 |
| Art by Sophie Campbell |
GREGG
KATZMAN: What jobs did you have before you broke into the comics industry?
 |
| Art by Sophie Campbell |
GK: How
old were you when you realized you want to make comics? Do you remember what
inspired you?
SC: I was
doing comic strips when I was a kid, Calvin & Hobbes was my first big
inspiration, then the original Eastman & Laird TMNT comics is what really
got me into it. In high school I kinda fell off of doing comics and actually
wanted to do either fashion design or writing prose novels for a while, even
when I went to art school I still didn't really take the comics thing seriously
until senior year when I realized I actually liked drawing comics a lot. I had
to do a senior thesis project thing and I did 20-something pages of the first
Wet Moon comic ever, and I found that I really loved it and I think that was
kinda the turning point. I'd done other small comics assignments before that
but it didn't click until that senior project.
 |
| Cover by Sophie Campbell |
SC: It's
amazing! I like going between the two, they both have things I like and dislike
and they scratch different itches. Doing work-for-hire gigs is nice because of
the money and having someone else steering the ship so I can focus on the work,
and of course getting to put my stamp on characters I love. But it's always
great getting to go back to my creator-owned comics where I control everything
and I don't have to worry as much about whether the work is "good" or
not because it's my own thing and there's less riding on it, I can focus on
what I have fun doing. They both have different mindsets for me. Getting to do
TMNT in particular has been so cool, I wonder what my 10-year-old self would
think.
GK: It's a
very stressful industry. If you ever experience doubts, how do you pick
yourself up and motivate yourself to keep creating comics?
SC: I
experience doubt all the time, I feel like maybe that comes with the job for
most people. This is one area where work-for-hire excels, if I'm doubting
myself and the work or if something gets bad or middling reviews, it messes me
up mentally and emotionally, but I don't usually have time to stop and wallow
over it. I have to keep working because other people are counting on me, that's
a big motivation for me, I don't want to let them down even though I'd rather
go crawl into bed. With my creator-owned work it's a bit harder because I don't
typically have the same rigorous schedule on that so it's easy to let myself
put the project down and do something else. Which I've done before, I've
postponed projects for years because of doubts or not feeling satisfied with
something, I've scrapped entire scripts and hundreds of pages of thumbnails
because of uncertainty. I wish I had a method to get past that and motivate
myself, but sometimes I need to just step away, get some perspective and come
back later for the motivation to return. Also, sometimes whining to friends
about it and getting a pep talk helps, too.
 |
| Art and lettering by Sophie Campbell |
SC: The first
piece of advice I always give is to be friendly. Even if you're doing webcomics
and not interested in traditional publishers, being friendly to others is the
most basic step toward getting your work seen and building a network of friends
and readers. Something else I see a lot in people who want to get started doing
comics is them saying it's too hard or they keep starting and stopping and
redoing things, and I think if you're at that stage you really need to look
within yourself and question whether this is something you really want to do,
even if it's just for fun. If you're struggling even taking the first steps and
you're not having fun with it, then that's a message that your heart is sending
you, in my opinion. Comics can be rough and a slog sometimes, yes, like
anything creative can be, but I really feel like if it's causing you more
stress than fun or excitement, maybe comics isn't for you. And that's fine! Or
if you're really determined, then find what's fun about it and go from there. Over
the years I forgot how to have fun with my comics and I had to get back to
basics and find what I enjoyed about it again, and I really feel like that's a
huge aspect of it. Otherwise the work suffers and you suffer. And finally, do
life-drawing!! Whether it's drawing from photos or going to a live model
drawing. Don't bother with anatomy tutorials by other artists and that type of
thing.
GK: What's
the best part about writing and illustrating comics? What's the most difficult
part?
SC: The best
part for me is coming up with the characters and who they are, what they look
like, how they act and interact with each other. That's something that's
especially satisfying for me when I'm doing both the writing and art, I can
immerse myself in it and not have to run ideas by anyone about how I want a
character to be. The most difficult parts are staying excited on long projects
and sticking to a schedule and making your own hours since I work at home. It's
really easy to get derailed when you have the internet at your fingertips and
you have a cute needy kitty who needs cuddles. It's difficult to shut myself
off from the world when I need to get work done.
 |
| Art by Sophie Campbell, Victoria Robado, and Shawn Lee |
SC: Sadly,
yes. I'll go through short phases where I don't care and won't read any, but I
always seem to go back to reading them. Which is probably a bad idea because on
average I feel like I tend to get middling reviews for my work, my reviews are
much better now than they were in the first half of my career, I've gotten some
of the worst most scathing reviews you can imagine, haha. Just ripped to
shreds. For some reason the middling ones bother me more than the scathing
ones, like I'd rather someone totally despise a book than just shrug and say
"it's okay I guess." Sometimes really horrible reviews galvanize me
in a weird backwards way, like I turn into a stubborn sneering kid and the
criticism makes me want to flip them the bird and do more comics. It depends on
what the reviewer is criticizing though, like if they criticize something I did
intentionally then I don't mind that because that's just a difference in
opinion, but if they criticize something I didn't mean to do, like something
offensive or something I messed up or didn't realize I was doing, then that
gets to me. Reviews are also weird for me because it's like I both want to get
them and DON'T want to get them at the same time, not getting them is much less
stressful and I don't have to worry about what people are saying and I can just
do my thing, but that also starts to nag at me like does the lack of reviews
mean people aren't paying attention and don't care about reading my comics? I
know that's kind of silly because the readers/fans aren't usually the ones
writing the reviews, they're still there regardless of how many reviews there
are, but it still makes me dwell on it sometimes. And then at the same time
sometimes I don't WANT people to be paying attention so I can just do my thing
and have fun and not have to worry about people watching, sometimes it's nice
to be off the radar. I don't know what I want.
 |
| Art by Sophie Campbell |
SC: That
freelancers are having a blast partying at home all day and you can bother us
whenever you want because we're not at a place of work like an office. That's
probably the biggest thing for me anyway, even 15 years into my career and
people still kind of treat it like I'm goofing off all day. Or when I tell
someone new that I draw comics, a lot of times they act envious because they assume
comics is a nonstop party.
GK: I'm a
lifelong TMNT fan and I absolutely loved your work with the franchise. What was
the most challenging part about bringing the Heroes in a Half Shell to life?
What about the most exciting part?
SC: Thank
you! The hardest part at first was dealing with the licensors and testing their
boundaries of what I was allowed to do and what I wasn't, that was rough for
me, I was too much of a fan. But things are a breeze now on TMNT and I wouldn't
say there are any difficulties with the more recent work I've done on it. Maybe
the hardest part now is just doing work that lives up to what the characters
are in my imagination. The most exciting part is when other fans cite me as one
of their favorite TMNT artists or that my renditions of the Turtles are their
favorite, that's always amazing. And when Kevin Eastman is excited about what I
do!
GK: Is
there anything else you would like to say about your upcoming work and your
career as a comics creator?
SC: I can't
say much about what I have coming up, as much I'd want to, unfortunately, but I
hope people like it. I'm hopefully going to be doing a fantasy comic soon, and
also the next Shadoweyes installment (which will be the end of the series).
 |
| Art by Sophie Campbell |
Cool
ReplyDelete