First Second Books - Doodles and Dailies

on CCS and Marketing

CCS sent us over an e-mail last week about an Awareness Week they're having to -- um, raise awareness about the fact that CCS exists.  I'm not really sure if anyone who reads our blog hasn't heard of CCS, but if you are that sole solitary reader scratching his or her head over this curious combination of initials, be made full of awareness now!

I got a chance to visit CCS this fall, which was fun, because it involved very long train rides and also butternut squash/beet soup and Alec Longstreth.  And (of course) the most fun part of all was talking for 2.5 hours to a group of second-year students about marketing (after which there was ice cream, which I needed because I had no voice left). 

As a marketing type, I find it to be an excellent thing when schools incorporate into their curriculum some sort of 'professional practices' class that includes marketing.  Because, it turns out, marketing is important when it comes to publishing books well.  And if authors are prepared beforehand, everything runs much more smoothly.  When authors have an accurate idea of what sorts of things are their responsibility marketing-wise, they are less frequently accidentally crushed to death under the weight of events, interviews, and other miscellany. 

(We like our authors best when they are not crushed to death.  It is a better state from which to get them to do more books for us!)

MENTORS CORNER/from Gene Yang

As an offering to our young talent, and to anyone who might find this helpful--here and elsewhere, green or seasoned--I've asked a number of experienced authors to send a little word of coaching, encouragement or mentoring to them. We'll call this new category MENTORS CORNER. It will occasionally feature some authors who aren't with First Second.

Check back here on Thursdays every week for new offerings. If any of this speaks to you and answers a need or sparks an enquiry, do add your comment--who knows what dialogue may open up from it.

From Gene Yang:

Advice for a cartoonist who’s just starting out?

Get a day job. I know people tend to see day jobs as a sign of failure, but really, there are so many benefits:

1. By separating your comics from your need to feed yourself, you keep full control of your comics. You’ll never have to draw someone else’s story simply because that someone else is going to help you make rent.

2. Health insurance.

3. Your day job can be a great source of material. Stories occur around us all the time, especially when we’re interacting with other people. I’ve found that some of the best stories come out of interactions that you wouldn’t necessarily choose to have: ones with your co-workers, your customers, or your students. There are lots of great characters out there, walking around on the street and in office buildings and on campuses, just waiting for you to bump into them.

You do have to exercise good judgment in picking a day job. It should be something you like – not every day, but overall. It should be something you find meaningful. And it should be something that will leave you with enough energy to make your comics after work. For a lot of us, that means a day job that doesn’t involve cartooning.

Personally, I think classroom teaching is a great way to go. Everyone knows we need good teachers, and teaching, at least for me, draws from a different “energy well” than cartooning. Teaching is so extroverted, so people-oriented. At the end of a day of teaching, when I’ve had all the human contact I can stand, I go to my drawing board and recharge by inking a page. Then, when I’m sick of being holed up in my home office, I go back into my classroom. Plus, you can catch up on your comics during summer vacations if you fall behind during the school year. If you’re a cartoonist who’s ever even had a passing interest in
teaching, I’d encourage you to explore it. Heck, I’m one of three cartoonists on staff at my school, and we all put out comics fairly regularly.

Of course, plenty of comics creators do just fine with art-oriented day jobs. The incredible C. Scott Morse works at Pixar during the day and still finds the energy to create brilliant graphic novels at night. Plenty of others don’t have any day jobs at all. Jeff Smith hasn’t had a day job since the start of Bone.

But for me, I’ve found my own day job to be a blessing rather than a curse.

MENTORS CORNER/from MIKE CAVALLARO

As an offering to our young talent, and to anyone who might find this helpful--here and elsewhere, green or seasoned--I've asked a number of experienced authors to send a little word of coaching, encouragement or mentoring to them. We'll call this new category MENTORS CORNER. It will occasionally feature some authors who aren't with First Second.

Check back here on Thursdays every week for new offerings. If any of this speaks to you and answers a need or sparks an enquiry, do add your comment--who knows what dialogue may open up from it.

From Mike Cavallaro:

There are so many potential pitfalls encountered while working alone on a long graphic novel project that it's impossible to address them all. Sometimes it's just hard to stay focused and away from the Playstation day-in and day-out. Maybe you feel your own work isn't measuring up to the work of your favorite artists and that's making you panic and redo things. With so many wild tangents and distractions, it's hard to tell the right path from the detours and dead ends.

Fortunately, there are tools for finding your way. Two of the most useful are calendars and clocks.

Although some guys like Sfar and Trondheim seem to do a graphic-novel-a-week, the rest of us have to put in long hours for every page. The "free" part of "freelancer" is truly great, but it's still a job, and you're going to have to put in a real workday just like everybody else.

That work day should be something reasonable, like an 8 or 9 hour day.

In that time, you probably need to be penciling at least 2 pages. So get an early start, get that first page done, take a lunch break, and then get back to work.

This is where the calendar comes in. At the end of the week, you will be able to see the fruits of your labor in the form of 10 or so newly penciled pages. Progress!

If this isn't happening, you're doing something wrong. You're overworking your pages, getting distracted by tv, video games, friends, etc., or sitting there staring at a blank page.

Do yourself a favor, try to remember the confidence you had when you did the sample pages that got you the job to begin with. Art should be fun. Have fun with this, just stick to your schedule. It's possible to do both.

All these times and measurements have to be adjusted by your actual deadline. Two pages a day only works if it gets you done in time. Maybe you can do one page. Maybe you need to do three. It depends, obviously.

The bottom line is, drawing all day may be the greatest job in the world, but it's still a job and you have to treat it that way. All things in moderation. You still need to see your friends and goof off a little, but you also need to get this job done.

Put in a real work day, and work hard. Have a daily quota, and be sure to meet it. Watch your completed pages pile up around you. Don't waste time obsessively redoing things; you're getting better as you go even if you don't realize it. Let it happen. That's how it went for all the cartoonists you admire.

TRUST YOURSELF.

and:

FROM AN INTERVIEW WITH ARTIST JOHN BUSCEMA:

DAVID SPURLOCK: Is there any message that you would give to aspiring artists?

JOHN: If you're looking to make a living, open a deli! At least you won't starve (laughs)! Seriously, no matter what you tell someone, if they have the drive, they will do it. If you try to discourage them, they'll do it anyway. Others, you can give all kinds of encouragement, but they'll fail if they don't have that determination. When people ask me for advice, I say, "Do what makes you happy. That's the only way to go."

MENTORS CORNER/from JESSICA ABEL

As an offering to our young talent, and to anyone who might find this helpful--here and elsewhere, green or seasoned--I've asked a number of experienced authors to send a little word of coaching, encouragement or mentoring to them. We'll call this new category MENTORS CORNER. It will occasionally feature some authors who aren't with First Second.

Check back here on Thursdays every week for new offerings. If any of this speaks to you and answers a need or sparks an enquiry, do add your comment--who knows what dialogue may open up from it.

From Jessica Abel among many other credentials, co-author of DRAWING WORDS AND WRITING PICTURES:

"Get yourself a calendar, and schedule the work you have to do in there.

Make sure the calendar is the type where you can see a day or a week at at time (not a month at a time), so there's room to write under each day. Then, mark in any regular commitments you have. If you meet a friend for lunch every Wednesday, or just this wednesday, make sure it's in there. If you go to the gym three times a week (or just mean to...), put that in there. Write down your breakfast, shower, lunch, dinner times. Commuting, if you have to do that. Mark down sleep. Mark down playing video games, if you must.

Once you've got all that there, you will be able to see how much time you really have to work (and if you need to make adjustments to your daily activities that aren't work). In the time you have for work, assign yourself very specific tasks--like "lay out pages 56-60" for half an hour, then "rough pencil page 56" for however long it takes you--maybe 2 or 3 hours, then "letter page 56" for an hour or whatever.

Taking a little time to get all this in your book will do several things for you. It will become clear to you how much you can reasonably get done in a week. It will become clear where you might need to shorten your daily activities to fit in more drawing. And, most importantly, it will give you concrete goals, so that when you finish what you set out to do, you can cross it off and feel good about yourself, and you can also stop working, sometimes the hardest thing to do for a freelance artist. Knowing when you're on and what you need to get done makes your free time, once you've accomplished these goals, truly free, guilt-free. And that's the most important part of learning to make a life as a working artist.

Once you get good at all this, you don't have to be so detailed about it, of course. But it really helps to follow this discipline throughout one project to get yourself in the rhythm of it. And even once you get more comfortable with your schedule, it still helps to make detailed to-do lists for a given day so you have something to cross off when you're done. Half the battle is tricking your brain into feeling that sense of accomplishment you might get if someone on the outside were praising you for a job well done.

Good luck! "

MENTORS CORNER/from MIKE MIGNOLA

As an offering to our young talent, and to anyone who might find this helpful--here and elsewhere, green or seasoned--I've asked a number of experienced authors to send a little word of coaching, encouragement or mentoring to them. We'll call this new category MENTORS CORNER. It will occasionally feature some authors who aren't with First Second.

Check back here on Thursdays every week for new offerings. If any of this speaks to you and answers a need or sparks an enquiry, do add your comment--who knows what dialogue may open up from it.

From MIKE MIGNOLA, who hardly needs an introduction... A few thoughts worth treasuring:

"There is so much great young talent out there these days, but I'm afraid to work with anybody who hasn't been in the business for ten years, someone who's been mistreated by all the major publishers and has a mortgage and a family to support. What I wouldn't give to be able to insert a work ethic into people. So, don't know what to tell you about that end of stuff.

I CAN pass on something that Frank Miller told me when I was about to start Hellboy--It's as good advice as I've ever gotten on this subject. He said something like "just do it, do the best you can, don't drive yourself crazy, just KNOW that when you look back on it you're going to hate it. It can't be helped. The next one will be better." I don't know if that really helps here. Your problem is that you're dealing with GRAPHIC NOVELS and they are a lot scarier than comics. They're sold in bookstores and are going to be in print for a long time. The beauty to doing comics in the old days was that you did a shitty job, it came out, and then it was gone. Now everything is collected and we have to live with our mistakes--Of course that also means we keep making money (which is good) and when we DO finally do a job we're proud of it stays in print. I wouldn't want the old days back, believe me, but it was easier to learn as you went, knowing that your early work would be forgotten.

For me the only thing that works is having a lot of projects lined up so as you are working on one, and it's not coming out quite as well as you'd hoped, you can always say the next one will be better."

MENTORS CORNER/from JAMES STURM

As an offering to our young talent, and to anyone who might find this helpful--here and elsewhere, green or seasoned--I've asked a number of experienced authors to send a little word of coaching, encouragement or mentoring to them. We'll call this new category MENTORS CORNER. It will occasionally feature some authors who aren't with First Second.

Check back here on Thursdays every week for new offerings. If any of this speaks to you and answers a need or sparks an enquiry, do add your comment--who knows what dialogue may open up from it.

FROM JAMES STURM, of the Center for Creative Studies, and co-author of the upcoming ADVENTURES IN CARTOONING from First Second:

The difference between making a zine or a comic book and a graphic novel is like the difference between a short story and a novel. With a novel it's a long and sloppy affair and you have to defer that "polishing stage" when everything looks tight. You have to trust that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. If you don't you will have a hard time sustaining the energy and commitment to see the project through 'cause it's a long haul. In other words, you have to believe in the material because you will undoubtedly doubt yourself (sadly, many of us cartoonists feel we are only good as our last drawing).

"FInished panels" makes us feel like we have accomplished something and generate confidence but I find rushing to a finished image when working on a long book is antithetical to building momentum on a long project. With smaller works its easier to proceed through a story with a fair amount of precision. With longer works you have to give the work form and shape with pretty blunt tools before taking out your scalpel (or #2 brush or hunts 102 nib, etc).

On longer stories, like most novelists, I work in drafts. Each subsequent draft takes longer. The first draft I try to bang out as fast as possible and keep the visual writing as fluid as possible. I am not a big coffee drinker but during this initial draft caffeine really helps! This draft is more scrawled than drawn. Some pages may even be just a few sentences describing what may go where. Some scenes, that are seen more clearly, are more fully visualized. The first draft is usually only readable to me.

The first draft is like building a fence around the project— if I am stuck I just put down anything and move on knowing I will return to it on a subsequent draft. It's like overseeing a big farm. You can't afford to dwell too long in one area and allow the rest to go to pot.

After the first draft I'll take a few days away the piece than dive back in. The next draft I still work small (thumbnails at half printed page size but in the correct proportions). I go though the book again. I'm amazed by how much easier tackling difficult areas are when I return to something fresh after a short time away from it. This next draft takes at least twice as long as the first draft. My small drawings are tighter. I'm not as concerned with the perfect facial expression (or brush mark since I am still using a pencil) but concentrating instead on panel composition and correct proportions.

The third draft I blow these pages up to the size I'll be drawing out and pencil out the entire book (always editing and revising as I go). Fourth pass through is inking, but of course returning to the penciled pages, often months later, I'm able to see the pages with fresh eyes and strengthen and clarify the drawing.

I guess the long and short of all this is that by making several passes through a story I never feel too much pressure to ever "get it right" knowing I'll be returning to each page several times. By the time I am ready to ink I have a lot more confidence than if I would have penciled and inked as I went. Working this way also allows for the inevitable changes in my drawing and helps me maintain greater consistency. Alison Bechedel was telling me how she had to go back a redraw many of the early pages in Fun Home because by the time she was finished her drawing was much tighter and the earlier pages looked shabby (to her eye at least!).

MENTORS CORNER/from GEORGE O'CONNOR

As an offering to our young talent, and to anyone who might find this helpful--here and elsewhere, green or seasoned--I've asked a number of experienced authors to send a little word of coaching, encouragement or mentoring to them. We'll call this new category MENTORS CORNER. It will occasionally feature some authors who aren't with First Second.

Check back here on Thursdays every week for new offerings. If any of this speaks to you and answers a need or sparks an enquiry, do add your comment--who knows what dialogue may open up from it.

FROM GEORGE O'CONNOR:

This is primarily directed at those people with the perfectionist streak that keeps them redoing the first ten pages I suppose. A nice, no pressure way to begin any long project is, before you actually begin finished pages, give yourself the necessary warm up time to draw each of your main characters a hundred times or so. These needn't be finished pieces of art, just doodles, warm-ups, to give yourself the feel of your characters. As the artist, you're an actor, and the characters are the tools you use to express yourself. Achieve complete famialiarity with your creations, streamline any chunky bits in their design, and most importantly, regard this "doodle time" as an integral, important part of the book, not justr something to get out of the way. Rehearsals, if you will. After you warm up for a few days, begin your finished pages and try not to let a day go by where you don't keep working, even if it's just an hour or two on weekends. That way, you keep "warm" and in the feel of the book, and you'll be less likely to look at what you've done already and shudder. If I ever redo a page, it's invariably the first one I completed after an unintended break from the drawing board.

MENTORS CORNER/from EMMANUEL GUIBERT

First Second has a growing number of young creators getting signed on to big projects. Some of these new talents are getting their first break just out of art school, some are not even out of college; some are leaping from short assignments or smaller indy projects to a big long book for the first time, with a big publishing house.

i wonder about our young creators. How are they handling new pressures, contracts, deadlines? Some have already found themselves a trusted mentor or two, a coach in a teacher, their agent, or their editor, but others probably toil away on their own. While for some it may look like they've been doing it all their life, for others it's possible to freeze up, or fall apart, or feel paralyzed, or get stuck redoing their first ten pages forever.

As an offering to our young talent, and to anyone who might find this helpful--here and elsewhere, green or seasoned--I've asked a number of experienced authors to send a little word of coaching, encouragement or mentoring to them. We'll call this new category MENTORS CORNER. It will occasionally feature some authors who aren't with First Second.

Check back here on Thursdays every week for new offerings. If any of this speaks to you and answers a need or sparks an enquiry, do add your comment--who knows what dialogue may open up from it.

FROM EMMANUEL GUIBERT:

In the end, I believe only in learning by example. I can't think of too many general ideas I can offer comics artists who are starting out in their careers. I know a few in France, whose work I'm following, but each one is an idiosyncratic case.

Besides, having been through a lot of screwups of my own early on, I can measure how much I needed to go through them. I crossed a few deserts, often feeling like I'd turned into a piece of dried fruit—I always judge myself to be far below what I could and should be doing, obviously—and that's been part of my path. I can see how it's been useful. In fact, I've always had the feeling that my drawing skill was a kind of treasure, that I carried a treasure in me and that, before being a responsibility, this was an amazing stroke of luck. I'm an incredibly lucky guy, and the most intimate yet visible manifestation of this luck is having drawing in my life.

That said, if I'm expected to hand down one or two precepts from the dizzying heights of wisdom I've scaled, I'd add this: when you feel stuck, on the wrong track, up the proverbial creek, don't stay on your own. Looking back at my own experience, I can see that it was a key turning point for me to decide to mingle with a circle of people, to make a radical break with the solitude of my drawing board and go work among other people. Granted, I lucked out, since the other people were called Joann [Sfar], Christophe [Blain], David [B.], Emile [Bravo], Marc [Boutavant], Marjane [Satrapi], and so on. I could've fared worse. But that's really what did me a world of good—the exampleship of it, the sharing, the mutual inspiration, the highs and lows that you live through together. Watching how the others do it. What they bring you, and what you have to offer them.

Our drawing reflects what we are. A lively personality with a strong sense of curiosity and a robust instinct of self-preservation will tend to use drawing to evolve, to gain maturity, to seek, meet, and always feel more. A less vibrant or more fragile personality will use it as a way to shore up its deficient self-esteem, to carve out a niche, to lie to itself, sometimes even to self-destruct. The truth is that both extremes coexist in each of us, and the key, as in everything else in life, is to try to strike a balance. You can do yourself a lot of harm or a lot of good with your drawing, depending on how you use it. Like all important ingredients in life, drawing is a double-edged sword. It has its good uses and its bad ones. You'll drift from one side to the other, and you need to be keenly aware of the happiness or misery that it's causing you, because that's your compass. And through it all, never put down your pencil!

More treasures from the Eddie Campbell trove

Lots of goodies on the nuts and bolts of the craft of comics, archived on Eddie Campbell's blog.

ON WORD BALLOONS

There are some precious lessons to be gleaned from Eddie Campbell's blog, including an entry called THE LAST WORD IN SPEECH BALLOONS. Several First Second creators have found this valuable in the midst of their thumbnails, so let's add this link to it here, in our TIPS FOR CREATIVE TYPES category (which is filling up with a nice variety of stuff.)