This is about people who DON'T make a living from their comics.
I got the idea from Jillyfoo because it was really interesting hearing about all
the different jobs she'd had and how each one had different influences
on how she worked on her comics.
I'd like to do a show on how DD webcomicers make a crust. How do you
support your webcomicing lives? How DO you earn a living and how that
factors into your webcomic:
Weather you do a biographical comic or you put scenes from your real life in your comic, or you work on it or think about it at work in some way, or if your work gets in the way and means you have a lot less time for your comic.
Even if you are out of work or a student it all factors in and I'd love to know about it!
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This Quackcast is going to have Skoolmunkee as a guest.
Please have any sumbissions in by Thursday Midnight on the 2nd of February.
Post written submissions here and you can send recordings to "ozoneocean at gmail dot com"
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Comic Talk and General Discussion *
QUACKCAST 63 - Need contributions!! -Topic: HOW do you make your living? Non-comic jobs
I am an auto mechanic . I would say that my job factors into my comics in several ways . First let me say that the past few years I have been sort of fed up with the auto industry and hopefully soon I won't be a mechanic anymore .
the way this affects my comicing is that I had several ideas and ended up choosing my dragonslayer comic because i think subconsiously i wanted a machine free comic ! Days when I am frustrated with work I tend to spend in the forums or on some other task .It seems i create better when I have had a good day that i worked hard and made money on , so i guess you could say job affects mood affects creativity .
At present I'm a full time parent, I have been for the whole time I've been doing webcomics. I'm not sure it has any bearing on my comics, well perhaps an abscence of any interesting real life stuff as mine isn't that interesting for the most part. Previously I had been all manner of things but being a taxi driver had an influence. Doing that was a real eye opener, I've always known there was a seedy side to society but never realised the extent of it.
I'm currently 19 years old in a higher middle class type family. I think it's safe for a regular person to assume i don't have a job. I'd be working as a bartender if i could find a single place that wasn't dozens of miles away from my house or the typical all night loud music bar clubs that are all over the place.
Needless to say if i had a job right now it'd be a bartending job, which is pretty easy to see how it could factor into my comic 'Nectar of the Gods'.
artofzinn - I'd imagine there's not a lot of creativity type stuff going on as a mechanic! I'm interested to know if the physicality of being an auto mechanic has any effect. Do your hands hurt some days or anything?
genejoke - so does being a fulltime parent give you more or less time to do comics? (Or maybe just odd times of day?) Does not having interesting real life stuff make you have to work harder to write fiction?
rpggrenade - how does NOT having a job factor in? I guess it would give you time at least. :]
It's a mixed bag, but usually in the afternoon I have an hour or two where I can get some bits done while the youngest falls asleep after preschool. Most of my creating is done between 7pm and 1am but I do tend to have the software loaded and do a little here and there when I can.
I say life isn't that interesting but it can be, but I prefer to use fiction as an escape or a way of mulling things over.
Yes my hands are injured most of the time , but really I have a high pain tolerance so it doesen't even bother me . There have been times that I cut my hands pretty good and did not even realise it until blood showed up on the engine ! Desensitivity probably affects my artwork although I relly cant say I've noticed it . The stress of getting paid by the job instead of paid by the hour though definately affects my mood and my art .
skoolmunkee wrote:I find the exact opposite to be true. Having more unstructured time allows me to waste so much more of it. When I have less open time I tend to accomplish more. I was working seven days a week when doing my most involved comic work on Attack of the Robofemoids. Now that I'm down to two days a week I'm spending less time on the current comic and more time reading or watching movies.
rpggrenade - how does NOT having a job factor in? I guess it would give you time at least. :]
Well…
I don't make a living. I'm just a jobless student. So when it comes to making comics I really don't use disposable goods outside what I would need for class. I don't invest in traditional art supplies, but I have recieved some things from Ochi as gifts (some prisma pens and a light box to play with). I only use my mechanical pencils, computer paper, printer, and photoshop. (Now I used a graphics tablet that I got as a gift for Christmas).
The way I see it. Clara the Student and Niccea the webcomicer are two different people.
The two worlds have collided in different ways depending on what I have been doing. When I was working at the school library, I used my spare time to draft comics (if I didn't have too look at references for characters) and used events for my psydo-biography webcomic When Books Attack Part II. When I was a Resident Assistant, I was allowed to have a computer at my desk and so I did both drafting and coloring during my work hours.
When I was an OT student, I took comicing as a creative outlet while others were into scrapbooking.
Now as business student, I look at things in a diffent way. My experience in webcomicing and on the site. I look at is at a small scale business enviornment for me to learn and practice my trade in (without spending any of my money.) I beleive I'm the only of my classmates that can say she has regualar interactions with people from all over the world.
I have to agree with Niccea on this one. Usually when I've been working, wether it's night time duty, fishery, driving, mail delivery etc. there usually isn't time for making comics, at least in my case because I don't draw on paper(mspaint ftw). For example, working good 12-14 hours standing and cutting fish with knives, operating machines and stuff and if you aren't focusing you might loose an hand or an eye or something.. and I guess that's not a good thing if you are making comics.
Often you get loads and tons of ideas for comics, strips, jokes. For example the ideas and the plot in my other comic [link=www.drunkduck.com/Not_so_Heroic/]NsH[/link]I was thinking outloud, seeing scenarios and often talking to myself while I was mailman this one summer. At work I formulated the ideas and concepts and in the evenings, if I had the time I tried to put them down on paper. While on the other hand [link=www.drunkduck.com/Bobby_the_fetus/]Bobby the fetus"[/link] usually suffers when I'm working, simply because I usually don't have motivation, lack of ideas and generally life comes first…
*edit* because I forgot, I'm currently unemplyed single male (ladies…) and studying social work…
lol my bad. Doing a lot of film exposes me to a lot of different styles of storytelling. In some of the cases I've done camera work so I also see how different shots and angles affect the outcomes of what I am working with, and it's something I've tried to work into my comics at tims.
As a student, I'm trying to improve my artwork as best as I can. For example, the last sememster helped me think outside of the typical norm when it comes to paneling.
I'm a stay at home Dad, who sends his wife out into the cold, cold world (or at the moment the gloriously sunny, hot world) each morning after pouring espresso down her throat. Technically when the wee-ist one starts school in a couple of years I should probably stop spending my days writing comics and taking photos of Playmobil toys, but we will see about that. I intersperse my comic making with male sopa operas (sports), cooking (which I love to do), playing the bass (I have four of them) and playing the ukulele (I have three of those) …but one of which is actually both a bass AND a ukulele. If there are any other DD musicians out there we could start up a vitual band?
In the past I've worked in comic shop, a bottlestore (selling alcohol), an international consulting firm (I have no idea how that happened, nor what I did for them for 4 years), an English as a second language school (where I installed video games for the students to play), an adult education school (which is far racier sounding that it actually was) and a writer for various history of science textbooks and encyclopedias (everything from this history of the zero to what kind of hip replacements are better).
For the time being, I work a late 2nd shift job as a custodian for an educational district. I wake up around 10-11am and crash around 4-5am. This suits me fine. However, it is not a perfect scenario for purposes of doing my comic.
When I wake up just prior to noon, I have a handful of hours before trudging off to work and the first of which I'm just trying to thaw out or stay conscious. Then I have a need to mentally stimulate my mind for a bit. I can't just fire up and be creative. So in that window of time, I rarely have myself together enough to get anything started. That's an operative term here.
When I come back late at night and I've had my fill of dealing with 50-60 somethings who act like frat brats (let me tell you, the difference between older pencil pushers and elementary students is, aside from energy levels, extremely minimal at times), I don't feel like dealing with anything or anyone. Now by this hour, my girlfriend is passed out a few feet away and I can rarely keep more than a 40 year old desk lamp on without disturbing her. This provides a pretty poor amount of lighting for yours truly on the paper, to say nothing of my arm making shadows. So I usually sit there with my piece of paper trying to express in ink something resembling what I've been thinking about at work through out the day concerning the comic. This process is laden with distractions as it is.
But the important thing is, I get it started that night. Even if it's just a single character being drawn once, I find this makes things much easier. By the next day's start, I can finish what I couldn't start in the morning of the previous day. Somehow, that takes less mental focus, even while I'm still groggy. I usually finish just before I have to head out to work again, although it sometimes runs me a bit late out the door.
Sometimes, this makes my life feel overly routine. I can't help but go to work and I can easily think about plot lines and motivations while doing my runs, but when I get back there's a certain feeling of, no matter how much I generally like doing my comic, it's still mainly a responsibility that cuts into de-stressing time where I would prefer to do nearly anything else occasionally: write, play a game, or even draw something else.
So what I'm left with is a story that I'm overly familiar with due to the mundane nature of my work giving ample time to focus on nothing else. If I could illustrate even half as fast as I can think and write, it would feel fresher to me as the expression would keep pace with the thought process itself. Instead, I'm both ahead of the game and eternally backlogged and I find that is, at times, largely unsatisfying.
I'll also go on record to say it leaves me with maybe too much time to think about it, such as if I'm wasting my time even doing the story as a webcomic.
I use to be a teacher at that time I had more jokes involving kids…lighter stuff.. now I work in as a personal care aid hospice.. I do anything that needs done.. and any thing the nurses wont..my comics have gotten darker.. more looking at death.. discrimination,, hatred …the question of why. I use my comic as a way to tell myself stuff.
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