How Dominic Deegan Might Save My Life
Warning: long self-exploratory rambling brain spew ahead. Just thinking out loud (figuratively, unless you count keyboard clacks).
Nobody tells me they like my art.
[To clarify: in this case, I'm using "art" in the common-parlance of comics sense, meaning drawing and illustration, as opposed to the other part of comics, commonly referred to as "writing" or "story" - which, yes, pedantic ones, is also "art", as is music, another artform I dabble in, but "nobody likes my art" is snappier sounding than "nobody likes the way in which I illustrate things".]
This isn't fishing for contradictions ("oh, no, no, you're really very good"), but a realistic assessment of my ability. Oh, people sometimes praise things I've drawn for one thing or another: "That's a cute expression" or "I like that shiny effect" or something similar, some specific aspect of a picture I've made. I've had more stir over a kind of throwaway gag cartoon I did of Power Girl and Supergirl swapping costumes than nearly anything else I've posted on my DeviantArt account, and I suspect that's due to the appeal of the characters themselves, rather than any particular appreciation of my art style.
My style is neither fish nor fowl: certainly not standard US superhero comicbook stuff, and though it has manga-like elements, it really isn't as manga-derived as most stuff commonly referred to as "OEM" these days.
Plus, (SELF DEPRECATION ALERT) it really isn't that good, in a technical sense. I am aware of many flaws in the way I draw things, I know most of my artistic weaknesses inside out.
Were I to re-live my life, I might have put more effort into classical/traditional methods of learning to draw; in order to also develop my writing and musical skills, however, I did not, and I can't get those 42 years back. Jack of all trades, master of none.
I also lack the all-consuming drive you often hear about when artists (of all stripes) are asked how to get "into the biz", whatever biz that may be. You often hear people say that the art needs to be your main goal, that you have to love it above all other things, that you have to work against impossible obstacles to succeed. Myself, I tend to place eating regularly nearly as high on my list of desires as art, which is why I've kept taking things like factory jobs to keep myself alive - jobs which have the unfortunate side effect of draining my energy and enthusiasm for making art. As much as I'd like to, I simply am unable to summon up the will and tenacity to put in an 8-hour shift and then come home and make any real progress on art. The catch-22, of course, is that devoting all my time to art, on the few times I've tried it, has so far been a miserable failure as far as generating a livable income.
There's been a small buzz in creative circles lately about the concept of "1000 true fans" and how that relates to "the long tail". Which would be ideal - I'd be content to make a reasonable living off my art, I don't need super-stardom (not that I'd eschew fame and fortune if it happened) - the trick is finding those 1000 true fans in the first place.
But there's part of the problem: if people don't like my art style as it stands, then what draw can I provide? Excellent writing? Possibly, but problematic with comics. Some people won't read things that turn them off, visually, even if they're literary masterpieces. (And some people read horrible dreck if it shines up purty.) (And I'm guilty of the latter myself, so shut up.) And if writing becomes the draw, then that means abandoning any thought of simply selling things like prints or standalone illustrations.
My music is potentially more accessible and interest-generating, but the same time/energy constraints exist.
To further complicate matters, I am absolutely dreadful at marketing myself. I find it somewhat distasteful to play the shill (unless it's being done sarcastically), especially when my most recent works dribble forth in time measured in months, if not years. There's some marketing I can do: I have been experimenting with small changes in the way I dress at conventions versus my normal everyday attire. The majority of people at a convention are dressed in casual wear, particularly men: overweight fanboys in jeans and logo t-shirts - but that's how I dress most days! (Another significant style of dress of congoers being the Klingon or Stormtrooper, but no, I'm not likely to go down the cosplay road.) There's no standing out in a crowd there, but I digress. This is all attention-getting at the physical, personal appearance level anyway, and my appearances are pretty limited.
It also sidesteps the fundamental issue: it's no use worrying about promotion if you don't have much of anything to promote, and that means sitting down and doing the work and actually producing stuff, which requires time, energy and dedication I do not have. And then toss in this: how disheartening is it to expend extra effort, force yourself to work through things, when there's no guarantee of any reward? I'd be more willing to produce new images for prints if I thought I would sell even one or two prints at a con, but I can barely give business cards away.
Well.
That's all the bad crap. Connect that to a recurring case of the mid-life-crisis and you have unhappy me.
And still, I have some small measure of hope.
Have you heard of Dominic Deegan? It's a webcomic.
And some people hate it.
Oh, god, they hate it. Do you know how I discovered it? By stumbling across a forum that had a thread dedicated to discussing how terrible it is. That's right: There is a thread (on more than one message board, I believe) whose sole singular purpose is to get a bunch of people together with nothing better to do than to gripe about how bad Dominic Deegan is. How lame the art is. How weak the stories are. How idiotic the strip's fans must be - yes, the flipside is that the strip has many fans. The fans are criticized for being morons who support a mediocre webcomic. Sometimes some of those fans vigorously defend the strip. This is the utter definition of "pointless internet drama". Because it is utterly pointless, what's the use of bitching about why other people like something?
Now, I'll concede that the art in Dominic Deegan isn't exactly what I would consider high-quality illustration. And the story? Serviceable, but no masterpiece by any means. Buuuuuuut, nevertheless, fans. And fans enough that the author seems to run the strip as his job, a page a day. Hell, I read it myself, now.
And that is inspirational - the triumph of the not-quite-so-great.
Because it means maybe, if things are just right, I could enjoy some similar sort of success.
It is interesting to me that many things that are reviled on the level of Dominic Deegan also turn out to be very popular.
On Gaia, a recurring topic was the webcomic Megatokyo, a popular punching-bag for wannabe Japanophiles (for being too wannabe, too stereotypically Japanophiliac). The creator's promotion style, of plugging his strip everywhere he showed up on the internet, was criticized - but it worked, it propelled his strip ultimately into a book deal with Dark Horse Comics.
Also scoring a deal with a book company (albeit the smaller, lesser-known Seven Seas) was Chugworth Academy, whose creator has been lambasted by Journalista and the crowd at When Fangirls Attack for being a misogynistic purveyor of cartoon jailbait. But investigation shows he has a fair amount of fans, and has done a lot of commission work, despite the hate pointed in his direction.
Survival despite intense hate. In fact, possibly because of that hate: after all, some of this stuff I may have never learned of if some mouthy cranks weren't eating up bandwidth trying to convince everyone else how rotten these things are/were. So, ding! one more Dominic Deegan reader. And more than that, the people who keep reading the strip just to pick it apart later are still readers themselves, giving weight to the sales of banner ads and the like.
Seriously: I could learn to welcome hate if it'd bring me in a living wage.
Perhaps a shift in focus is required. Often I've witnessed poor-to-mediocre artists receiving unfavorable critique, and then challenging critique with the line about how "well, Artist X is crap, but he sells a gazillion books!" Such an excuse is used to avoid any personal initiative to better one's skills - to wallow in the way one does things now, to wish for commercial success before one is truly skilled enough to achieve commercial success. There must be a grain of truth to the excuse, however, since Artist X does suck, and does sell a gazillion books. One should keep in mind that these things can owe a lot to luck and positioning and connections and other uncontrollable factors, but in the end, Dominic Deegan has fans enough to support the comic; why shouldn't I get that number of fans (and/or enemies), too?
Perhaps I should stop fretting about the quality of my art. It is what it is - and I don't have the time or money to invest in intensive study to improve it. The best I can hope for is to improve by doing more art on a regular basis. Not that I should be fully satisfied with my art, but I should be able to let it go at a certain point if for no other reason than to move to the next project, the next page, the next whatever.
Some experimentation may be required.
Nobody tells me they like my art.
[To clarify: in this case, I'm using "art" in the common-parlance of comics sense, meaning drawing and illustration, as opposed to the other part of comics, commonly referred to as "writing" or "story" - which, yes, pedantic ones, is also "art", as is music, another artform I dabble in, but "nobody likes my art" is snappier sounding than "nobody likes the way in which I illustrate things".]
This isn't fishing for contradictions ("oh, no, no, you're really very good"), but a realistic assessment of my ability. Oh, people sometimes praise things I've drawn for one thing or another: "That's a cute expression" or "I like that shiny effect" or something similar, some specific aspect of a picture I've made. I've had more stir over a kind of throwaway gag cartoon I did of Power Girl and Supergirl swapping costumes than nearly anything else I've posted on my DeviantArt account, and I suspect that's due to the appeal of the characters themselves, rather than any particular appreciation of my art style.
My style is neither fish nor fowl: certainly not standard US superhero comicbook stuff, and though it has manga-like elements, it really isn't as manga-derived as most stuff commonly referred to as "OEM" these days.
Plus, (SELF DEPRECATION ALERT) it really isn't that good, in a technical sense. I am aware of many flaws in the way I draw things, I know most of my artistic weaknesses inside out.
Were I to re-live my life, I might have put more effort into classical/traditional methods of learning to draw; in order to also develop my writing and musical skills, however, I did not, and I can't get those 42 years back. Jack of all trades, master of none.
I also lack the all-consuming drive you often hear about when artists (of all stripes) are asked how to get "into the biz", whatever biz that may be. You often hear people say that the art needs to be your main goal, that you have to love it above all other things, that you have to work against impossible obstacles to succeed. Myself, I tend to place eating regularly nearly as high on my list of desires as art, which is why I've kept taking things like factory jobs to keep myself alive - jobs which have the unfortunate side effect of draining my energy and enthusiasm for making art. As much as I'd like to, I simply am unable to summon up the will and tenacity to put in an 8-hour shift and then come home and make any real progress on art. The catch-22, of course, is that devoting all my time to art, on the few times I've tried it, has so far been a miserable failure as far as generating a livable income.
There's been a small buzz in creative circles lately about the concept of "1000 true fans" and how that relates to "the long tail". Which would be ideal - I'd be content to make a reasonable living off my art, I don't need super-stardom (not that I'd eschew fame and fortune if it happened) - the trick is finding those 1000 true fans in the first place.
But there's part of the problem: if people don't like my art style as it stands, then what draw can I provide? Excellent writing? Possibly, but problematic with comics. Some people won't read things that turn them off, visually, even if they're literary masterpieces. (And some people read horrible dreck if it shines up purty.) (And I'm guilty of the latter myself, so shut up.) And if writing becomes the draw, then that means abandoning any thought of simply selling things like prints or standalone illustrations.
My music is potentially more accessible and interest-generating, but the same time/energy constraints exist.
To further complicate matters, I am absolutely dreadful at marketing myself. I find it somewhat distasteful to play the shill (unless it's being done sarcastically), especially when my most recent works dribble forth in time measured in months, if not years. There's some marketing I can do: I have been experimenting with small changes in the way I dress at conventions versus my normal everyday attire. The majority of people at a convention are dressed in casual wear, particularly men: overweight fanboys in jeans and logo t-shirts - but that's how I dress most days! (Another significant style of dress of congoers being the Klingon or Stormtrooper, but no, I'm not likely to go down the cosplay road.) There's no standing out in a crowd there, but I digress. This is all attention-getting at the physical, personal appearance level anyway, and my appearances are pretty limited.
It also sidesteps the fundamental issue: it's no use worrying about promotion if you don't have much of anything to promote, and that means sitting down and doing the work and actually producing stuff, which requires time, energy and dedication I do not have. And then toss in this: how disheartening is it to expend extra effort, force yourself to work through things, when there's no guarantee of any reward? I'd be more willing to produce new images for prints if I thought I would sell even one or two prints at a con, but I can barely give business cards away.
Well.
That's all the bad crap. Connect that to a recurring case of the mid-life-crisis and you have unhappy me.
And still, I have some small measure of hope.
Have you heard of Dominic Deegan? It's a webcomic.
And some people hate it.
Oh, god, they hate it. Do you know how I discovered it? By stumbling across a forum that had a thread dedicated to discussing how terrible it is. That's right: There is a thread (on more than one message board, I believe) whose sole singular purpose is to get a bunch of people together with nothing better to do than to gripe about how bad Dominic Deegan is. How lame the art is. How weak the stories are. How idiotic the strip's fans must be - yes, the flipside is that the strip has many fans. The fans are criticized for being morons who support a mediocre webcomic. Sometimes some of those fans vigorously defend the strip. This is the utter definition of "pointless internet drama". Because it is utterly pointless, what's the use of bitching about why other people like something?
Now, I'll concede that the art in Dominic Deegan isn't exactly what I would consider high-quality illustration. And the story? Serviceable, but no masterpiece by any means. Buuuuuuut, nevertheless, fans. And fans enough that the author seems to run the strip as his job, a page a day. Hell, I read it myself, now.
And that is inspirational - the triumph of the not-quite-so-great.
Because it means maybe, if things are just right, I could enjoy some similar sort of success.
It is interesting to me that many things that are reviled on the level of Dominic Deegan also turn out to be very popular.
On Gaia, a recurring topic was the webcomic Megatokyo, a popular punching-bag for wannabe Japanophiles (for being too wannabe, too stereotypically Japanophiliac). The creator's promotion style, of plugging his strip everywhere he showed up on the internet, was criticized - but it worked, it propelled his strip ultimately into a book deal with Dark Horse Comics.
Also scoring a deal with a book company (albeit the smaller, lesser-known Seven Seas) was Chugworth Academy, whose creator has been lambasted by Journalista and the crowd at When Fangirls Attack for being a misogynistic purveyor of cartoon jailbait. But investigation shows he has a fair amount of fans, and has done a lot of commission work, despite the hate pointed in his direction.
Survival despite intense hate. In fact, possibly because of that hate: after all, some of this stuff I may have never learned of if some mouthy cranks weren't eating up bandwidth trying to convince everyone else how rotten these things are/were. So, ding! one more Dominic Deegan reader. And more than that, the people who keep reading the strip just to pick it apart later are still readers themselves, giving weight to the sales of banner ads and the like.
Seriously: I could learn to welcome hate if it'd bring me in a living wage.
Perhaps a shift in focus is required. Often I've witnessed poor-to-mediocre artists receiving unfavorable critique, and then challenging critique with the line about how "well, Artist X is crap, but he sells a gazillion books!" Such an excuse is used to avoid any personal initiative to better one's skills - to wallow in the way one does things now, to wish for commercial success before one is truly skilled enough to achieve commercial success. There must be a grain of truth to the excuse, however, since Artist X does suck, and does sell a gazillion books. One should keep in mind that these things can owe a lot to luck and positioning and connections and other uncontrollable factors, but in the end, Dominic Deegan has fans enough to support the comic; why shouldn't I get that number of fans (and/or enemies), too?
Perhaps I should stop fretting about the quality of my art. It is what it is - and I don't have the time or money to invest in intensive study to improve it. The best I can hope for is to improve by doing more art on a regular basis. Not that I should be fully satisfied with my art, but I should be able to let it go at a certain point if for no other reason than to move to the next project, the next page, the next whatever.
Some experimentation may be required.