Daydreaming is awesome, but what good will it do you if that’s all it stays? I will give myself some credit in that a pencil and paper have carried me a long way. Drawing has been second nature to me since I was a wee one. I started with dinosaurs and made the jump to anime style once I got into DragonBall Z. I’d spend hours playing back episodes and redrawing characters learning how to Git Gud before the thought of making something original popped into my head. (insert my early days DeviantArt page).
I realized early in life that I did not have it in me to be a traditional animator. The repetitive drawing put me to sleep. This bummed me out a bit, but then I found comics! Western and Eastern style comics. The amount of detail, the flow of the story through beautiful illustrations. Yes, this was me! So I immersed myself in reading and collecting them.
It wasn’t until high school that the thought of actually making a comic myself even popped into my head though. My first attempt at a comic was a Kingdom Hearts fan-comic (that will NOT see the light of day, so don’t ask.) I kicked out over the course of a month. I wanted to see if I even had the patience to make a comic since I figured out pretty early on that animation was a no go for me. I would work on it after school on Fridays for about 6hrs. I made a rinky-dink script that was nothing but pure smut, and just started sketching it out in my dollar store sketchbook.
Two months later I had about 8 pages to show for my dedication. I was hella proud of those 8 rinky-dink pages! Even with all of the Inconsistencies… I mean, Riku’s clothes changed every panel.
Anyway, the take-away is that I did it! There was a lot of frustration, but I made it. That was proof enough that I could make comics. That feeling is what I’m mustering whenever I think of the task at hand. It’s hella daunting to think of everything that goes into making comics, but taking it one step at a time is how you do it. Baby steps are still steps, and every little bit of work you put into getting your creation from your headspace to your hands is worth it!
How do you eat a whale?
One bite at a time.
Have you heard of tiny Melinda Mae,
Who ate a monstrous whale?
She thought she could,
She said she would,
So she started in right at the tail.-Shel Silverstein
I heard a variant of this first from one of my favorite comic artist E.K. Weaver. Creator of the Less than Epic Adventures of TJ and Amal
