This book is still in the editing process. If you find any mispelling, grammatical errors, or anything wrong with my writing then please feel free to comment at the end of the chapter to let me know. Your help is much appreciated! Enjoy ~Shaun D. McMillan
Chapter 1 – Your Life as an Artist
Chapter 2 – What Every Artist should know BEFORE Art School.
Chapter 3 – My Experience in the Industry
Chapter 4 – Freedom as an Independent Artist
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about my life and my work. Comics, like anything worthwhile, take an insane amount of time to produce. I always find myself trying get more work done faster. And since it takes so long I constantly find myself questioning whether it is worth my time or not. There are a lot of other things I could be doing.
So here is the dilemna. We only have so much time, and that time is extremely valuable. So what should we do with it?
The answer? Well it’s not so simple because what I should do and what you should do are entirely different. Our options are not even the same. But I think the factors that go into making that choice are same for all of humanity. How should we go about choosing what to do? Most people in the world do what they have to do. They have to eat, pay their bills, sleep, die, whatever. We all have things we have to do. But we also have some choices. How should we pay the bills? How can we make more time to do what we really want to do? Who should we spend time with? What is worthy of our short amount of time?
If you consider yourself an artist then you may be spending a substantial amount of your time doing artwork. If we are going to do artwork with the time that we could be using to spend with family, work, or do anything else more rewarding, then there must be some reason or purpose. How can we justify using our time on something so … self centered? I think most of us get a good feeling from seeing artwork, and we want somehow to recreate that good feeling by doing it ourself. You can call it competition (our desire to out do or mimick other artists), you could call it jealousy, or you could say it is a noble cause because it is something animals can’t do. This good feeling is not really enough to justify all the time we are spending to produce our work.
There are of course the financial rewards of doing artwork. If you are a professional then it is possible to make money off of doing your work. But if you seriously love what you do then you might not want to turn it into something you have to do. Even if you have to do your artwork to make a living I’m sure you have hopes of doing something more with it. If you are trying to do some meaningful artwork in the hours left over from a full time job, then you of all people truly understand the limits of time.
Have you ever started a project with tons of motivation only to find yourself in the middle of your project wishing it wasn’t so difficult and demanding? Even when we finish our work we find ourselves wanting something more after the good feeling wares off. We may argue that it is a noble cause because we are pursuing excellence when in reality, we are really just pursuing that good feeling. The reward of our hard work and effort.
Don’t you want to create something more meaningful than just a good feeling? There are so many valuable ways I could spend my time. If there were not something more to my art I would no longer pursue it. Luckily for me I have found a much more meaningful purpose in doing my work. My purpose is a little different than most but I’ll explain more about that later in this article.
I find inspiration in my favorite stories. When I watch a show like Naruto I am clearly reminded of why I want to do artwork. I want to be moved, and I want to move others. If you havn’t seen Naruto then maybe you’ve seen one of the Pixar films like Toy Story, Bugs Life, Finding Nemo, Cars, Incredibles, or their most recent film, Ratatouille. These films revive the human spirit and bring out our most noble virtues. They touch upon truth. In the end it all comes down to love for our neighbor and the hope of seeing them do well.
A sketch I did of Naruto
These stories set my heart on fire, and the designs look so good that I immediately find myself drawing once again. Then more of the good feeling comes when I see my initial sketches. When I’m really inspired I write story lines for my original characters in the hope of creating something truly meaningful. The problem is that this motivation dissipates when I begin to see the realities of how much time and effort it will cost to produce such a work. It is just damn near impossible to see how I could realistically produce anything of real substance. The only reason it seems possible at all is because of the existence of shows like Naruto and Incredibles. Their existence is proof that it is possible. But there is such a huge gap between my dream and my reality. How do we resolve this?
Here is the latest from my comic strip, “Almost There.” I did the original sketch on paper and scanned it in. The ink and paint is all done in photoshop on my tablet pc. I’m also working on a video version. To see more go to the official Almost There website, http://drawalot.blogspot.com.
I asked the students in my motion graphics class to animate a comic. I figured I might as well do the assignment as well and animate one of my own. So here it is, my very first animated comic strip!
At some point I’ll create some tutorial on how to do this yourself from beginning to end. I used to photoshop to ink and paint, and I used Adobe After Effects to animate.
To see more you can visit the official, “Almost There” sketch blog.
And here is a time lapse of another strip I did…
First, this is the strip.
And Here is the time lapse of me making the strip.
What are Blogs? How does it compare to a regular website or MySpace?
A Blog is simply an online Journal where you can post pictures, videos, as well as comments. It also allows for you audience to leave comments on your articles or posts. It’s easy to update, it doesn’t cost you anything, and it quickly gets your work online. This is a blog that you are reading right now.
It’s technically different from a website in that the newest posts are at the top of your page and you don’t need to design, develop, or upload files to a server. You can add parts to it that are like pages of a website, for instance you could add an “About” page.
It’s also different from a MySpace page because it works more like an online journal and in my opinion looks much more professional.
How do I create One?
Easy, just register an account at Continue reading ‘Blogs – The Fastest Way to Get your Work Online’
Here is one of two new posters. I’m still working on the second one. If anyone has any suggestions I can still make changes to it. I like all the design elements but I think maybe it should be more simple. Download by clicking here.
I graduated a while back but while I was taking my first motion graphics class I undertook this project. First I came up with a concept. My friend sleeping on my couch at the time worked at Friar Tux and used to hook us up with free t-shirts. The inspiration was to do everything in suits. Then I grabbed a camera from the school video cage, found some buddies in the hallways and classroom, and shot all the footage by nightfall. I didn’t know anything about filmaking at the time so I just threw the camera at my roomate who happened to be a video production major. Rico did a good job and most of the footage was usable. My buddies are Demaurie and Brandon. They came up with a lot of the ideas. I peticuliarly liked the idea of going to the sauna in suits, but unfortunately the room was too small to get a good camera angle. It’s not easy to shoot a video all in one night, but find a fun energetic group and friends and impossible things suddenly become possible. Enjoy.
I’m currently teaching a Motion Graphics class at Westwood College in Anaheim, CA. These are the final projects from a couple of my students. The assignment was to apply motion graphics to a popular comic. Welcome to the new world of Digital Graphic Novels. These guys did some excellent work, good job guys.
Soon to come – A Tutorial on how to animated comics in Adobe After Effects!
Calvin & Hobbes by Ruben (Joel) Cardenas
X-men by Albert Blanchet
