Drawn to Success #7
“How Character Licensing Works”
Or
“Cha-Ching !
Went The Strings Of My Heart”
You hold in your hot, big hands the next big, big thing to hit our pop culture! This creation of mine is going to be on everybody's lips, in everybody's heads, and emptying everybody's wallets! This new breakthrough group of characters, now available for licensing, is called "Skunk-Head Kids"! I am the brilliant but still undiscovered creative genius who came up with this riveting concept. I hired a local artist to flesh out the characters, and now I offer them to you. See the art work for details."
(BTW, the "artwork" is three pages of group shots of these characters, with no concept copy, no personality profiles of the characters and no background or environmental elements drawn. Really.) I would like to make you this earthshaking offer, Mr. Gilchrist. If you will create a comic strip or comic book or children's book about the characters, I'll cut you in on "The Skunk-Head Kid" for 50 percent of future revenue! How about it?
Sincerely,
Delusioned Idea Man"
Dear Skunk-Head Kids Creator,
No thanks.
Sincerely,
Guy
The preceding exchange was real. Really. I'm not kidding. I did change the name of the property that was offered to me� but, believe me� it WAS Skunky.
I get "incredible" offers to work for free all the time. Even before I became established, "creators" would seek me out, like they do others, to do jobs for them for no up-front money and a piece of the future "action". So� what is wrong with this proposal? If you said "Everything!" you win a prize. Asking you to work on "spec" (meaning no up-front payment) Telling you they have a concept when they really don't. They haven't worked out a story line. They have no idea what the personalities of the characters are. All they have are a group of "cute" drawings. No idea how licensing works. No idea that they are offering you 50 percent of nothing. These letters can be funny, but they are also symptomatic of a lack of understanding in the creative community about what the label "professional cartoonists" means and what the business of "character licensing" is all about.
Let me address the first problem. "Professional" means it's your "job." You must be paid to be called a professional. Working on spec is something a professional cartoonist doesn't normally do without a good reason. Part of being a professional cartoonist is knowing when to do a spec project. In my opinion, working on something for no payment from a stranger is always wrong. If you want your work and yourself to be valued, to have worth, you have to set a value on yourself and what you do. If you don't ask for what you're worth, and stick to your guns about it, who will? If you think that doing free work will enhance your professional standing, then, in my opinion, you're wrong.
You will get offers of future pieces of a pie for free work your entire career. You alone will have to decide whether you want to take that chance. I have made a lifelong decision to only do projects on spec if it is my own idea or an idea created with another established creator I know and I trust. I only work for free for charities.
I strongly believe we have to give all we can, the full measure of our heart, souls and talents, to make this world a better place for our humanity. I am a religious man. I know the Lord has blessed me in more ways than I can name. So, I give. Just not to "The Skunk Head Kids." Now, let me explain what character licensing is and how it works. A character, or group of characters, is only going to be eligible for crossover on licensing success after it is successful in its original place in pop culture as a comic strip, comic book, movie, TV show or book. Disney marketing only existed because Mickey Mouse was such a beloved cartoon show. After all of the early success of Mickey Mouse cartoons, Kay Kamen, the original merchandising man for Walt Disney, was able to find companies to make books, dolls and watches.
This was always the way to licensing success. Then, in the �70s and �80s, characters began to be created by huge, wealthy, multitiered companies in partnership with other huge companies. These huge licensing campaigns used characters in dozens of product lines to create characters recognizable around the world seemingly overnight. In other words, they used mountains of cash to shove cartoon characters down our throats. We gagged as those mountains of cash turned into continents of cash. Rainbow Brite, The Care Bears, Strawberry Shortcake� Decades later, you still know their names�
Ever since those heady days, well intentioned amateur cartoonists, writers, and "idea men" have been sending me letters like the "Skunk-Head Kids." I blame Parker Brothers and American Greetings for every "Skunk-Head Kids" submission I've ever gotten. When creative amateurs saw the "overnight" success of the Care Bears, etc., they started thinking they could be overnight millionaires if they could just come up with "something like that!" They couldn't. Here's why. Parker Brothers was a toy and game company, (with deep pockets and a huge staff of talented artists and writers) who would get together with American Greetings (a huge, wealthy greeting card company with another big creative staff). Together, these companies could create character properties that were bigger than Godzilla. They would put these characters on toys, games, books, greeting cards, and dozens of other products needing no outside help from anyone. Then they would spend tidal waves of cash in promotional campaigns so enormous that no mom or dad could withstand the wallet-emptying force.
I know this for a fact. I had to take my daughter to the Rainbow Brite movie. Back in the �70s and �80s, I got into working on successful licensing campaigns with The Muppets and Muppet Babies, Looney Toons, Tom and Jerry and Pink Panther, to name a few. I learned how to design products and write books and create stories for these established characters. Then I took that education into my own licensing campaigns. I created my own characters. I wrote stories. If my ideas were successful in one area - -for instance, children's books- -I would work with toy and clothing companies to create crossover product. I didn't have huge sums of money to "buy" a successful character licensing campaign like Parker Brothers, American Greetings, Hallmark or Disney could. I also was just "me." I wasn't a huge creative staff of artists and writers. I was a staff of one. But I did it. I sold 14 million books, had stuffed animals, pajamas, games and puzzles, greeting cards and school-kid valentines with my cartoon characters on them.
It wasn't the Muppet Babies, or the Care Bears, but it wasn't small-time either. I worked with Gibson (the third-largest card company), Gerber children's wear, Thermos lunchboxes, and Applause and Russ Berrie Toys. I'm not telling you this fishing for applause while I'm bowing. I'm telling you this so you will know YOU can do it, too. You�little nobody you� can compete in the character licensing business! You can IF you stay true to yourself and your art� IF you don't think about putting the cart before the horse!
You must first start with creating characters that are meaningful to you and your audience. You must first create characters that have a meaningful story, that have well-developed personalities and that are well-drawn. If you do that, you have a chance to get a following in comics, children's books, TV or movies. Once you've proven yourself in this first area of entertainment, you will be at least eligible for crossover success. You can be a success. Just ask Charles Schulz.
But remember, FIRST comes the comic strip and THEN you get the blimp.
--Guy Gilchrist Artist of "Nancy," "Mudpie," "Your Angels Speak," "Jim Henson's Muppets"
Founder, Guy Gilchrist's Cartoonist's Academy
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Drawn to Success #8
“Using the Computer to be a Successful Cartoonist”
or...
"Or "What Program Do you Use to Make Those Comics With, Because That's What I Want To Do Tomorrow" ”
I have an old high school buddy who doesn't get it. Every time he asks me to take off with him to the lake and I can't go because I have a deadline, he says, "Don't you have all your "Nancy" characters saved in your computer? Can't you just do a week of them in Photoshop or something?
The answer is "Yes" and "No." Yes I have all my drawings in the computer. No I don't feel comfortable recycling old drawings into a week of what are supposed to be new comic strips. I draw new stuff every day. I don't work on a Wacom pad. I use two- or three-ply Strathmore Bristol board, a number 2 pencil, and I finish my drawings with a Windsor-Newton series 7 Red Sable Brush, Hunt 102 Dip-Pens, and a 50/50 mix of Higgins Black India Ink and Speedball Black. I've been drawing comics pretty much the same way since 1975.
I know. I'm old. Ah, you wise-guy, know-it-all kids with your spiffy, new-fangled computers! Now, when I was a kid, we had to draw our comics with sharpened dinosaur bones dipped in tar. Then we had to walk 50 miles across volcanoes carrying the stone tablets we drew on to our editors at the Neanderthal News-Times. That's how old I feel sometimes. I feel like the guardian of the old treasure. The old ways of paper, pencils, inks and paints standing fast as the slings and arrows of Photoshop, Flash and Illustrator fly all around me. My drafting table is my shield. "Forgive these marauders, Lord! For they know not what they do!"
If you look at some of the bad web comics out there, you'll see what I mean. Computers have forever changed how comics are drawn, written, distributed and read. Mostly for the better. In some ways, for the worse. To be a successful cartoonist, one has to adapt to each change in his or her chosen field. It's up to us all to meet the new challenges head-on. We have to use any new weapon we can to win, while overcoming each new technological challenge with talent, brains, and renewed determination. You can be a successful cartoonist in the new millennium, if you do your work, and understand the 21st century landscape. Part of understanding the landscape is not only seeing the opportunities but also the negative forces.
Let's get the bad news out of the way regarding syndication and newspapers and the Web first� The Web is killing the newspaper business. More and more people get their news, sports, features and comics online. Online "newspapers" and "magazines" continues to grow and flourish, while the old printed newspaper I used to hold in my hands disappears as I'm reading it. The newspaper is another bygone century's technology. It is becoming less and less relevant. It is also expensive to produce. Newsprint, labor, distribution, and real estate prices go up� and the sales figures go down. Even this old dinosaur of a cartoonist can figure this out. The fewer newspapers that are sold translates to smaller circulation numbers, which means less money from the newspapers for fewer comic features.
Newspapers thrive off big distribution. Their advertising rates are tied into their circulation numbers. If they have a readership of 250,000, they can demand and expect, say, $2,500 a page for display advertising. As their circulation of the printed paper goes down, so does their ad rate. The bigger a paper is, the more it spends on comics. If I sell a comic strip that I'm producing to a 14,000 circulation small-market newspaper, I can expect a weekly check of somewhere about $14, or $1.00 per thousand readers. A big paper in a large metropolitan area of 250,000 SHOULD be paying $250 a week. They don't. They tend to pay less than that. Why? Because they know they can. If you want to be in their market, you'll let THEM dictate what they're WILLING to pay. The days of two-, three- and four-newspaper towns are over.
Back when there were two or more papers in a big town, newspapers would actually "bid" for a hot, popular strip! The costs of producing a newspaper, combined with the rise of the 24-hour news networks and the rise of the Internet, have spelled the end of those days. I remember in 1981 when I started creating "The Muppets" comic strip for Jim Henson and King Features, we actually had two papers in Philadelphia go to court to decide which one of them would get the "honor" of running our comic strip. We were HOT, and every big town had more than one paper. If the syndicate asked for $200 a week, and the paper didn't want to pay it, all the sales person had to do was threaten to go across the street to the other newspaper! That was my kind of war. I paid for two houses and a bunch of cars. Good Times. Good Times. Nowadays, there are still areas where there is more than one newspaper, but the days of bidding wars on comic strips are over. Now� THEY tell you what they're going to pay. PAYBACK TIME. Ouch!
As the circulation of the printed newspaper has gotten smaller, the newspaper owners have learned to adapt by offering online versions of their newspapers. These are scaled-down versions of the daily paper. They HAVE to be. Internet advertising rates are very small relative to the ad rates still quoted in the print version. The comics we do as syndicated cartoonists are run in most of these Internet versions, but for no extra pay. It's another situation where the newspaper is squeezing the syndicate, and us! More payback? Yep. I'm getting squeezed like a Florida orange.
Ready for the good news? Not quite yet, my young, disillusioned friend. Let me get into the negative consequences of computers in art, first. C'mon. Put the gun down. Step away from the noose. It'll all have a happy ending. Remember, I write children's books. Now, back to the technological trials�. On the creative sides of computers, we now have to deal with another waking nightmare... People who don't know how to draw very well can take their badly conceived art and put it into programs designed for artists who know what they're doing! They can AIRBRUSH bad drawings! They can ANIMATE bad drawings! They can misspell words! They can take crudely drawn and rudely written comics and put them on Web sites and e-mail inboxes!! The cyberworld and the computer in my living room can be filled with garbage that, before computers, would never have even been published by your junior high newspaper!
Yeah. I know. "Power to the people." Right. Go tell it to Yoko. I ain't buying it. I'm old-fashioned. I think you should know how to write and draw before putting out a comic strip. Yeah. Just call me "Dream-smasher." Now, that having been said, there is only one way I know to get better at creating a comic strip and that is to DO IT. You will be applauded in public for what you practice in private. If you are committed to becoming the best cartoonist and writer you can be, and you work hard to improve computers can be incredibly helpful. I realize I've spent the first part of this column ripping the latest technology.
Now, let me give the computer its due credit! The programs designed for the artist are absolutely amazing! In the hands of a skilled cartoonist, these programs can save some time and money, helping you create awesome artwork. "Flash" and the other animation programs allow anyone with the ability to create animation, the opportunity to do so. In the old days, animation was so expensive, the artist with an idea for a cartoon series had to literally sell his or her idea to an entertainment company just to get the thing test-animated. A few of my own animation projects were dealt death-blows either by a production company only wishing to negotiate for film rights on my properties after they owned everything, or lack of funds to do a proper test reel. These problems have been minimized with the relatively inexpensive cost of computer animation programs. All you need now is talent, a little money and the time and desire to create a sample piece of "film."
Many of the cartoons that have become blockbusters lately have started out as "basement projects." No longer is the cartoonist so much at the mercy of the big entertainment companies! If you have a great story, with great art, you have what you need to be seen, and taken seriously. Yes. You still need to get them to buy in but you can develop your ideas much further with computers. The same goes for comic strips. Now, with the Web, if you have an idea that is well conceived and worked out, you can go about finding and building your own audience.
Cartoonists are not as much at the mercy of the syndicates. He or she can build a Web site with his or her own web-comic, or put their web-comic on a web-comic showcase site that features their comic and other comics. Some of these comic strip or graphic story creators strictly work for the Internet audience. A very few of them have even found some "commercial" success, in that they are selling paperback collections and/or t-shirts, posters and other cartoon merchandise based on their creations. Are any of these cartoonists making the big "Peanuts" or "Blondie" money or even the "Nancy" money? Not yet. But, in time, somebody will.
For a lot of years, newspapers and comic syndicates tried to ignore the 800-pound gorilla that was the Internet. The gorilla just got bigger. Syndicates have started to adapt by selling subscriptions (at very low rates) to their cartoons. My folks at United Feature send you "Nancy" and anything else you want to read daily right to your email inbox. They post our comics on comics.com. This is a huge plus for readership of my strip. In the old days, if the Newark Star-Ledger didn't run "Nancy," I'd have no readership in Newark. Now, people from anywhere can read "Nancy!" They can buy Nancy merchandise online. They can visit my Web site and see all the projects I have to offer. Newspapers are online with our strips. Magazines are online with our strips. Working on a Web-comic is a great way to learn how to do a daily comic.
I remember back in 1999, having a discussion with Jeff MacNelly, the late, great political cartoonist, and creator of the comic strip "Shoe." Jeff loved working on a Wacom pad. He had taught himself to do it and had eliminated pen, brush and ink paper originals. I fought hard on the side of Strathmore Bristol! I love the tactile feel of paper beneath me. I love the give and take of brush and pen on paper! Jeff loved the Wacom! So, we disagreed on that one aspect of computer art. Jeff and I found common ground on the subject of comics on the Web, however. Jeff felt, as I do, that the Internet was a great way to develop a comic strip and the characters and story arc that would sustain it. When he and I first started out, there was, of course, no Internet.
When you began to create a comic strip (before the Web), you created that strip in a vacuum. In your own private world. Speaking just for me, here's how I would do it. I would come up with an idea, and start creating the characters and the jokes. I would then do a week's worth of strips, followed by another, and another. Over the course of the first two, three, and four weeks, I would begin to change my strip. My character's appearance would change as I fleshed them out and got better at drawing them. My "star" might even change. A new "star" might emerge. I might find that my original main character was not as strong as another character I had in my "supporting cast." The more strips I drew, the more I came to realize what the true essence of my strip was to be. I also found out if my idea was even going to work.
I can't tell you how many times I would come up with an idea, and draw two or three weeks worth of it, and come to the conclusion it wasn't going to work out. Remember, the comic strip is the "marathon" of all art. It's the story that never ends. At least you HOPE not! When a comic syndicate looks at the strips being submitted to them, they have to try and gauge if this idea before them is strong enough to last 10, 20, 30 years. Sometimes they're right, and they buy a strip that is classic. Something that has "legs." Sometimes, they're fooled, too. A cartoonist sends in a strong submission and they buy it. Under the intense pressure of the daily deadline, the cartoonist begins to crack and weaken. He or she cannot sustain strong writing or strong art on an everyday basis. After a year, the feature folds.
Jeff MacNelly thought that if a cartoonist first put their strongest ideas for a comic strip up on the web, it would be beneficial to him or her in many ways. The cartoonist could try writing every day and not missing a deadline on the Web and see if he could do it. If they could do a strip for six months on the web and not miss a deadline, then they had a much better chance at being successful as a daily newspaper cartoonist. I agree. I would add though, that one should first do three or four weeks of material so you have an idea where the strip is going. It will also help to have a small backlog of material. I also think that having a discussion board or an e-mail link is a good idea. It gives the creator a chance to find out what the audience thinks of what he or she is doing. The cartoonist is no longer creating in a vacuum. The audience might have a favorite character or a favorite story arc. This feedback can be very beneficial.
There are many comics on the web that were not and never WILL BE created as "auditions" for newspapers and the syndicates, as I've mentioned before. But if your goal is to someday be a syndicated cartoonist, the Web can be a great place to start. Two of my features, the old daily "Mudpie" comic and the weekly "Your Angels Speak" feature were developed online and then sold to the syndicates. I know that several syndicates watched both strips for quite a while, to see if they would work out for the long haul. After appearing for a couple years on my website, as well as other web-comics showcase sites and on search engine comics pages, I sold them both to established syndicates.
You can make it, too. The technological terrain may shift, but the qualities one needs to succeed never change. Whether you're working for newspapers, magazines, comic books, the game industry, movies or TV, a good cartoonist is a good cartoonist. If you practice in private, you will be applauded (and rewarded) in public. Being good requires talent, determination, a never-quit attitude, and a habit for doing your homework. There are hundreds of stories of failure for every story of success. That's because success is difficult� and ultimately� beautiful. As beautiful as that purple pteranadon flying above my cave studio.
- - Guy Gilchrist Artist of "Nancy," "Mudpie," "Your Angels Speak," "Jim Henson's Muppets"
Founder, Guy Gilchrist's Cartoonist's Academy
=========================================================================================================
Drawn to Success #9
“That Leap of Faith from Part-Time to Full-Time Cartoonist”
or...
"Or, "Don't tell Marianne and Ginger, but I Just Told Gilligan to Burn the Boat"”
"Established Quitter Wanted: Must be able to make excuses at a moment's notice. Inquires and resumes should be sent to: Ihavenochoice@theworldconspiresagainstmeonadailybasis.com."
Yeah. That ad will work. How many e-mails would that thing get? Every cartoonist who ever made it has faced adversity. Every one of them faced it a different way but overcame it. How are you doing with it? What's YOUR problem? What's YOUR excuse for shutting it down?
The way I overcame adversity, and continue to, is by leaving myself absolutely no choice to but to succeed. No parachute. No reverse gear. No boat to jump back in and paddle away from the Island of Rejection Slips."
There was a military leader from centuries ago I once heard about who commanded his troops to burn the boats! The deal was this: Once his troops had landed on a foreign shore in their boats--soon to engage another army in battle for possession of the prize--he would order the troops to BURN ALL THE BOATS! That way, his army had no choice but to fight to the death to win! They had NO OUT. No boats to escape in if they lost. THEY HAD TO WIN.
I've burned a lot of boats. I've won a lot of battles. I've even won some pretty long wars. But I've lost some beauties, baby. Oh, yeah. Sometimes I wasn't General Grant�I was Gomer Pyle, USMC! No one wins every battle. Sometimes just when it looks like you've won the war, you lose a battle. You have to retreat behind the trees and figure out another way to approach the editor... I mean, enemy. If you had a boat to get out of there with... say, a really well-paying noncartooning job (that you hate doing, of course), you'd be tempted to quit trying, and paddle your torn-up behind out of there! Instead of just losing the battle, you'd quit the war. Just on the verge of winning the prize, you'd quit. Heck, YOU didn't know that if you'd just hung in there for ONE more battle, you'd win, Totally rule, man. Totally rule.
Here's what happened to me... At the age of twenty, I got married. My wife and I were already expecting a child. She had some secretarial skills and made mediocre money at jobs she wasn't thrilled with. Soon, she would have to, at the very least, take maternity leave and I would be the sole provider, for a while, anyway. I was working as a cook, bartender, and bouncer at a couple pubs while taking my lunch hours and days off to pursue my ultimate dream--the same one you might have: "World-Famous Cartoonist." That's the title I wanted following my name in the newspapers.
I was picking up a decent bit of freelance cartooning work. They were all small-time, local jobs. My lunch hours and one day off each week were not enough for me to take the time to go to New York City from Connecticut very often to get to the Big Kahunas. It was also extremely difficult to even get to see the art directors at the local Hartford and New Haven area's corporations since my day off HAD to coincide with a break in THEIR schedule to see me.
It was pretty tough. I knew that I had set up this roadblock. I only had that one day a week to go after my dream of steady work. So, baby on the way, and everything else, I chose to stick to my plan I had mapped out for myself three years earlier. Three years before, as a poor high school kid who didn't have the money to go on to art school, I had told myself I would not ever give an excuse for not becoming a cartoonist. Everyday my junior and senior years, I would work the night away while others were playing and dating, to first LEARN how to draw, and then to build a portfolio with decent work to get small jobs that would eventually lead to bigger jobs. I had also taken on every single art job I could at school to be printed. I was art editor, then editor in chief, of the high school "Literary Art Magazine,� the editorial cartoonist for the school paper, and the artist for the school yearbook.
Through these high school jobs, I became acquainted with the local businesses that bought ads in the paper, and the yearbook. They paid me to illustrate and composite their ads. These businesses and that ad work became the foundation for my commercial portfolio. Three years later� I had told myself that if I could ever make the same amount of money in cartooning that I was making in my day job for three months in a row, I would quit my day job. I knew that as long as I had that day job, I had created a parachute against prosperity! A "One Day A Week Looking For Work Wall" that held me back. It happened. I made the then (1976) princely sum of ONE THOUSAND DOLLARS a month for three months. So, wife, baby on the way, I QUIT MY DAY JOB.
If I didn't succeed quickly, I would not only appear the idiot. We'd all probably be homeless, my wife's father would beat me to a pulp, my baby would have nothing...and it would be my fault. Tie the noose. I deserve it. Goodbye, cruel world. I've always been a proud, family-oriented man...even as a 20-year-old bozo. So, off I went in pursuit of a steady-paying dream that would feed a young family. It was springtime, and the jobs were plenty. Seemed like I had started running down the road to success at exactly the right time! Nope. Wrong again, Lone Ranger. Summertime came and the small commercial jobs dried up in the hot July sun. Folks in key positions took vacations. Folks got more laid back about giving this young hillbilly some work. Looked like I had just burned my boat in time to lose the battle. And my young family would be perishing with me.
Looking back now, almost thirty years later, I almost can't believe I didn't walk back into that bar and beg for my old job back. But I didn't. I went out and begged for any cartooning, lettering, writing, paste-up, drawing or inking job I could find instead. For any pay. And I did them when I found them. Some days I would sleep in my '65 Dodge van in a park by the side of the road because I had sworn I wouldn't go home until I had gotten a job that day... and I didn't have a job yet. As I looked under every rock that summer...sometimes so desperate for that pay that I would travel to 10 or 15 appointments per day if I could get them... I met people. People who knew other people. People who liked my willingness to work, my ability to produce good work on deadlines (much of the work I got that first summer was work with such impossible deadlines that no other artist would take the job). July, August...I was only making about a hundred dollars a week most weeks, not the thousand I had to have per month just to make what I had left behind in the bar. My wife was supposed to leave her job in September. I needed to pick up HER paycheck as well by then. My time was almost up.
Then--at the eleventh hour--it happened. One of the ad agency guys I had produced for sent my name and number to another guy in Middletown, Conn., to Xerox Education Publications, where they produced books and comic books and promotional brochures for the Weekly Reader. Weekly Reader was a newspaper outfit that did educational publishing of newspapers, magazines, and children's books for schools all across the nation. They had a comic book they wanted written and drawn to "test" to see if they could sell it on a monthly subscription basis to kids 7-14. The 7-14 age range was their weakest-selling demographic, and consequently they were willing to try out a young cartoonist for the job. It was no big deal to them. It was a real big deal to me. I got an audition for the job. I got it.
The book sold 25,000 copies in the test. When, after six or so issues, the subscription base went up to 100,000 kids. They offered me a five-year contract. The comic was called "SUPERKERNEL COMICS." It was about a cartoon superhero who encouraged kids to read by defeating villains who were illiterate and thus prone to losing out. It eventually had 350,000 readers every month. My art and writing in this comic caught the attention of many publishers, ad execs...and even a few of my cartoon heroes! One of them was Mort Walker of Beetle Bailey and HI AND LOIS fame, who passed my name onto Bill Yates, the Head of King Features Syndicate in New York.
Eventually, King Features gave me an audition to become the cartoonist for the brand new Jim Henson's Muppets comic strip they were launching worldwide in September of 1981. Yep. Got the gig. Never looked back. There wasn't a boat there anyway. SO, what's holding you back? WHO's holding you back? It just might be YOU. It was for me. The Wall Of The One Day A Week Interviews For Work was something I built myself. So I got rid of it. I am not going to tell anyone to just up and quit everything and jump off the cliff like I did. That would be irresponsible.
I don't know YOUR situation. Only YOU know YOU and your own personal battles within your own war. What I will tell you is to look long and hard and with absolute truth at yourself and your dreams and then ask yourself: "WHAT AM I WILLING TO DO?" "HOW BADLY DO I WANT IT?" Look inside yourself. Keep a journal with your your goals and write in it everyday. (I mention this journal in an earlier column; read it below.) Try to move toward those goals a little more every day. I believe that God opens doors.
I believe that God wouldn't put that burning desire in a soul if it wasn't there for a reason. It ain't easy. There are no guarantees. Okay. I just lied. There is one guarantee If you don't give yourself every chance to succeed, you WILL fail. I hope this story of my own life has given you some things to think about in your own. I wish you every blessing on your own road to cartooning stardom. I hope you too are "Drawn To Success."
--Guy Gilchrist Artist, "Nancy," "Mudpie," "Your Angels Speak," "Jim Henson's Muppets"
Founder, Guy Gilchrist's Cartoonist's Academy
===========================================================================================================
Drawn to Success #10
“How to Create Your Own Personal Goals”
or...
"or "Honey, Why Don't You Come Over Here And Ink This Cartoon In For Me?"”
A cartoonist walks into King Features and says, "Here's my strip. Put it in 1,000 newspapers. Oh, and I want one of those supermodels/male models waiting for me back home in Paramus, okay?"
OOOOOKAY... Somebody call Security.
Sound ridiculous? You bet. But still I get letters all the time from folks trying to make it as a cartoonist who tell me they can't understand why they haven't made it yet. After all, they've been at it a month or two already! They ask me WHO they have to know to get anywhere in this business! WHO do you have to know?
Start with knowing YOURSELF. Your dreams. Your specific goals. I have written in previous chapters about the importance of having a definite goal in your mind and your heart. I want to elaborate on that in this chapter. You must, MUST, MUST have a specific set of goals in mind that you are working toward every day. You have to have a specific destination. If you don't, you're just wandering around HOPING you get where you want to go. That supermodel might be waiting for you back in Paramus, but you won't stop at the filling station to buy a map.
"I guess I want to be a rich and famous cartoonist." THAT won't really work as a goal. It's much too vague. It's like a rough, light pencil sketch drawn on gray paper with a gray pencil, and then colored in gray wash. DREAMS DIE WHEN THEY'RE WRITTEN IN GRAY. Think of your dreams, your GOALS like a piece of artwork you're creating. A good piece of art has a specific idea in as a finished piece of creative work.
You work it all out in pencil first in a thumbnail, or several thumbnails, until you find the composition that is strongest. Then you begin to draw, lightly at first, and continue drawing tighter and tighter until you have just the image you visualized. Then, you go to inks on it. You work on it until it is a perfectly composed piece of black-and-white art that can be reproduced for the public. Then, and only then, have you achieved what you set out to do. Then, and only then, can the world see what you first visualized.
GOALS are like that, too. You've got to be very black and white with them. Your goals have to be black and white, bold, well worked out, and easy to read. Your goals should be clear. Something you, and only you see. Goals that are reachable, yet stretch you to your limits. You should have both a short-term goal and a long-term goal. Did the guy/girl who walked into King have a definite goal? YEP. Sure did. Was he/she off their rocker? YEP. Sure was. But no more so than anyone who wishes to succeed, who doesn't have a clear definite goal in mind and written in a journal, and the patience and fortitude to work as long as it takes to achieve, or surpass that goal.
It's a long, long journey to riches and success, grasshopper. You need a map with a destination and a pathway BURNED into your mind. Everyday there will be things in your way. Traffic jams. New construction. Most drivers on the road to success turn off to the side of the road. Go back where they came from. No way to get there. HELP ME! they scream! I TRIED! they lament. It's the solitary driver who drives on, no matter what, changing pathways, and routes along the way, never stopping until they reach their destination, that MAKE IT.
There are plenty of excuses for failure. Success knows no excuse. YOUR GOALS ARE WRITTEN IN INK. YOUR GAME PLAN IN PENCIL. While your goals must be definite, your plans don't and shouldn't be. Circumstances of all kinds come and go daily, and your plans have to change with them. As you move on, more rapidly than perhaps you ever thought you could toward your goal, your plans will constantly change to get around the problems you are faced with, and the incredible opportunities that come your way. ONE ARTIST ON ONE MASTERPIECE.
When I set goals for myself, I write down in my "Personal Goal Journal" what I want to achieve... both in six months from today and in five years from today. I date my entries. I give myself deadlines. Ever try to "get to" that spec idea you have for the next big strip or project without giving yourself a deadline to get it done? Never gets done, does it? WE ALL NEED DEADLINES! When I write down these personal things, I am the only one I have to convince that these goals are reachable and realistic. To me, THAT is extremely important. I ask for no one else's input. WHY? Because no one but me KNOWS ME, and all that I AM capable of.
Someone else might think that I'm just as wacked out as that person that got booted out of King Features! Only YOU really know the greatness inside you. Only YOU know your own desires. Only YOU know what you really want, and only YOU know what you will be willing to do to get it! I know, I know. You have a great "soulmate." You have a great family and great friends and a pet that licks your face. I know.
So, WHY NOT get THEIR input? Why not tell them all your hopes and dreams and show them your lofty goals so that they can tell you how great you are and how incredibly talented you are and that they SO, SO, SO believe in you. BECAUSE. Because they will love you no matter what. That's why. And if you fall on your face and fail as you may have so many times before and don't get it done, they will still be your safety net. And isn't THAT really why you want to tell them? To set yourself up for failure? To give yourself a "guarantee" that they will still love you when you fail? Failure should NOT be part of your roadmap to success! They could also tell you it's too hard. They could also tell you you CAN'T do it! They could also tell you that you can only do it WITH THEM at your side. OR that what YOU'RE wanting to accomplish will affect THEM!
So, be careful. All these scenarios are WALLS. Walls between YOU and your GOALS. More complicated considerations that you'll have to take into account as you plan your dream. You don't need any more walls! Goals are hard enough to achieve, dreams are tough enough to get to, when it's just you and you alone! Think about it this way, "Mr. or Ms. Soon To Be A Successful Cartoonist Or Writer": When you are at your drawing board, journal or computer drawing or writing, trying to create a masterpiece in the solitude of your mind with your God-given talents, HOW MANY PEOPLE are there with you doing it? That's right, Grasshopper. NO ONE. Just you. That's why for your next masterpiece, YOUR GOALS have to be just between you, your journal, and God.
If you're anything like me--and Heaven help you if you are--you already carry all the luggage of your life in your mind along with your own guilty conscience every day of your life. You already hear that evil whisper that YOU don't have anything creatively worthwhile to say, so why don't you get a real job. We all are weak sometimes. We all get beaten down. Sometimes we beat ourselves up. And a beating that you give yourself is always much worse than any beating the outside world could ever give you. It takes all you've got sometimes to battle that evil whisper! But you do it. You beat it. You dismiss it. You soldier on in your solitude toward your goal. YOU CAN DO IT! you think to yourself! You know you need to succeed! You feel a strong, intense sense of responsibility to succeed not just for yourself but for your loved ones. Therefore, your loved ones are always a huge part of your life and your thinking. But if they are also a part of your creative experience, than there's always more than one artist holding the brush.
As it is that only one person can hold the brush in your artwork, so it is that that only one person can hold the brush as you paint your goal masterpiece! When it's done...when you've achieved your goals... hold them up for your loved ones and the whole wide world to see! It always kind of cracks me up when the TV people call and want to do a story on me and my work. They come out with a camera crew and ask to film me drawing. BORRRRRING. The creative process is long and boring and uninteresting to anyone but the artist. WE are the only ones who see what we see before it's drawn, aren't we? The camera guy always eventually figures this out and takes video stills of the completed artwork for the story. THE COMPLETED WORK is WHAT EVERYBODY ELSE UNDERSTANDS!
Your goals, once achieved, are what you will be applauded for! Once you've achieved your goals...they are visible to everyone! They are of value to everyone! They become gifts to you and your world! In my next chapter, I will detail the GOAL JOURNALIZING process. Until then, e-mail me and let me know how things went at King Features.
--Guy Gilchrist Artist of "Nancy," "Mudpie," "Your Angels Speak," "Jim Henson's Muppets"
Founder, Guy Gilchrist's Cartoonist's Academy
=======================================================================================================
