Last week was very exciting for me. I wrapped up a couple of big projects and it feels like the weight of the world is off of my back. Oddly Normal: Family Reunion is finished and ready to print and my Star Wars 30th Anniversary sketch cards have been sent in to the Topps office. And I'm fairly satisfied with how both have turned out, although I wish I'd had more time to work on them. It's not that I think my work was not up to muster, it's just that I wish I'd had more time to do an even better job. Then again, what artist doesn't want more time for every project they work on? But in the end, it's always best to have a deadline looming so the work gets done.
During the previous week I also set two new projects in motion, finding artists to collaborate with on new graphic novels that I'm writing and hoping to get on the publication schedule for 2008 and 2009. One of them is actually a project I once thought that I would draw myself called Flynn. The other is a story I've had sitting on the stove for years and I finally feel that it's ready to serve up.
During this convergence of endings and beginnings, I've found myself reflective about my craft once again. The last time I felt like this, I wrote my longest blog post to date. This one may not be as long, but it certainly feels like a follow-up.
So, let's get down to it . . .
I'm retiring from the world of sketch cards. Well, maybe "graduating" is a more appropriate term. I've written about this before, in the comments section of this post. But I guess this is the "official announcement" about my intentions.
So why am I putting an end to my sketch card work? There are many reasons, but the most important one is that it's simply the right time to move on and focus on creative work of my own making, such as original graphic novels. In fact, my wife and I recently made a major decision about my career. We decided that I wasn't going to do anything that didn't advance my career as a creator and storyteller. The line I always use is "I never wanted to be the guy who draws stuff that George Lucas created, I wanted to be George Lucas." As an artist, there are certainly short term benefits to be gained from standing on the shoulders of giants like Lucasfilm or Marvel or DC or Lord of the Rings, and maybe being a working artist is enough for some people. It's a worthy end in and of itself to be a working artist, I'm not trying to take that achievement away from those who succeed in this regard. But I've always considered myself a writer who draws, not the other way around, so the need to create my own stories and properties must be the primary focus when thinking of my long term career plans.
So . . . I've begun to focus on my own projects and will do so exclusively in the foreseeable future. I may not have made any money with them yet, but I have faith that it it will pay off in the end. That's why after I finish the DC Legacy cards, that's it for me. No more sketch card projects. It was fun while it lasted (for the most part), but it's time to move on.
But that doesn't mean that I look back on my sketch card work as a total waste. It wasn't. I recently wrote to a friend of mine that I've come to think of sketch cards like a job at McDonalds; it's entry level, it pays very little and even if you move to the top of the heap in terms of seniority, you're still just the manager of McDonald's. But upon reflection, I think that analogy was a bit unfair.
While I was finishing up my Star Wars cards, I had The Beatles Anthology DVDs playing in the background. And during the portion of the documentary that detailed the (pre) Fab Four's time in Hamburg, I began to re-exmine my McDonald's metaphor and think of my time in the sketch card world more like the experience that the Beatles had pulling 6 to 10 hour shifts playing beer halls in that German red light district. When they left Liverpool, they were already a well known band in their home town and were very popular among the Cavern dwellers. But they were still raw and embryonic as a group of musicians. It was during their self-imposed exile in Hamburg that they became a tight musical force to be reckoned with. Their time in the West German rock trenches built up those creative and technical muscles to an extent that, upon returning to Liverpool, the audiences were stunned by the transformation.
So while working in sketch cards was grueling work with long hours and bad pay, it was also an invaluable learning experience for me. It forced me to work out issues in my drawing that I may never have solved and it also became a work environment for me to take up the challenge of learning to color with markers and colored pencils, a skill that I feel I've become quite good at, after years of being deathly afraid of any color that was not in pixel form. Drawing literally thousands of sketch cards has made traditional color work with markers and colored pencils second nature for me. As I was working on the recent Star Wars set, I was often amazed at how breezily I threw color onto cards, a skill that was not in my creative quiver just two short years ago. I have my work in the sketch card world to thank for that, so I can't just dismiss the jobs I've done in that area as easily as I did just a few days ago in that e-mail to my friend. In the final analysis, I owe my time in the trenches a lot more respect than initially thought.
Other than the experience doing traditional color work, I also found that the limitations of the sketch card format, especially the small size of the drawing area, has changed the way I work. I've found that working small has become something I've integrated into my other work. In drawing the thumbnails for Zeek, I'm working very small, at about 3x2 inches, and then moving on to roughs that are about 7x5 inches, which is about the size that the pages will be when printed. Working small has helped me focus on strong shapes for characters and composition. I think that being forced to draw on those tiny pieces of cardboard really influenced me in changing my methods.
The final aspect of sketch card work that I want to talk about is how my drawing style has evolved over the course of my work on those tiny pieces of cardboard. I wrote about that in Part 1, but the evolution of my style has continued through into the work I did on the Star Wars cards, and I really feel like I've found my groove on that project. The work just came more naturally on that set and I finally feel like I'm drawing in a style that I am very comfortable with. And other people seem to agree . . . I've gotten a very positive reaction to the cards, which is a great validation of all the work I've done to improve my own drawing skills and develop my style to a unique end that I am happy with.
If I had one piece of advice for artists interested in getting into the business of sketch cards, it would be this: know when to get out. Once you get in, work hard, improve your craft, have as much fun as you can, interact with the collectors (and make friends when you can) and take advantage of the opportunity to work with properties that you would not otherwise ever get near at your level in the business . . . but know when to get out.
Drawing sketch cards is not a career. It is and should be an entry level position. Sure, there are a few big name artists who do sketch card work once and a while, but I would guess that they are doing it just for the fun of working with properties like Star Wars and Lord of the Rings, and wouldn't ever consider it their main bread and butter. Remember . . . The Beatles may have become a better band in the beer halls of Hamburg, but they didn't stay there:
I probably stayed in the sketch card world longer than I should have, but I was really keen to work on the 30th Anniversary of Star Wars and also the DC Legacy set, so I took on two final sets after I'd already decided that I was most likely calling it quits.
And so, I'm moving on to working solely on my own projects. And I have many projects in the hopper. Oddly Normal is moving ahead with production on the third book with artist Jessica Hickman. I have Zeek, which is the only project that I am currently writing and drawing. And then I have Flynn, which may finally see production with another artist taking over for me (and I'm happy to give up the drawing chores on that one to a better illustrator). And finally, there is the newest book I'm writing, which has an amazing artist attached to it, and I'll be talking more about that after we pitch it to our publisher (and I can't wait to talk about it, because the artist on the book is wonderful, someone I never thought would agree to work on a book of mine without even reading a script).
So the time has come to get moving on my own projects full time, but I just wanted to stop for a moment and reflect on my time in the sketch card trenches and give due respect before moving on. I learned a lot while working in that world, and I hope that the skills I acquired there will serve me well in the future.
See you soon.
-Otis
