Anonymous: I'm working a job that I hate. I have more hours coming up and more money, but I am already looking forward to the day I quit. I am using this horrible job to keep me on task to become an artist. I would one day like to work for Laika, but I can't figure out how to craft a skill set that they would want to hire me. How would you advise a youngster craft their path for themselves if they aren't sure of he exact position they want? I just am struggling with patience and focus. Thanks!
Yikes. I’m so sorry your job sounds that awful. It might be just the fact that you aren’t where you want to be yet and I completely understand that. Or your job could really be that bad working in the acid mines being whip cracked by a demented Boss with bad hair. Not sure…..
I have never worked at Laika, I would love to work with them too one day, so I asked someone I know in the industry over there and this was their response:
“I can definitely relate to the questioner , but I’m not sure I have a
good answer on how to get into Laika. My path here has been vastly
different than most everyone else ive taked to. Without a direction to
focus on (regardless of if you want to stay in that position long term)
and the patience and persistence to work hard, network, etc. ( took me
3-5 years of hyper focused applications in costuming and CTN and social
media investment to even get on their radar for rejection notices, let
alone in the door of a completely unrelated department. Now I’m fighting
my way over before I roll off) it comes down to right place right time.
And those purely lucky people usually roll off first and don’t get
asked back because they are hit and miss when it comes to good work/good
to work with. There is no general set of skills. There are no general
positions that overview departments. Everything is highly specific. Just
like all the people who work here, highly individualized.”
Here endeth the quote….
So now that they’ve chimed in, I will add my 2 cents. First, I would spend time asking that question by doing your homework and finding out who runs the department you want to see yourself and emailing them directly as the first step. I have learned in 12 years that portfolio’s is just as illusive as creating a hit show. no one knows and there are millions of people pretending to know. I would say if you Build a portfolio towards what you are passionate about and enjoy doing it, then that’s the win. It’s not pandering, it’s not false, it’s just a window into the artist and what they want to say to the world. Then go to conventions like SDCC, CTN, GDC, etc, or job fairs, etc where they will be would be next. Just flat out ask them what they are after. Shadowmachine works in miniatures too and I would find all the places and ask around.
OK, now that pandering directly to the company you want to work at is out of the way:
For the real meat of the question, finding focus on what you want to do/ position. For that I have jumped from 3D environment artist, to concept artist, to children’s book illustrator, and now jumping onto comics. I chose a field that I thought I wanted, 3D modeller and realized years later it wasn’t what spoke to me, so I just restarted. There isn’t any answer I can give you other than trying and seeing if you enjoy it. If you don’t move on. You will take the experience, understanding, and knowledge and use it down the road so no venture will be lost. It all works to your advantage.
Think about what you want to create at the end of the day
Think about what part of the project you want to be in? (pre-production, production, post production) Each will have positives and negatives.
Think about if you are willing to be stressed and deadline oriented. Will that task still be enjoyable.
figure out the difference of what you truly want to do and where that silly inner ego wants you to be. They are rarely the same.
When you find your answer, Ask yourself, will you be happy doing this if you don’t get into Laika or no one notices? If you answer yes, than that’s what you want to do, despite praise or job.
I don’t have all the answers, I swear I wish I did. But hopefully this gives you an idea of how to start thinking about finding your answer. I’m a big proponent for self realization.
Hey, all. This is a comic I started on 24 Hour Comic Day, but I only managed to complete 12 pages on that day. That makes it a technical failure, but I decided it was worth finishing regardless of that.
I sold copies at APE, but I didn’t anticipate the demand and ran out of them pretty quickly. So, I promised to re-post the mini on tumblr when i got home, and here it is.
Some further reading, if this kinda thing is up your alley.
Patreon is the new kid on the block; not quite up to scratch as of yet, but full of possibilities. Search “comics” to find a number of creators using it to draw a page rate from their fanbase.
I hope someone finds this helpful. I may put a print-rez PDF up for sale, if any interest is expressed.
Why the fuck didn’t they give Sirius Black veritaserum? like they could have asked him whether he was the potters secret keeper or not?! he would say Peter was and BAM! they would know he was innocent. it would have saved them all that azkaban nonsense. on second thought, why bother with trials when veritaserum was a thing? wizards have all these tools and spells but never fucking use them!! the wizarding world is an actual disaster
People sometimes send me Asks wanting writing advice. I suck at it. I don’t really know how I do the writing, or how one should do the writing, or what one should do to get better at the writing. All I can ever think to say is “write a lot of stuff and you will get better at the writing.” Which is true, but hardly a bolt from the sky.
Well, as it turns out, I do have one piece of Legit Writing Advice, and I am going to share it with you, right now. If you were in any of my writing workshop groups at a con, you’ve heard this advice already.
Warning: you’re going to fucking hate it. But if you do it, you will thank me.
If you have a piece of fiction you’re serious about, something you might want to actually shop around, or just something you really are into and want to make it as good as you can…do NOT edit it.
Repeat. DO NOT EDIT.
REWRITE.
As in, print out the whole fucking thing and re-enter it, every word (or use two screens). Retype the whole thing. Recreate it from the ground up using your first draft as a template. Start with a blank page and re-enter every. single. word.
I hear you screaming. OH MY GOD THAT’S INSANE.
Yes. Yes, it is.
It is also the most powerful thing you will ever do for a piece of fiction that you are serious about.
Now, let’s get real. I don’t do this for most things. I don’t do it for my fanfiction. But if it’s something original, something I might like to get to a professional level - I do it. You absolutely COULD do it for fanfiction. It’s just up to you and how much time you want to sink into a piece.
You can edit, sure. But you WILL NOT get down to the level of change that needs to happen in a second draft. You will let things slide. Your eyes will miss things. You will say “eh, good enough.”
The first time I did this, on someone else’s advice, I was dubious. Within two pages, I was saying WHY HAVE I NOT BEEN DOING THIS ALL THE TIME. I was amazed at how much change was happening. By the time I got to the end, I had an entirely different novel than the one I’d started with. When you’re already re-entering every single word, it’s easy to make deep changes. You’ll reformat sentences, you’ll switch phrases around, you’ll massage your word choice. You’ll discover whole paragraphs that don’t need to be there at all because they became redundant. You’ll find dialogue exchanges that need reimagining. Whole plot points will suddenly be different, whole story arcs will reveal their flaws and get re-drawn.
You cannot get down to the fundamental level of change that’s required just by editing an existing document. You have to rebuild it if you really want your story to evolve. You will be AMAZED at the difference it will make.
It will take time. It will seem like a huge, Herculean task. I’m not saying it’s easy. It isn’t. But it is absolutely revolutionary.
Try it. I promise, you will see what I mean.
*PSA: Tipsy!Lori wrote this post. In case you couldn’t tell.
maybe i should try this with my comic scripts.
This advice is real.
I think to some extent in a comic this happens in the penciling, inking, colouring and lettering stages if the same person is doing all of them. I know that what I draw and what I use in the final lettering is very frequently not exactly the same as what was in the script. It still might be worth trying this with a comic script though.
When I was 13 years old and curious about sex and love, I asked my mom if she had had sex before marrying my father (of whom she is still married to, and has been since before I was born). She said that that wasn’t really a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ question. I said ‘sure it is, you’ve either had sex before him, or you haven’t’. She brought me onto the couch and sat me down and told me about the boy she liked when she was young and how one night she snuck into his house while his parents were gone and they were kissing and he said they should have sex and she said that she wanted to save sex for marriage and he laughed and basically took all her clothes off and he raped her and as my mom was telling the story she cried and this was the second time I had ever seen my mom cry. She was 12 when it happened.
In grade 8 I got a call from my friend in the middle of the night and she was drunk in the park crying and told me that she went out that night with some other friends and they drank a little and her guy “friend” starting flirting and yes she laughed at first but then he tried to pull her shirt over her head and she pulled away and he ripped her shirt and it was her favourite shirt and then he pushed her to her knees and HIS BEST FRIEND HELD HER JAW OPEN WHILE HE FACE FUCKED HER. And so I went to the park and picked her up and took her home and slept in her bed with her except we didn’t sleep because she just cried and her mouth bled and this was four years ago but I still have to be the one to bring her items to the till it the cashier is a man, and she still has anxiety attacks and she’ll get a rash all over her body and I just want to kill those boys but instead they are still walking around. And I’m in the bathroom with her, dabbing at her skin with a warm cloth until it returns to its regular colour.
And in grade 9 one of my closest friends was kinda seeing this boy and so they hung out one night and then she said that she really had to be getting back home and he said that she wasn’t going anywhere until she gave him what he wanted and he parked the car and took off her clothes and she said no and he ignored her and so she laid in the backseat totally limp and just cried and it wasn’t even sex, he just masterbated by using her body instead of his hand and she came to school the next day with vodka in her water bottle and she drank all day and I had to fight her to get the alcohol away from her and she just cried and threw up and I skipped class while I held her hair back and that same boy texted me a month later, asking if I ever wanted to hangout sometime.
And in that same year my very best friend who has never even kissed a boy, confessed to me that when she was 9 years old, her 12 year old cousin made her give him a hand job and he told her that was what cousins do and he gave her a chocolate bar afterwards and she told me that he probably doesn’t even remember it but that it’s something that she’ll never have the luxury of forgetting.
And in grade 10 I knew a girl who invited her best friend over to watch Disney movies and then he started to put his hands down her pants and she said no but she is 130lbs and he is 220lbs and he called her a tease while she tried to fight him but he used one hand to hold her down, and the other to put inside of her and i was the one to push her inside of a classroom and stand in front of her while calling the police when he showed up at our school looking for her and she was so damn scared.
And a few months later I skipped class and was in the car with a guy who i had had unprotected sex with in the past while under the influence of cocaine but this time I was sober and I insisted we use a condom but he told me he couldn’t feel anything while the condom was on so he ripped it off and I said I refused to have unprotected sex again and so he just grabbed me and forced himself into my mouth and I was crying and he pulled me onto him and I just came saying “stop” over and over like a broken record but he must’ve heard something different because he went until he came and I just sat naked in the backseat while he drove me back to the school and said “we should do this again sometime”. And I had five showers that night and I scratched at my skin so hard to try and rip his fingerprints off of me, I still have the scars.
And I found out soon afterwards that that same guy had raped a classmate of mine, 5 months earlier and she told me about how he brought her McDonald’s first, and how he said they could take things slow and she told me about how he didn’t listen to her either. And he goes to our school and so after she told me about her incident and I told her about mine, we decided to report it to the police and the trial is currently still going on and he told people about it, except in his version we are just “asking for attention” and all his friends talk about how bad they feel for him. As if HE is the one that still wakes up screaming. As if HE felt like his skin no longer was beautiful, no longer belonged to him.
And I held her in my arms as she bawled after giving the police her statement. And she did the same for me.
And I met a woman a year ago in a paint store and she had a service dog and I asked what the dog was for and it turns out that she had been so brutally raped and abused in her life, that the dog is literally trained to keep men away from her.
And I’m so FUCKING SICK AND TIRED OF THIS WORLD WE ARE LIVING IN. How many rape victims eyes have I already looked into? How many more will I? And how many more friends will I hold while they shake? Because I don’t know how many more I can take. And who the fuck still has the nerve to make rape jokes? And… Something just has to change. Please, someone just start being that change.
Sure, yeah! I’ll give you some of the top things I’ve learned in studying creative writing/life in general.
ONE: Never underestimate the reader. A lot of times people think that they have to describe every single detail so that the audience will know what they mean, but that’s not always the case. Sometimes simply saying “she gave him a curious look” says more than “her brows furrowed in curiosity, wondering what he meant”. You have to trust the reader to make that connection on their own while still keeping the writing smooth and limited. The reader will catch on to your hints. Don’t make it too obvious.
TWO: Master the art of flash fiction. The more flash fiction you write, the better your longer writing will become. Flash fiction is a story of 1000 words or less that really strips down to the wire and creates intrigue without giving too much away, very much like a short film. I had a whole class on flash fiction and my writing INSTANTLY improved afterward, especially because I am someone who thrives on descriptive language and often over-complicates things in my work.
THREE: Write 1,000 words or more every day. Stephen King said this in his book about what makes a good writer, and I believe it. I’ve been keeping up with this for the past year and it’s worked out wonderfully for me. I can feel my writing truly improving, and it gets you in the habit of pushing past writer’s block. You don’t have to publish what you write anywhere. Just write something.
FOUR: Read books. Like a sword needs a whetstone, a writer needs reading. Sharpen your skills in someone else’s forgery. Get inspired. Compliment other writers and appreciate when they compliment you back.
FIVE: Never ever ever ever ever ever forget the fans. They are the reason you do what you do. Don’t disrespect them. Want to break their hearts with plot? Go ahead! Want to make your story stick with them in good and bad ways? By all means! You are the writer and have full creative license, but understand that your fans are your sponsors and your network, the people holding you up. Don’t walk on them.
SIX: Learn how to take criticism, even the bad stuff. Writing will always leave you vulnerable to haters. Learn to ignore them and you’re unstoppable (but listen to those who politely present genuine complaints, however. Address them kindly, you might find they’re right!)
SEVEN: Know what needs your full attention and what doesn’t. As a future novelist I have to wonder what my focus is truly on–writing fanfiction while I’m working on my degrees, or saving all that creative juice for my novel? Of course, that’s not to say that I’m lazy over my fanfiction, but I don’t slave over it like I would over actual books. Fanfiction is free. It’s not my dream to write fanfic forever and I’m not getting paid, nor will it get me famous. Just be aware of your priorities. Don’t wear yourself out before your real journey begins!
EIGHT: Put your work out there. Poetry, fanfiction, original work, something. Get feedback. Learn how to interact with fans and take suggestions/criticism from them. Don’t be shy.
NINE: Get an ego (in a good way!). It takes serious guts to put your writing out there. It’s a part of you that you’re exposing to the world; of course you’ll get offended when someone tears it down, and love it when others raise it up. I’m convinced that every writer has to be a bit self-absorbed to make it, because confidence is truly the key to getting out of the gate.
TEN: Travel somewhere alone. You may think that going to Mexico, San Francisco and Italy for two weeks as a 20 y/o single white girl all by myself was a bad choice, but it was FUN and I made so many memories. You meet new people and learn to socialize, learn to break out of your comfort zone. You hear stories that inspire you from other people. You make new friends and have no limits on what you can do–it’s incredibly liberating. I can’t tell you how it helped me as a writer and a person to be able to stand in the Sistine Chapel around a bunch of strangers, looking up at Michelangelo’s Creation of Adam and thinking to myself, “wow. This is art, this is history, this is the impact of what we create as people over hundreds of years. And I’m contributing.” I sat in that chapel for three hours watching people go by, surrounded by all this beautiful art and raw purity of the human existence and I was on no one else’s time. I spent days just walking around Rome and learning about humanity because I wanted to. It was powerful. Let humanity inspire you.
Hi, I'm Tim Lai! I'm a cartoonist living in Ontario, Canada. I like drawing cute and colourful things. This blog is a hub where you can find all of my Tumblr, DeviantArt, Flickr, Blogspot, and other posts in one place.
About My Work
I write and draw Lemon Inc., a comic about a seven-year-old who wants to be a business tycoon when he grows up. Until then, he runs a lemonade stand. You can read it at www.lemon-inc.com.
I have done some professional web and graphic design work, including designing the website for the webcomic, Just Joel. I'm also a member of the webcomic collective, Ink Bomb Comics.
September 26, 2015 20:07
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Anonymous: I'm working a job that I hate. I have more hours coming up and more money, but I am already looking forward to the day I quit. I am using this horrible job to keep me on task to become an artist. I would one day like to work for Laika, but I can't figure out how to craft a skill set that they would want to hire me. How would you advise a youngster craft their path for themselves if they aren't sure of he exact position they want? I just am struggling with patience and focus. Thanks!