/ic/ - Artwork/Critique

[Anonymous No.3141304]

I once saw it said that comics are the worst art career in terms of pay for time, and that unless you're passionate about the medium (either artistically or as a fan) you should seek work elsewhere because you'll make more money.

Where is this elsewhere? Where else can you get paid money for black and white drawings?

[Anonymous No.3141308]

Normal office Job + double funded kickstarter comic master race

At least thats the best way I found to keep making comics with sustainable income

[Anonymous No.3141312]

It's true. My current page rate is $100 for inked interiors and $250 for covers. I've only been doing comics professionally for a year but that rate isn't going to go up much over the next while unless I get a gig at Marvel or DC. And even there it's hard to get a raise.

You're probably better off working in illustration or storyboarding if you're not fully invested in comics

[Anonymous No.3141317]

Book and editorial illustration if you can get it, although the future for print media doesn't look too bright. Comics are no longer a mass medium like they were in the past.

On a side note "passion" is one of the biggest memes of all time, and what it actually means in 9 out of 10 cases is how much free work and unpaid overtime you're willing to do to in order to make your bosses record profit. See its overuse in the entertainment design industry.

[Anonymous No.3141322]

>>3141317
Are there any reliable stats for digital comics though?

[Anonymous No.3141331]

>>3141312
Not op, but where do i find storyboarding jobs

[Anonymous No.3141332]

>>3141312
>You're probably better off working in illustration or storyboarding if you're not fully invested in comics

I'm invested in comics to the extent that it's the medium where I want to express myself artistically but it's not something I'd want to have to rely on to make a living.

Storyboarding is something that has always interested me and I'm kicking myself for not seeing it in high school. I have family in the local film industry (Vancouver) and as a kid I was given many gifts of professional storyboards. I should have pursued it when the guidance counselors were asking me what I wanted to do with my life. Maybe it's not too late.

[Anonymous No.3141333]

>>3141332
I mean you still have that family connection presumably, I'd go for it.

[Anonymous No.3141336]

[Anonymous No.3141340]

>>3141333

I do, although I'll have to seek a ceasefire in the family drama currently going on.

Thanks to those connections I've worked in the film industry too as a laborer for the art department, way down the totem pole. I've hung out with art directors on set, shooting the shit about Led Zeppelin and Joni Mitchell, and never thought to bring up drawing This was years ago. The same relative who got me that job even told an art director that I draw and afterwards told me he was interested in seeing my stuff. Except I didn't have any stuff because I was fucking worthless and had no confidence. I was 20. Now I'm 27 and still living in my mom's house scrounging up nickels to buy a box of mac and cheese at the chink store.

I think need a drink, then work on my art. Fuck me.

[Anonymous No.3141346]

>>3141340
A learned lesson is a learned lesson, whether it took seven years or not.

I'm rooting for you, as I get back to my own comics.

[Anonymous No.3141350]

>>3141322
Comixology weekly top sales are available, but exact numbers are only given to creators as far as I know

>>3141331
I don't even know where you live, I can't answer that

>>3141332
It's never too late, and if you already have possible connections then go for it. You can always self-publish comics or work on something bit by bit, just never in monthly comics.

>>3141336
Wew, I'm at stage 2 already

[Anonymous No.3141361]

>>3141336
Savage

[Anonymous No.3141372]

>>3141340
We all have regrets. I could have started at least 7 years earlier. Now 30 and still chasing the dream.

[Anonymous No.3141375]

>>3141304
when i was a kid i had a garfield comic book, and there was a spot at the end where jim davis gave career advice. He said don't get into comics unless you're literally no good at anything else lol.

[Anonymous No.3142391]

The comics industry needs to meet the 21st century if it's going to survive. Some how it's stayed like it's a depression era industry. There is NO reason why it has to be shitty other than the shitty people running it.

[Anonymous No.3142503]

>>3141375
Jim Davis isn't even good at comics

[Anonymous No.3142554]

>>3142391
Previously (from around the 1930s to 1980s) comic books were a mass medium, available in a large quantity and variety at every drugstore and news stand. But during that time cable and satellite TV, blockbuster movies and probably most importantly videogames started taking up more of peoples' time and money and as such comics went from a mass medium to a minor niche product.

Hardly anyone reads comics and the reason you're going to get a shit deal going into what's left of the industry is because there are more people who want to do it than available positions for comic artists.

[Anonymous No.3142563]

>>3142554
There are webcomics tho. M-maybe it's just the format that has changed... right?

[Anonymous No.3142565]

>>3142391

It's shitty due to a combination of factors.

One is that the market is small, with around 500,000 buyers. It's a small niche industry and there just isn't enough money to support more than a couple hundred artists.

Two is that the business model is monthly, which calls for tight deadlines. This puts a lot of pressure on the artist to work very long hours, all for a pretty low rate.

Three is that the audience's tastes are focused on detail. In the business's heyday an artist could draw several pages a day and work on several books at a time, generating a lot of income. In the late 70s single young artists started putting more detail into their work because they didn't have to support a family and could afford to make less money. With each generation the level of detail has gotten higher while production has slowed. Far from drawing multiple monthly books at a time, artists today can barely handle a monthly book.

Four is that comic books were the low-rent bastards of comic strips. Comic strips were where the real, trained artists went, able to labor over a single page for a week. Comic books were just reprints of those strips, and soon evolved into a medium where artists who weren't good enough for weeklies went. So it's always been kind of shit.

There's not enough money in the industry, a surplus of willing artists, unreasonably high standards of detail and a long history of being trash. That's why it's a shitty career path.

[Anonymous No.3142711]

>>3142565
>>3142554
I disagree if you're implication is that it has to be this way. The american business model has completely fucked comics. The audience would grow if the model grew up, stopped acting like this was 80's or before when they had a captive audience in children. Kids are inundated with stuff for their attention and the way more now.

Comics are just waiting for someone to crack open the formula of making them convenient and high quality. If literature survives to this day then there is no reason why comics can't either. it just needs to rethink its approach.

[Anonymous No.3142777]

>>3142711
I'll argue that it has to be this way if only because the supposed solutions and alternatives (imitating the Japs wholesale, direct-to-bookstore OGNs, etc) are costly, impractical, and couldn't be implemented without fucking over a lot of people in the process.

[Anonymous No.3142796]

>>3142777
How so? I'm honestly curious.

[Anonymous No.3143552]

>>3142796
Phonebook anthologies similar to the Japs' are impractical because it costs too much to print and distribute something with that many pages (the cost of using newsprint is negligible). Plus, the format just doesn't appeal to anyone besides comic aficionados already knee deep in the medium. The average person isn't going to spend $8-12 bucks for a grab bag of content when they can either spend that much on comics they know they want or just trade-wait.

The OGN only approach is dicey in that a publisher has to sell people on a $20+ paperback/hardcover out of the gate. A lot of copies need to sold to make a profit, especially after everybody else gets their cut (printers, transportation, distributors, stores). Not exactly an ideal situation for publishers that don't deal in instant bestseller material (superheroes, licensed stuff, latest flavor of the month, reprints).

[Anonymous No.3143560]

You could be a freelance illustrator. It baffles me how overlooked on /ic/ being a freelance illustrator is, considering this is mainly a drawing board. And I don't mean being a freelance illustrator in terms of getting commissioned work from bottom-of-the-barrel Tumblr clients using those awful commission charts, but getting commissioned work from real, actual businesses that need illustration.

The money and hours are great once you get the ball rolling with repeat clients.

[Anonymous No.3143579]

>>3143552
Generally, compounded with the escalated espectation of quality printed, the cost of printing is too high to maintain large circulation in new titles.

I think going with digital distribution as an entry and then printing select titles as in tpb format is the way to go. remove printers from the equation, take that money and give it to creators, invest in talent, and watch the industry thrive. If you can couple that with a netflix like business model, comics will be golden.

[Anonymous No.3143592]

>>3143560
How do you get into it?

[Anonymous No.3143602]

Im kinda in the same boat. Im color blind so I only like to do black and white stuff. But I dont like comics, so I really dont kniw what Im doing with my art besides making it

[Anonymous No.3143611]

>>3143592
Are you retarded? The attachment in that fucking post tells you everything you need to know.

[Anonymous No.3143624]

>>3141312
since you're(supposedly) a professional comic artist, did you start out drawing full comics on paper by hand? that means drawing, inking, coloring and lettering all by hand.
just wondering if i should even waste my time drawing full comic books on paper? or go digital because ive spent a lot of time drawing figures and scenes and different character poses on paper but never an entire comic.

[Anonymous No.3143628]

>>3142554
>>3142565
How does all of this compare to the manga, anime, light novel and doujin industry?

[Anonymous No.3143637]

>>3143552
if you went with tradepaperback/hardbacks out of the gate and promoted them like video games, you could increase the price of each book sold from 20+dollars to something like 40+ dollars for around 6 or 7 issues. you would be forcing people to buy the collected trades for a higher price since theres no single issue.
or
keep the current model of single issue then trade later, but increase the trade paper/hardbacks to something way higher like 50 or 60. that way single issues would be more desirable to purchase?
im still not sure how this would work though. you'll get less buyers but more money. im not sure if the equalibrium is high enough to squeeze more money out of people so that you can pay artists more money.
>>3143579
theres always going to be people who want to own physical copies. i can see the netflix type thing working for the big individual companies (DC MARVEL IMAGE) and they could have different tiers for certain comics. 10 dollars for a small set of comics 30 for a bigger set etc.

[Anonymous No.3143767]

>>3143628

In Japan comics are a much more universally accepted form of media, there is no stigma of them being childish and the medium is not dominated by one genre. The Japanese industry can afford to publish huge anthology phonebooks every week and successful creators are real celebrities.

Japanese creators also kill themselves on extremely tight deadlines, which is indicative of their culture of shame.

[Anonymous No.3144120]

>>3143637
Increasing prices for trades is a great way to lock out readers and kill enthusiasm for trades in general because nobody is going to pay $50/60 for recent trades. Omnibuses and niche collections aimed at the collector/connoisseur, maybe. But not the average reader either looking to get into a series or already following one.

Marvel already gets shit for charging $40+ for TPB compilations of older material and pulling stunts like the odd $4.99/9.99 single issue.

>>3143579
>If you can couple that with a netflix like business model, comics will be golden.
There's no real incentive for publishers to let their entire libraries be easily available when most of the profit is going in somebody else's pocket. I don't recall a lot of initial applause from comic creators for Comixology Unlimted when it was unveiled.

[Anonymous No.3144125]

>>3143592
In the post you're responding to, I posted a picture that gives you a literal step-by-step guide for getting into freelance illustration. This is as much as anyone can ever help you, is it's up to you to come up with good work and contact relevant decision makers to commission you. All anyone can do is point you in the right direction.

It's hard to get started, and it's much more entreprenuial than people think.

[Anonymous No.3144126]

>>3141304
Arrite heres the secret, somehow the further from the public the work the higher the pay is...

Consulting on some pie in the sky shit that will never ever gets made. No will ever see the work, the meeting might never even happen.
>Skys the limit
Pitch
>pretty good to great.
Pre-Production
>not bad to good
Design work in the pipeline
>salaried peanuts
Illustration/Comics/Animator/Caricatures on the sidewalk/Painting kids faces
>peanuts

[Anonymous No.3144159]

>>3143624
I only draw comics traditionally, digital is not for me. A lot of pros have transitioned to digital these days as it's faster and you can do a bit more, but I just hate the disconnect.

Also I only pencil and ink, in most American comics the issue is broken up into a team of writer, penciler, inker (if the penciler isn't inking himself), colorist, letterer and editors. I don't have time to do anything more than the hard-drawing of a 22pg issue every month.

Do what works for you. Nobody cares how you make it, as long as you make it.

[Anonymous No.3144234]

>>3144126
Lumping a career in illustration into "salaried peanuts" is just wrong and misguided. Illustration can pay very well if you are both a good artist and business minded.

This myth that illustration pays poorly is such incredible horse shit. It's your own fault for not being able to land higher value clients.

[Anonymous No.3144362]

>>3144234
hoho, u've misread my tier list friend, illustrators are almost never salaried. That would be just peanuts.

[Anonymous No.3144368]

>>3144362
>illustrators are almost never salaried

just because someone isn't getting a salary doesn't mean they're making peanuts.

[Anonymous No.3144501]

>>3144368
You've missed the point of my post and simply feel the need to blurt "waaah i've *heard* illustrators can make a living"

[Anonymous No.3144758]

>>3143602
I guess it's true, sometimes limitations spur people on to truly exceed themselves, nice.

[Anonymous No.3145185]

I'd rather make comics or keep art as a hobby than work as an illustrator. Illustrations are boring, stories are meaningful.

[Anonymous No.3145406]

>>3142503
He doesn't need to be when he's a multi millionaire.

[Anonymous No.3146355]

bump