High Resolution(s)

Granted it's been 2014 for the better part of a week already but, regardless, I've chosen today to post my New Year's Mission Statement because:
a) it's the first Monday of 2014 (bet you all feel great about that), and
b) I only got back to my base of operations* in Peterborough at the weekend.
(*not an actual base of operations, but a two bedroom flat by noisy railway tracks.)
So, today is the first day back to full-time, anti-social, forgetting to eat like a regular person, and consuming lots of caffeine, work.  And, to be honest, I couldn't be more excited.

2013 was my first full year working as a freelance illustrator and, truth be told, it was pretty difficult.  On the grand scheme of things, I'm not very far into my so-called "career" so I wasn't really prepared for the modest peaks and soul-crushing valleys that characterised my first year as a freelancer.  However, I have learned a lot over the past twelve months and some lean stretches towards the end of the year have provided me plenty of time to practice, study and grow as an illustrator (some day I won't feel like a fraud when referring to myself as an "artist", but that's some time away yet), so I am extremely optimistic about the year ahead and, as such, have laid out some goals for myself to hopefully have a better year, both creatively and commercially, in 2014.

Resolution One: Be more self-promotional.
I was much too lackadaisical in hunting down work last year: one reason was feeling too self-conscious about self-promotion to advertise my abilities and services, another was being overly critical of myself and not wanting to show work that I didn't feel was my best.  These issues meant my profile over the last year was almost non-existant.
As such, I have resolved to be aggressively self-promotional this year, including being more active on social media, blogging regularly, finally setting up the website that I purchased a URL for ages ago, and attending more conventions.

Resolution Two: Actively seek out the right kind of jobs.
Being new to things, I was naive and easily distracted by offers of work that either weren't compatible with my own career goals or unprofitable (creatively and/or economically) in 2013.  Not that I am ungrateful for these jobs: to be offered any kind of work is a huge compliment in this industry and to be offered actual money for your endeavours is becoming even more rare.  However I feel like I sacrificed my career plans in favour of making ends meet a few too many times in 2013.  At the end of the day, I want to draw comic books for a living: nothing gives me more pleasure or a greater sense of reward than toiling for hours over an A3 sheet of bristol board and creating something that is visually dynamic and also tells a story.  It's what I live for and if I want to spend a lot more of my days doing this, and get better at it, I need to seek out work that lets me exercise my visual storytelling and also shows my peers and potential publishers that I am a guy who delivers quality material to deadline.
Thankfully I am currently working on what will be the biggest project I've had so far.  While I'm unsure if I can mention any details right now, it is something that will reach more readers than anything I've drawn before so I'm determined to provide to the best of my abilities and really make an impact with this, and start 2014 with a lot of forward momentum.

Resolution Three: Self-Publish.
Up until the second quarter of last year I was working away for the good men at Uproar Comics, drawing their flagship title "Zombies Hi" and working behind the scenes remastering back-issues of the series for their groundbreaking Digital Experience Comic (DEC) App.  While working at Uproar, I was mostly oblivious to the rampant business practice that is the "Backend" deal.
Those unfamiliar with the business of making comics might mistake this term for something else entirely and, for the most part, they'd be wrong.  A backend deal is a business agreement wherein a group of creators will work on a project (comic book/graphic novel/etc) without compensation for their input, instead splitting all the profits from sales in whatever ratio agreed (hence, on the "back end").  As you can imagine, sometimes it can prove profitable, and a lot of the time it doesn't.  A lot of the benefits of the backend deal aren't economical however: for one, it allows writers and artists to be published, which is a great way of promoting your skills to larger publishers who can judge whether you have the talent to work for them; It's also a magnificent way of networking with other creatives, getting noticed, and establishing a community of creatives - The comic creative community in Ireland is a perfect example of this, and especially rewarding to be a part of; and it can provide a bit of experience of what it could be like working professionally for a publisher.  In circumstances where people do not have a lot of money, particularly common in this day and age, backend deals provide an opportunity for people to make something from nothing and forge a career.  There are a lot of people in Ireland doing this who I have immeasurable admiration for and hope to some day work with.
However, I have a huge problem with companies or individuals who either do have the finances to compensate an artist for their time and effort but won't (usually using the line "We feel an artist can be more involved with a project when they own a share of its success"), or refuse to be flexible with people who they are essentially asking to work for them for free (ie. asking somebody to draw a comic in a month, for no money, when that person will clearly have bills to pay and no time to take on extra work that will tie them over).  This is when the term "backend" begins to take on another, less pleasant, kind of meaning.

After receiving quite a few offers like the latter ones stated, I started thinking "Instead of spending my free time working on somebody else's property, why don't I work on something of my own?"
This isn't a particularly novel line of thinking, I should point out.  In fact, it's what most people have been quoted as saying/thinking before venturing into self-publication.  So don't think of me as a revolutionary but rather an educated fool stumbling into an over-crowded market.

Into this mire of self-promotion and audience building I have dragged with me my long-time friend and cohort, S.G. O'Hagan (His pen-name, which I will address him by unless he advises me otherwise).  A drama teacher and novelist, S.G. has been writing witty and imaginative stories since before I first met him maybe thirteen years ago, and he shares my affinity for visual storytelling.  We've flirted with the idea of developing a comic in the past but have always found ourselves too busy to commit.  So when our most viable idea for a story, conceived by S.G. way back in 2005, ended up making its way into his latest book "The Adventures of Yes Lad and Fergal", I asked him to come up with something new that we might publish.  The story he dreamt up in the time it took him to take a shower (I assume he showers in under five minutes like all men, but there's a chance he could have been in there for an hour) literally blew my mind.  Completely removed from the gritty crime story he wrote originally, this is something else entirely.  I don't want to give anything away, as we are still in the early stages of development, but I don't think there are many stories like what S.G. has written out there.
As we're well aware of the costs of printing, publishing and promoting physical comics, and the financial risks of doing so for first-time creators, we decided to forgo any such gamble and just give the damn thing away for free, as a web comic.  It makes most sense as our chances of financial success with this endeavour are not only very slim but ultimately inconsequential, as what we are really hoping for with this story is exposure.
S.G. has, I feel, a huge amount of talent and his comic book writing, particularly, is really unique and powerful.  The story he has written for this web comic deals with a pretty common phenomenon in mainstream comics, but he handles it with such sophistication and self-awareness that I'm confident people who read it will be really impressed.  It's my job, as the illustrator, to do justice to his words.  Obviously, I have a lot to gain from this as well: if i can publish a set amount of pages a week, and continue to make that target along with other duties, I can further build that reputation of somebody who can provide quality work to a strict deadline, and hopefully it will look good enough that publishers will want to commission me.  Ultimately, this is going to be our CV and I'm feeling good about it.
I had considered the idea of approaching some other creators, namely an inker and colourist, to join us on the venture.  I was really conscious of this idea, however, because it felt just like offering one of those backend deals that made me want to get away from backend deals in the first place (on a side-note, S.G. and I had thought of ultimately selling collected, printed editions of the web comic, and using profits to retroactively pay these contributors a page rate, whereafter we'd split profits, but obviously the books would have to do pretty freakin' well for that to happen).  A few tentative inquiries to my peers in the Irish comics community confirmed by apprehension and so I'll be drawing, colouring and lettering the web comic myself.  Not that I'm complaining:  I find comic book colouring to be a huge talent and one I am envious of so while I am daunted by the task of colouring my own work, in the spirit of this being a creative endeavour, I'm welcoming of the opportunity to develop my skills in this area, and I'll strive to provide the best work I possibly can.

As previously stated, we are still in the early stages of developing this project, so for the next few months I'm going to be working on concept art.  My recent Advent Sketches (view blog posts from December 2013 for more) allowed me to see how much I could achieve in a short amount of time so rather than quit speed-drawing/sketching now that Christmas is over, I've decided then to make it a regular practice, substituting characters from Christmas movies with development artwork for the new project.  I'd expect this process to take some time but I'm going to post my concept work regularly: this will help my self-promotion phobia, get me used to posting my work online, and - through any responses to the posts - let me gauge response to the visuals of the comic, and adjust them accordingly.

As an exercise in self-promotion and learning new skills, I'm really excited about developing the new project along with my other work.  How successful it will be critically, remains to be seen.

Resolution Four: Land work with major publishers.
While 2013 might not have been so successful for me financially, I did make a lot of contacts in the industry and the people have taken their time to give me their advice and encouragement are appreciated more than I have words to express.  It is my major goal this year to continue improving my abilities using the advice these people have given me, and raising my profile through self-promotion (Resolution One), working on more comic books (Resolution Two) and publishing my own web comic (Resolution Three), to hopefully get noticed by, and secure some work with, one of the more established publishers (Resolution Four, see how I made all the dots connect there?).

I'm aware of how difficult it is for an illustrator to "break in" to mainstream comics, but I am resolving to be more pro-active in my pursuit of that goal.  I'll also have to submit sample work to publishers more often which will require quite a bit of juggling, but I know that if I want to achieve my career goals I need to really step up and commit myself.

And now that I've written it all down and put it out in the world, I'm just gonna have to man the hell up and do it!

Here's to 2014.

Happy New Year.