What are my chances of becomming a cartoonist?

Factual Questions
1

Ok, so I was bored in class the other day and decided to draw some cartoons, the three box kind, and I found that fun and I decided to write more and more and now I have about 100 of them…and when I read them I find most of them are pretty funny…so I figured this could by my open door to fame.

The problem is I really can’t draw (it really looks horrible) and I my writing is difficult to read…

So, what should I do? Should I find someone that can draw and form a partnership? or should I take some drawing classes?

Say I score the jackpot with a local newspaper, how much would I get paid per cartoon?

How should I go about trying to find a place to publish my cartoons? (should I try the university school paper, local paper, Chicago Reader? or just scan them and put them on the internet, or add some stupid stories (I have lots of those too) and make a small book out of it)

I’m seriously considering doing something out of this…

2

oh and, does it matter if some of them are not exactly politicaly correct? (say…making fun of Jesus and/or Cancer?)

3

Put 'em on the internet. Homestarrunner comes to mind as an incredibly successful internet-based comic, as well as Get Your War On, UserFriendly, and countless others.
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If you do that for awhile, enjoy it, and it develops a fan base… look into where to take it from there. Oh, and good luck.

4

If I were you I’d do it on the side and not put much emotional/financial investment in it being a secure source of income cause it probably never will be. That being said, I think everyone needs a creative hobby, and if that turns into mucho dinero–more power to you! Plus with another job you can use your comic to bitch about your job and link up with a lot of people out there!

5

Practice drawing and lettering. Practice your brains out. It will get better with time but you have to work at it. Consider a local (resonably priced) drawing class. If you know how to draw from life, you’ll find it’s easier to draw cartoons (at least that’s how it was for me).

The fact that you can come up with funny stuff is a good sign- in the cartoon business, the gags are more important than the drawings. Or you can team up with a friend who can draw.

You can probably find several books in the library about drawing/cartooning and how to submit your work.

First try publishing your stuff locally -school paper, a local free paper etc… If you belong to any local group/club that has a newsletter try submitting your stuff there. Don’t worry if you get paid peanuts (or nothing), because that’s how most people start. From there you can grab yourself a copy of Artist’s Market and find what magazines are looking for what kind of stuff. Don’t freak out if/when much of your stuff is rejected. It doesn’t mean you suck. It’s that there’s only so much space in each magazine that they can devote for cartoons- the rest get rejected good or bad. Keep drawing, keep sending stuff out.

Most big newspaper comics are distributed by syndicates. If/when you have an idea for a comic strip, you submit it to the syndicate and if they think they can make $$$ out of it they’ll hire you to crank out the strip, and they’ll try to sell it. Beware that competition here is extrememly stiff.

Politically incorrect humor? If you’re good at it, go for it (short of slander, of course). Two warnings- many mainstream publications shy away from it (not wanting to piss off their readers), and you’ll get some people mad at you. But that’s part of the fun.

What else? Pay attention to constructive criticism but ignore the rest. In the late eighties my cartoons ran in a weekly university paper along with cartoons by someone we’ll call “Joe”. Someone sent a letter to the editor saying “These comics are crap, they’re never funny, ever, blah blah blah”

Flash forward to 2003, both me and Joe are paid artists. I don’t cartoon much these days, but “Joe” sure does- he’s a nationaly syndicated editorial cartoonist.

6

If I were you I’d do it on the side and not put much emotional/financial investment in it being a secure source of income cause it probably never will be. That being said, I think everyone needs a creative hobby, and if that turns into mucho dinero–more power to you! Plus with another job you can use your comic to bitch about your job and link up with a lot of people out there!

7

If I were you I’d do it on the side and not put much emotional/financial investment in it being a secure source of income cause it probably never will be. That being said, I think everyone needs a creative hobby, and if that turns into mucho dinero–more power to you! Plus with another job you can use your comic to bitch about your job and link up with a lot of people out there!

8

If I were you I’d do it on the side and not put much emotional/financial investment in it being a secure source of income cause it probably never will be. That being said, I think everyone needs a creative hobby, and if that turns into mucho dinero–more power to you! Plus with another job you can use your comic to bitch about your job and link up with a lot of people out there!

9

Okay, here’s the Straight Dope:

Barely one in a thousand artists manage to get a comic syndicated- and if you’re not syndicated, you will NOT see widespread print.

I know of one cartoonist who draws a clever strip with decent jokes and art, and even though he’s been in the local paper, daily, for five or six years now, and has several self-published books, he’s nowhere near syndication.

Part of the problem is it’s an Alaskan theme that simply won’t appeal to anyone outside of Alaska.

Which is part of the problem: The syndicates look for wide appeal. The comic has to appeal to both the 13 year old Xbox gamer and the 80 year old grandmother. The strip I mentioned above, being “outdoorsy”, simply won’t appeal to, say, retired folk in Miami, or people in New York City, or surferdudes in southern California.

Your best bet is to scan 'em and turn it into a webcomic. There’s hojillions of webcomics out there: The Belfry, Rocketbox, Keenspot and Keenspace, Top Web Comics and so on, ad nauseum.

For you, Keenspace will actually host and automate a site for you, sort of like a Geocities/Yahoo site. You upload the comics, set the scheduler to dole out this strip on that day, and sit back and let it do all the work.

If you have a hundred comics already, set it for a fairly common Mon/Wed/Fri schedule, and you’ll have thirty-plus weeks ready to go, presumably enough time for you to draw more.

If you set it for a less common, but more popular from the reader’s standpoint Monday-through-Friday schedule, you still have twenty weeks’ worth. However, just keep in mind that, after those twenty weeks are up, coming up with five drawings a week starts getting to be a real chore.

Now, from a monetary standpoint, you will NOT make any money. Not even a dime. It will COST you money, materials and time. Out of the… I’m guessing two thousand or so comics I linked above, I can guarantee you perhaps half a dozen are making money at it.

Penny Arcade makes a few bucks from advertising, since they have a hundred thousand hardcore gamers reading the strip every day. Ozy & Millie makes a pittance more than break-even since he’s got a couple of books out (indie press though) and his art and dialogue is excellent. PVP now makes big bucks, from his gamer advertising and now it’s being published in an Image comic.

A rare few, with good art and a decent story, make a random few bucks here and there from having a “PayPal” donation button, or a CafePress store that carries T-shirts and whatnot with the characters.

The rest do it simply because they enjoy the art, or they have a story they want to tell, or just for something to do.

Personally, my strip started almost accidentally, snowballed amazingly fast, and has now been up for ten months and over a hundred and forty strips. However, it’s a specialty/niche market, and I hold no illusions of ever seeing widespread print.

I also had the benefit of a prexisting site and bulletin board that had considerable daily traffic.

10

WaW! I didn’t knew that there were so many cartoonists here! thanks a lot for the info…

I have a question regarding puting it on the internet; how do I make sure I don’t get ripped off by someone else? (In other words, how do I copyright my stuff; how does that work?)

11

Having your ideas ripped off is always a risk, but wouldn’t it be worth finding out (from strangers and non-relatives) if you’re as good as you secretly think you are?

One more thing: Of all the thousands, or millions, of people out there in the world calling themselves cartoonists, only a few hundred make more than about $30 K a year. Only about twenty of them make more than $100 K a year with any kind of job security. I know well the path you’ve chosen. Hope you don’t mind dying broke and alone.

BTW, I’m assembling a pitch for the syndicates myself, so take my warnings with a grain of salt; they’re only true in a narrow, factual kind of way.

12

Success as a cartoonist is a numbers game- to prosper you must

A. Practice, practice, practice if you want to draw well.

B. Research the market- what’s selling? What’s getting bounced? There’s lots of good books about drawing/selling cartoons- from getting ideas to proper submission packages.

C. As I posted earlier, syndicated newspaper strips are harder to sell- there’s lots of competition and only so much room in the newspapers. If this is your dream, keep it, but get your feet wet with local sources- your school newspaper, for example. Or approach different campus clubs and see if they’d like your art for their flyers. From there you can try magazines (start with smaller special interest ones- “Bird Talk”, as oppossed to “Newsweek.” Of course, if you think a cartoon is perfect for Newsweek by all means send it in (worked for “Joe” in my earlier post), but you’ll probably have better luck with the smaller markets at first.

D. Most of what any cartoonist sends is rejected. Get used to it, keep drawing, keep sending out stuff. It’s a numbers game. The more stuff you have in circulation, the more success you’ll have.

E. For ideas, and to keep your mind fresh, read books, magazines and newspapers when you’re not drawing. Watch out for t.v. and video games- they’re fun but will rob hours of your time. Don’t quit your day job- that’s where ideas come from!

F. If you want to persue the big kahuna of newspaper syndication, don’t expect to land something right out of college. It happens, but it’s rare- a few years of “real world” experience helps people create a more well-rounded strip that appeals to a wider audience.

G. And like I said before, don’t let rejections freak you out. Just keep creating and submitting. If you send strip (or cartoon) A in the mail, start working on strip B imediatly instead of waiting by the mailbox.

H. Work hard but have fun. Good luck.

13

Got any scans of your cartoons to see?
Don’t look for cartoons as a career. Its fun as a side thing, but if your doing it full time its a hard life.
I second the suggestion to put them on the web. You may even get a following. If you get confident enough, you could ask a local paper or magazine if they want to put it in. If you look at the back of University or College paper you might see a page or so of amateurish comics. If your stuff is good, fans will come.
Good luck.

14

I have a good friend who is a Successful Cartoonist and Illustrator–he’s syndicated, has had several books published; and he regularly publishes in major newspapers and magazines.

And he has a helluva life–had a nervous breakdown a couple of years ago. He has to constantly sell himself, constantly start out at Square One, reintroduce himself when his editors change papers; fight to stay ahead of the young 'uns coming up behind him; buy and learn all the latest computer technology; constantly promote himself via postcards and the Internet–and he still can’t afford health insurance.

And he’s successful.

15

Thanks a lot everyone! seriously, I wasn’t expecting that much! (why does it say 9 replies when I see like 13?)

Anyway, I just want to say that first of all, I’m not considering this as a career, but more like something that would be cool to do, since I enjoy drawing and reading them myself I thought it would be cool if others could enjoy them too. so i think that I’ll go with the internet suggestion, and then i’ll try the university paper…(but first i need to either learn to draw or find someone to draw for me)

Unfortunatly, i don’t have any srips scaned so far, they are all in one of my notebooks (in which I’m supposed to take notes for class)…also, I’m on student exchange right now, in Sydney Australia, so i’ll wait until I get back to Canada to put everything on the net because I’ll have to redraw them or at least write more legibly…

I’ll keep you posted though, when they will be available on the net, i’ll probably include a link with my signature…

(a warning though, my cartoons are more like stupid nonsense humour - not witty intellectual humour - which some of you might find not really funny…)

so thanks again

And by the way, those of you who actually have cartoons on the net (JKB, Doc Nickel and Krokodil - i’m looking in your direction), if you don’t care, would you mind posting a link, just so I can have a look at your work?

16

and by “if yo don’t care” of course I mean “if you care”…by which, of course I mean “please”

17

-No offense, but chances are no one will want to rip off your work. I’m a regular reader of about fifty webcomics, and I’ll scan through some others when I have the time, and I see surprisingly little copied artwork, gags, characters or storylines.

And if you mean somebody taking your art and printing it up or using it for other purposes (clip art, maybe, or T-shirt graphics) again, chances are slim you’ll see that sort of thing.

I mean, look at Bill Watterson- other than the “Calvin peeing” rip-off, what Calvin & Hobbes stuff have you seen out there, legal otherwise?

As for Copyrights, your work is technically copyrighted the moment it leaves your pen. If you want to get heavy-duty and official, there’s a copyright office that will register certain aspects of your work in a manner somewhat more widely legally recognized, but it starts costinor g real money. You really don’t need to worry too much about it 'til you’re looking at actual publication/syndication.