I've almost missed this topic, so I would like to chime in. I'm 32 years old.
How do you budget your time and money in pursuit of your comic hobby?
Funny you should mention money. Over the course of the last couple of years, when I was conceptualizing Don't Be A Hero, I invested a little bit of money into a couple of guides to comic-making, and eventually an art desk, some 11x17 bristol board and some art supplies. Those were getting me by fine until a little under a couple of months ago. I was at a point in my life where my gaming hobby had reached maximum saturation in terms of the things I owned, and the amount of burnout I was feeling. I had been gaming steadily for 8 years, hammering away at my backlog, whilst only picking at my comic idea over the last two years. I realized one day that I had hundreds upon hundreds of games just sitting on my shelves, barely being touched (actually, I had beaten 99% of my backlog by this point, but I knew there was a lot I wouldn't replay), because my days had become so busy being a husband, dad of my now 19 month old daughter, and a provider. Whenever I got a sliver of free time, it was usually towards gaming, but all I wanted to do was push at my comic. I had been drawing about 30 pages on bristol board since February, but I couldn't actually get it out there until I had some digital means of cleaning it up/working on it.
I had a wacom tablet when I was 16 or 17, but I never liked the thing because I could never get used to drawing on a small surface, while looking up at the computer screen. I looked into my digital options and found the Cintiq 13HD Touch. But damn, it was $1600-ish Canadian. What to do? Well, how about sell off a good chunk of my huge gaming collection I wasn't playing? I knew I wasn't going to get much for the games at pawn shops, and selling on eBay/amazon was too much of a hassle, but luckily, years ago, I knew a flea market vendor who used to live in my town who paid good money for games. He left his card with me all of those years ago, so I dialled him up, and he offered to swing by town to check the games out. That night, we went through a quarter of my collection, and game-by-game, we discussed the price of each one. By the end, he offered me just over $3k! I was flabbergasted. I used that money to invest towards my new tablet and banked the rest! It was such a relief, since I thought I may have had to save up for years to get into my comic hobby. Selling off just over 100 games for that much was worth it (yes, I sold some very rare ones). I still have my absolute favourite games left, and I can explore my lifelong passion to create something grand, instead of just consuming everyone's media.
Time-wise, I do get an occasional day off to myself for it since I work a part time job, and then there's nights after I put my kid to bed (well, the ones I don't spend with my wife. We kind of like every other day or so to relax to ourselves). Still, I kind of draw slowly, so I need to keep my comic in black and white, at least until I get faster at my work and more experienced at colouring.
How long have you been at it?
I used to draw some comics when I was 10, of these dog and cat characters I had, inspired from Garfield. By the time I got to high school, I tried drawing this comic I made called Duel of the Gods, but it was kind of narcissistic, making the main characters like me and my friends, so I eventually dropped it. I lost the desire to draw afterwards when my parents forced me to go to college for a career I didn't want to do. After graduating, I focused more on moving out with my wife, getting married, eventually getting out of our apartment to a house, while gaming all the while. It was only 2 years ago, when I got semi-serious about making another comic series again. It was only this year when I got incredibly serious with all of my drawing and investing into digital art.
Why haven't we met at a comic-con for drinks and high-fives?
I've never been to a comic-con, but I'm not opposed to virtual high fives. I would love to go to a convention someday and have my own table though.
