Is the value of comic art dropping and can you make a living anymore?

[carloswebcomic]

Around 40 years ago, a rather clever French chap called Jacques Attali, wrote a book called Noise where he correctly predicted that the monetary value of music would drop as the market would become saturated. And indeed, that's exactly what is happening with the music industry. Everyone and their dog is creating music and musical distribution is a snap.

This struck a chord with me (Ha! See what I did there?!) as I've been thinking about the same issue but with comics. The market is so saturated these days that if you want a comic artist, you can throw a 50 cent coin and get like a thousand artists willing to work for that price.

I'm starting to believe that we may be looking at the death of lavishly produced comics where they had a separate guy doing the colouring, pencilling, inking, lettering and such. I'm not sure if the current market can support those jobs anymore when you have a whole bunch of people already doing pretty damn good work for very little or even for free!
It feels as if professionally done comics may disappear. Perhaps we will only be left with amateur produced comics done by people in their spare time as this could be the only viable option.

I personally do not see the comic market drying out anytime soon. The stable door has been smashed open and the horses are halfway to Mars now.

What do you guys think? Are there still career options for comic artists or will we be left with nothing but amateur comics?

P.S.- I feel I need to clarify that I'm not interesting in making a career of comics. I'm mostly wondering if comics with high production values are still viable in today's market.

[hades]

Not every professional is only seeking out monetary gain. though I DO believe that comic artists should be paid more and the market is wishy washy at best, there was never really much concrete evidence that comics was a lucrative career to begin with? Comics were the funny books here in America and is still suffering from a niche market that wanted to keep it a niche. Most don't jump in the industry in hopes to be rich....or maybe I'm too hopeful. At least I've been asked why I wanted to be one of those starving artists.

However, have some faith too! Artists are creators, so are writers, so are those that do both and other things too. It is in our blood to create, whether our projects become financial flops or not.

[carloswebcomic]

Yes, but you cannot do something full time without money.
What I'm thinking of is that we no longer may have fully dedicated comic artists as there's not enough money around to be able to support them full-time.

[Kamikaze]

Just because the market is saturated doesn't mean that it'll die out. Look at written books. Millions, if not BILLIONS of titles out there. People write for free on blogs, and ebooks and yet...printing isn't going anywhere. I think the difference between a market being saturated (much like the publishing or music biz) is that it takes a while to get noticed. Additionally, it also means your work has to be quality in some degree.

XKCD does not have the best art...but the story, the bits of writing with simple images hit us where it counts.
Comics from the 'big 2' have been around forever, and have the name power to be productive in cash flow.

It all just depends on what you're producing.

I will say, if you're in this comic game to make money...uh, you might wanna look somewhere else. Making comics is a lot of work, making good comics is even harder, and making MONEY with those comics means more work and time on top of all the rest you've already done. Some people don't have the patience and dedication to get to the point where their comics are successful. Others simply don't have the resources, so they have to go about it slower or not at all.

If you want to make a living a comics it can be done, but if you're expecting that money to roll in and always be there you may want to find a job doing something else. Many artists that I know who do this work professionally, don't do it only because they love it. They do it because it's all they feel they can do.

[carloswebcomic]

I will say, if you're in this comic game to make money...uh, you might wanna look somewhere else.

How about make a living? Do you think it is still possible?

[Kamikaze]

How about make a living? Do you think it is still possible?

People wouldn't want to be comic artists if making a living as a comic creator wasn't possible. It's just a LOT of work and takes a shit ton of luck. That doesn't mean it's impossible - it just takes time, dedication, hardwork and patience on levels that most folks just don't have. The worst part is that sometimes folks do everything, and I mean EVERYTHING right and they still fail. But this is what I'm talking about when I say that most artists aren't artists for the fun of it, they create because they don't feel like they can do anything else without going insane. Those same people who fail spectacularly feel bad for a little while, and then they get up, dust themselves off and limp on forward.

Making a living is not impossible, you are facing some incredible odds. It's good to arm yourself with knowledge before you take that leap, and ultimately when/if you do....well it's all on you.

To learn more about comics (while dated) there's a great book called How to Make Webcomics which features some pretty awesome folks. It's got good resources and ideas to think about. And this article paired with this article are also great resources.

[Kayke]

It's possible if you can get enough work. There are still people willing to pay a decent page rate, but you have to be able to find enough of those gigs to have stable work if you want to quit your day job.

As for the old way of doing comics, with a whole production line of people doing different jobs, I do think that method is phasing out. From my experience, which granted is limited, the projects I've worked on have had me doing every step of the artistic process from pencils to finish. The project I'm working on right now, I actually wrote it too, using the franchise characters, and that's worked into my pay rate as well.

Companies with existing marketable characters are always going to want to produce media with those characters, so there will always be some jobs doing those sort of comics. Those sort of jobs might change from the traditional roles of pencils, inks, lettering, and coloring to something more compact like just one artist, buy you can bet your butt there will always be jobs drawing franchise comics.

Webcomics are kind of a whole different game from that though. Like you can produce a bunch of quality content for free and then make money off of it later if it's picked up by an indie publisher or even if you self publish/make merch. But your comic has to have a huge following for that to be your "real job"...

[mariusthered]

interesting topic ...

now I've only been doing a web comic for two years and I've made sod all doing it, so I don't have much to say about that. But I am a self employed Cartoonist /Caricaturist and I will tell you the ball park has changed over the last 20 years and it's a lot harder theses days to make a living.

The internet is like one of those bad friends you can't do without, you know their doing stuff to harm you but at the same time helping you. and by that I mean, years ago if people wanted a cartoon for an article or caricature for a gift they would seek out a person like myself and everyone would be happy . these days their are apps and computer software that means anyone with working eyes and fingers can put something non professional together on their ruddy phone.

we also have a world market now, I'm not only competing with local artists but people from the other side of the globe and that's when things get hard. for me to do a job for someone in America ( I'm in UK ) I have to charge more to compensate for the exchange rate and the pay pal charges so that puts my price up. if i do a job for a non business and it's digital work inside the EU I would have to pay VAT charges ( despite me being under the UK VAT threshold) so I can no longer do art in the EU for non businesses, another limb chopped off my revenue tree.

one last thing I will mention is the price of art is being pushed up by some artists and it is nothing to do with the art. if some artist's don't want to do a job instead of just saying no , they will put a higher price on is hoping the client will go away, but they will also say that good art is not cheap. we all that does is make the client go looking for another artist but not consider the people who can do good art at a lower price.

so yes you can make a living at art but it's a very hard and crumbling road.....o look a rope bridge!

[scythe]

Last time I looked there were dozens of comic artists making a liveable wage off Patreon. As to the long terms survivability of mainstream pro artists, I think it's definitely still doable, just maybe harder than it was before.

[mg78]

im not an expert about the music business (well, im not about the comics business too lol XD ) BUT if in these days everyone can learn techniques to draw or to play music or whatever, its not the same for the fantasy... and that s that thin red line who make the difference... (this idea it is on every sector who work with the ideas/fantasy and so on)(so yes, writer for book or for TV show or what else).

and that's not enough! because after that u have to be reaaaally smart to keep it on at the right lvl. how many musician, tv film, comic, started with something great, then they disappear?

so in the end... thats just a note, working for most, but not for all.

...everyone can play hockey.
but there s just one modano, ovechkin, selanne or jagr.... lol.
to translate the concept: everyone can do a comic in the future with cyborg, IA and so on. but only one did Ghost in the Shell.

[shazzbaa]

I feel like this is a case of The Grass Was Greener In The Good Ol' Days

I'm starting to believe that we may be looking at the death of lavishly produced comics where they had a separate guy doing the colouring, pencilling, inking, lettering and such.

That wasn't lavishly produced. That was an assembly line. Comics were arranged that way in the olden days so that they could be cranked out as fast as possible, not because comics as an art were respected and loved. Comics have always been considered cheap entertainment in America; the people who made them great were artists and writers who deeply cared about their craft DESPITE being on an assembly line production.

I don't think it's impossible to make a living anymore -- after all, plenty of people ARE making their living at comics -- look at how Der-Shing Helmer and Tracy Butler just recently began focusing full time on comics through Patreon! And several of my classmates have gotten work at places like Dark Horse.

But the model is different. It's a lot harder to get a job as an in-house inker, because the majority of people are either being hired for specific projects or getting their start online. If you want to be a penciler for A Comics Company -- can you pencil AT LEAST one page a day, looking as good as the pencils of the comics Greats, and do you have finished work to show that you created on your own time? Because that's the bare minimum of what they're looking for. Or, if you want to be in webcomics, can you carry on producing a webcomic for 3-10 years without seeing a cent of restitution but still promote the heck out of it and pour your soul into it? Because that's what it takes to Make It in webcomics.

Those "jobs" still exist because not everyone can do them. But the industry isn't dying -- that would be like saying comic strips are dying out because newspapers are struggling. But look at XKCD and SMBC and Sinfest and Wondermark and Kate Beaton and Dinosaur Comics and etc etc etc ec -- comic strips aren't dying, and plenty of them make their full living in a job of their choosing. It's just a different path to get there, so people still looking at the old path that's blocked off don't see there's a different door that's wide open.

[carloswebcomic]

That wasn't lavishly produced. That was an assembly line. Comics were arranged that way in the olden days so that they could be cranked out as fast as possible, not because comics as an art were respected and loved.

This is certainly right, but the fact remains that you could have a high quality comic delivered in a timely manner with the "assembly line" approach. Question is, how sustainable is it nowadays that so much content is available for free?

[shazzbaa]

I do think it's sustainable, but the methods keep changing; you have to be very adaptable! I mean, there's still ways to get Hired By A Company (honestly, there are more companies open for unsolicited submissions now than there were when I was sending out submissions in college), but I know when I graduated 6 years ago most of the success stories I knew were people who "made it" with advertising or clever merchandising. Then the biggest success stories were Kickstarted. Now, while ads as income is getting harder and harder to sustain, the more recent success stories are Patreon-based -- again, I'll mention Der-Shing, because her comics are incredible works of art that she devotes herself to full-time thanks to really focusing on making her Patreon something worth pledging to, and she's not someone who made it in before the bubble burst -- she took this step pretty recently.
And I'm sure, in a few years, there'll be some other business model that the new kids are doing that we'll all need to learn!

Which, like -- it's hard! It's hard to jump through three different business models in the span of 6 years. And you can look at any of the big successes in this self-publishing market and see that they were all working on their comics for free for YEARS before reaching the point of being able to sustain themselves. And you can also see huge numbers of people who've been making comics for years and tried to make merch/kickstart/open a patreon and were never quite able to make it sustainable.
If you're looking for a Stable Job, I think that comics are REALLY not the place to look. The ability to have a Stable Job in comics at all may well be gone soon. But the fact remains that we still see people finding new ways to succeed, finding what people WILL pay for and how they'll be willing to pay for it, and building some kind of living out of it, and I think it's something we'll continue to see!

So I guess I'd say, yeah, there are career options.... but today more than ever, you have to be pretty adaptable, and you have to be willing to be an amateur artist for a while first. ;u;

[Doubtcent]

In the American market, it might seem that way because the high-payers are DC and Marvel, just superhero publishers. There are some lower than that, like Darkhorse, that don't expressly publish superhero stuff only, which is a start.

Now if you look overseas, there's plenty of comic potential. Japan I would say is the biggest, it being a cultural phenomenon. Other Asian countries as well, like Korea looks at comics as the place to expand on reading.

Then there's Europe. It can be pretty big, and you get a lot of different types of comics everywhere.

Although American comics are everywhere, maybe it's time to promote in other countries as well?
@carloswebcomic yours has a great anime feel to it, so maybe if you got it properly translated, it could do well in Japanese markets? Who knows?

[carloswebcomic]

Well, I have no interest in making a career out of comics. I'm wondering if the old the of comic, with high production value, is still sustainable. Also, I'm not talking about American comics only. I'm not American and frankly, I can't say I've paid much attention to the American comic market.
But certainly the Japanese market still there and I know the Korean market is also pretty big, but I wonder if their method of production is sustainable.

[Doubtcent]

As far as I know, (from the amounts of research I've done in the market) Japan is the most profitable for long-running series while Korea is more into the daily and shorts.

Meh.

[eschaefges]

There are more people making a living in Comics now than at any point in history. While there are ALSO a lot MORE people NOT making a living in comics but trying to, I agree with above points that good art and good writing usually find an audience, and very often a paying audience.

[Delete]

I think the biggest problem with comics right now is that everybody is giving them away for free on the internet, including me. The business model for web comics is give away the product and build a fan base and hope that eventually people will pay you in the future via pattern, kickstarter or by buying a physical copy. That works for some people but it doesn't work for a lot more.

I've been posting my comic here for a couple months now and I've only got a couple of subscribers and likes here and there. But likes aren't the same as an actual sale. My full comic is currently available for sale at the moment but why buy it when I release a new page every week?

Overall the mistake all artists made was making art for free. Not just in comics but in illustration, graphic design, and etc. It lowered the whole value of artistic abilities. People now expect art to be free and complain about how comics now cost $5 when they buy everyday their god damn coffee for the same amount with no question.

Right now comics and art are in a damned if you do, damned if you don't situation. If you don't give away your comics for free, well, there are thousands of people that are. If you plan on not giving away your comics, well, selling at conventions without people knowing about your product is just as hard because people don't like to take risks with their money on stuff they don't know about.

My passion is making comics but I think I'm going to switch over to just fine art painting. I've been doing comics for about 4 years now I've made about $–3000. This 1.5 years in fine arts grad school I've made $8000. fine arts painting is also way easier than making comics as well and the people that have money to buy fine arts are loaded with cash. I'd rather make art for them than people complaining that my 120 page, full color, graphic novel is too expensive at $15.

[ifluke1]

I think films are better value with a guaranteed 90 minutes of lay-back zombification to wash over you.
Same price as a 20+ page comic read in five minutes.
The world doesn't need comics.. cant say the same about box sets

[MylCreates]

Perhaps not in the sense as it used to be. Specific roles might no longer be a thing for most comics, but the way of earning money now a days seems to be a lot more on networking than anything to make it work as the money is coming from an audience who is far more picky about who they support and want to feel a more direct attachment to the artist rather than just their work. Like in the music industry there's probably that 1% who make an actually living off of their original work based off of them and their comic's popularity, and the 99% who need another job to sustain their daily lives.