Rather than thinking about my career in terms of job description, I’ve recently shifted perspectives.
I’ve realized that the job position shouldn’t matter to me.
For so long I’ve tried to fit myself inside a box with the label of “comic artist”, or “penciler”, or “inker” to arbitrarily place myself in an industry role and decide which marketable skills to develop. But as I experiment with and learn different skills relevant to the art I want to create, using a label feels increasingly limiting.
The only thing that concerns me is that I use whatever means or medium necessary to realize my artistic vision.
It doesn’t mean becoming just a comics penciler, inker, colorist, animator, or illustrator, and yet it could mean doing all those things exactly.
As time passes, more career potentials seem to drop from my sight. The thing I’ve realized is that life is too short to be one kind of artist to pay the bills for 20 years before I can hope to do any of my own stuff. Yet having an experience base is incredibly important, so working for publishers or studios is not out of the question. For me to be paid for what only I can do, freelance may be the best option. Time and time again, I’ve seen that those who’ve struck out on their own at the right time were rewarded greatly both creatively and financially, (if they handled the business side well.)
To me, it would be like an artist trying to pencil Batman comics, when he/she is wired to create something like Homestuck. These wildly differing works require different kinds of creativity. If I try to stifle the creativity that could create an awesome webcomic or animation in favor of doing Batman comics for a living, I will lose on both fronts.
I won’t be as skilled nor as appreciative of drawing Batman as someone who’d been training for the position for years, and I’d gradually lose my connection to kind of creativity that would create a unique work like Homestuck.
That is not to say I can’t choose to play with one road just to see what it is like, or that the two creativities can’t be combined in some way; it just means that as time goes on, I will have to start letting go of improbable career paths in order to focus on what I really want to accomplish in my artwork.
Until next time,
-Ken