Alex Robinson's Blog, page 32
June 25, 2015
brianchurilla:
So you want to be a comic book artist..? Here’s...
So you want to be a comic book artist..? Here’s some sobering information.
One year. 12 issues. 264 pages. 4 covers.
As a full-time comic artist this is the expected output, more or less. Not to say I haven’t done a TON of work on the side to make ends meet, but as an artist on an ongoing monthly title, this is generally what you are expected to produce every year. Some artists do much more than this. Some less. It all depends on your productivity and drive.
It’s taken a lot of work and a ton of luck, but I’ve managed to stay busy for the majority of my career. I’ve gotten married, bought a house and have two beautiful kids. All the while, I was working full time as a professional comic artist. This schedule has allowed me to stay home with the kids until they were ready for school. I’m truly grateful for the opportunities I’ve been given and all of the wonderful people I’ve gotten to know and work with over the years.
I wanted to take this opportunity to give people a look at what it really means to be a professional comic artist; good and bad.
This was a strictly work-for-hire job on a licensed book. That usually means no royalties. The page rate on this project was $125. This is considered an okay page rate by today’s standards. Advances on creator-owned projects are a different matter and subject to different criteria, so are jobs at Marvel and DC. That being said, this is a middle-of-the-road page rate. Not great, not terrible.
Gross pay over the year in addition to those four covers was $33,625. After taxes? $24, 210. That’s $2,017.50 a month (again, I do a lot of work on the side to make ends meet).
Nearly all of that aforementioned salary goes to the mortgage, and so the majority of the financial responsibility falls on my wife.
Remember those kids i mentioned? Full-time daycare in Portland is somewhere in the neighborhood of $1,000 -$1,500 per kid. Not to mention health insurance, utilities, car payments, school loans, credit card payments, et al.
Needless to say, you’re going to have to do a hell of a lot more work than those 264+ pages per year to keep your family afloat (should you choose to have one).
So. Here’s the schedule I keep:
7:00am - Wake up, feed the kids and get them ready for school.
8:30 - Take the kids to school
9:00-9:30am - Start work
12:30pm Pick up kid #1
3:30pm: Pick up kid #2
4:00-9:00pm - Family time.
9:00pm-3:00am Work
3:00am Sleep.
Yep. That’s four hours of sleep per day, best-case scenario. Weekends too. Due to the sleep deprivation, I feel like absolute garbage all the time. Depression, anxiety, nausea, fatigue, weight gain, compromised cognitive abilities, even hallucinations - I suffer from all of these.
So, let’s imagine you have a quaint little nuclear family, a mortgage, etc. and you land a high-profile, non-DC/Marvel gig like #BigTroubleinLittleChina, and you command a decent salary (by today’s standards) from whatever value your name/talent/reputation derives.
You will still likely need to work 50-60 hours a week, nearly 365 days a year to just get by.
So you want to be a comic book artist..?
My best advice to you is to find another way to make your money. Make comics for fun, and at your leisure. Make creator-owned comics, as this is some of the most rewarding work you will ever do, hands down. My books, The Secret History of DB Cooper and Hellbreak have been the most rewarding experiences I’ve had professionally. I implore everyone to do their own thing and not expect comics to pay their bills, because it likely won’t.
-BC
Hellbreak and The Secret History of DB Cooper are available through your local comic shop, and are published by Oni Press.
June 15, 2015
Commissioned drawing of Dash Rendar vs Bossk. Fairly certain...
Commissioned drawing of Dash Rendar vs Bossk. Fairly certain this is the first time I’ve drawn an Expanded Universe character. One good thing about EU characters is that you don’t have to worry about capturing the likeness of a real actor.
Speaking of likenesses, Bossk is a tricky character to draw, since he tends to look very different depending on the angle from which one views him.
June 13, 2015
Dash Rendar vs Bossk #StarWars #commission
Dash Rendar vs Bossk #StarWars #commission
June 12, 2015
Bossk #StarWars #wip
Bossk #StarWars #wip
June 7, 2015
May 27, 2015
"There is a supercomputer somewhere in the Nevada desert whose sole function is to count the number..."
- David Rakoff
“Don’t Get Too Comfortable”
May 26, 2015
Billy on the Street!
Billy on the Street!
May 24, 2015
May 22, 2015
The Death of Nanta #starwars
The Death of Nanta #starwars
starwarsminute:
Return of the Jedi, minute 100: We close out...
Return of the Jedi, minute 100: We close out L.A. All-Star week with a visit to the Never Not Funny studios and a chat with Matt Belknap about ewoks, space battles and our love of Star Wars in general!
This was the last episode we recorded on our trip to Los Angeles and it was an exciting finale for me. Never Not Funny was one of the first podcasts I really got into and it inspired my own forays into podcasting all those years ago. Getting to record in the studios where Matt, Jimmy and the gang work was a real treat.
