It’s time to vote for your favorite villains! Teletoon Retro is having a big contest where you vote for your Top 5 villains and you can win a Super Villain Prize Pack that includes round-trip airfare for four to New York City, three nights’ hotel accommodation and $500 in spending money plus loads of super villain swag.

Since I’m a comic book creator, and a guy who generally lives with his head in the clouds twenty-four-seven, I felt compelled to campaign for my favorites. Vote for these awesome bad-asses!

#5: The Riddler

The Joker gets more time in the limelight, but at least Batman knows what to expect: the Joker is going to launch a massive prank and Batman’s going to have to stop it. But the Riddler is all about messing with Batman’s mind. I’m really disappointed that Christopher Nolan is not using The Riddler in his movie series because The Joker pushed Batman to the limits of his ethics and worldview but The Riddler would have made him question his mind and his grip on reality. It takes a great writer to write a good Riddler story. For a little skinny guy, he’s bad-ass all the way.

#4: Destro

It’s enough that he’s an entrepreneur with a strict code of ethics, kind of a cartoon Tony Montana. But get a look at the guy! Between those clothes, that metal head, and the hottest babe in the HQ – the Baroness – as his little missus, Destro is the baddest man in the entire G.I. Joe universe. In real life Destro might have done just as well as a rapper or a pimp where his metal head would alert you that he’s bad in the hip hop sense. But in cartoon world, it lets you know that he’s not to be trifled with and I’d kind of rather have to tussle with Cobra Commander himself than with Destro.

#3: The Misfits

The Misfits had swag before there was even such a thing as swag. I can’t speak for 1986 when the Jem show was originally on TV but if The Misfits came out today with the exact same look and act, they would be your new favorite group. You would go to their show and fall in love with them because they’re such bad bitches on stage. You wold try to chat them up after the show and get made a fool of. And then they’d be on their way to hatch their next plot to knock the Holograms off the scene. They added some much-needed bad-assery and flair to the proceedings on Jem, and they’re still the most interesting and memorable part of that show. I even took The Misfits as my inspiration in this comic strip.

#2: Darth Vader

I battled over whether or not I was going to include this man just because he’s such an obvious choice. But if you look at Star Wars as just three really great movies like I do, Darth Vader is the baddest man to ever fly around the galaxy. His is one of the greatest cautionary tales ever. He teaches us the dangers of power and obsession, but also that no matter how far we’ve gone there is always hope of redemption.

#1: Doctor Doom

I have always thought Doctor Doom was the greatest bad guy ever. He’s crazier than Kim Jong-Il or Gaddafi. He’s got the Lex Luthor thing where he’s driven to show up his foe. He’s got the Andy Warhol thing where he sends in doubles himself whenever possible. He’s got the supervillain thing because his armor gives him great power. And he’s got the sympathetic and relatable origin story. Something about that mask has always captivated me, and as I grew up and got to know the character I realized he’s just the most interesting and he’s got the total package. We still have yet to see Doctor Doom portrayed on screen in any truly iconic way, and still he’s regularly at the top of most ‘greatest villain’ polls. How about a Doctor Doom movie, kind of like Scarface on a much more epic scale?

There’s what I think! Now cast your vote!  Click here to vote for your top 5 villains and enter for a chance to win a supervillain prize pack including a trip for 4 to New York City.

Need more inspiration? Watch this video…..

X-Men: First Class stacked the deck in my favor: I am an enthusiast of all things sixties. I love superhero movies when they’re grounded and stay focused on the characters. I love historical fiction that cooks up an outlandish and crazy explanation for events that actually happened without re-writing history.

X-Men: First Class is the bomb. It’s not good enough to crack my personal all-time top five like Spider-Man 2 did, but it’s definitely the best superhero movie since The Dark Knight.

There were two major things wrong with it, but those two things don’t take away from the enjoyment of it. First, January Jones is way out of her depth here. She seems too much like she’s having fun and impressed with herself over hanging out with Kevin Bacon to actually get down to the business of acting. That said, I didn’t really think about this until after I got home, but that could just be a testament to how good a job the wardrobe department did on Ms. Jones’ Emma Frost costume.  Yowza!

The other problem ended up not being a problem at all. The X-Men who are assembled for the team’s first roster are a collection of characters so lame and with such shitty powers that I had to wonder if they’re really out of cool characters to include in these movies.  But thinking about it later I realized that using crappy B & C-tier characters was a brilliant way to keep the focus squarely on Professor X and Magneto.

The standout performances in this movie are Kevin Bacon as lead villain Sebastian Shaw and Michael Fassbender as Magneto. Bacon is so fun to watch, you get the feeling that he hasn’t enjoyed making a movie this much in a long time. Even saddled with a bunch of lames for a crew, he is a menacing villain and he’s an important part of all of the most satisfying moments of the movie. Fassbender gives the movie its dramatic oomph. His Magneto is the most realistic and committed performance of the film. Watching him on his revenge quest is the main thing that keeps this movie feeling like a real movie and not just some junk to give the fanboys something to natter about (like Marvel movies have a tendency to do lately in the run-up to the Avengers movie).

X-Men: First Class is one of those movies where the more I thought about it later, the more I liked it. It’s a good example of how these kinds of movies can take risks and be proper cinema but still be satisfying as summer entertainment. Watching it, I was afraid that it’s going to be too highbrow for the general audiences coming to it from Thor, but I hope it’s a big hit because I really want to see the next one.

Special thanks to the two people behind the scenes who were why I was able to catch the advance screening!

On Formspring, someone asked me:

What topic absolutely blew your mind when you heard about it?

This is a topic I was talking about just last night.

Blogging blew my mind when I saw it.  You see, I was blogging since before there was such a thing as blogging so seeing blogging made me go “What the blood??!!” and it was the bomb.

My friend Shaun McGrath was the guy who got the Internet first.  We used to spend gobs of time calling up BBSes over a 14.4 modem all night long to play Legend of the Red Dragon. This one BBS had ten phone lines, which meant that ten people could be on the BBS at once, and that was a huge deal.  So when he got the first Internet access that any of us had, with an unlimited number of people on at all times from around the world, that was insane.

One visit to Shaun McGrath’s, he signed me up for Hotmail and Geocities.  I put up a picture from Pulp Fiction and a list of my favorite movies and now I was as big as any mainstream brand on the Internet.

Over the years, from site to site and service to service, I always kept a journal.html file on my site which amounts to a blog that I would update by manually editing the HTML document.  So when I saw blogger.com for the first time, and saw that this thing I was doing privately had a name and you could use this service to take the technical heavy lifting out of the equation, I had a vision.

I saw this thing that you could do if you’re an Artist, using blogging and streaming video and online networking.  I had this picture of how Charlie Chaplin and Andy Warhol would have distributed their work online and had pretty much the same career arc.

I know that I was right when I saw it because I remember when I was working for a late night TV show.  We were looking for an online video solution to replace the current one that had the user download a small-resolution .WMV clip and play it locally.  I found YouTube, brought it to the bosses, and suggested that we use it as our solution.  Fans can embed clips anywhere they want, we don’t have to worry about transferring files and bandwidth, and “mark my words”, I said.  ”This is going to be the standard for online video so if we get in now, we’ll be the first ‘mainstream’ brand to embrace it.  They’ll support us and we’ll be at the front of the whole thing as it goes huge.”

“No,” the bosses said.  ”We don’t want people to be able to post our clips wherever they want.”

I explained how the coming attention economy was going to work, how the number of people who see it is the most important thing, and it doesn’t matter where they see it.  I explained that if we don’t start a channel and start running it hard, all of those low-quality WMV clips they’d been distributing for years were going to start getting uploaded and then we’d have no control and get no benefit.

They got me to get a guy to manually throw together a slap-dash FLV viewer for the site.  As online video grew more popular, old low-quality WMV clips of the show began to proliferate on YouTube.

Meditating on the current state of my art and business and the rising trajectory of it all, I got to thinking about how when I first got the vision for how to make Art on the Internet, it wasn’t ready yet.  The Internet itself needed to catch up to the capability of what I had in mind.  Then Twitter, Facebook, and the iPhone happened, people started to get the picture about what the Internet is really means, and here we are.

I’m really happy with the quality of my work right now, and it’s always fun to bring new insight to old ideas, put them into new combinations, and watch what they turn into that you couldn’t have predicted or planned for but kind of knew all the time was on its way into your life.

Thanks for asking me this question, whoever you were.

If you want to ask me a question on Formspring, you never know – it could become the subject of a blog post right here!

TRON: LEGACY is the kind of movie I would like to review after seeing it again, maybe even a couple more times. There are textures and nuances that are easy to overlook when you’re assessing it as popcorn escapism, and I have a couple of gripes with it that I would like to dig deeper into to find out if I missed something.

Tron: Legacy is a good movie. Despite a few bad reviews appearing online, it delivers on all of the levels that it needs to. It’s high-energy, loud, exciting, visually arresting, and gives you the comfortable and familiar in a new and original way.

But is it a great movie? Is it a classic?

First and foremost, Tron: Legacy is visual splendor (and gets a lot of mileage out of how fun & unique it is to look at). You could literally hear the gasps in the audience at certain moments. If you go back and take a look at the 1982 original, you have to agree that a revisit of this material was in order. Tron (1982) is charming as an artifact of it’s time, but it’s hideously dated and almost hurts to look at it. The world has finally caught up with it now and instead of sharp, jarring, and angular, the world inside the computer is graceful, elegant, and sexy.

And it’s not just the computer graphics that make this movie so engrossing. 3D is such a gimmick right now, but Tron: Legacy uses 3D to make the movie a richer experience in much the same way that The Wizard of Oz did with its use of color. It’s not just about making something flashy, but using flash itself as a device in service of the story and the experience.

To say that Tron: Legacy gets by on ripping off plot devices and motifs you’ve seen a bunch of times before kind of misses the point. We are talking about a product of the Hollywood event machine, after all. But we live in a remixed & mashed up world and part of the fun of Tron: Legacy is catching the samples, like when you’re listening to mid-90s hip hop. You’re going to recognize Star Wars, The Fifth Element, The Matrix, & The Dark Knight, but I was also picking up traces of Triumph of the Will, Ziggy Stardust, and the Busby Berkeley musicals of the 1930s.

Any criticism of the story, script, and acting are rendered moot for me by the fact that I was so hypnotized and enchanted by this movie that I was literally pumping my fist, stomping on the floor, and calling out in response to it. I remember a moment when I accidentally glanced at my watch. I had been so caught up that I could feel the illusion shatter, and I was sad that I was taken out of the movie for even that brief second. It’s terrifically hard for me to relax enough to lose myself fully in a movie so when it happens, it’s a rare treat (I think Spider-Man 2 was the last time I caught myself talking to the screen).

So often these event movies treat their ‘story bits’ like a conveyor belt to the next action sequence but when they’re done well, these kinds of epic tales are my favorite kind of entertainment . In Tron: Legacy it’s all as epic and Shakespearean as you would expect, but what’s masterful is the marrying of 21st century sensibilities with those classic archetypes and themes. Taking place within the world of tech, computers, and the Internet, this feels like they’ve made a blockbuster action movie for people living the app life (though I kind of wish that we would have got to see how Social Media is personified in Tronland).  But as an active member of that tribe, maybe I’m biased and that’s why I’m apt to forgive the movie’s flaws.

And Tron: Legacy certainly is flawed. Most notably, as good as the computer graphics in these movies are, they’re still not up to the task of making a completely believable person. We see Jeff Bridges both as he looks now, and as he looked in 1982 when the original Tron took place. It works when we’re in the computer world because everything’s supposed to be computery but a flashback scene that takes place in 1989 just doesn’t hold up. There are a couple of lingering questions along the lines of “wait a minute, where did they get those from?” and a whole thing I don’t get about how a driver can take her vehicle “off grid” if the world inside the computer is itself the grid. But right now those are kind of nit-picky things that do not take away from my enjoyment of the movie.

Tron: Legacy has it’s shortcomings but if a baseball player is the greatest home run champion of all time, you’re still going to want to see him in action even if he’s not so good at playing shortstop. Tron: Legacy is the best 3D movie experience yet. While flawed, it’s so fresh and groundbreaking technically that it stands out as Art in a way that other movies coming from the video games & comic books scene do not.

BONUS: Check out this vlog from an advance screening of Tron: Legacy in Toronto…

I got an email a little while ago from a girl named Emma asking me what advice I could pass along to her friend about how to get his career started as an artist. I thought I would answer her here on the blog since this is the kind of question professionals get asked most frequently.

Morning Sean Ward,

Thanks for hitting me back on Twitter! The reason I wanted to connect with you is kinda weird. I am interested in becoming better acquainted with the Toronto comic book scene. I mean, I’ve lived here for 6 years, and I’ve haunted the Hairy Tarantula and Silver Snail, etc… But a buddy of mine just moved here from the Territories and wants to get into comics here… drawing them mostly…and I have no advice to give him, so I thought I should find someone who could! (also I am pretty pumped about everything you do, as I am a videographer and hip hop head… seems we have things in common!)
Anywho, what advice would you give to a newby transplant about getting into comics here? Toronto is a scary move, and not knowing anyone here doesn’t help much. Whaddya say Sean? Words of wisdom from someone who knows what he is talking about? It would be much appreciated, I would take you for a coffee or beer if you’d let me!
Have a good one dude!
Emma

This question of how one goes about getting started in comics or in any art has been asked many times. Those of us who have been asked it have usually heard different people answer it different ways. But here are a couple of the recurring themes that emerge:

1. The person doing the asking has a conception that there’s a specific blueprint that can be followed.

2. There is no blueprint. Everyone’s journey is unique.

Tony Robbins and guys like that tell you that success is a system that can be easily duplicated. I’ve got a lot out of listening to them, reading books like Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill, and attending workshops & seminars. I keep a Bible & a Hare Krishna prayer book near my work space, making a point to flip through them often for context and insight. But those materials do not provide the answers. They help you be the kind of person who finds the answers.

And that’s what it’s all about: success is a process, not an event. It’s about having a vision, and the continual process of doing whatever you can to try to move closer to it.

When I first started doing comics, with no connections in the industry or the scene, I jumped in and went crazy. I spent a year cranking out as many issues of a series as I could, photocopying them and selling them on the street downtown. The most important thing was not how good they were, it was how many of them I could get out there and how many people I could get looking at them. I was wildly prolific – an idea that’s become popular in the business world with the recently popular rallying cry of “ship often”

You’ve heard about the 10,000 hours theory, right? That’s the idea that it takes 10,000 hours of practice to get good at something. So Emma – the only advice there is to pass along to your friend is to start putting in those hours right away.

As my mother used to say: “There’s no way around – you have to go through it.”

So that’s for your buddy to get down to making some comics.  As for getting in with the scene, that’s what Twitter is so damn good for.  Follow these people, talk to them often, jump into the conversation, and go to anything you hear them talk about going on.

Essential Toronto Comics Scene Twitter links: @SilverSnailTO @TDotComics @EscapeFromRL @comics212

(If you can think of anyone else who would be good for Emma to follow, let me know in the comments)

As I type this, it’s almost three in the morning and I have stayed up later than I should to watch the last disc of the Freaks & Geeks complete series DVD box set. I’m about to watch the last episode and I feel kind of silly, but I’m actually really sad that after this one, it’s going to be all over.

Watching the 18 episode complete series, I’ve grown to love these characters. I was shouting at Sam to go for it when he had the chance to kiss Cindy. I winced when Lindsay crashed her parents’ car. And even though I knew damn well they weren’t going to kill him off, I couldn’t help it: I nearly wept when Bill went to the hospital (and I wanted so badly to beat the shit out of Alan for putting that peanut in his sandwich). I am so engrossed in the world of the show that I almost can’t believe that this was a television series. It feels like a really long movie or a visual novel or something.  And while we’re here, let me just say that watching Busy Phillips as Kim Kelly feels like watching a real person.  I would almost venture to call it the best acting job I have ever seen.

It’s no surprise to me that Freaks and Geeks was cancelled before the first season finished airing. It’s too good for TV. And on top of that, I can’t believe that it ever made it past the television censors with its realistic portrayal of family life and teenage angst. Between the language, nearly explicit depiction of drug use, allusions to underage drinking, and frank portrayal of high school sex and relationships, this is not what anyone would expect to find when flipping through the channels of broadcast television.

It would have been nice for Freaks and Geeks to continue, just for the nod to the cast and creators for a job well done. But then it probably would have been less special. As it is, Freaks and Geeks is a work of Art. It’s flawless. And it’s no wonder that almost everyone involved in the making of it went on to become a huge star.

I have dreamed of working on a Judd Apatow production for years. I already thought he was one of the most brilliant and tuned-in creators working in any medium. But now I see that he’s a true Artist.

I am going to miss the Weirs and all of their friends.

With my compliments, enjoy my recent posts to the online periodical Bite Daily.

http://bite.ca/bitedaily

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Top Five Iron Men

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Top Ten TV Moms

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Too Cool For Social Media

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Last weekend’s Saturday Night Live Recap

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Real Life Vigilantes

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How to Spot a Chick Flick by Its Poster

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Is Hollywood Racist?

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆
Those are just a few choice selections.
See the full collection at
my Bite Daily profile.

This is an e-mail I got over the weekend, seeking advice.  I asked Steve, the writer, if I could respond in a blog post since his question is of a kind that I get asked much more than any other:

Hey Sean, I need some words of wisdom from you on how I can get my own art career going and on track. I am working in an office right now – Fraud detection analyst for a Mastercard issuing bank.

In short, I have lost my sense of humor, and each day seems to lack a sense of purpose.

I have been watching as you’ve grown and progressed, and realized that we both have the same 24 hours in a day to work with.

I need some words of wisdom from you in this regard. I used to have a wicked sense of humour. I want it back.  I want to reclaim it.

-Steve

Hi Steve!

Thanks very much for writing.  I am flattered that you would come to me with a question like this.  I thought all weekend about your question and I thought of a catchy way to explain how to find what you’re looking for.

It’s all about The 3V System: Values, Vision, and Vehicle.

Values

First, you have to know what you stand for. You have to know what’s important to you, who you want to be, what you want for yourself.  Be opinionated, keep high standards, and surround yourself with people who inspire you instead of people stuck in the same rut as everyone else.  You don’t want comfort in forgetting your cares, you want to be uncomfortable enough to take action.

Vision

Your vision is the effect you want to have on the world.  It doesn’t have to be earth-shatteringly huge.  It could be as simple as a word of advice for the people around you.  Care passionately about what’s important to you and you’ll start spotting places where there is a bit of class, taste, or beauty missing that only you can fill in.  That’s what art is for.

Vehicle

Your vehicle is the form in which your vision expresses itself, and the arena in which you explore your values.  You need a vehicle because otherwise the ideas inside you collect dust and eventually disintegrate.  Whatever you feel is the best expression of your talents and your vision whether writing, drawing, speaking, or any other outlet, you need a project to get passionate about.  This will give you something to look forward to while you’re doing the things you’d rather not, and it will provide the means and opportunity to get to know yourself better so that you’re more of the real you in all areas of life.

The hardest part is making the time for your vehicle.  There are a million and one perfectly good excuses for why you have no time for it.  You get home from work, unwind, prepare dinner, check in with the world, relax a little bit, go to the gym if you’re on your fitness game, and next thing you know it’s time for bed again.  That’s the routine.  That’s also how the Universe finds out who is serious and who is just phoning it in.  Most people want everything to be in place, but I’ve always been a big fan of just jumping in and seeing what happens.  Besides, at this stage what have you got to lose except for some of your sleeping hours?

I started seeing the microscopic, incremental day-to-day changes that the workaday world was having on me and that’s why I stopped showing up to work to be an Artist with no plan, no money, and no idea how I was going to pay the rent.  My way is hard and sometimes it’s not very fun, I’m not going to lie.  But for me it’s about what’s going to make for the most interesting story to tell at the end of it all.

I hope his helps.  Keep me updated on how it goes!

-Sean

Beyoncé VS Avril

This is the first match up on the site.  Seriously?  This ain’t even a fair fight.  I’m sure Avril is lovely, but Mrs. Jay-Z is in the elite division.  She’s a timeless icon in league with Rita Hayworth and Audrey Hepburn, and you’re putting poor little Avril up against her in the first round?  There isn’t even a discussion to be had.

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Carrie Underwood VS Katy Perry

Another one that’s not even a question.  Carrie Underwood is pretty in a conventional way, but she’s not sex symbol material for me.  I mean, I get that middle America has a difference of opinion on this than I do, but I’m street.  And Katy Perry’s riding that line running between cute and sexy that has done me in in real life more than once.  Katy Perry all the way.

The photo below looks so much like a girl I know IRL that if it was her Facebook profile pic, I would be asking her when she posed for it.  Katy Perry: If you also want to know if I want to smoke a bowl with you, the answer is “yes”.

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Bianna Golodryga VS Sarah Silverman

I didn’t know anything about Bianna Golodryga before seeing her name here, but it’s not hard to beat Sarah Silverman.  Sarah Silverman is a sex symbol for those dudes who want a woman to wear the pants in the relationship and be treated like a piece of shit.  You’re supposed to get over that in your early 20s, but I am saddened as ever to be reminded that some of us never do.  Bianna Golodryga wins this one by disqualification.

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Christina Hendricks VS January Jones

This is the most epic match-up in the tournament.  This is Andre the Giant VS Hulk Hogan at Wrestlemania 3 – the greatest match you’re likely to ever see.  It’s not just that they’re two of the most gorgeous women currently on the scene, but you have the added drama of their being co-stars on Mad Men, one of my favorite TV shows ever.  This is the sex symbol equivalent of Pacino VS DeNiro in Heat.  Further complicating the issue is that their styles are so different that they don’t lend themselves to comparison.  Yikes.  Let’s do some further analysis.

Christina Hendricks gets an early lead for the red hair and her rack.  January Jones sashays her way back into the game with her grace and classic beauty, tying the game with less than a minute to go.  Christina Hendricks does that coy blink thing and wins it in sudden death overtime.

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Heidi Montag then VS Heidi Montag now

This one goes to Heidi Montag because she followed me on Twitter.  Or maybe it was her manager.

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Anne Hathaway VS Rachel McAdams

The Nerd ‘net is ablaze with discussion over who is more suited to the role of Black Cat if that character were in a Spider-Man movie, A or R.

If this were a discussion about acting chops, Rachel McAdams would get it in an instant.  Even if it was about who I think would be cooler to invite into my party posse when we go take over Shake A Tail, it would come up McAdams.  And I really want to give her a pass on this one for the hometown love, but Anne Hathaway has just got the va-va-voom thing going on for me so to Ms. Hathaway it goes.  Even though I wasn’t for an instant buying the age-reversing process in Get Smart as an explanation for why she was playing Agent 99.

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Jessica Alba VS Jennifer Aniston

Jennifer Aniston reminds me of Mariah Carey in that she had a really natural, real-person charm when she first hit the scene, and has since morphed into a plasic diva.  Jessica Alba, on the other hand, appeared all over town in those tearaway Good Luck Chuck posters with the ice cream.  Jessica Alba probably wouldn’t make it to late in the tournament, but her first round match is a breeze and she wins it easily.

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Eva Mendes VS Sienna Miller

Even though Eva Mendes looks just delicious, her trouble in her first-round match-up is that I don’t go for that skinny-pretty-blonde combo often but when I do, I go for it full force.  Further, Sienna Miller gets Sean cred for playing Edie Sedgwick in Factory Girl.  As yet I have not seen Ms. Mendes dressed like a 60s party girl which is the look that makes me go “Hello!  We haven’t met…”  Sienna Miller takes it in an unexciting, low-scoring game.

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Just when I was wondering where Scarlett Johansson was, I discovered that past winners are not eligible.  That means that neither are Angelina Jolie, Charlize Theron, Jessica Biel, Halle Berry, or Kate Beckinsdale.

See the full tournament here

What do you think?  Would you have made the same picks?

In this week’s Monday Meditation, I am going to share with you a hard lesson that I learned about content creation. I try not to write from the point of view of “don’t do what I did”, and only be proactive, but an innocent tweet got me thinking about the importance of creating content.

NEVER STOP PUMPING OUT CONTENT

Here is a tweet sent out last Friday by one of my favorite Twitter peeps, Scott Stratten of un-marketing.com - @unmarketing on Twitter:

“Community, sponsor, content. Content builds community, sponsors want ur community”

Gary Vaynerchuk, author of Crush It, also stresses the importance of content creation as the foundation of building community online.

When I first started my career as an artist, I instinctively knew that content is king. With no education and no money, I knew that I would have the edge if I was more prolific than the other guy. I pumped out photocopied comic books like crazy, and quickly developed a style, an audience, and a modest business.

DON’T REST ON YOUR LAURELS

But then my first taste of real success came. I signed a development deal with a production company for a TV show, entered into a publication agreement with a comic book publisher, and went to work for a late night TV show helping them launch a spin-off comic book and rebranding the show for the web.

Surprisingly, all of these deals brought my content creation and being prolific to a halt, costing me time and ruining my momentum.

The comic book publisher delayed and delayed and delayed and then went out of business before anything by me got published. The network wanted to see another edition of my underground cinema event, but the production company spent a year writing Word documents. Working on the late night TV show, a lethargic and complacent corporate culture meant that I only got to do about a quarter of what I was hired to do.

For the two years that all of this was going on, I wasn’t sharing my vision, nor creating content around my passion. I was caught up in other people’s schedules, other people’s priorities, and other people’s goals, instead of continuing to do what attracted those opportunities to me in the first place. I was sacrificing my momentum and the community I had built, putting my success in other people’s hands. I treated my business like the game was over and I had won.

I learned the hard way that it never gets easy.

In fact, the demands on your creativity and problem-solving increase with the scope of your challenges.

This is why it’s so important to create content around what you’re passionate about – you need that high level of passion to get you through when it gets really tough. Lucky for me that I’m so stubborn and single-minded about being an artist.