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)

When I was a kid, we moved often. The average length of time we lived in any one place was probably two years.  One magnificent summer, we lived out of suitcases and the whole family – Mom, me, and sisters Laura & Lindsay –  moved 9 times in six months.

Moving so much and the complications around having to leave stuff behind, starting all over again just when I’m feeling settled and secure, and never quite knowing when the ground beneath my feet was going to come unstable, it’s made me have trouble with momentum.

That’s what I realized when I looked at where I was investing my attention, and decided to do the one year daily v-loggin’ project.

I knew that it would give me some much-needed structure, and the small day-by-day victory of getting the videos up was what I needed to get a rhythm going and get the juice to tackle other projects.

Now I’m working away on those other projects – writing scripts, plotting pages, dreaming up marketing schemes, etc. – and sometimes I feel like I want to drop the whole daily video thing and just focus on next year’s product launch.  But it doesn’t take long to realize that if I stopped doing daily videos, I would just be doing the same thing I always do – jumping from one big idea to another without staying in any one place long enough to tie them all together.

I set a goal for myself of one full year of daily vlogging.  I will admit, sometimes it’s really difficult and I have to dig deep.  I’m a private person, despite how everyone thinks I’m really extroverted.  And my artistic process is such that sometimes I need to vanish for days at a time, seeing and being seen by no one.

But at the same time, I fully credit doing the daily video project with how I was able to start answering long-lingering questions I’ve been asking myself about how I’m going to tackle the next phase of my career.  I’m very blessed to have been able to live out many of my childhood dreams.  Doing the daily videos, in a weird way, gives me the focus and deep introspection to build the confidence and refine the abilities required to tackle the next set of challenges.  And had it not been for the Daily V-loggin’, I wouldn’t have even met many of the people who are now an important part of my life and my Art.

My Daily V-loggin’ is a sketchbook, a sounding board, and a dream machine.

NEXT: Daily V-loggin’ as a portrait of a city.

I’m working on my second video for Springfree Trampoline, and I just finished the stack of drawings that are being used in it.

I needed to devote two days to finishing this off.  Drawing is something that I can’t do well when it’s squeezed in for moments at a time. To get anything good, I have to devote whole days to it and get lost in it.

If you don’t see me on Twitter for hours at a time, it usually means that I’ve gone all “Simon in the Land of Chalk Drawings” on you.

Where do you go when you’re getting down to business?

This was my costume for a scene I was shooting today.  Come a little closer so I can tell you the news.

I showed my sister the first cut of the Iron Man spoof video I’m making for Bite TV because she loved the Iron Man costume I made, and she and I saw Iron Man 2 on the weekend (review forthcoming).  It was funny to put it all together: the time spent shopping, making the costume, travelling, shooting, and finally editing, and seeing that it all comes out to a minute and sixteen seconds.  That’s movie magic for you.

I made all of the music for the video in Logic and the biggest challenge was putting together a hard rock sounding rock that sounded like one of the Black Sabbath or AC/DC songs you hear in the movie.  I came up with something so dope that I wanna make a song out of it, even though it was only supposed to be a hastily assembled quickie kind of thing.

I’m having a lot of fun with my work right now.  The year started out really rough, but now it’s levelling out.  Bite TV is pretty much a dream job.  I said months ago that what I really want is for someone to pay me to make videos for the Internet and WHAMMO – here I am with the added bonus of writing comedy blog posts.  I’m not bashful about my desire for them to hire me full time, either.  It’s a good creative outlet, they’re major media but still under the radar enough to do exciting things, they’re small enough to be hungry, and if I was full time with them I wouldn’t have to have that part of my mind racing about securing additional work.

If you’ve got a website or TV channel you think my style would be well suited to, let me know because I will rock the spot.

ONE LAST THING: Please don’t forget to send me your suggestions for what I should spend my $100 Google Adsense gift card on!  This is the experiment: I want to spend it on words and phrases suggested by you guys, and we’ll see how we do.  Click here to see the video I posted to my Youtube about it.

Leave your suggestions and comments below!

One the things about being prolific is that it’s easier to keep going than it is to start again once you’ve stopped.

Don’t get me wrong, I’ve been working my ass off. But posts that I’ve been meaning to write and videos that I’ve been wanting to make have taken an inadvertent back seat to my freelance writing and design of late. But fear not, loyal reader, for energy is also being invested in developing what I can right now only describe as a third series of The Sean Ward Show. I have some concepts for videos that I have been thinking about for a while and right now I’m seeing the team come together and it’s getting nice enough outside to pull them off.

As for this blog, the reader will see that every so often my posting frequency falls off of a cliff, and then I get back on a daily or even semi-daily routine. This cycle takes anywhere from a few weeks to a few months. If you see me not posting for a long time, it’s usually because I got carried away with something IRL and been away for a bit, and then when I do go to write a post it feels like I can’t just jump in; I feel like I’ve got to have something big to write about or put up a long and eloquent dissertation on a topic that I have had a long think about.

But then I’m missing the moments that make up a life. I waver constantly between wanting to use this blog to show off only my best and brightest ideas, and using it to rip my life open for all to see.

I think that’s the yin and yang of being a personal blogger, though, don’t you?  Isn’t that what everyone who takes part in this thing called ‘Social Media’ fights with?

Rockin’ the party, way old school

Here is a story about the time that I learned how the big kids party.

When I first moved downtown, the first place that I stayed was my Auntie’s boyfriend’s room in a house he rented with a bunch of local rock ‘n’ rollers. My Auntie’s boyfriend was never there since he was always at her house, so they figured why not let me use it while I get myself situated in the city.

I didn’t know it at the time, but the roommates in that house were a bunch of the movers and shakers of Toronto’s music scene. One of the dudes living there was Steve Banks who at the time was just a cool guy to me. I wouldn’t find out until way later that he is a legend.

One night there was a band’s CD release party. The next afternoon, everyone was sitting around the kitchen table talking about the night before.

Steve Banks tells the story of the end of the night when he was already more drunk than he wanted to get, but couldn’t stand to see all of the abandoned half-finished beers go to waste. He ended up getting way smashed.

I got thinking about how my parents always told me as a kid that you should never finish a beer that isn’t yours because you don’t know what someone has done to it. I didn’t know what they meant, I just thought that maybe people go around poisoning drinks for fun.

So I say to the group “Aren’t you not supposed to drink other people’s drinks?”, and the whole room burts with cacophonous laughter.

Steve, between chuckles, says “If someone put drugs in it, that’s a bonus!”

It was one of those moments when my whole universe did this huge 180-degree turn on me.

Welcome to INSIDE THE ARTIST’S MIND – real talk for creative people. This week I’m going to address the Artist and money, and the new forms of currency that creative people are investing in.

I’ve been thinking lately about money, and the artist’s relationship with it. I get to remembering where Dave Sim explains that when you’re an artist, the time you spend on your art is an investment and you have to treat it like other people treat their mortgages and RSPs.

That was before the Internet, and his point rings even truer today. What Dave Sim was talking about was building a body of work that will pay off for you down the road. But now, in the age of Social Media, the investment you make in yourself, your brand, and your creative vision can pay off even more directly.

Social Media is a currency, and I’m surrounded by people who are cashing in. The Internet is how you stake your claim, mark your territory, build your brand, and express your vision. The Internet will let you know in a minute if your work is connecting with people. And the more you connect with people, the more say you have. That translates into influence and opportunities.

How have you implemented tools like Twitter, Facebook, Youtube, Tumblr, etc. into your work? Are they central to the work or just a vehicle for getting the word out? Let me know how important social media is to your work in the comments!

And connect with me:

Twitter: seanward
Youtube: seanward
Facebook: seanwardsuperparty

This is something new that people can say: I live on the internet. For most people, the internet is still a tool. But for some of us, the internet is a place and it’s where more and more of us are choosing to spend our time. Every so often it becomes an issue with someone, whether they think I spend too much time online or just think it’s funny that I”m as active as I am. Those people enjoy the blog posts, see the comics, and interact on Facebook, but they don’t understand what it takes to keep up that level of activity in so many areas.

During any given day, I am likely to be working on a drawing in my lap with my computer open in front of me. I’ve got several browser windows open, with my attention split in a bunch of directions: Facebook, my website admin panels, My iGoogle homepage (to keep tabs on my email, RSS subscriptions, and calendar) and Tweetdeck with a constant eye on what’s going on via the pop-up notifications of tweets from those on my “Don’t Wanna Miss” list.

And the funny thing is, I don’t feel like I’m a slave to my computer or to the internet any more than someone is a slave to their shoes by wearing them to walk down the street. It’s just how I do things. I turn my Gmail Notifier off frequently so that I can concentrate on one thing, and I have no problem blocking everything out when I’m writing a blog post, working on Super Party, or writing an important letter. I take frequent breaks (maybe not frequent enough. I’ll give you that!) to get up and eat or stretch.

The the world is changing, and the very nature of how we interact has been altered forever.  Personally, I couldn’t be more excited to be here to take part in it.

How entrenched is the Internet in your life?  How big a part of your day is it?  Let me know in the comments!

Wow, I am ten percent towards my goal of Five straight years of weekly Super Party webcomics without missing one. It’s exciting but scary. It’s awesome and awful at the same time.

The scary and awful comes in the excitement of getting started. The form of the thing is still yet to be made manifest. Once you’ve shoved your stake into the ground, you’ve started the process of actually having to see the reality of the thing. I think a fear that the reality will not live up to the dream of it is a major thing that keeps many would-be geniuses stuck. Getting started is so often the hardest part.

It’s Awesome and exciting because when you understand the importance of being prolific, you can’t wait to see what the thing actually looks like. Rushing to get on to the next thing is almost as dangerous as not moving at all, but it’s way more fun. Flying by the seat of your pants is way more fun than waiting in the lounge for your flight to board (it’s probably going to be delayed yet again so you should just charter your own. This unnecessarily grand metaphor was brought to you by Sean Ward’s Super Party – the choice of a new generation)

Ten percent is a big chunk, enough that I can kind of start to see the grand scope of what it will look like when it’s done. But it’s still way early and the most exciting parts are still to come.

Hello and welcome to INSIDE THE ARTIST’S MIND on seanward.net. This is the first edition of this particular column, but it’s also the long-awaited continuation of my series called the Monday Meditation. This spot is where I’ll be able to do my thing and share my thoughts and experiences as a cartoonist, blogger, and social media nutcase.

Inside the Artist’s Mind means two things.

First, it means that you get a glimpse inside of my head so that I can share with you what goes on in my world, and how my experiences turn into my art.

Second, it means that you get to see what being an artist is all about and hopefully give you something to think about that you can apply to your own life and career.

I have been looking forward to restarting this column in the new year so that there would be more of a feeling of a fresh start. It seems like all the Facebook status updates and Tweets I saw about it were cursing 2009. I don’t think 2009 is getting a fair shake. It was a quiet, inward time, but it was also a year of discovery and figuring things out. It seems like everyone experienced some of both the highest highs and the lowest lows of their lives in oh-nine.

There’s a lot of talk in the Blog Stars circle about what we want to achieve in 2010. Everyone’s hype. Here are my big goals for the new year:

Super Party updates every week without fail

When I started it as a web series, I said I’m going to go five years without missing one. Almost six months in, and so far so good. I feel like I’ve got a good rhythm there, so I’m starting to think ahead to introducing the product line and showing it at comics conventions and art events.

Blog as near to daily as possible, with video every week

Again, this is about keeping my blades sharp. But it’s also about giving myself an outlet. It’s as much a mental housekeeping thing as it is a creative outlet.  And by forcing myself to be prolific, I’ve got excellent idea turnover and I keep inspiration on tap.

More socializing

I think that this will give me more focus, as I kind of dawdle and then don’t have time for going out. If I’m committed to doing something, then I have a set amount of time I can get stuff done in. Being busy is a great motivator, and keeping balance between work and play is an important part of being creative. Also you can’t substitute for being out there and meeting people, just being around for when stuff happens.

More work for clients

This has always been one of my weakest areas in business. All of the jobs I’ve done for outside clients have come to me, I’ve never really worked at selling myself as a gun for hire. I spend so much time in my own world that I forget about how doing outside work keeps my blades sharp. I’m so obsessed with my art and there is only so much time in a day and selling myself takes a back seat. I’ve got an agent now – Carly-Anne Fairlie at The Fairlie Agency – so I finally have some of the help I need in that area.

I have to say, today is the day I was really excited for: the first work day of the new year. There’s a feeling of newness, and an excited vibe in air. When I was in California for most of last year, one thing that became very pronounced is this “Swingin’ London” vibe going on in the blogger scene of Toronto.  Very exciting stuff going on!

What are you most excited for in 2010?  Let me know in the comments!

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