For this new interview, we talked with illustrator and manga-influenced comic authorJessica Mars. We met Jessica after buying her self-published comic Hey Sister!, an spiritual sequel of sorts for japanese manga Worst, but with a really interesting plot twist. We liked it so much that we wanted to interview her as soon as possible, and here is the result!
Tell us a bit about yourself: How did the road began for you to get into manga, comic and illustration?
I've been drawing and reading comics since I was a kid. I always wanted to make my own stories, but everything ended up becoming a unfinished project. Some years ago, I finally decided to go for it, and here I am!
Who are the artists that influence you the most?
There are many artists and work that has been an influence to me, not only style-wise but on many other aspects of the creation of a comic. Some of my favourite comic artists are Matsumoto Taiyou, Otomo Katsuhiro and Inoue Takehiko. And I've added Hugo Pratt to that list lately, too.
On your comic works, you are in charge not only on art, but also in writing, script, characters... Can you tell us about your process on this?
My stories usually begin with an idea I want to tell to people, and then they become comics (or illustrations) because that's my medium. I create a story from that idea, set up a timeline and define setting and characters. There's not a fixed order for this process, it sort of happens at the same time. When all of this is done, I begin sketching the comic storyboard and then work on the final comic after that.
You have made a strong bet for webcomics and self-publishing. What advantages do they have versus traditional distribution, and what do you think of the future of self-publishing?
The strongest advantage of self-publishing, on my opinion, is being free from go-betweens. No editors, anyone will condition and change your creative work.
The future of self-publishing depends a lot on people engagement. We the authors who self-publish ourselves are equally skilled as the ones published commercially, but in comic-book events they won't give us any visibility. Unless people begins to understand the quantity of self-published authors who need a space to show their work, the future looks tough.
What good (and bad) things do you feel the Internet and the new technologies have brought to your field?
New technologies are the real power-tool for self-published authors in order to show and distribute their work. It may come with some plagiarism or work stealing, but Internet gives a broad horizon of options to people who don't work with publishing firms and lets us reach lots of customers who we wouldn't be able to reach any other way.
And last, but not least: any advice for aspiring illustrators and comic authors just starting up their careers?
The only advice I can give is: don't give up, keep drawing, and try to work on what you really want to work. Don't get influenced by negative comments, as there will be always plenty of them. The sooner you realize that, the better. But the most important thing is: don't stop drawing!
Last year, we had the great pleasure to work with the team at Thrive Solo to get you an exclusive discount. Jerome, the founder of Thrive, told us that it worked well and a lot of creatives did benefit from this offer, so we are doing it again this year!
Based on United Kingdom, the great guys at Thrive have built Solo with a mission in mind: to help freelance artists to stop undercharging their clients. To achieve this, they built a web application where managing projects, clients, invoices, expenses, quotes is extremely easy, and where you can measure the time you devote to each client and project.
With Solo, all the difficult tasks involving invoicing and clients become painless. We really think the Thrive team has built a great, unique and nearly artistic user experience that gives you a bird view on the day-to-day state of your personal freelance business.
You can try Thrive Solo during 15 days for free, and also get a 30% discount with our coupon code DRAWSOLO30
You know that with our STORE plan, you can have your online store in the portfolio website you already built with us, in a matter of minutes: it comes with shopping cart, order management and paypal payments.
Even if we solve the technical pains of having your own e-commerce, selling your stuff on Internet is still tough: people is infoxicated with loads of information every day, and there's a lot of marketing and promotion work to do to get them attracted to your work.
That's why we built Drawfolio Market: we want to make more visible the products that our customers on STORE plan are selling through their online stores. On this section, it's easier to discover new artists and the great stuff they are producing: original works, prints, mugs, or shirts.
For any doubt, question, suggestion or problem, please contact us at uservoice or write us at [email protected].
Some advice to help you being more easily discovered on our search engine:
Write good title and description on your websites and pictures. If you write relevant and short descriptions about you and your work, it will be more easy for the search engine to think of your content as relevant for a search.
Same thing with tags: tag your portfolio website and pictures with descriptive words, and clasify your portfolio in one or more of the existing categories.
For any doubt, question, suggestion or problem, please contact us at uservoice or write us at [email protected].
As you know, we always try to collaborate with other products related to comic and illustration, in order to offer you the best chances possible.
This time, we would like to talk you about our friends from Chibi Games. Chibi Games is a mobile app and games studio from our home town, Valencia, that focus specially (but not exclusively) on kids.
As you will see, in their portfolio they have got great, gorgeous games with a strong component of manga and illustration. But they also made an app named Anime Pose 3D, aimed to help manga artists to improve their work through the easy set up of 3D models to take as a references.
The great team at Chibi Games gave us 5 free keys for Anime Pose 3D to give away.
Just comment below on this post before 23 of May, and we will choose 5 winners from the people who commented.
