Inspiration 101: Scott McDaniel

When you finally find that thing that you really like, it's natural that you search for better ways to do it so you can improve. In my case, while I was doing Sevenfold, at first it was exciting to get back on the drawing train, but soon I realized that it was taking me too much time to finish a single page, send it to the editor and continue with the next one. I was sleeping just few hours a day and I was having trouble meeting the deadlines. Illustration is always a race against the clock. You have to produce the best art you can within the time frame that you have, and that just means one thing: you need to be organized.

So I started to do some research on the interwebs, trying to find out how other people do it. I know that this is in a great part a labor of passion and love, which believe me I can honestly say that I have, but there had to be better ways to accomplish the task. That is when I stumbled uppon the web site of Scott McDaniel.

Boy did I hit the jackpot.

Scott is a comic book artist that works for DC comics as penciler for Batman, Detective Comics, Nightwing and The Great Ten. Needless to say he is uber talented.

And besides the fact that Scott is an awesome artist, he is a really really great guy. I haven't had the pleasure to meet him in person, but I've talked a couple of times with him through Facebook chat, and he is one of the nicest guys I've ever met. He believes in giving back to the art community, so he has a special area on his website dedicated to help aspiring artists to break into the comic book world where he describes the do's and dont's as well as what does one need to start in this business. It goes from the gear you need, tips for the artist, drawing exercises, the process of making a comic book page, cover and how to meet your deadlines keeping your schedule within reasonable times. In other words, it was exactly what i needed.

I cannot express how helpful Scott's website was to me at that time (it still is!). I learned a bunch of tricks that helped me speed up my drawing process, not sacrifying art quality or even time! One of the coolest things I learned was the use of the Light box (which I will explain how I built mine later). If you would be kind enough to pay him a visit and give him some love. I'm sure you will not regret it. Because probably, just as he says, you are here because you love comics and you love to draw.

You can find him on Facebook and on his website, scottmcdaniel.net

Once armed with better organizing techniques, I continue my journey to polish my process and search for more inspiring ways to produce better art.

Sevenfold: Rise and Fall.

Comic book convention came and went, and we had a blast. It was our first experience as creators and being sited on the artist side of the whole thing was simply awesome. Sevenfold is the name of our comic and it was only the beginning of the 2010. -"This is my year"- I thought. This is the year where I come back to life doing what I thought I have forgotten for many years, drawing for a living.

Guess again.

We have had a couple of good talks with some editorial houses and the book was supposed to be selling in major magazine stores and comic book posts here in Mexico, but not just in my city, but in other major cities as well. We had planned to release 6 issues the first year, and if the book was successful, it would came for a second season the following year. We just had to keep working hard to make sure the book got out on time.

But even though we did it every month, for the first 3 months at least, something wasn't working. I don't know what it was, but the book was't selling as we had hoped. Together with mismatched partnerships with the editorial houses (which I'm not gonna name) we hit a wall that we could not evade.

Long story short, on october of that year, we could no longer support making the comic. We released only 3 issues out of 6. I have finished issue no. 4 completely and began issue no. 5. At this point, Ed, the creator of the story and Editor of the whole thing decided it was better to postpone it (indefinitely) than to continue. After all, making comics is a business and Sevenfold wasn't behaving like one.

So much for my big break in comics.

But, same as in life, everything happens for a reason. Something inside me told me it wasn't over, not like that at least. This Sevenfold experience taught me many many things, and the most important one was that I re-discovered my true calling in life. You can disguise it by trying to be something similar, but deep down you know what you are. You just have to be bold and face it.

I decided that moment that I wanted to become an artist, a comic book artist, no matter what, and I set myself to design a plan in order to do so.