Legos
How’s it going out there?
Well, I haven’t said much about this, but I am going to be looking for work soon. My writing gig at Dreamworks ends sometime in the next month or so and that will be the end of my foreseeable steady income. I was pretty lucky to land this job when I got it. It was right about the same time I got married. I was wondering how the heck I was going to support this family and this job practically fell out of the sky right when I needed it.
Knowing that happened then, I should have faith that something else will come along. But it’s never easy to approach joblessness without a little bit of nervousness. But it’s something everybody has to face at different points in life. I hope to find work that allows me enough time to keep posting here and elsewhere. Patreon gets my priority, since my Patreon supporters are helping me work towards a goal of not needing to hunt for a steady income.
This past couple weeks on Patreon I have posted…
- A weekly series featuring unseen TV show pitches I have made, in full
- A tutorial on coloring
- Regular posts of artwork I have never posted anywhere else
- Free access to my new chapter book
- Patreon members will get free PDFs of Dickinson Killdeer’s Guide to Bears of the Apocalypse at the end of this month
- At the end of the month they will be able to buy the physical book at my cost with a free sketch inside.
- Created a private Facebook group for Patreon members only to interact with regularly
- Any book I have already made free in PDF format.
I know that, if I ever manage to get to a living wage on Patreon it’s going to be a slow climb. But it’s sort of my dream option right now. Please check out the page and the many options and perks involved. Thanks for supporting me even just by visiting my site on a regular basis.
Ethan
Mormon reference, huh? Any connection?
None personally, but Andrea’s story was inspired by a friend.
“I’ve never been so impressed by a grown man playing with Legos.” XD!
you know this comic would make a great animated movie! I’d love to see it! have you tried to bring it up at dreamworks? or anyplace else? I cant imagine no one having the foresight to see it would go over big! well if I was rich id pay to have it done but alas Im also a starving artist. Im a sculptor though.. hey if ya ever want a bear sculpted i’m your lady! cast em in resin and sell em! we could do a mole brear and a bear with horns and one with his mouth open roaring of course. maybe even a head in oes mouth! lol that would be fn to sculpt! I also know how to make molds.. …hint hint…. lol
I have talked to movie people here and there before, but the budget is what scares people, it would be one huge budgeted movie. Send me some links to your sculptures I’d love to see them.
I’ve been imagining this as stop-motion animation for a while, and now I’m imagining the minds that will be blown when the tiny puppets somehow build their own miniature cities with microscopic bricks.
I swear you have the most money problems i’ve ever heard from someone with as many hugely famous comics and even working on a cartoon and working with dreamworks. If it was me, the ad revenue from ax cop’s comic alone would make me wealthy beyond my wildest dreams. Well, my regular dreams anyway.. where having more than 200 a month would be so great.
It’s not money problems. I’m fine, until I lose my job. But I think you vastly overestimate either my traffic or what ads pay. I made $11 in ad revenue last month. I’ll make around $60 this month, and that combines all of my websites.
I have no issue admitting I don’t know how to monetize what I’ve got. I’m working on it, but most webcomic creators I know struggle with it.
And $200 a month isn’t going to support a family. I pay my colorist on Bearmageddon more than that per month (so currently, a majority of what I make on Patreon goes to coloring this comic).
I’ll probably get another job, I’ll be fine, What I’m trying to crack isn’t a money problem, it’s an issue of making what I do lucrative on its own. And you are right- I should be able to make enough to live on with the amount of exposure my work has gotten. I am open to suggestions.
I wish I had ideas or understood this at all. All I know is it’s depressing. I mean you’ve “made it” and I used to live under the impression that once you make it you can stop worrying about money forever. I guess it’s like how they always told me if I got good grades I wouldn’t have to worry about anything. That was a disappointment.
I think this is largely a myth with rare exception. It’s something I used to think too. I think my situation is somewhat unique in that I have made it in very specific ways that are more critical than financial. Axe Cop the TV show was relatively low money, it was a 15 minute show that played in the middle of the night and barely got a second season. When you have a show that is not making the network money, they know they are doing you a favor by making it, so the money doesn’t get good until you are doing them a favor by letting them make your show. Axe Cop never became that.
Its best to readjust your view of life as early as you can to just toss out the whole idea of making it. Make it every day instead. Be the kind of person who is going to always work as hard as you can, not just to reach some end of the road “I made it” finish line, but because making stuff is in your blood.
I see you’ve made use of one of the greatest lessons of illustration: when in doubt, black it out!
Yeahhhh…I probably would’ve too.
Do you have a shop where merchandise can be found? And what sort of merchandise do you sell?
I feel like this has been discussed before but my brain is fried from a convention (I’m a small business owner too) and I cannot recall what the answer was.
I’m actually putting together a new online store I hope to open in October.
Excellent! I need to get back to work on mine. I’m much better at making stock than posting it.
pedantic time, it’s lego, not legos, always, whether singular or plural, drive me up the wall that one!
That may be true, but literally nobody says that unless they are a hardcore lego nerd.