Getting In Touch With Your Cartoonist Within

"They" say you have to be funny and artistic to be a cartoonist. I beg to differ.

Though the jury is still out whether I am funny, I know for a fact that I cannot draw a straight line. So I felt certainly given the advice I was given, no matter how many funny concepts and concepts I'd written, I would probably never be a contender. Then I met the late Marc Cohen online, a close friend of Peanut's creator Charles Schulz who advised me that many cartoons were done by teams of artists and writers. As I researched this even further, this was confirmed by top single-panel syndicated cartoonists Dave Coverly (Speed Bump), Leigh Rubin (Rubes) and John McPherson (Close To Home). Oddly enough, it was the bigger cartoonists, the one's who were "superstars" who spent their generous time talking to me about the business. By the time I finished learning from them, my confidence was up. That was April of 1997.

I will not bore you with the details of my false starts, my economic woes, my losing artists as quickly as they arrived, or any of that. You can only imagine.

I also can't tell you how many times I nearly "threw in the towel". A day did not go by that I was not certain I could never do this again. In 2001, I suffered a major heart attack, and was for certain I would never create again. Oddly enough, the opposite happened. I was more productive than ever after that event.

Fast forward ten years and the smoke has settled. I have worked with some of the best cartoon illustrator in the world, writing the cartoons and concepts and assigning them to my cartoon team.

I can draw but not well. I wanted a well-drawn cartoon. I found artists who were good at that. Many are still with me. You can do it too if you don't mind some rejection at the start.

Not all cartoons are meant to be funny. However, if you are billing your cartoon as a funny one, I might suggest you either be funny, or have a funny ghost writer.

From my main cartoon site I have given birth to a superstore, Londons Times Superstore with over 70.000 gifts in 23 different categories, even my own private label coffees, Ruth Londons Exquisite Coffees that come in gift boxes with cartoon mugs and coasters (none other like it anywhere). I also launched my own offbeat cartoon designer clothes (again a first) with Rick Londonwear. And I'm planning other stores as well. There is always something new to learn.

So what do you have to do to become a cartoonist? First get organized. Have a plan. If you are like me, a writer, and not an artist, you *must* believe in your humor. If you don't, it will suffer and so will those who have to view it.

Rejection is a part of the game. This is not for the weak of heart. But remember, some of the greatest writers of our times experienced rejection, a lot of it; such as Margaret Mitchell, Isaac Asimov, John Grisham and many others. Even Charles Schulz and Gary Larson (and of course yours truly, me)

When I started Londons Times Cartoons there were no cheap domain registrars. Now one can be purchased at places such as GoDaddy for $9 a year. That's a lot better than a subdomain with popup ads and people take you more seriously

One day, in 2005, I got a call from a newspaper publisher wanting to know if he could run my cartoons. He said he saw my website was the 67,000th most popular site on the Internet according to Alexa.com (Amazon.com's analytical site). I had no idea. I thought we were still getting a few hundred visitors a day. We were getting 4000 hits an hour, and to date have had over 7.5 million hits since early 2005. I am still astonished.

All this is due to persistence. And now we have Ezines, blogs and other media available to us that Charles Schulz did not.

I know myself well. I am not the most talented guy in the world, but not the least either. I can write a good line and turn a phrase.

Once upon a time only the Rockefellers, Perots, Rothchilds and others had access to very important business tools. As you can see, that is no longer the case.

Our founding fathers probably had cartooning in mind when they expanded upon Freedom Of Expression. There can be no purer form, in my humble opinion. And for those of us who truly love to express ourselves in a very different way, this forum was built for us. Good luck to you all!

Article Source: http://www.rightarticle.com

4.5 million visitors click on Londons Times Cartoons by Rick London each year at offbeat cartoons and his new unique comic merchandise gift shop, Londons Times Superstore, and new cartoon clothing line store Rick Londonwear. He launched his venture in an old warehouse in Ms. in 1997.

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