Behold ! I have survived the trip there and back again to the ASA Comics Masterclass. Accompanied by the ever fabulous Emmajeans we tracked down the building on the Saturday Morning. It was easier to find the closer we got as more and more nerds with slightly bewildered looks were encountered.

We poured into the spacey 7th-floor venue and awaited to feed upon the glory of Colleen Doran’s brain… I mean experience. Now my first fear at coming to a comic or any art professional’s talk or presentation is that although the artist may produce  awesome brilliant and insightful artwork,  that may not equate to any ability in talking about it in an entertaining way for two days. Fortunately for us, Colleen proved to be an excellent and highly entertaining speaker.

On the talking about things: Colleen’s talk was full of frank information of the day to day (and year to year) life of a professional comic artist detailing the perils and  pitfalls of making a living and the joy of your work coming out right.

The talk covered topics such as publishing, story telling, and the realties of working as a professional. The professional’s life sounded like a continual gamble – you work really really hard on a big project for  X months then if all goes well and the book comes out then hopefully you have enough money you can use it into the next book/project; and if not, you’d better hope you have some reserves left over from the last project.

The talk was littered with amusing anecdotes, tips for the creation and business of making comics and was great overall. However Colleen …. please when demonstrating a a technique for a story creating method  do not point and a random person and expect them to be able immediately make a short 30 second story.  Not that the story creating idea is not good or that I was completely unable to make up a story – but dear god, did my public speaking fear turn into a sudden overwhelming panic attack. I think I lost most brain function for most of the rest of the day.

On the interesting times: On the first day Colleen was given various foods to try during the day such as Vegemite and Tim Tams but in the end it was a dinner of the humble Butter Chicken that did the damage. On the second day, suffering from food poisoning, she needed to sit down most of the day and wander off at random moments. I was impressed she kept on going. I for one would have bailed out to go hug the toilet but she held it all together (and in) as best as possible while dishing out advice info and entertaining stories of the business.

* Note to self – when traveling, stick to as bland food as much as possible.

Quotes – I like quotes – here’s a bunch:

 On being a Pro:
“An amateur can be as good as a professional but a pro has to make money (1/2 living wage) to be a pro.”

“The difference between the amateur and pro is you’re using a different yardstick. You’re competing with the best; you don’t get to compare yourself to the worst – ‘at least I’m better then Dilbert’. “

“On average I would draw 200 pages and have done about 400.”

“Dont be cheap – if your going to sell out, put a lot zeros behind the first number on that cheque.”

On the  internet and Gadgets:

“The gadget is your distributor; the art is you – The Mona Lisa is not about the paint.” – On iPads and the like.

“Infinite Canvas : finite attention span.”- On comics on the web.

On inspiration and aspiration:
“Dreams dont come true until you wake up.”

“Life is too short to try and figure out what you meant.”

“Do you want to be right, right now? Or do you want to take what you can use it to be better and  get on with your life?”

On the why of things:

“Know why you’re in it and be ok with it. Don’t complain when people notice.”

“What do you want ? What do you want from your publisher?”

“We love our audience, they give us money”

On the event: The ASA Masterclass was an awesome event. My thanks to Collen for the advice, to Tim McEwen for stepping in and doing an impromptu talk about Aussie comics, to Paul Mason helping look after Collen and a big thanks  to the organisers for making it all happen Julie Ditrich & Jozef Szekeres .

I would certainly  go to another event like this, even if it turned out half as good. I was very glad to meet lots of crazy comic people and put names to faces.

Yay for comics!

-Gavin