One of the challenges of writing a blog about my cartooning career is figuring out how to organize it. That's true of the cartooning, too. When you start drawing, you make a few cartoons and stuff them in your desk drawer. If you keep drawing, the pile of cartoons grows. Eventually, you get to the point where it's hard to find particular cartoons. That's when you know you need a good filing system. You need a system that will grow with you, one that will accommodate changes of direction.
I started out drawing cartoons about my central character, Rose, and her family. Rose, who is widowed, suffered a mild stroke. Her daughter Teresa got divorced at about the same time, so Teresa and her son Norman moved in with Rose. The first cartoons dealt with their relationships and the funny things that happen when more than one generation of a family live together. Soon I found myself developing friends and neighbors for Rose. These things happen naturally, as the characters develop. I tried out a number of characters for this group, experimenting until I settled on a core group. These cartoons were easy to manage and group.
Very soon, though, I also started drawing cartoons about more generic old people. They were liable to do most anything. A few interested me enough to draw more than once, but many were isolated one shots. So, this turned out to be the second category for the filing system. All this time the pile of cartoons grew, but at least I could find each one as needed.
Several years later I started drawing the mummy cartoons. This category absorbed me so much that I branched out with it, incorporating zombies and regular characters. This made up the third category that I still use today.
Eventually, I found that I also felt a need to draw other cartoons. These seemed to fall into regular patterns, such as classic horror. Since I enjoyed drawing them enough to return to them again and again, they became the fourth category.
It wasn't until I started the Rock Garden webcomic that I felt a need to refine that system further. It became necessary to come up with a way to pace myself and encourage more consistent drawing habits. I set myself the daunting task of running a daily one panel cartoon. I did this for several reasons. At that time, 2005, I had spent months submitting batches of cartoons to the local newspaper syndicate, with no success. I realized that I had the capacity to keep up the pace of drawing a new cartoon every day. With a webecomic, I didn't have to ask permission or beg to have my work seen. The webcomic gave me permission to go ahead with my work at full pace.
Since I'm of a naturally mystic bent, anyway, I decided to organize the cartoons into thirteen lunar months per year, with twenty eight cartoons each. I named each of the lunar months, usually relating to whatever big holiday occurred in it. This worked well from the beginning. I also decided to regularly rotate each of my four main categories, running seven of each category every month. That gave variety and pace to the cartoons. It has always interested me that some readers like one or more categories, but not the others. This way, they get some of everything within a month's time.
Honestly, having a good system of your own choosing is about the only way to survive making a daily webcomic. It's so labor intensive that you need to smooth the way for yourself any way possible. When you get your system perfected, it frees your time and your mind for the main task of drawing. The drawing is the treasure that you must nurture at all times.
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