Getting In Touch With Your Cartoonist Within

Someone once told me there are two things to consider when thinking of becoming a cartoonist: 1. You must be funny and 2 You must know how to draw.

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.

If you are a quitter, don't star this. A day doesn't go by, sometimes still, for those of us who "made it" who don't want to throw in the towel. Yes, I now deal with a "higher class of problems, but problems still exist".

No neon light went on that said, "You've made it. Artists will start seeking you out now. They simply did. It was a process. It was slow. But it happened.

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.

Being funny is very much about extreme self-editing; saying in a few words what many say in several hundred words. Shakespeaere had cartooning right when he said "Brevity is the soul of wit".

One does not have to stop with a cartoon site. There are ways to produce revenue from them, such as making Ecards, creating a membership site, or selling the cartoons to magazines and newspapers, but the big money is in merchandising and licensing, that is, creating products, or letting others do it, with permission to use your cartoon images.

Planning, studying, researching, and finally doing, That is really all there is to it. When you hit obstacles and challenges, and you will, don't be afraid to act even if it means making mistakes. Because if you learn from those mistakes, you will do it right, or at least better next time.

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 I could not afford a private domain so I put it up on a free web host with more pop-up ads than images. I was ridiculed in my community incessantly. It was brutal. I persisted. I learned that was the key as much as talent if not more so.

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.

Charles Schultz and the other early pre-Internet pioneers are the true heroes. They had to work 1000 times harder than we do.

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!

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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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