Needless to say, I got my books and even a little zine manufactured. When the Kickstarter closed out, I raised 5 times what I had asked for and had over 200 backers. That was the first time I noticed the disparity between how much others believed in me and how little faith in myself I had. There were so many people I had met through my art and they all believed in me. To my absolute surprise, the goal was met in 48 hours and I even cried when I looked at the list of backers. I wanted that art book so much that I was willing to cover some of the cost out of pocket and even set the project goal lower than what I needed to fund it. I was ready for that Kickstarter to fail. It was a collection of all the lessons I had learned that first year.
I really believed that being an artist is already really hard and if you’re not amazing like those professionals you see all over the internet, you really will have no chance.Īfter the first year of quitting my full time job, I ran my first Kickstarter to put together an art book called Some Place Far From Here. Growing up around that stereotype hurt my confidence a lot. There are a lot of negative stereotypes around a profession in art and all of them have to do with being poor. I used to have this huge fear of not being good enough because I didn’t come from a formal art education like my peers. It’s a huge milestone for me and definitely a reflection of how much I’ve grown in the last couple of years as an artist. Considering the amount of work, planning and commitment a comic requires, I still have trouble wrapping my mind around the first episode of Tiny RPG Universe that is now on Webtoons. While the comic is something I’ve always wanted to do, I never felt like I had enough skill (or confidence) to pull it off. Making a comic sounded nice and I even had this story I’ve been building since high school. When I first quit my job if you told me I would start a comic on Webtoons, I would have laughed. Congrats on your first Webtoon comic! You've come a long way since selling prints at the Art Walk at our events, to branching out with merch and an art book, and now Webtoons! What's your journey been like?