On April 20, the Camosun Comic Arts Festival will showcase the final projects of students in the Comics & Graphic Novels (CCGN) program. The students have created and published their own comics to display at the festival, which runs from 3 to 7 pm in the Wilna Thomas building at Lansdowne, and is free of charge.
CCGN student and Nexus cartoonist Tylar McKoen is just finishing up the year-long program, and feels that she has benefitted from the experience as an artist and as a professional (see page 10 to see McKoen’s comic, Taxidermy Bug Project, this issue).
“It’s been an incredible program; my art has grown tenfold,” McKoen says. “The skills I’ve learned are invaluable and it’s definitely something where if I didn’t do it, I think it would have taken me a lot longer to get to the technical skill that I’m at now, but also the confidence level to do something like pursuing it as a career.”
Program instructor Gareth Gaudin is a lifelong cartoonist, proprietor of Legends Comics & Books, and the artist behind the iconic Perogy Cat. Even as recently as Gaudin’s own youth, comics were scorned as a form of art or literature, he says, and now they’re booming. With an art so early in its infancy, the future is a blank page, ready to be drawn by the next new talented cartoonists.
“Comics are young enough as a medium that the greatest thing that will ever be done in comics hasn’t happened yet, and the person who’s going to revolutionize it probably hasn’t picked up a pencil yet,” says Gaudin. “So the future’s bright for this medium. I’m so used to people having to struggle to find their voice later in life, and it’s such a pleasure to see these kids who I’ll just be proud to see go off into the world and get work for the first time ever.”
McKoen advises people to take a chance doing what they love, because times are hard and purposefully choosing one’s own life path is the most sensible, inspired, and productive plan for a healthy lifestyle.
“In the state of the world that we’re in right now, there’s no risk in trying. If you focus too hard on what’s going on, it just kind of seems like everything’s falling apart, so why not take the chance to do something fun?” she says. “This sounds very cynical, but if I’m going to be struggling to pay my rent working a minimum-wage job, I’d rather do it by making art, you know? There’s no risk, no harm. It’s going to be an amazing experience and you’re going to learn something from it regardless.”
Gaudin, who has more than 30 years experience in the industry, says legendary artist Todd McFarlane once shared a sagely bit of guidance that made a lasting impression on him as an aspiring cartoonist.
“He gave me some really good advice when I was a teenager: ‘If you want to break into the comic book world, don’t look at the greatest guys working and think, I’ll never be that good, look at the worst guys working in the industry and think, I just have to do better than that.’ I really loved that,” says Gaudin, “it totally changed my perspective, and it actually kept me going. I was a teen and it was a really big moment for me, and it changed my life.”
McKoen says that the program has left an indelible mark on her life, and she’s excited to move into a long, productive career as a comic-book artist.
“No regrets, it’s been an incredible experience, and it’s definitely my career choice from now on,” she says. “I’m running headlong into comics for the rest of my life.”