Jamie Colville chats with Scott Chantler, artist of the upcoming Tek Jansen comic and creator of the excellent Northwest Passage, which originally Chantler was reluctant to pitch:

Jamie:

Were you concerned that comic readers wouldn’t really care to read about Canadian history?

Scott Chantler:
Yes. I was reluctant to even pitch the series, but Jamie Rich dragged it out of me after I happened to mention the idea on Oni’s message board. Everything about this project–from its Canadian setting to its serialized release–was a risk, and the gang at Oni really needs to be congratulated for taking it. I couldn’t believe it when they green-lit the book. While I was working on it, I really just tried to write it for myself, and hoped that there’d be at least a few people out there who shared my sensibilities. I was prepared for it to be a failure, albeit a noble one. Somewhere along the line, though, the collected edition of LOUIS RIEL came out, which made a splash, especially with the audience *outside* of comics, so I began to have some hope that I wasn’t just wasting my time.

Chantler also talks about working in the animation industry:

It’s just so corporate. You’d think that a business that’s so art-driven would find a way to put the work first, but you’d be wrong about that. Animation is big business, and like any big business, the studios are driven by profit and little else. They suffer the same short-sightedness and tunnel vision. Animation is the closest thing an artist can get to a steady paycheque, but you pay for it by hardly being an artist at all. It’s 9-to-5, in an office, with all of the unpleasantness that those things entail. You might as well work in a bank. Animators are just cogs in the machine. To have any real creative input at all you need to be a director, and even they have to deal with the marketing department, not to mention whichever jackass is above them on the ladder of corporate politics.

Which is too bad, because the art form is one of the most powerful that there is. Pixar seems to be able to navigate the corporate world while still maintaing a high level of integrity artistically. Most of the industry, though, is the victim of its own small thinking. Comics, by comparison, are a creative wonderland, print being much more of a niche market. There’s significantly less money at stake, so publishers are much more willing to take risks. The downside, of course, is that it’s a pretty difficult field to make a living in.

This entry was posted on Monday, April 2nd, 2007 at 12:08 pm and is filed under Creators, Independent, Interviews, News & Views. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.