Becoming a Cartoonist

Ever since I can remember I wanted to be a cartoonist, and I would vary in the exact industry I wanted to go into. First it was to become a comic book artist working one of Marvel Comics flagship titles, The Amazing Spider-Man. Then I found Calvin and Hobbes, The Farside, and a slew of other comic strips in my local newspaper, and I shifted gears to becoming a syndicated comic strip artist. Later I waxed and waned from 2D animation, to political cartooning, to gag comics in the New Yorker, to 3D animation to eventually realizing that 33 years have gone by and I’m not a cartoonist.

It’s not that I’ve wasted my time. Quite the opposite actually. I went to college, met my wife, graduated with a degree, got a job as a graphic design, started a family, worked my way up to being an art and photography director and now I work for a fast growing internet based Web publishing platform. All in all, I’ve accomplished quite a bit in my life. But the one thing that I ignored, kept pushing off to that ever so close but distant “someday” when I grow up was to be a cartoonist. 

I’m tired of never getting to that “someday.” I’m tired of doodling and sketching and working on my brilliant ideas. It’s now time to act. Time to do what I want to do. Today, is going down in history as the day I set forth and say by the power of Chuck Jones I will become a cartoonist.

All I need to do now is just find my pencil and then I can get started. Now where did I put that pencil?