The Action Chick avatar as rendered by Ryan Estrada.
Our accomplices at RocketLlama.com have spoken with many Zuda competitors, cartoonists entered in the monthly contests to win a contract with DC Comics’ webcomic division. We’ve previously interviewed the Black Halo Entertainment team behind Amber Hale, Supermodel ourselves, and they shared some exclusive art with us, their 8-page preview of the comic Reign.
This month, #3-ranked Zuda entrant Ryan Estrada, hoping to earn #1, is promoting his comic Sci-Fi Drive-by by giving away original art left and right. So we had to ask him: Are you nuts?
Fox Force Five? Try Screen Team 5! It's the women of the Screen Team Show: FilmBadger Angie, Brit Twins Jade & Nikita, Garden Mary, Action Flick Chick Katrina. Art by Ryan Estrada (Sci-Fi Drive-By).
AFC: Has the process of drawing all these requested pictures (a) been a ton of fun, (b) robbed you of sleep even worse than Zuda already had, (c) made people question your sanity, (d) some of the above, or (e) all of the above?
Estrada: The drawings have been a lot of fun! These are all the kinds of fun little warm up drawings I like to do before I start working to loosen me up. I’m ending up drawing a lot of things I’d never draw otherwise, and since I have to do things out of my comfort zone, my drawings are getting better with every one!
What I think is mind numbingly un-fun is begging people to vote for me on Zuda. I feel like a panhandler every time I ask people to do so, but the way Zuda works, there’s no way to win unless you promote, promote, promote and get your comic in front of as many potential voters as possible. What the drawing thing does is gives people an excuse to go to Zuda, register an account, and go to my page. And keep checking back. One of those times, perhaps they’ll look at my comic and decide to vote for it – and all with out me asking them to. These drawings may take up my every waking moment, but they are way more fun than the alternative!
AFC: Believe me, I understand how strange it feels to ask people for votes.
Estrada: Anything where you’re trying to direct a lot of attention to yourself online is going to bring out the craziness, even if it is a necessary evil of making a living online. I did a couple of publicity stunts a while back where I secretly drew guest strips for as many webcomics as possible, and asked the creators to post them all online on the same day so that if you read any webcomics that day, you saw my work. I did 50 the first year, and I think 75 the year after. I considered it just a wacky fun thing, and a lot of people really enjoyed it, but others, not so much. I received death threats. Crazy, violent, specific, publicly posted death threats. Death threats. I’m far from the attention hog many of those folks think I am… I just make my living online while I travel, and the only way to earn enough to eat is to promote myself (which is why I try to get it over with all at once in big publicity stunt bursts).
AFC: Everybody loves your rendition of my Action Chick avatar, including its creator Nick Langley – who has strong opinions about how other people depict her – and I’m really looking forward to showing your Screen Team 5 pic to the other Screen Team Show contributors. So we know you can produce wonderful work very quickly. How long did it take you to make Sci-Fi Drive-by?
Estrada: Sci-fi Drive-by is based on a weird little comic I drew about 8 years ago, but the latest rendition took me about 3 weeks to draw. The first half of that was just doing sketches for the human characters. I wanted to draw them in a more realistic style than usual, to even further distinguish them from the ridiculously drawn aliens.
I should have spent more time getting used to the designs. I didn’t even realize until a few days ago that I had overcompensated for my usual habit of drawing four-fingered characters and accidentally gave one of the characters six.
AFC: What has the Zuda experience taught you so far?
Estrada: It’s taught me just how far the tides have changed for a lot of artists and their relationships with their creations! It wasn’t long ago that the big dream was to have your comic published by a huge company like DC. Now, both times I’ve done this, I’ve had other webcartoonists start e-mailing me en-masse trying to talk me out of competing. My characters are mine, they say, don’t let Zuda steal them from me!
What I say to each of them is that Zuda does not steal characters! They buy the rights to characters from willing artists who know what they’re getting in return before they even submit. Yes, I agree that there are many opportunities now for artists to self distribute projects and make things on their own. But I also understand that there are a lot of different kinds of projects.
I’m not a guy who creates one property and works on it forever, I’m a storyteller. I have a hard drive full of scripts for things I’ll probably never get to draw. But if I can get paid to draw one of those that would collect dust otherwise, I can use that money to finance several more projects on my own. Plus, I get my work seen by a whole new audience! If I win this Zuda competition, I’m using the money toward the independent film I’m working on!
AFC: What do you feel distinguishes your story from other Zuda comics?
Estrada: Humor comics never really do well at Zuda, and I’m intent on changing that!
AFC: What’s the next insane or spectacularly fun activity on your agenda?
Estrada: I’m just about to start production on an action-filled chick flick, as a matter of fact! An independent animated feature based on my last Zuda comic, called The Kind You Don’t Take Home to Mother. It’s about a woman named Julia Hobson who’s a werewolf, but since the movie takes place between full moons, we see her dealing with every day life as a human, burdened by all the social stigma and emotional pain caused by turning into a murderous monster once a month. We only see the werewolf in one shot of the movie, but that one shot is an insane, violent 7-minute-long action sequence through an entire city.
AFC: So when you eventually fake your death to trick the werewolves and the extraterrestrials, which do you hope your obituary says first – filmmaker or cartoonist?
Estrada: I want to be known as a storyteller. I have a lot of stories I want to tell, and I’ll tell them as comics, movies, plays, radio dramas, novels, whatever opportunity comes along!
AFC: Thanks, Ryan, for the interview and for your super awesome, kick-ass renditions of both me and my avatar!
Ryan’s links:
Sci-Fi Drive-by http://zudacomics.com/node/1739
http://www.thekindyoudonttakehometomother.com
http://www.ryanestrada.com
The pics’ models:
http://rocketllama.com/actionchick
http://screenteamshow.com
Related posts:
shortened url = http://3.ly/st5re or http://3.ly/Ryan
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