The Momentum of the Cartoonist: The Dark Side of Industry Pressure

One of my art teachers of animation once harshly chastised the anime style, saying "It's all the same shit", which could be interpreted as "It has a limited range and goes on a specifically limited structural system of design"

Which is not a bad thing. Just because it's using a system and certain components for all artwork doesn't mean it's bad. Especially when it looks as good as it does. Computers are built on a finite amount of parts that are always the same, but does that mean computers are bad? No. All manga is constructed in a certain way that's all based on the same system. Which is good because if you can learn to draw within that structure, you can become a real manga artist.

Comics and animation is kind of scary. There's all this information about getting started, but no options for quitting. That's what is meant by "pressure". The pressure to never stop working, which is not a demand every artist or cartoonist can meet. It's like talking about quitting your job as a successful cartoonist is talking about death, or some other tragedy. But sometimes the momentum has to stop for the cartoonist's sanity and health. Like my breakdowns in 2002 and 2015. My life literally came to a stop temporarily. It's very hard to bail out of continuing once you have a certain amount of fame and commercial and public momentum. Even if you stop moving, others will take your place. It's scary and amazing how much the animation and cartooning industry doesn't give consideration for failure or lack of money, or what an artist should do if he loses his talent or drive or momentum or sanity.

But I saw everything in my life come to a stop, where I was burnout and had to temporarily retire. I HAD to stop. But fortunately I'm getting some of my mojo back today. But it is scary to think about reducing momentum, or worse, stopping yourself from continuing drawing and writing every day. It's scary thinking what happens when you don't meet your quota, but for some of us it happens sometimes. An artist in Japan who is on "hiatus" could really secretly be wishing there was a way to quit his job or bail out of the momentum system" he built for himself by wanting to retire and give up the pain of drawing by never drawing again, but he doesn't know how to.

I find one thing that helps me is drawing while watching Shonen Jump and Japanese manga artist sketching videos and feeding off the momentum of their moving pencil and letting that osmotic motion seep into my pencil.

But momentum and stopping. Difficult dynamic to deal with.

Thos Japanese manga artists. They use the same things to draw I do: Erasers, mechanical pencils, Number 2 Pencils, and sharpie markers. So why CAN'T it produce the same product??