Today I have another fantastic interview for you! I hope you enjoy it.
@cobmaximus is in the chair (swoon). I'm the lucky one ;)
@cobmaximus is well-known to many of you for his Funny Comic Strips Contests. I enjoy seeing all the entries every time.
So, here is the interview:
Dee:
You already have an online presence from joining other platforms, often about comic strips. So, what drew you to Steemit in the first place?
Well yeah, I did have some presence before Steemit by making vlogs in Youtube with my wife, if you're interested in watching some of the videos, here's the link to our youtube channel.
We did that for about a year. People started following us and liking our content, but at some point, it was more of a burden for us than anything we enjoyed doing, so we stopped making those vlogs. Maybe in the future we'll resume it but for now there's now plan on doing so.
Going back to your question, a friend is what drove me to Steemit. @moaphotography told me about how you can make money by blogging in Steemit. I got curious, so I made my account in June of last year. However, I found it hard to use, with a very steep learning curve, and with an interface that was 0 appealing. For these reasons, I stopped using Steemit. Eventually, around October of last year, I decided to give Steemit another try. I wanted to be active, at least for a full month, and try to understand as much as possible, if by then I still didn't like it, then I would stop using it. So having that vlogging background, I started writing blogs of what I did on the weekends. Around that time I had my mom and sister visiting, so we did go out to interesting places. I also did some food tutorials and food photography. That's why I also have in my blog that I'm a food enthusiast.
Not until December is when I started to draw. I bought a drawing tablet (those that you connect to your PC) and started a 30-day drawing challenge. These were just cartoonish drawings, which later on became comics. By the time I finished the challenge, I knew I wanted to shift my blog from food topics to comics. I've been focusing on comic making since January.
Dee:
You say on your Steemit profile that you are a ‘Catoonist Noob’. What is the history of your art career outside of Steemit?
I would say not much haha. I did take a "drawing cartoons" summer class in school to learn how to draw cartoon characters. But since then, I haven't taken any other "art career". Everything I know is just on my own mostly (with the help of some tutorials online).
I do however have some experience making comics. When I was in school I did a series of comics called "Loser Boy" which told the silly adventures of a kid and his chubby friend. I don't know where these comics are, xD, probably in the trash :(. But here's a drawing of what it looked like:
I also did silly comics with my high school friends, where we would pass each other a piece of paper with a single panel of a comic, then the next person would add another panel and pass the paper back. We would be doing this until we made a full page of a funny situation. These comics were very simple, with stick figures (again these comics are lost in oblivion). I did follow this tradition in college with other friends.
After graduating from college, I did stop making comics until last year when I got the drawing tablet :)
Dee:
I know you as a hilarious comic strip artist (https://steemit.com/steemit-webcomics/@cobmaximus/arriving-at-mars-comic-strip) and the creator of the the Steemit Webcomics Funny Comic Strip Contest. What led you to this niche on Steemit?
By early January I knew I wanted to be more involved in Steemit. I learned to love the platform and wanted to dedicate more time to it. I also wanted to leave a mark in here, help grow other people while they also helped me grow here.
I knew the importance of working on a niche subject. If you think about it, Steemit is still very young, it's still very chaotic and lots of people trying to figure out how to become successful. Compared to other big social media like YouTube, Facebook, Instagram etc., Steemit still doesn't have that many influencers. Sure, it has a lot of successful people in here, but content-wise, not many of them focus on a single topic, in other words very few have a niche audience. Or at least this is how I see it. This is why I think it's still early in the game to find a niche you like and try to work with that subject. For me that topic was comics.
There are multiple communities for art in general, but not for comics. I saw this as an opportunity to grow on the platform. At some point in mid-January, I got contacted by @jonathan-greer, who wanted to get me involved in a Facebook community called steemit-webcomics. I started working with him promoting the Facebook channel. Then we also started running the discord server and using the #steemit-webcomcis tag.
Dee:
Do you foresee your Steemit input developing in other directions than your contest and comic strips?
Not for now. Well as some of you know, I'm also working on a card game on my free time (when I'm not making comics or being lazy), so when I finish the game I will probably make some posts about it so people can support me or also buy the game, but it will take some time to finish.
I have more plans for the steemit-webcomics community. I want to make another contest that runs in the middle of the week and I also try to motivate others in the community to make their own comics related contests in Steemit to help spread the word. Someone that took the chance (and even without me asking) is @organduo, he started doing his comic contest based on #pinkyandspiky. We'll see in the future if more contests come and if more people are inspired to try comics.
Another thing I would like to do is make a webcomic in steemit. Think of it like Superman or Batman, where there's a main story and I would make a page every week or so... but to be honest, I don't think I have the time to do it :S
Dee:
Over the past year, Steemit has changed remarkably. There have been a couple of hardforks and it has become a viable social media. How do you see Steemit developing in the future?
I see the platform growing more. However with the many other platforms that are popping in like Dmania, Dtube, Dsound, Busy, etc. I'm not really sure if Steemit itself will be a major social platform if they don't overhaul it and also fix some of the issues it has. I don't want to worry too much into detail about what flaws and what things I would like to see get changed in Steemit just because I will have a separate post about this. What I do want to say is that the blockchain STEEM is what has truly great potential, and with SMTs coming, that will allow for other platforms to be put in place, with many many improvements. This is what really has me excited.
Dee:
Could you please choose one/some examples of your art to show us?
This is the latest funny comic contest: https://steemit.com/steemit-webcomics/@cobmaximus/steemit-webcomics-funny-comic-strip-contest-week-13-win-sbd-and-have-fun
Some of my latest work as well:
Follow this link for the full comic strip:
Dee:
Is there anything else you would like in the interview?
I would like to add that a great inspiration for me to continue working with my comics is @corinneiskorean. Her art and the way she makes her comics is actually what made me make comics again. So I would like to give a big shout out to her and give her many many thanks for helping me awake that sleeping creative bug in me :).
Many thanks to @cobmaximus for sharing some of history, motivations and views with us.
Would you like to see another interview? Click here for @organduo and here for @MagicCleatus.
Last but not least, please, please, please spare an upvote for this interview!