Let me just preface: every Tumblr blog I post is most likely an expansion of something I was talking about on Twitter. Just so I don’t have to say “Anyone who follows me on Twitter…” at the beginning of every blog. Thank you.

Last night I was discussing my high school friend’s comic, Uncle Sunshine (I won’t post a link, but you can Google it or look through the ComicGenesis list, but be warned it is very very VERY NSFW). He was very talented, and even though his ideas were very disturbing, at least he was creative. Even though I haven’t spoken to him in about three or four years, I still wish he had managed to continue doing a comic (whether it was Sunshine or one of the many other projects he had floating around in his head), because it’s a waste of talent, and he got the shaft early on in life so it’d be nice to see him get rewarded for getting through it.

The problem is he had no self-motivation. No motivation to succeed in school (he was never held back but he did have to go to summer school to graduate), none to succeed at a job (I got him a job at my place of employment. He never called out but he didn’t exactly do a great job while he was there), and unfortunately no motivation to do anything productive. He became a master at StepMania back in 2005 when it was cool, both in playing and in creating elaborate, impossible to pass songs. He put so much time and effort into that, and got absolutely nothing rewarding out of it besides self-satisfaction.

There’s nothing wrong with that. I play video games. Hell, I used to be an achievement whore on Xbox (not as bad as some people, but I tried to 100% eveyr game I played), and I’ve got nothing to show for it except a 5-figure number next to my GamerTag. But he spent so much time in StepMania or any other game that he didn’t leave himself time to concentrate on stuff that would help him further in life. I remember freshman year when the original Pokemon Gold and Silver came out he bred a Larvitar at breakfast during school (around 7:00AM), and by the time lunch started (at around 11:15) it was a level 70-something Tyranitar. I didn’t know it was possible to train something that quickly, let alone do it during class. Clearly he didn’t pay much attention in those classes, at leats that day.

When I first discovered webcomics my senior year of high school, more specifically MegaTokyo, I decided to try my hand at it. It was… a disaster at first. But I also tried to get any of my friends who also drew to try one, because if I couldn’t be a successful comicker, I may as well try to help someone who could be, and this is where my friend fit it. We both would draw all the time, though he was much better than me, and I figured once he set his mind to something he’d pour all his energy into it to be as great as possible. I also had two other friends who I managed to talk into starting a comic (both of whom did guest strips for me for Jelly Bean Sniper), one only did a single strip and never did it again, the other was fairly consistent but wasn’t a terribly talented artist (not that I was great either), but I tried to motivate all three to do comics. If nothing else we’d have a nice little stable of comics that might appeal to someone.

However, it didn’t always work. Obviously, the one friend who drew a single comic (actually, it was half him, half me. It was a co-op type deal) didn’t respond to my motivation at all. The other two responded sometimes. What frustrated me was the first friend. He poured all this time into video games and the like, and doodled constantly, but he was such a freak, such a perfectionist that it became impossible to get a comic out of him. If the piece of paper wasn’t perfect, whether there was a corner ever-so-slightly bent, or a slight mark on it, he would toss it and keep trying to find THE PERFECT piece of paper. It got worse from here, trust me.

The main problem was I was in charge of not only motivating, but I also ran the web site, scanned the comics and uploaded them, and was in charge of the lettering. Basically all they were doing was drawing, and it wasn’t like they were elaborate. But my friend was such a perfectionist that if he did a sketch he didn’t like anymore, he would argue when I tried to put it on the site. I’d do it anyways, because he didn’t have the internet to check the site.

Some of his excuses were strange. He lived on the 10th floor of an apartment building, so during the summer it would get hot. He refused to draw because he didn’t want to get sweat on the paper, and when I suggested he use a fan, he said that it might bend the paper when it blew on it. I’m sure there were other reasons, but I can’t remember. Time was not one of them, however. Like I said, he spent so much time on video games that he could easily do two comics a week. Hell, he usually drew them in class, so it’s not like it would’ve cut into his video game time anyways.

When he did draw a comic, he would draw 3-10 comics at a time (and this only took him about a week), so I’d use them for a buffer, hoping that in five weeks he could come up with some more. But usually not. From December 2003 (when we all started), until September 2005 (when he produced the last comic I ever saw), he managed 54 comics. That’s a little over one every two weeks, and that was WITH me constantly breathing down his neck for them.

I know webcomics aren’t for everyone, but he was someone whose dream was to get into anime/manga and work his way up to director/producer status, and I told him this would be a good starting point. But unfortunately, he couldn’t force himself into it. He loved coming up with the ideas for comics, hell, he could usually come up with 10 comics worth of ideas in a sentence, but he couldn’t be bothered to put the effort in. He wasn’t one to work his way up the ladder, he wanted instant gratification. He wanted to be an anime producer, but he didn’t want to start off as an animator and work his way up. He wanted to be one yesterday.

So if you ever wonder why I start busting people’s balls for not updating their comic in a while, especially people I talk to regularly, that’s just what I associate with webcomics. I’m not saying I’m a good motivator, I’m probably horrible, but I still find it in my nature to TRY to motivate people into doing it.

After all, if they don’t, it’s just a waste of talent.