Draw Faster and Smarter | with PUNKO

0:00 Hello everybody. Welcome back to another episode of the Webune Wave podcast. I'm Audrey and this week I interviewed Marty, also known as Punko. Punko is the creator of Cinderella Boy and Stag Town on Webune. The story of Cinderella Boy follows Chase, a fame obsessed boy who just so happens to stumble upon a key that can transport him into any fairy tale. And in each story, Chase also gets any wish he wants, but at a cost. Turns out that Chase is a heroine every single time. So, if you love comedy, if you love romance and magic, Cinderella Boy is the story for you. In this episode, Puno and I discuss how she got her start in comics and how that journey landed her a movie deal for her web tune original, Stacktown, which is being produced by Lucky Chap Studios. One of the biggest things that Puno and I talked about in this episode is

0:45 efficiency and how comic creators can be more efficient with their process, which will help them with the creation of their comics. And honestly, I learned a lot from Punko. So, let's dive into how she did it. Hi, Funko. Welcome to the podcast. I'm so excited to have you on today. Yeah, I I'm so excited that you wanted to be on the show. I for my listeners, usually when I have guests, I connect with them because I really like their work. But in this case, I had actually not read Stack Town or Cinderella Boy. So, I'm really glad that you applied to be on the podcast because now I have a new favorite series. I love Cinderella Boy so much. story of my life. Wow, it's so nice to meet you. I've never heard from you. And I was like, I know. I It is what it is.

1:33 But I'm so excited to talk about it today and we have a lot to cover cuz you got a lot of really cool stuff going on. Yeah, I'm pretty busy. Okay, so for our listeners who aren't familiar with you or your work, just give us an introduction to you and how you kind of got into the comic space. Uh, well, I got a degree from Savannah College of Art and Design in comic books, sequential art. Yeah, it's great. Uh, Edgue Rank just put me on their list of like top 15 u notable alumni of SCAD and they used the worst possible picture for me. So, I'm like, "Thank you, but why?" Like, where did you where did you get that picture? But I burned it. So, I was just like I'm like flattered but insulted.

2:22 piecing. Yes, I have a lot of mixed emotions about this. So, uh I graduated in 2003 with that degree and then went on to work for Tokyo Pop as one of their um OG English series and I wrote an eight volume graphic novel series called Biz & for them. And after that, I worked for Action Lab Entertainment doing another series called Toyotica. I had a couple little minor projects in between there. Then I started in a couple of self-published graphic novels before moving over to Webtune where I started on Canvas with StagTown and then got picked up for an original and then segueed into my newest original which is Cinderella Boy. And in between there,

3:07 I've had every job you can imagine. I worked as a toy designer for a toy company. I worked mil cows on a dairy farm. I worked as a like Disney princess style entertainer. I worked on a assembly line making jewelry. I've had like a million jobs. Very colorful work history. That's amazing. Anything to support staying in comics, you know what? Yeah, pretty much. So, you know, we can talk about uh Stag Town for a little bit cuz you have an adaption that was announced. So tell me, how did you come up with Stack Town and what was it like moving from canvas to Originals? It was a crazy story. Uh back in oh

3:52 gosh, was it 2017, 2018? I can't even remember when Stagtown started. It was around that time. I had been working for Action Lab at the same time and I was working from home as like a monthly, you know, print comic artist. I had heard very vaguely of Webtune from my like I I was at New York Comic- Con with my editor and a couple editors from other companies and they were like, "Have you heard of this new app, Webtune?" And and look, you read comics, but you scroll on them. And I was just like, "Well, that's interesting." And a lot of the older editors like, "Oh, that's a it's a gimmick. It's I don't I don't know about this." And I was like, "No, that's fascinating. You can just read comics on your phone. That's amazing. You could read it. You can reach a much bigger audience that way." I'm interested in that. And so I had

4:38 just looked up just on a whim I I looked up web tune one day and I saw that they were having a contest and it was a short story contest. Oh yeah. 2018 I believe. Yeah. It it uh it had a couple different categories you could enter. You could enter like romance and everything and I had seen that you could enter the horror category and I thought well I bet I'd have less competition in that category if I entered that one. So I I was like and I do I do like drawing horror. So it says you've got two months to draw. You had to have five episodes. Luckily they didn't have to be as long as like regular episodes that I do now. My episodes now are about at least 45 panel minimum for each one. But these I

5:24 think they could be around like between 22 and 30. I I forget. But it they could they could be a little bit shorter I think. Then it said, "You've got two months to draw five episodes of a short story." And I thought, "Well, I've never done this before, but I'm sure I could figure it out in two months." And then I looked and said, it said, "Oh, actually, you had two months two months ago. This ends in 10 days." And I looked, I was like, and I thought for a second and I looked at the prize money and I called up the CEO, Action Lab, who worked at my editor. I was just like, "Brian, I'm going to be sick for the next 10 days." He's like, "What?" I'm like, "Yeah, see you." And I I immediately got up, ran to the Acme, which is the the local uh grocery store where I used to live, and

6:09 just scooped up everything that could be eaten with one hand. Hot Pockets, like frozen tacos, anything you could eat with one hand while drawing with the other one. And all the Red Bull they had, all of it. Like they just all the cans. There were like 20 20 cans of 25. I just scooped them all into a a shopping cart, went and I bought everything, came home, and immediately started drawing. And I I thought to myself, like, I don't have anything. And I was like, "Oh, what about that? What about that that horror thing that you were thinking of pitching around, but you didn't really have a solid plan for it? You really only had sort of like a kind of story." I was like, "All right, we're going to go with that." And for 10 days, I cranked out five episodes of this. I did. I slept every other night for four hours.

6:54 Wow. By the end. Yeah. Don't do the things I do. Don't ever don't ever do the things I do. Um I had carpal tunnel by the end so bad that I was putting my arm in a bucket of ice, like a Home Depot bucket full of ice water three times a day and then letting it sit for about 10 minutes and then drawing again. On the last two days or so, like yeah, it was it was over two days. I spent a 50our stretch with no sleep just drawing and I finished 15 minutes before the deadline and turned it in and then collapsed for like three days and was sick. Oh my god. Because of how much I'd overworked and I didn't win. But I got an honorable mention and so I got mentioned on the site I did and that got a lot of people looking at it

7:40 and so I got you know and a lot of people said I hope you'll continue it and I was like well I do have more like a bigger story for this when I recover. Why not? And then at that point, I had moved away from a little a little while after that, I moved away from working for Action Lab to working as a toy designer for a toy company. And so, uh, I thought, why not just bring my iPad with me on my lunch breaks and after work and start drawing it for canvas? Might as well. And so, I started doing that. And then the pandemic happened and it shut down the toy company and I was at home and I said, "Well, now I really have no excuse not to." And so I just started working on it again. Then during the quarantine they had another contest, the brain and heart

8:25 contest. And I entered I entered that one with a short story called Red Dart, which is still up on on Webune that you can read. And it won second place. And so this is so cool. And I was talking to the editor about arranging like sending the files and everything for it so they could promote it. And I said, "By the way, I have this series on Canvas if you're interested in it." And actually, we they're like, "We actually already know about Stag Town and we'd like to, you know, offer you a contract for it." I was like, "Wow, great." I remember I was standing in a cornfield at the time in the middle of like I was in the middle of like a cornfield maze at the time cuz it was like fall and I had just gone out there to like goof around and go for a hike and everything. And I was like, "Well, me and the corn are very excited. I can't tell you

9:11 enough. And so yeah, way to pitch yourself be like, "Hey, hello." That's I was like, "Wow, I'm two for two on entering a contest that I don't outright win, but then I use it as a chance to pitch to the editors." Because that's how I got Biz and Gast with Tokyo Pop. I won. Really? That was my first job in comics and I won a runner up in the rising stars and manga anthology. And while they had I had them while I had them on the phone, I was just like, "By the way, I've got this other series I've been working on since college called Visas. would you like to see it? And then they picked it up. I was like, this is how I get jobs, by losing contests. And that was another contest where you had two months to do a whole issue and then I found out about it like 11 days before. My god, this is the template for my life. This is the cornerstone of my success. Losing content,

9:57 doing it last minute, losing them, is still coming out and doing well. Yeah. I always That's why I always tell people, they're like, if you think you won't win, enter anyways. At least you'll get the contact information of the editor. Yeah, I you know that's kind of relevant kind of right now because they have the uh 2025 legends contest going on and right now they're like in the judging period. Yeah. Yeah. And I have mutuals who are like I just like I would love to win but I don't think I will. And I like to tell them I'm like okay if you look back at the 2018 contest even like the 2016 contest there were so many creators who entered that didn't win. Some didn't even get like an actual honorable mention or anything, but they still are some like

10:44 the most popular creators on the platform today. So, I'm like, it's okay if you don't win the contest. Like, there's still a chance that an editor down the line if you keep producing your comic be like, hey, you know, we noticed in the contest maybe or like we already have our winners, but you never know, right? So, that that's so interesting about your history with with contest. It's I always say like take the chance anyways. Like a lot of people are just like, "Wow, like you're really lucky." Like you get a lot of lucky breaks in life. And I'm like, "Yeah, but I make that luck by always taking the opportunity." And I it's just not not just random luck. It's because when I say like, "Oh, I like oh, I should do this." But I could have said it's over in 10 days. There's no way I could do this. I've never done you know a web

11:30 tune before, much less cranked out five episodes and everything. Like it was still a ridiculous amount of work. And I don't recommend it to other people. Like don't kill yourself if you know that you're not going to be able to do that. But I didn't know how hard it would be so I just did it anyways. But don't talk yourself out of an opportunity like oh I might not get it. Oh I might not. Because even if you don't win your work will still be in front of the editors. They'll still look at it. And then if you can show I I always say like I have been saying this since I started doing con circuits and like giving talks to prospective comic book artists since 2006. People always say like you know like how can I get my stuff published? How can I get this? How can I get that? And I said there is one most important thing that

12:17 you should know. It doesn't matter how talented you are. Okay? Because there is an audience for everything. It doesn't matter how talented you are. What matters is how consistent and reliable you are. You will get far more jobs and keep far more jobs in comics. By always, always turning things on time, always sticking to a schedule, always being there. If you tell, you know, your canvas readership this posts every Friday and post it every Friday like clockwork, you will get far more work and far more followers and subscribers and all that than you ever would by just being really talented. I have seen so many incredibly talented people that I went to school with, that I knew in the industry just flame out because they couldn't stick to a schedule. They had

13:03 an excuse for everything they didn't want to turn in. They were playing way too much Balders Gate 3 or whatever they were playing back too much. Yeah, they they they missed like not that, but you know, like you like way back in the day, whatever they were playing back then. and they, oh, they missed a deadline and oh, it's okay because my readers will understand and I'm, you know, I'm so good and everything. Editors would much rather see you be reliable than amazingly talented because I know at least in the print side of comics, like you will end up costing them so much more money when you miss deadlines. Yeah. Than you would ever make up if you were amazing. So, don't be afraid like, "Oh, my stuff's not that good." Like, I look back at Stag Town, like the first

13:49 episodes and everything. I'm like, "Oh, these look like garbage." Yeah. But but they were posted consistently and that was what that was one of the things that Webtune really liked about it was, "Hey, nobody's like making you stick to this every Saturday schedule that you've been self-imposing." Used to call it stagger day. We'd post every Saturday. We're like, "We can see that you're very, very good at sticking to a schedule and we really like that. we'd rather have you be consistent than have you be amazing and have the most subscribers ever and all that. So, that's really important and you really should focus on just being reliable and consistent all the time. And if you make a schedule, make sure it's one that you can stick to. Yeah, I think that's such an

14:36 important piece to it, especially if somebody does want to grow an audience, is if you can be consistent as much as you can. Like it doesn't matter if it's every week, every two weeks, even like every month. Like if you're delivering when you say you will, then readers are like, I know I can expect a new episode whenever it comes out. And exactly. And I my guess is I don't think they necessarily care about the length of the updates, just as long as you're like consistent with it. Yeah. I mean really it's it doesn't have to be like this giant fulllength episode. It it just has to be something that they they know if I sign in by like this time on Saturdays it's going to be

15:22 there and it's it becomes part of their routine. It becomes like oh I need to check on my oh my favorite thing is out and all that. It it just becomes a part of their life and a part of their routine and something that they can rely on. If they keep coming back and it's sorry I didn't get to it. Sorry, I didn't feel like it. Sorry, I I got overwhelmed with work. That's why I always say when you're setting a schedule, make sure it's one you can stick to. If if you can't stick to an every week schedule, that's fine. Do every other week. Just make sure that it's one that you know you can stick to. And because it's better to come out fewer times a month than to promise, you know, once a week and then constantly not be able to deliver on it. Yeah. And I think it's up to the creator

16:07 themselves to like set that schedule. But I know in in your guys' case as web tune originals creators, you have a weekly schedule. Like that is what you got to deliver. And I know there's a lot of cases where creators can face things like burnout and injuries. So what's been your experience dealing with that in your career as a creator? Well, that's a really good point. Oh, like all the people who are who have been my readers for a while know that I went through I had to learn the hard way before learning to do things the right way. During Stag Town, they know that I got incredibly sick from burnout. And by sick, I mean that I actually developed an autoimmune disease, which I have to

16:54 live with for the rest of my life because of because I pushed myself too hard. I I didn't know you could develop celiac disease in adulthood. I thought you were born with it. And no, it can kick in in times of extreme trauma or stress, which is, you know, pregnant women can get it after they give birth. Yeah. I Stag Town is why I can't eat bread anymore. Hooray. And I have to have to live on an unbelievably strict schedule. No more ever eating at restaurants or ordering out or like getting anything. Just like like I have to read every last thing I buy at the store. Like 70% of the grocery store can never ever have it again. all because I stressed myself out too much. And I when people are like, "Oh, you know, burnout's nothing. Girl, boss, hustle culture." That can that's

17:41 great, but it can be so toxic. And we have this sort of I think we're now seeing in society this backlash against hustle culture when we realize the ramifications healthwise and and like mental health, physical health of what that can do to a person. And no, it's not always good to hustle no matter what. I used to be the kind of person who was like, "Oh, I work harder than everybody. I wor out a bad like a badge of pride that I worked over 70 hours a week." And now I think, what was I thinking? Yeah. Now I'm, you know, I woke up one day to find out that a third of my hair had fallen out and I'd lost a quarter of my body weight because I was so sick. I was and I was still losing weight. Like I was was like a skeleton, man. They they couldn't figure out what was

18:27 wrong with me. uh they thought there was something like really like endstage wrong with me and then they realized it was celiac that was brought on by stress and I said that's my wakeup call never again and I remember during stag town I like I was telling you before we started that I drew the whole stupid series in Procreate on iPad yeah which by hand no assistant all this cross-hatching yeah great so terrific like nobody's proud that you're a martyr to your series like that's not impressive That's dumb. If you only have Procreate, great. But if you want to pay the like 60 bucks a year, get Clip Studio. And so I had to in between season 1 and season two of Stag Town be like, "Okay, we are going to sit down and how are we going to cut out at least

19:14 20 hours of the work week? How are we going to cut this down and be more efficient and not drive ourselves completely insane doing this?" And I worked my whole hiatus working on that. and watching videos on YouTube and Skillshare and everywhere else, like learning how to use a new program, learning easier and faster ways of doing things and really prioritizing my health. And before then, first season of Stag Town, I never went out. I would consistently tell friends, "No, I can't go to this party. No, I can't go out to the city with you. I have work. I have work. I have work." And it really, really, really made me suffer. and I was just at home all the time working. And so I said that needs to stop. I need to be prioritizing

20:00 myself. I need to give myself permission to go and just do things for fun once in a while with friends and all that. So now I have a much better schedule. I see a personal trainer, you know, two to three times a week for, you know, just to keep in shape and just to hang out and socialize with James like two or three times a week. you know, we talk about like golf and like video games or whatever we're talking about while I'm doing my RDL's. If I have to work from home, I have a balcony and so in the summer, I will make it like my summer office and I will take all my stuff with me and sit on the balcony. If it's a really nice day, we have um an incredibly nice pool terrace at my complex and the clubhouse, a fire pit and everything. So, I now have a

20:47 cooler that I take pack like a lunch, cold drinks, everything, ice in there, take my iPad, my charging cord, my bikini, my big hat, my sun hat, just go work by the pool every day. And just that atmosphere makes it's so great. It's like I'm just like, well, time to go to work. And I put on like my sun hat and my sunscreen, my bikini and like my my sun wrap and then just like grab my big cooler of snacks and go over to the pool instead of like they got like tables with an umbrella over them and everything. So, I'll just sit there, park it, and just hang out with the locals when they come down to the pool. Like, hey, how's it going, Nancy? Yeah, I'm just working. I make the time. I mean, like, we can talk like a little more in depth later about like how I arrange a schedule to be more efficient, but there are ways to cut down the amount of hours you're putting

21:32 in. And it takes a little bit of work and a little bit of finessing, but it can be done. sometimes like it wouldn't be possible for me if I didn't have my colorist Rayaki, who I have to shout out to. She's amazing, does things so quickly for me. Uh I don't think I would have nearly as much free time without her help. And so it it sort of becomes a balance of like uh making enough to pay out to help someone to have someone help you or you know hanging on to that money and like doing it all yourself. Yeah. I used to be like, "No, I'll do it all myself cuz I want the whole paycheck." And then I was like, "Time and health is more important." Mhm. It's okay. And so, you just got to kind of find what works

22:18 for you. And there's also no shame in being saying to yourself, you know, I work a full-time job already doing something else. No, maybe I can't post once a week. Maybe maybe I can't do this. Maybe I have to scale back. Maybe I have to post twice a month. It's I do see a lot of originals burn out and you know what if you've got other things going on and that sort of thing there's no shame in saying this isn't for me. You are not a quitter. You are not weak. You are not you can't keep up. It just isn't something that you want to invest all of your time into. And that is absolutely fine. I I am so I was so pro hustle culture and girl boss your way through everything and I don't

23:03 need to sleep. I was doing one allnighter every week for two years. Wow. I was exhausted and sick. No more. Sometimes, you know, I'll look at a panel and I'll be like, "This could be so much better." And I was like, "But on the other hand, I want to sleep." So, out it goes. That's it. And you know what? The fans do not care. They could not care less. They They're just happy to get the story. they you show it to them and you're like, "Oh, but it was supposed to look like this." Nine and a half times out of 10, they're just like, "Yeah, that would have been cool, but I'm fine with the other one." We overthink it way too hard and think like, "Oh, it has to be perfect. It has to be this. Has to be that." It really It's okay. It doesn't. It's fine.

23:50 Especially if you're weekly. It's okay. You don't have to do the most and sacrificed all of your health and free time just so like it looks a tiny 10% better. It's fine. Yeah. And like you said, readers don't really care about what like if the panel is perfect, they just want to read it. And that's, you know, I I think we as creators can get so stuck in wanting it to look perfect and wanting it to like, oh, I just I need to add extra detail. I need it to look really good because I want to be satisfied with it, but at what cost? Your mental health, your physical health, right? Yeah. Exactly. It's like you have you have a couple of sliders you can mess with you like the like you know like little sliders that you got. You've got time, you've got money, and you've got

24:37 quality of art. Now listen, like you can't shove up like no time and maximum quality of art. That's not going to happen. Just think of it like I like to like I would never like compare like a web tune is like fast food. Not true. Like there are some amazing amazing art. But if you have only a week to do something versus taking all the time in the world to do something, you will take shortcuts. Nobody is going to go to McDonald's and say, "I ordered this burger and it's not perfectly flame broiled like for 20 minutes over like a a seasoned skillet like just like whatever over like an open flame." Like they're not going to say that. They know what they're expecting. They know they're they're paying for the the speed of the food as well as the taste. Yeah.

25:23 You go to a fancy restaurant, it takes an hour for them to make your food. You go to McDonald's, it takes them like five minutes. And you're willing to wait more for like the really expensive meal, but with McDonald's, listen, your fans are like, they're like, "We will like it. We just want it to be every week. We're okay with it not being perfect, and we just we would rather have it every week. If I go to McDonald's, Yeah. it'll like if it takes an hour to make, I don't want it." Yeah, I you know I'm totally fine with what I mean I can't eat there anymore but back when I could I'm fine with how my Big Mac takes if it's you know takes this long just as long as I'm not waiting an hour like that's such a disservice to compare it to fast food because you know artists do work incredibly hard on web tune but listen people are on web tune

26:10 because they wanted to see it every week you they aren't expecting it to be ungodly unparalleled quality that took two months to do. They'd rather just have it every week and it's, you know, the best you can do within a week. So, don't say don't approach it with how can this be the best possible ever. This is going to be the best possible art and now I have to fit it into my schedule somehow. I have to fit all of that effort into my schedule. Look at it the other way around. Say, I have this many hours. How much quality art can I fit into it? Look at your schedule first and then adjust the quality and the speed of the art to fit that schedule. Don't say it's got to be perfect and I will sacrifice all of my time and my schedule

26:56 in order to do that. The schedule button stays put. The schedule slider stays put and the quality goes up and down. The quality doesn't go to max and then you just like try and crank around the schedule to fit it. Do it the other way. That's what I had to learn in Stag Town. the quality has to be as good as I can possibly get it and I will just kill myself like sacrificing all my free time trying to get there. Now it's I have this many hours in a week. Cinderella boy goes up and down depending on that and it's okay if I forget to like shade a panel so nobody has like shade under their chin or in their hair. Nobody notices. There there have been so many times when Deacon I forgot to put the freckles on his face and nobody even noticed. I went back and did that like live react from season one and I was like, "Oops, forgot his freckles there, too."

27:44 Nobody noticed or cared. It was fine. It was absolutely fine. I think like one time somebody noticed and that's just cuz they have a massive crush on Deacon and even they didn't notice and they screen capped millions of pictures of him. Oh, that is hilarious. We really are. We really really are. So, what were what were some of the things that you learned during your hiatus with Stack Town or just like your experience with Stack Town where you learn to kind of cut back and reduce so you can have a healthier balance? Well, it's funny because it kind of got worse before it got better sort of thing like while I was learning. Uh, this was around the time that during that hiatus between seasons one and two, I had the

28:29 idea for Cinderella Boy and I immediately loved it. I was actually driving home from my folks house way up the coast. It was like a 5-hour drive down from New England and it just popped into my head and I was obsessed with it for the rest of the drive like oh my gosh. And I decided that then and there that even though it would be impossible for me, I wanted to do it on Canvas because I had been just talking to the people at Webtune. I had been during my hiatus, I had been in LA for a party that they were doing at the Webtune headquarters there and a little get together and then we went to the local convention and everything and I had pitched an idea of doing a comedy series after Stagtown and they would like kind of politely reminded me that it's very hard to make readers switch genres once they know you do one thing.

29:15 And they're like, "We just don't know if you can really do comedy." And I was just like looking at him like like staring at you in used to do improv and standup and kind of am known for doing funny things but like just not on Stag Town. And so I was just like oh you know they really didn't. They're like oh you know I mean like can't you just do it like we we can give you another seasons of of Stag Town? And I was like it is literally killing me. It's so depressing. Like I was so sick at the time and didn't know why. And I was really depressed and it was just it's such a like tense series that it was really making me tense and it was making me like unhappy to do it. And like I can laugh about it now because it's over. But at the time I was like I feel like

30:02 I'm trapped in Stag Town and I'm there for escaping. So I did not and I don't have enough material to do three seasons and I don't want to do like a whole half a season of filler just to make a paycheck. I I feel like that's an insult to the audience that pays for those with Fastpass. I was like, I don't want to do another season. So, on the drive home, when I came up with this idea for a comedy series and I thought they're never going to go for it, they said I can't convince my current readers to read a comic, a comedy, like a light-hearted series. And I said, well, I'll just prove them wrong by getting a whole new audience by putting it under another name on canvas, like kind of incognito, and testing it out. And I was like, "Oh, it's going to be in full color, though. Oh, that's going to be so much work." And like, I've never really done that before. I'

30:48 i've never had to do my own colors. I I either had a colorist or my manga, like American manga, was in black and white when I first started. And so, I was like, you know, what I have all these elaborate backgrounds and everything. I was just like, "All right, all right, right." So, I I went home and I was like, "Okay, how will we do this where we cut off this many hours a week of Stag Town and fit in maybe half an episode of Cinderella Boy every week and put it on canvas." And it was it was literally just half. It was like 20 panel episodes. Like, they were just the episodes were just divided in half and put up as part one and part two on canvas. And it was an awful lot of work. I will not lie. Doing two of those series at once was pushing 90 hours of week

31:34 of work. Oh my god. I would fall asleep at my desk with my pen in my hands and fall asleep everywhere. It was miserable. But it was just because I knew it would pay off because I would be able to relax more in the new series. Yeah. He's like, I have a proof of concept. Like here it works. People like it. And it Yeah. And it did. And I I mean the numbers became like there were only 11 episodes on canvas of Cinderella Boy before it got picked up, but the numbers were so good that I showed it later in the year to David and I I was like, "David, look at these numbers." And he's like, "Wait, you've been drawing this at the same time as Stag Town?" I'm like, "Yes, I'm exhausted. Please, please understand. Just look at it." And other editors were like, "Oh, wait. That's Cinderella? I've heard of that." Like,

32:19 "Yeah, actually we've noticed that on canvas. That was you." And I was like, "Yeah, I mean that's pretty similar." And so I showed him the numbers that I had and he was like, "Wow, that's all for one month." And I was like, "Come on, man." Like, "Yeah." And he's like, "All right, yeah, give us a pitch." And so I pitched it right as Stag Town finally ended and they were like, "Yeah, okay." And so they picked it up and so I was like, "Finally, finally I can rest." One big thing that cut down on drawing for me was heavy use of 3D models as backgrounds and used off of because there was even if I had the whole week just to devote to Cinderella boy, which I do now, even if I had it, there's no way I'm going to be able to draw a new palace every single week. Y I I love drawing backgrounds. They're my

33:04 thing. People know that I'm known for drawing backgrounds because I love love love drawing backgrounds like more than drawing characters. I said, "There's no way I can do this comic full-time without using uh 3D models, although a lot of them were very heavily heavily edited by me." Uh, I go in and I touch them up and it takes several more hours to touch up each one. A lot of the models I built over my season 2 hiatus from Stackone. I built them myself in SketchUp because I have experience using SketchUp from going back years and so had to custom build all of like the real world locations and all that. But those still saved a ton of time. And yes, they do cost money, but you can get sales. It's on a3d.com. A n3d.com

33:50 if you know how to use that sort of program. I found their free program, Abler, which is like a Blender. Yeah. Yeah. They just came out with Abler 2.0 and Yeah. which is no longer free and is also only in Korean. And so I was like, forget it. I have Google Translate on my phone. I will translate the menus while using it. And they're like great, but you have to but you can only buy it in like you had to have this like Korean like bank identification number or something somewhere where I tried to buy it and you had to be a Korean citizen to buy it. I was like man I am screwed. And so I went looking around. They're like we also have a Japanese version so you can buy it in from Japan in yen without having to be a local resident. And so I bought that. And so I was like, now I just like use Google Translate on it.

34:37 And now I've got it all memorized. But I was like, you are not keeping me from doing my job. So that's where the money comes in as an investment to claw back some of your time. That program is I got it in yen, so it was a little more expensive than if I had gotten it in Korean one, but it was like it's like a hundred bucks a year for that program. But it looks phenomenal. It's fantastic. It has like nice tune shading on it. You can do atmosphere. you can do bloom on like to give it a softer diffusion like it looks great and so that is money I'm willing to spend in order to get back some of my time whereas Stag Town I had all these big elaborate backgrounds and they were all cross-hatch and I did them all by hand and it killed me and so I was like I'm willing to save up and and

35:24 use those as a timesaver and they are an incredible timesaver and so I have that going for me. I have Rayaki, my colorist, who is overseas, and she's just phenomenal. And I pay her a set amount of dollars per panel, and she helps me out with that. It is more of a money investment, so there can be sort of like a a little bit of return of investment. Yeah, if you're if you're on on canvas, it can be a little bit of a steep hurdle to get over. But on the other hand, most stories don't need a new castle every other. You know, like for me, like all of Cinderella Boy is is based on constantly going to new locations. New fantasy locations. Exactly. And they're very expensive. But if you've just got a school, a house,

36:11 and like a town, if you've got the same four or five locations all the time, you can make an initial investment on those models, and you're only putting in like just a little bit of money up front, and then you're good for like the rest of the season. Well, that's that's like what I did with my series is I found a bundle on Acon 3D and it was like $100, but you get basically like an entire city. Like you have your high-rise buildings, you have there's like uh restaurants, there's streets, there's buildings, there's apartments, like trees, parks, it's got it's got everything. So, I was like, you know what? I'm going to buy this because this is what I'm going to use for the rest of my series. And it really really saved me a lot of time because I hate

36:56 backgrounds. I hate drawing them. I can't do it. I have a series I started doing on YouTube called I hate backgrounds which shows people how to like how to very conveniently and quickly draw backgrounds and tips and tricks that take like 10 minutes. Like they're all 10-minute lessons. And I showed how to perfectly draw windows in perspective on a building and like anything that like anything that's parallel to each other like railroad tracks, rail fences, like it's just an easy 10-minute trick. And people were amazed. They're like, I didn't know like actually drawing backgrounds was this easy. And I was like, yeah, it absolutely. It's because you you're you're not approaching it with like all the like little secret hints that people know. But even then, that's not going to save you if you're like me and you need a n castle every five seconds. So, my Patreon, I actually

37:45 have a monthly budget for models and a monthly budget for colors. And like a lot of my Patreon goes towards covering those high costs, but it's worth it. Yeah. Because then I get weekends off. I'm sitting here drawing my 50th palace because literally the series would not exist. Like there wouldn't be even if I spent every last waking minute and slept like six hours a night, the series could not exist on a weekly basis with all the elaborate backgrounds that need to happen. So again, it it's like would I love to draw them by hand? Absolutely. I love drawing castles. I love drawing all that stuff. It makes me so happy. But again, with those sliders, you know, the the schedule is fixed and we're going to slide up and down the quality right here. And people do like the way they

38:31 look. you have to have a couple of tricks for having them blend in with your art so that it all looks very cohesive. But it's and again it it helps to know SketchUp and to be able to model things yourself and know when to draw over something in the background and like fix it up so that it looks really good and that there's a lot of different hints. I'm actually going to be coming out with a new digital series on YouTube later this year teaching people how to do that sort of thing so that their time is more efficient. Okay. It's going to be all about being more like listen there there's a hundred much hundred more like thousands much better tutorials on how to be a good web tune artist. I want to put out a series that is about how to be a more efficient web tune artist so that you aren't burning yourself out and you aren't doing things like I was doing the

39:17 absolute wrongest and like hardest way possible. And like I want to save you money. I want to save you time so that you can get your art done and still go out and hang out with your friends and go to the store and like just sit out on a nice day or just read a book sometimes. Yeah, I I love that. I would definitely watch that because I feel like the like you said, there's a lot of people covering how to be a better web tune artist and like grow as an artist, but like not a whole lot that I've seen about efficiency. Yeah, I think that the efficiency part is so critical, especially in the web tune industry or just being a web comics artist in general because you're doing a lot more work than say like if you were working on a comic book for a few months like

40:03 it's not like as tight and demanding of a schedule. I have the unique perspective in that I've been in comics for 20 years now. And so I remember I remember back in my day, back in my day when we used to draw on paper and we drew our big pages for our comics on paper and scan them in on an 11 by7 flat scanner. I still have that old 11 by7 scanner under my bed. I don't even want to I don't even know if it would still work. I haven't even tried to hook it up yet, but I was like, I wonder if this thing still works. I'm sure you can't get drivers for it anymore, but I remember when we still used to draw on paper. And I think what contributed to me being more efficient as an artist is coming from that background where if you drew something and then you started to ink it and you

40:48 messed up, guess what? It was forever to go back and do it again. It wasn't undo, undo, undo, undo on your tablet. It was take another piece of paper, paste it down over where you screwed up, and then reink on top of it. You can't use white out. It looks like crud. or like doing that and then having to put it into the computer with your like really crummy like proto tablet and trying to fix it. So you got it right the first time you got it right because you didn't have time to fix it and there is no undo. The amount of undo that I do now on like tablets is amazing but there wasn't any when you drew on paper. So you when I was showing somebody how I draw and they said okay how do you like cuz I had my tablet out they're like show me how you draw a panel and I would draw like a very simple like skeleton sketch of the

41:35 character and then I was just start inking like we call it inking but I guess line arting now they call it immediately without a base like drawing their clothes their facial expression everything they're like you just drew that like I I was like from 20 years of experience it comes with experience and practice ice. You have to practice, practice, practice, practice. And then eventually you'll be able to draw people straight without even having to fuss and fuss and fuss and fuss and do like a little pencil layer underneath and a sketch layer and then line on top of that. You just go straight from like idea to line art. Like that's how I save a lot of time. But that's you can't just do that automatically. You have to have a lot of practice in years and years of it. And so no better time than to start today. I definitely I think that was kind of a

42:21 problem I ran into when I was working on my contest entry for the legends contest is I was sketching things and then line arting and then I was like flatting and then rendering. So it was like a lot of steps in the process. So that was like and I was like running out of time too doing it that way was just trying to sketch it out and my my sketches were so clean that I didn't really need to do line art because the sketches are so clean and so I was really shooting myself in the foot in that process of just it was taking me extra time. I also was doing a lot of work for the podcast trying to do it at the same time. And so there I think I had from like

43:09 February until the end of the contest I had maybe a good three weeks of like actual being able to put work into my contest entry. And you know I got yeah I met the requirements at least I got it done thankfully. But I was like okay. So, when I return to a regular update schedule, I'm just going to skip the sketching. I'm going to put my 3D models in there, and I'm just I'm going to do what So, this is what Rotania does, the creator of Star Catcher. She just has the models, then she just inks. She puts their clothes in, hair, details, sends it off to her flat colorist, and then she does the rendering after. I'm like, "Yep, that's what I'm going to do." Cuz I want to stick to a bi-weekly schedule. And I'm like, "You know what? Since my sketches were already clean, I don't

43:56 have to have the line art be perfect either. So, I'm like, I'm going to save myself some time be more efficient. Absolutely. And that's and I can't tell you how much I love Star Catcher. Like, can we just Star Catcher? Canot. Cannot. So good. So good. So good. So good. And she's so nice. Saying that saying that on Discord like you're just so fabulous. Yes. Yeah. No, that is exactly it. Like too too often we get too stuck on the sketch layer and we go, "Oh, but I don't know." Like we we second guess ourselves and oh well I just can't go straight into line art. But that's exactly what I do. I just go boom. That's why somebody said, "Well, maybe to cut down on more time you could get somebody to do your line art for you." And I said, "No, because then I'd have to spend more time doing a sketch layer for them. I just go straight from like concept to line art."

44:43 Like just like that. There is no in between. it would actually be more work for me to do a sketch layer and tighten it up to the point where someone else could follow it. And like all my scripts, I don't sit there typing out and then so and so does this in this panel and then then that. Like I have a script where it's just like uh one two three four and I what I do for the scripts is I number how many panels are in the episode and I aim for those panels because people say oh you know I wanted to do this and I wanted to that and I and I ended up being 10 more panels than I usually do and it was so much extra work and I said put your structure down first. put down 45 panels or 50 panels or whatever you're slated to do. 20 panels and then fit the story into that and you will find you can save a whole lot of panels if you only have that many. Like just give yourself a

45:29 budget. I have this many panels. I have 45 panels. I have never I won't say never but almost never put down that number and then been like oh no it accidentally went 10 over. like you will find a way to fit it and it will one of the things that I hear consistently from readers is they like Cinderella Boy because they said there's no filler. It doesn't drag. It goes point point. You know, it goes from joke to joke. It goes from scene to scene. It goes plot to plot really really not too fast. It doesn't skip over anything. But they're like there's no dead air. There's no filler episodes. I said because that's I work within a budget. I don't I don't write the story and all the things first and then then be like, "Well, I have to expand everything to fit that." I art and your

46:15 time are like water. If you pour it into a glass, even if it's a little bit of water, it's not going to just huddle in one little corner of the glass. It's going to try and fill up the whole glass. It's going to spread out. And that's something I found also with my schedule. I found that if I give myself all day to do 10 panels, it will take all day to do 10 panels somehow. And when I was working on Stagtown, I thought I'm working at my limit. I'm working so many hours and I'm only getting this many panels done. And one of the secrets that I found for efficiency is I now work a strictly 9-to-five schedule, five days a week. I get up at the get up at the same time and technically it's 9 to6 because I take an hour off for lunch. So, and so like I I'll like an hour off for lunch

47:02 or like since I see a personal trainer, I'll fit that in for an hour because he's right off the street. So, I do that. But I give myself eight hours because I I noticed when we talk about efficiency, I am obsessed with efficiency and cutting down on time. I've read books about efficiency. I've watched seminars about efficiency because I feel it's just as important as being a good artist. Being an efficient artist will keep you from burning out. It is because burnout is the worst enemy of web. And so I I was trying to figure out how can I be more efficient in my work? And I said, "Oh, there's just nothing else I can cut down on. I It took me this long just to do this many panels." And I thought to myself, why is it that it took me all day all the way until

47:48 bedtime to do 10 panels one day? Like I'm like, this is 10 panels today. It's so much work. And yet every time I'm way behind and have no episode buffer and I wake up Monday morning at like 5 in the morning, somehow those same 10 panels only take me like three hours to do because I have to get them done as quickly as possible. Why is it I can do it on the day and I can't do it then? And I started to look at how I work and I thought it's because if I give myself all day to do it, it's going to take all day to do it. If I give myself eight hours to do it, it's going to take eight hours to do. And that's because we're picking up our phones. We're walking into the other room. Our mouth is bored and wants to go to the fridge. Yep. We're not even hungry. Our mouth is just bored. It's looking for things to do. We've got TV playing like, "Oh, I'm

48:35 just going to I've seen this movie a thousand times before. I'm just going to put it on for background noise. There have been multiple studies done that prove that no, people really, really can't multitask. We think we can multitask because we feel like we're doing two things at once, but our brain is not thinking of two things at once. It's thinking about what's on the TV, thinking about what's on your tablet, thinking about what's on TV, thinking about what's on your tablet. It's constantly flipping back and forth, even if you think you're not really listening to it. The thing that I found was turning off videos, turning off TV, turning off movies and all that and maybe just having like really chill music playing in the background and not music that I keep getting up to change it all the time. Like I go on on YouTube and find one of those like 10-hour work study relax

49:21 like synth wave kind of thing that I love. Flip one of those on in the morning and you just sit down and you concentrate on your work for eight hours. you can get it done in 8 hours and then you got the rest of the day to do whatever you want and then you've got a weekend again, but it's all of the little distractions and not giving yourself a time. If I'm working and I think I've got 8 hours to do this many panels today and I'll be working and it's 11:00 a.m. and I've been working since 9 and I'm doing in my head, okay, that many panels divided up into eight hours means I should be doing this many panels an hour. And if I look down, I'm like, oh, I'm actually one behind. And I was like, I'm taking too long playing around and fussing with, oh, it's not perfect. Oh, it's not perfect. I didn't get his hair just perfect. I'm like, I have to hurry up cuz I'm going to be falling behind. That keeps me on track.

50:09 And it is night and day the difference in my work. So, I was just like, I can't believe that ages ago it would take me all day long to do this many panels and now I can get them done in an 8 hour workday and then I got the rest of the day to goof off if but you have to like and if you think about it when you go to an office for an office job you don't get to bring your TV with you or your fridge. Yep. You don't you don't get to bring your you don't get to constantly be on your phone like playing and like surfing online. It's like you get more done because you're not sitting there with all of those distractions. And this is something that Dave Sim, like a a comic creator from back in the day, gave like a talk about and my teachers gave it as

50:55 a print out way back in like 2001 in college. And he said the same thing and except it was written so long ago that he referred to the internet as like computer nets like Usenet like the proto internet and like and talked about being distracted by your telephone, not social media. But he said turn off your TV. He worked in total silence. That's crazy. Like I can't always do that. I have to I should have like music playing, but it has to be like droning music that I'm not getting up to change all the time. And I said the same thing to him, which was I'm not really like watching the TV. It's just playing in the background. I need noise. Like ADHD runs in my family. I need two things to concentrate on. If I want to concentrate on this thing, I need noise. And I was very for years just that was my line. And then I realized actually no, that's not true.

51:40 That's not true at all. I just tried it the other way and was amazed at how efficient I was. And it was just crazy. So now I know this is what works for me. And things may be different for you. You have to test, you have to tweak it, you have to be conscious of, okay, how many panels did I get done in this amount of time? And is that really the most efficient way? Let's try turning everything off and just focusing on my tablet. Yeah, it's boring and you're not as entertained, but you're at work. Mhm. You don't get to go to the office and bring your TV and be like, but I want to watch more of Severance. Like, can I do that while I'm working? Right. Can I just be doing that while I'm working? No, you cannot because you will be watching the TV or listening to the TV instead of working quickly and just get

52:26 your work done first during the day and then you've got the rest of the evening to do whatever and you're still working from home but you're not eating up all your time. You're you're not expanding your workday to all day because you keep interrupting it with other things. And then now it's such I cannot tell you how much of a relief it is. Like a physical relief to be done at 6:00 p.m. and then be like, I don't have to think about my series for the rest of the day. Cuz that is the killer. If you let it consume your life, you will be thinking about it all the time. There's no off. And I'm sure you've heard and I'm sure you've probably felt it sometime like I am so constantly doing or thinking about my series that I feel like I'm never away from work.

53:12 I'm I don't have that like off that people they just go to work at Starbucks and then when they come home they don't have to think about work until tomorrow. That's such a luxury. You work from home, you work for yourself. That's a luxury that you have to build into your schedule but it's worth it where you can just be like 6 p.m. I don't have to do anything else. I like I don't have to think about work until tomorrow. This is great. It feels so good to do that instead of being like, well, I'm going to work on this all day and I'm going to be finishing it up at a panel right before I go to bed and then I'm going to wake up first thing in the morning and think about it again and on and on and on and on and on. You need to have that time when you are actively not thinking about work. And it can be hard because I am a massive workaholic. But I make the time. I go out with my friend Kelly and Perry and we do stuff. I go see my

53:58 friend Paul. I go see, you know, Carrie and David. I'd see everybody and we just go do things and I say, "I'm not going to think about work today and I'm not going to bring it with me." I used to bring it everywhere. Even when I went to social functions or parties or whatever, I have my tablet with me. No, it's staying home and I'm not bringing it no matter what. You just have to enforce that and you have to compress your work into a regular chunk of time where you're just doing that and not getting distracted so that you will have that expanded time later for your brain to decompress and think about something other than work. Yeah, I think that's such an important component and it it it definitely shows kind of the difference of your workload versus like a independent creator's workload. Like us independent

54:46 creators, we have jobs, right? We have full-time jobs or we have weird schedules. And so it's like, okay, so I can get done with my regular job. How much time can I allocate to working on my comic? And I think it's really important to figure that out. And what really helped me in my process was I basically just started timing myself. And I kind of had to redo it cuz I'm changing out my process cuz I'm going to skip the sketching this time. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But what was helping me was I'm like, "Okay, I have my script. I have my story boards. Let's time myself and see how long it takes me to do a certain panel." So it could be a chibi panel is like a level one. A panel with two chibies a

55:33 level two. A panel with like a regular character three. Multiple characters are four. If it was a really long complex panel that's like a five. And so I went through this process of timing myself how long it took to do each type of panel. And then I could actually roughly estimate how long an episode would take based on the types of panels I had in the episode. And like I had to do this where I'm like, "Okay, not every panel can be a four or a five. I have to balance it with the ones and the twos and the threes to like give myself time to be able to like get it done." But I think I have to redo it. So good. No, I know. I totally understand. But that is such a good system. Like I love that. I love that you you assign you say I have this many hours to do something. I'm going to

56:20 assign a point value to how difficult a certain thing is and then we're going to do that. That is so like just perfect. It's just excellent. And yeah, I have been on both sides where you know, remember when I said I worked at the toy company while doing Stag Town at the same time? It's okay to scale it back. Like Stag Town back then like episodes were really short and that was just they didn't have to be. You're like, "Oh, well, nobody will pick me up for originals unless I do, you know, a 40 panel episode every week like they do." That's absolutely not true. Mhm. We just ended up combining episodes like there would be, you know, take two episodes and combine them into one when going to originals, but they would be like maybe 20 panels long or something. Don't worry about it. You can always fix it later. You can always don't be thinking this is going to be the version

57:05 that like if and when I get picked up or if and when I go to print or if and when I decide to do this and this with it, just do what you can now. And I love that like people really should work more at just timing what they can do and how efficient they can do. And look around, look around to see what makes you personally more efficient. Like you can see I got like my whole like 80s setup going here in my office. My thing is I am very affected by my surroundings. And before I thought it doesn't matter where I work, it doesn't matter if my room is messy. It doesn't matter if anything is anything because I'm just doing the same amount of work. But your environment will stress you out. Like we as artists are really sensitive to our environments and I now work incredibly hard to keep I just keep everything as neat as possible. I took a picture of my desk

57:51 the other day and sent it to the Discord and they're like this is like aesthetic goals like everything is like everything is like nice like pale wood and the your your little vapor wave pastel color scheme and like everything's perfectly in its place. That's what works for me. me. That's what makes me feel the most relaxed and in control of my surroundings. It's not always easy for people. Sometimes you've got like you got to work in your bedroom, you've got your desk set up and everything, but pick a spot that you feel most productive in and that you feel you can really breathe in. And the more stressed your environment makes you, the harder it's going to be to work. So work and see what works best for you. For me, it's being outside. Like I was telling you how much I love just being in the sun like all the time with sunscreen.

58:37 With sunscreen and a bright red hat. Thank you very much. Got to protect that skin barrier. Exactly. And so but I have it a setup on my balcony for when I don't want to go down to the pool during the summer when I am when it is summer. Go down to the pool under an umbrella and all that. Like that works for me. That makes me happy. I feel really energized and productive then. And maybe it's, you know, different for other people, but just find what works best for you. tidy up a little. Like that really helped me a lot. Like visual I I'm I'm always reading studies about these things. Like there was there were a couple studies I read studies that said like the more visual clutter you have in your life, the more your brain has to process it. And that seems so like hippie, new age, like oh my god, the manifestation of all

59:24 your stuff is like affecting your vibes. But it does have a scientific basis. Like for example, if I have a stack of a million things of projects I never got done, things from the fifth grade, something I meant to send to my mother, your brain looks at every one of those things and processes the emotions and the things like in the background while you're trying to work. I never got to do that project. Oh, I feel a little bummed about that. I feel disappointed in myself. I was supposed to send that thing to my mom. Oh, I got to remember to do that. Remember that thing that I saw in the fifth grader? Oh, whatever happened to that guy I used to know? are like, "Oh, I'm supposed to take out that recycling. Oh, I got to think about that." It's processing all that information in the background in your head. And when part of my efficiency kick was when I cleaned up and just Yeah. Just put everything away. just put

1:00:10 just put up like a nice neat little

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