TED RALL FAQs
Q: Isn't the conceit of asking yourself a question and then answering
yourself to avoid contact with real people incredibly pretentious?
A: Yes, it is.
Q: So why do it at all?
A: Everyone else does.
Q: Do you do everything everyone else does?
A: No, but I'm doing this.
Q: Okay. So how did you break into cartooning?
A: I've always drawn cartoons, starting when I was a kid growing up in
Dayton, Ohio and my mom bought me construction paper which I used to make
hand-made comic books. I drew pretty much for myself until I went to high
school. One day it occured to me to pitch my cartoons to the editor of the
local paper, the Kettering-Oakwood (Ohio) Times, and he liked them enough to
start running them. I was 16. I did cartoons for my high school and college
papers, but after college I got rejected by all the papers and syndicates to
which I submitted. In 1987 I began photocopying my cartoons at the office
where I worked and plastering them on lamp posts in New York City. I
included my PO Box address on those cartoons and every now and then an editor
of a paper would contact me and start running my stuff. By 1991 I was in 12
small papers, including the now-defunct New York Weekly. One of the
syndicates which had constantly rejected me over the years, the now-defunct
San Francisco Chronicle Features, decided to take a chance on me during the
middle of the worst recession in decades. That's how I got syndicated, and
despite leaving for Universal Press Syndicate five years later, that was my
biggest break.
Q: What materials do you use?
A: I draw with personally-modified Rapidograph pens ranging from thicknesses
of 2 to 7 on British Es-Dee scratchboard and regular Bristol paper. For
scratchboard pieces, I use a sharp scratch nib to cut away the white spaces.
Then I scan the India ink line art on a flat-bed scanner and drop the shading
in using Photoshop - for color cartoons I add the color in Photoshop.
Q: What about the original art? Does this mean there aren't any?
A: Now the originals are just the line art; if someone wants to buy one I
print out a copy with the shading as a transparent overlay; it looks exactly
the same.
Q: How long does it take to draw a cartoon?
A: Anywhere from 2 to 4 hours.
Q: What's your advice for a struggling young cartoonist?
A: Don't do this unless you absolutely have to. Cartoonists are
underappreciated, underpaid, overworked and get really bad back aches from
hunching over the drafting table for years at a time.
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All Material Copyright 2000 Ted Rall. Web Design: Bård Edlund.
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