Attn: smaller artists. 

The only block I have on supplies is a financial one.

My confidence is fragile at times too, but I just try to remember the end game.

Max: I learned to read from comic books, so they've been a part of my life for as long as I can remember. The comic realm taught me my vocabulary, my moral philosophy, and how to create art. It was always a given that I would have to return the favor, to give something back to that community. I've got more stories in my head than I'll ever have time to illustrate, but that won't stop me from trying. I've always operated under the philosophy that if you make enough art in your life, time can't possibly erase it all after I'm gone.

Kaminski: It sounds like you and I share some very similar sensibilities when it comes to the reasoning behind making art. So it reasons to be, that your ability with line must transcend to both medias because of your tattooing background. Do you find there to be a difference in approach when it comes to the tattoo gun vs. a pen / pencil? What's some strategies you use when jumping back and forth? And/or what's some similarities between the two?


Max: Tattooing is much more like painting than drawing. The techniques used for blending and saturation are similar to watercolor. Each stroke must be deliberate and colored in a certain order. Drawing comics allows me to work looser, allows me to lightly sketch an area until I find the perfect pose or perspective. Because tattoos are so permanent and unforgiving, creating comics has become the perfect therapy for unwinding after a long day. I get to create art on my own terms without having to please a client. The only similarities lay in my sketch process when I'm creating designs. But for my last three series, I've gone completely digital, and that's an entirely different beast. The only time I use a pencil these days is for tattoo sketches. I use a light blue Japanese soft lead that vanishes after I Xerox it. Maybe my tattoo and comic styles look similar. I can't really tell because my comics are a real world to me. They've ceased being drawings and feel more like I'm filming a documentary.

Tattooing is much more like painting than drawing. The techniques used for blending and saturation are similar to watercolor.

Kaminski: Well! You just changed my perspective!

Max: Haha, how so?

Kaminski: I honestly thought that tattooing in general was like drawing and painting with ink, not painting in washes like watercolor.

Max: It is in some ways. Or maybe it's more like using Copic markers. But It's definitely not like oil or acrylic because there's no way to alter the color once it's laid down. You can tint it, but there's no do-overs. Every mark has to be purposeful.

Kaminski: Whoa! So cool! Switching gears: What's it been like to work in comics thus far?


Max: Working in comics is my dream job. It's so exhilarating to sit down at the desk and create an entire world from scratch! I started off illustrating a couple of issues of Bethany's Song by Donald Juengling. I had so much fun on that project that I couldn't wait for another project to come my way. I immediately started writing my own graphic novel set in a futuristic Memphis and found that I was very satisfied with the mystery I'd come up with. I called it The Golden Silence. It was sort of a hodgepodge of every old detective show I'd ever seen, but I crammed it full of personal experience and emotion. And when I say crammed, I mean it. My first draft was 456 pages. I edited it down to 416, which ran for 16 issues and took a year and a half to illustrate. I published it myself under the banner of Memfamous Comics. The reception was warm and people seemed to enjoy the main characters, so I didn't waste any time writing its sequel, The Crimson Hand. This time I shortened the tale down to 6 32-page issues. I'm right in the middle of that one right now. I also created a third series called Memfamous Comics Presents that tells short stories set in that same world. And I've got a few dozen scripts ready to keep it going for a while. Illustration comes natural to me, but learning to write, edit, publish, and market a book took a lot of reading and practice. I've really learned a lot about how to run a business myself. It would be nice to have some other artists involved in the process, but I just haven't had the extra funds to hire anyone. The profits are meager, especially compared to tattooing, but that will never stop me from telling a story that needs to be told. I'm anxiously trying to finish The Crimson Hand now so I can move on to my next project. My next title is a really fresh idea that I think people haven't seen before. I'm very excited about it.

Kaminski:  Let's jump right in then: what spurned your interest in your Golden Silence project? And in that vein, what's a good summary for folks of the story as a whole? 

Kaminski: In that vein: Was there anything in particular that seemed to drive you towards or away from your project initially? Do you still feel just as driven about the project all these years later?
For me working on a comic project has been a very slow process because of the daunting amount of work, so I can only commend you on your dedication.


Max: The Golden Silence happened because I wanted to do something cyberpunk, but also something local. So I jumped ahead two hundred years into my own neighborhood. I created this scenario where a world war between religions had broken the United States and left Memphis to fend for itself. The entire city is surrounded by a wall to control who enters from the wasteland beyond. The police force is now corporate-owned and called The Public Eye because they use technology to spy on every inhabitant. The reluctant hero of the story is a disgraced former cop named Filadelfo Burden. Burden, with the help of his assistant Lola, now operates a Finder Service. He uses his experiences as a cop to track down various people, places, things, much like a modern day private eye. The only problem is that he has this monstrous addiction to sex, drugs, danger, or anything else that could get him killed. In The Golden Silence, he has to solve a missing person case without becoming one himself. He knocks on death's door almost every issue. That's the gag.

I was driven to do a detective story because of my love of old crime shows. I just threw Mike Hammer, Jim Rockford, and Sam Spade in a blender and added a pinch of myself. As I started writing, I poured more and more of myself into the story. I used a lot of personal experience with addiction, with psychedelics, with religion, with casual sex and used the book to explore how I really felt about those ideas. For instance, if a good friend died in real life, I would put that into the story and let Fil Burden work out his feelings toward that. Because his feelings are pretty much my own. So I stayed very focused and forced myself to get the work done. I didn't let anything pull me away from that project. My friends and family can attest to that. And I'm still that driven. But I just had a baby daughter born in December, so I'm finding that I won't have that much free time again for a while. But yeah, I live for work. The harder my day, the happier I am with myself at night.

Making comics is soooo exhausting. It takes forever. I can see why most are done by large teams of people

Kaminski: Oh I hear that! That is part of what maintains my trepidation of diving in headfirst. Once you start, you can't stop! So you better make sure you're fully committed once you start!
If you were to start over as a creative, what are some things you would tell yourself?


Max: First thing I would tell myself is to not release a brand new series a week before a presidential election. It turns out that people have their attention diverted and social media totally loses its marketing power. And social media is another lesson. I'd tell myself to not underestimate the prep work needed to launch a book in a way that the public can easily find and consume it. I also wish I could tell myself to start producing comics a lot earlier. I wasted at least a decade daydreaming about it before I did it, and I really missed out on this indie comics renaissance that happened about ten years ago. It's still happening, but now the market is so oversaturated that it's becoming increasingly more difficult to stand out in the crowd.

Kaminski: I can hear that... but in that same vein, it's all about grass roots, right? Once it starts to take off, there's no stopping it. Do you ever find your inner voice competing with the two sides of your artistic ability? Or do you view them as two parts of the same whole?

I know that working a day job, I have this tendency to come home feeling drained from dealing with the normal ins-and-outs of graphic design work, so it makes me wonder if there are also days where the same thing happens to you with tattooing vs. comics.

Laziness in art is a cardinal sin. That's the quickest way to get sent to Art Hell.

Max: Oh yes. Tattooing is like any job. It gets tiresome. Especially when the art you're creating is to satisfy someone else, and art is best when it's self exploration. So when I come home and switch gears into comic mode, it's all about pleasing that inner voice. I don't stifle it at all. I don't concern myself with editing, with being PC, or being shy, because that would be censoring whatever my subconscious wants to explore. Sometimes I read a finalized page and think "Well, that's rather offensive." But I don't edit that, because it would be artistically dishonest. And when it's over, I feel more relaxed because I've just had a therapeutic conversation with myself over thoughts that needed to surface. People think I'd be burned out from working too much, but the comics actually cleanse me and hit my reset button for the following day's work.

Kaminski: Definitely what art should do! I'm glad to hear that it's doing it's damn job instead of being all lazy and whatnot.

Max: Laziness in art is a cardinal sin. That's the quickest way to get sent to Art Hell.

Kaminski: This one is completely optional, but do you have any questions for me?

Max: I love your cyberpunk art. It reminds me of those old Shadowrun covers. Do you think you'll ever do a comic or graphic novel? Or do you prefer one-off illustrations to the sequential stuff?

Kaminski: Hilariously enough, my first influence is actually the ShadowRun second and third edition books. Because of that, Elmore definitely has a huge influence on my as well as John Van Fleet and Timothy Bradstreet. It makes me very happy that you recognize my influences as that means that I feel like I'm getting closer to being on point with that type of art.

Ultimately the whole project is actually part of a bigger world that Ashley and I continually work on and off - Honor: [De]Coded. The marionettes (all of my robot women) are part of this world as much as the displaced archetypes and foundlings, etc. etc. It's actually a world that is slowly building, but coming out none-the-less.

We have parts of the world and characters, but have yet to really find a way to piece it all together. Eventually it'll become a cohesive project though. I just have to stop getting lazy about it hahaha. That and I don't know if I could work on a comic project outside of my own work. I would have a seriously hard time on another's IP - making sure that every angle lined up to their expectations and things...

But yeah, the short answer is that it's all part of a bigger world that will eventually surface into a graphic novel form.

Max: I'm looking forward to seeing that happen. Cyberpunk is my favorite genre. I grew up feasting on cyberpunk comics, movies, art with these big cumbersome headgears and wires protruding from everything, but when I sat down to make my own universe, I had to modernize those ideas. I had to keep reminding myself that the future is wireless with smaller technology. It was hard!
If you could have any gig drawing an established character, which one would it be?
(Personally I'd like to revive Ghost Rider 2099)

Kaminski: Ooohhh.... that's a GOOD question!

It's hard to narrow down to one specifically... but if I were to dive into one character only, it might have to be Tank Girl. She intrigues me for so many reasons, but the one thing that I haven't really seen out of her is absolute depth. She just seems to be the embodiment of angst, and punk (which I'm okay with at face value).

Max: Oh yeah, Tank Girl definitely needs an update. They're always trying new artists, but the story never really progresses.

Kaminski:  What goals do you have set for yourself in the immediate? What about long term?


Max: My most immediate goal is to finish up my current series. The Crimson Hand only has half of its six issues out. But I desperately want to start my next series, so I'm about to shift it into high gear. My long term goal is to keep all these titles running long enough to make them popular. I'd love to see the Memfamous comic universe as a tv series, reaching a much wider audience. I would love to write for television, and it would be exciting to have a decent show set here and filming locally.

I don't have a retirement fund, and Hollywood money is about the only way to strike it rich with comics.

Kaminski: And of course, the final question: what's the best piece of advice you've received or best piece of advice you can give to upcoming artists?

Max: The best advice I could give to other artists came from my college painting teacher. "Just work." Don't feel inspired? Work anyway. Don't have an audience? Work anyway. Broken arm? Work anyway. Never stop working because each and every attempt makes you better at creation and safer in knowing your purpose. And a lot of the good stuff in art happens when you're not paying attention.

I think as artists, it's important that we all build community. That we build a support system of people that we can lean upon. A moment to realize that no question is too big or two small. This brings me to today's question:

I believe finding a reason to be a creative can sometimes be the hardest. Simply doing art-for-art's-sake usually doesn't fill the hole that you experience as an artist for long.  Quite often, even during my degree-seeking adventures of art school, I would constantly question myself and others,

"Is this what I (we) really want to do?" 

This question, much like a disc that continually skips, was on repeat. I feel like a majority of artists are initially scrambling to find a reason to do what they do, or even do what they enjoy.

I think it's critically important to discover why you enjoy art in the first place. That will be the initial guiding light that will turn you towards what you'd like to push forward with.

Ask yourself: What am I interested in?

This can seem like a daunting question at face value, but it will help to quickly turn the tide in your self-discovery favor.

I can still remember it, when I was a kid, thumbing through old volumes of Advanced Dungeons and Dragons, 2nd ed. Monsters Manual. I would read the small descriptions, even before looking at any of the ink plates that were presented in the book itself, and try my damnedest to imagine what the creatures would look like before I took a peek. Usually I was wrong, but I learned a valuable lesson at that point. I have the ability to come up with my own monsters? That's a thing?! It took a long while for this ideology to sink in, but there you have it, my first steps into doing art as a profession. Of course, I didn't know it at the time, but that for another story.

Fast-forward some time and thousands-upon-thousands of images later (not my own creation, merely gathered imagery), and I have slowly begun to discover what types of images I do or don't like. Some might say, I've gained a tad of an Art Director's eye. I can go on, at length, as to what makes a piece of art good or bad and offer a multitude of fixes to help make the piece really shine!

But through all of it, I still get continually asked the same question about creativity.
There isn't of course a tell-tale answer for everyone, but here's a few reasons that I think some people might pursue the creative arts:

For Money?

Some people might merely be searching for the next paycheck. While I will admit, sometimes the instant gratification of a payday can seem like a heaven-sent, I think it's important to look at the bigger picture. Sure, we all need money, but there's a certain amount of soul-gratification to completing a piece. I have this tendency to save a piece in a multitude of stages from initial sketch to final piece. I think this might be a holdover from when I was back in art school, but it's extremely gratifying to look back at a piece from conception to final.

Another bonus to saving a piece in stages, especially if you're searching for the monetary aspect, is that you can double it up later on as part of an art book. I know that I, for one, love to see all of the stages that make up the end result.



For Prestiege?

While this is something that typically happens over-time, some people go into the arts with this purely in mind. Going for fame and glory is always a matter of opinion, but having a background task (typically) is the way of the artist. There's always the ability to gain some sort of fame, or notoriety, depending on how you pursue your creativity, but there's still a certain amount of letting your creations speak for you. In this regard, I think that jumping into creativity with this in mind might end up making your struggle a bit harder than intended up front.

I'd suggest to let this path come to you.

For Preservation?

This one is also a bit hard to gauge because, as with prestige, usually comes the need for a way for your audience to want in on the action. By default, then, you end up with a sort of living legacy of your work.

For example, go back and look at a piece you did long ago, and then compare it to a piece that you're currently working on. I'd guarantee that you'll see a huge difference, even if it's only been a short amount of time. Your mind has changed about things, or perhaps your skill has grown. Ultimately, preservation, and subsequently, the need for collectors, will grow over time.

For Fun?

Then we come upon the real reason we should all be creating in the first place. FUN. If you're not enjoying the path as your developing it, trust me, it shows. I've seen the most passionate people burn out simply because they lost sight of the ability to have fun with their work.

If you're finding yourself burned out, try doing something completely different artistically. Drawing too many dragons? Try going the opposite direction: draw some robots. Combine the two: robotic dragons. Feeling out of sorts with character design? Try a couple environment studies. Another important thing to try is... simply take a break! Most people think that they have to grind and grind to get to their goals. Well when gears grind too hard, they break. This is true for a creative. They need to take a step back sometimes and just refresh their batteries.

I make it a point whenever I finish a big commission to take a day or two to just push that refresh button. Watch movies, play games, listen to music non-stop; anything that provides a release from monotony.

Ultimately, just have fun with your work!

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There are many other reasons to pursue art, but these are the top four that come to mind instantly whenever I start to think about reasons behind the art.

What are some of your reasons for continuing to make work? Leave a comment below with yours!