Today we’d like to introduce you to Chris Anderson
Hi Chris, so excited to have you with us today. What can you tell us about your story?
I was born in the Twin Cities and moved to L.A. when I was nineteen in ’97. The drummer in my and had come out a year or two before and landed a role as Harvey on Sabrina the Teenage Witch, So I knew him and my cousin who was also an actor, but older than me, who starred in Friday the 13 the series and Jason goes to Hell. Other than knowing two people, I had $600, no job lined up and no place to live. All I knew is that if I stayed where I was as an artist, my best case scenario was going to be redesigning the Count Chocula box year after year. I’ve found that jumping in blindly has paid off several times in my life. When I got here. My cousin’s roommate had just moved out, so I had a room in a 3 bedroom duplex off of Olympic and Crescent Heights and the other roommate found me a job the same day working at an aquarium store. I wanted to go to CalArts for animation, but they said I was too happy to be an experimental animator. So I started my own company with a couple of guys I met. W did the animated intro for a few BET shows. That’s how I learned that I didn’t like animation. I left after a year or so and became a teacher’s assistant and eventually, a teacher at a school in West Hollywood. I played music around town at the same time in my americana duo, C. Duck & Nate, at Molly Malones once a week the Hotel Cafe on a regular basis when it opened. But the thing that really set me on the path from the very beginning was comics. I knew in my bones that what I was before anything was a comics creator. The combination of words and pictures spoke to me ever since Batmania hit in ’89. I started to take it more seriously and studied sequential storytelling. I started doing storyboards for commercials and working with writers here and there. I went to Drink & Draw at Casey’s Irish Bar, downtown, where some big names in comics met every week to, well, drink and draw. I used it as my schooling. I’d bring in a page, have them tell me what was wrong, go home, draw it again and come back the next week for round two. I did that again and again and got better and better at visually telling a story. One of the books I co-created in those days got optioned, which is pretty wild considering it had no distribution. I got more storyboarding gigs too. Soon I was doing bigger and bigger comics work and boarding for tv. At this point, I had to say no to some boarding gigs, which paid more in a few days than teaching did all month. I was being headhunted by a charter school to run the music program as well. It was a now or never moment. If I was going to do what I wanted for a living, I had to say no to the big salary and pension and quit teaching altogether. My wife was the one who helped me realize this. She was a pre-school teacher too( which I had also become after the school I worked at transitioned away from elementary grades), and we decided to live off of her salary until I found my feet. I emailed every production company in town with my portfolio, out of 200, 10 responded, out of 10, 2 came through. That was all I needed to get going. The pay on those gigs afforded me time to also work on comics, which does not pay nearly as well. But It’s a little like making your own movie with no help. Total control. So if it fails, it’s all on you. But if it succeeds, It’s also all on you. To date I’ve co-created books like Lost Angels, Spectral: A Showcase of Fear and Chaotic Neutral. I’ve written and drawn stories in Heavy Metal Magazine and I’m serializing my new book, Three-Headed-Pig- Man on my Patreon. I also have a YouTube channel where I interview other artists who do what I do which is as much to educate me on what other creators do in their process and look at what inspires them as it is for the viewers. I recently worked with the award-winning visual effects team on the Penguin, doing storyboards and concept art which finally got me the coveted membership to the Art Director’s Guild as a Sr. Illustrator. I also have books coming out from Dark Horse, Image Comics and Sumerian Comics as well as another collaboration that’s 160 pages all of which I can’t talk about because they haven’t been announced. Taking the leap was the best decision I’ve ever made.
We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
Not at all. The biggest hurdle was myself. Just making the leap to do this full-time took me longer than I would have liked. In comics, You’re either a super polished artist who works for the “Big Two”, DC and Marvel and then gain fans so you can go off and release your own creator owned books and take the fans with you, OR you do very “Arty”, auto-bio, hip stuff and you come up from that direction. I’m in the middle and have felt the glare from the tops of the noses on both sides. So my path had to be cut. I did that through a love of all comics, talking to and making friends and fans on both sides and lifting creators up who are established and just starting out through my YouTube channel. That and time got more eyes on my work and I gained fans. The storyboard side is still a challenge. It’s all about who you know and networking, which I’m good at with comics, but I find the industry more challenging still. AI isn’t helping with that either.
Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your work?
I specialize in storytelling through pictures. Well, words and pictures in the case of comics. At this point, I’ve drawn every genre and collaborated in almost every way one can in the medium. The thing I’m most proud of is the story I’m working on currently and releasing through my Patreon. It’s called Three-Headed-Pig-Man. It revolves around a character who has cartoon, regular and demonic skull, pig heads on it’s shoulders. But what it really is is the freedom for me to tell any kind of story I want. From a slap-stick, loonytoons story, or a dark horror tale to a Golden Age superhero tale or autobio-esque yarn. The sky is the limit. I think what sets me apart is my style and approach to storytelling, but also my tendency to see a void in the industry or path not taken and march right for it. I want it badly, so I have no problem sticking my foot in doors it doesn’t belong in. It’s served me well.
Risk taking is a topic that people have widely differing views on – we’d love to hear your thoughts.
The biggest risk was letting go of a regular paycheck while having no savings. But it also made me fight 10x harder to succeed. I think that was a huge help in hindsight, but it was scary and could have gone very badly. But luckily it didn’t. I have no illusion that I’m invincible or that I’ll land on my feet every time. But if you don’t try things, you’ll never get anywhere. That should be obvious. Sometimes I wonder if the more audacious, but calculated, the risk, the more likely it is to succeed. I know it sounds crazy. But I think maybe clients or fans are potentially so stunned or interested in whatever it may be that they take the chance with you. If you’re good and you deliver, they stick around and tell a friend. Then it’s on to the next thing and the next.
Contact Info:
- Website: http://www.chrisandersoncomics.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chrisandersoncomics/?hl=en
- Youtube: https://youtube.com/@chrisandersoncomics?si=3ARw8l6PjhV_J8t3
- Other: http://www.patreon.com/chrisandersoncomics
Image Credits
1. Double- page spread from Three-Headed-Pig 2. Splash page from Something Seems Off, Published in Heavy Metal Magazine 3. Cover of Chaotic Neutral 4. Pin-Up of George Hage of the band JACK the RADIO after R. Crumb 5. Skeletor 6. Storyboard from HBO’s the Penguin. Splash page from Three-Headed-Pig-Man
