jma www.​John​Martz.com
www.​Robot​Johnny.com

Intro­duc­tion

John is an illus­tra­tor and car­toon­ist living in Toronto. He writes about illus­tra­tion, design, and visual cul­ture under the pseu­do­nym Robot Johnny for his per­sonal blog on which he also dis­trib­utes a small col­lec­tion of type­faces includ­ing peren­nial favourites Girls are Weird and Turkey Sand­wich. He con­ceived of Drawn!, like all good ideas, while goof­ing off at work. John stays inspired by a col­lec­tion of hun­dreds of art, design, illus­tra­tion, car­toon­ing, and humour books and an unhealthy addic­tion to DVDs. His biggest influ­ences are Charles Schulz, Jim Henson, MAD Mag­a­zine, Chuck Jones, B. Kliban, Jack Ziegler, the Marx Broth­ers, and Woody Allen. He also likes sandwiches.

Have you ever drawn a doo­dled of a Poodle eating noodles?

I haven’t until now!

How much money do you earn from Drawn!? And when it comes to your illus­tra­tions skill – which com­pa­nies pay more, Yahoo! or Hallmark?

I’m not rolling in it, that’s for cer­tain. The blog makes enough through adver­tis­ing for host­ing and main­te­nance, but it’s far from a cash cow. The biggest payoff is the extra expo­sure for my own illus­tra­tion work, and the con­nec­tions I’ve made with other artists. As for which clients pay more, I never kiss and tell.

Do you have an agent or do you handle every­thing yourself?

I don’t have an agent, no. There are times of course, when it would be help­ful to have some­one help find work and take care of the busi­ness end of things, but I’d be afraid of rely­ing too heav­ily on an agent, too. I’ve cer­tainly learned a lot about busi­ness and about my own work habits since I’ve started free­lanc­ing as an illustrator.

I’m lucky that I have sev­eral reg­u­lar clients that keep coming back for more. It’s def­i­nitely a plus to foster good client rela­tion­ships, and find not only the type of work I like to do, and can excel at, but also the type of client that needs repeat work, whether it be reg­u­lar comic fea­tures, or jobs that require spe­cific skills like work­ing in After Effects. I used to work in the cre­ative depart­ment for a big TV net­work here in Canada, and luck­ily even after I left I’m able to con­tinue work­ing with them on var­i­ous projects – not just because of my skill set, but because we’ve estab­lished a good work­ing rela­tion­ship in which they know what I can give them, and I know exactly what it is they’re look­ing for.

Do you ever get job offers from clients because they think you will post about them on Drawn!?

No, not at all. The types of posts that end up on Drawn! are links to artists that I per­son­ally admire and find inspi­ra­tional. So, if any­thing, I’m endan­ger­ing my own career, by pro­mot­ing my competition!

Apart from art and illus­tra­tion what other things are you into?

Art and illus­tra­tion sort of dom­i­nate my life, but I’m also some­what of a movie geek. I enjoy word­play (includ­ing cross­words and Scrab­ble) like silly poetry and light verse, and com­bine it with my love of movies on my per­sonal blog by writ­ing reviews of movies I see in verse-​form.

I find a lot of sim­i­lar­i­ties between writ­ing verse and draw­ing comics, in fact. I enjoy the chal­lenge of trying to com­mu­ni­cate a thought or idea using a struc­tured form, whether it’s the rhyming pat­tern of a lim­er­ick or a stan­dard 4-panel gag strip. I find the thought process very sim­i­lar – paring things down, and dis­till­ing them to their sim­plest forms while still retain­ing all the infor­ma­tion you need to com­mu­ni­cate the idea AND have every­thing fit into the right panel, or syl­la­ble, and follow a beat or rhythm. When you pull it off, and it works, it’s a great feel­ing – like solv­ing a puzzle.

Who are your favourite artists/illustrators alive today?

Since start­ing Drawn! that list changes every day, but I’m con­stantly awestruck by car­toon­ists who have mas­tered sim­plic­ity and econ­omy – those that can restrain from draw­ing ”too much” and manage to use the most min­i­mal lines and scenery – Seth, James Kochalka, Sempé, Ivan Brunetti, Tom Gauld, Lewis Trond­heim, Nico­las Mahler, Patrick McDonnell… I’m sure I’m for­get­ting about a hun­dred names, and I could go on, and on… And those are just the cartoonists.

Do you think Christo­pher Lloyd’s por­trayal of Uncle Fester in the Adams Family was better than his part as Dr. Emmett Brown in Back to the Future?

Has Christo­pher Lloyd ever given us a per­for­mance better than that of Dr. Emmett Brown?

Are you really a Robot? You blog like it!

My web­site began in 1997 as a simple web­site to dis­trib­ute some free fronts I had cre­ated under the name Robotic Attack Fonts and using the pseu­do­nym Robot Johnny. In 2003 I refor­mat­ted it as a blog. The fonts are still there, but it’s pri­mar­ily a blog. The blog part itself has evolved over time, into more of a work jour­nal. For much of the site’s exis­tence I was writ­ing in char­ac­ter. Robot Johnny is pretty much myself, but far more self-​righteous and indig­nant towards the human race.

I used to post more illus­tra­tion and design links, but now Drawn! has become my outlet for that. And triv­ial per­sonal things, or quicker links that don’t require much dis­cus­sion now find them­selves on my Twit­ter or Tumblr pages.

So now the site is home to my movie reviews and sketches, fin­ished work, and news from the draw­ing board.

Could you ever see your work being hung in a gallery? Do you have any ambi­tion for it to be on dis­play as Art?

I make no claims that any com­mer­cial illus­tra­tion I’ve done is fine art. I def­i­nitely believe there’s a line between the two. That said, I’d love the free­dom to do more per­sonal work with the inten­tion of it being put on dis­play. A few of the Drawn! crew have even casu­ally talked about the pos­si­bil­ity of doing a group show together.

Are you involved in any col­lab­o­ra­tive projects at the moment and is there anyone you would like to work with?

As I write this, I’m work­ing on a comic with Ryan North of Dinosaur Comics. He’s writ­ten a story that I’m illus­trat­ing that will hope­fully see it self printed in an upcom­ing volume of Flight. It’s always an inter­est­ing chal­lenge draw­ing comics or illus­trat­ing a story that some­one else has writ­ten, since the art has to per­fectly com­ple­ment the writ­ing, and vice versa, with­out either over­shad­ow­ing the other. Luck­ily it’s true that good art can’t save bad writ­ing but good writ­ing can save bad art, because Ryan’s such a tal­ented writer, that I can just hand in some stick fig­ures and call it a day.

What’s next in the pipeline for John Martz?

My new year’s project is to redesign my blog, port­fo­lio, and comics sites to look more cohe­sive as a sin­gu­lar site. Right now the three are pretty sep­a­rate from each other and could use some better integration.

I’ve got a few other projects up my sleeve, but don’t want to talk too much about them just yet. One is a rhyming kid’s book I’ve writ­ten that needs to be illus­trated still. It’s about ani­mals, so it should prove to be fun.

Spi­der­man or Batman?

Pffft. Batman. I was at the most impres­sion­able age when Tim Burton’s Batman was released in 1989, and suf­fered from a severe case of Bat­ma­nia. My best friend and I even renamed my tree­house the Bat­cave, and painted Batman logos all over it. We even started a Batman club that had a test you had to take in order to join, ques­tion­ing your knowl­edge of all things Batman. We were the only members.

Casper or Ritchie Rich?

Ghosts. Always ghosts.

Meat­loaf or Meat Loaf?

I would do any­thing for love, but I won’t listen to Meat Loaf.

You can see more of John Martz’s work at
www.​John​Martz.com

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