There are many aspects to cartooning, and I have yet to find one I don’t enjoy. I read incessantly about the topic, from the best known syndicated strips to the lesser known gag cartoonists of old. For whatever reason, the gag cartoonists of old interest me most.

I’ve created a line of business-related gag cartoons which are, I’m very grateful to say, gaining in popularity. Thus far, they’ve appeared in such publications as The Wall Street Journal and Harvard Business Review.

Because I’ve now got quite a number of them and they cover a bunch of areas surrounding business (legal cartoons, medical cartoons, generic political cartoons, insurance cartoons, among a bunch of others), I figured it was time to build a site where they can be made available for newsletters, Powerpoint presentations, publications, etc. I’ve also added a store where you’ll find lots of products and gifts featuring these cartoons.

I’m still creating new “Spectickles” – now that it’s out there in syndication, there’ll be LOTS more of those, as well as “Foggy Bottom” with my good buddy and fellow military vet Dave Ditullio, and “Karma Café” with Funnies Extra publisher Richard Cross. I suppose there’s no way to sustain all those commitments without a sustaining passion for cartooning, but there you have it.

Check out the new Bill Abbott Business Cartoons website and let me know what you think!

This year has seen it’s highs and lows, our successes and our losses. On this day though, none of that matters.Thanksgiving, to me, isn’t just a sumptuous meal. It’s an opportunity – a gift. Despite the challenges and difficulties, there are so many things to be grateful for. This is the day when I allow myself, and encourage my family, to seize the luxury of escaping the baggage and weight of the world. To pause a moment and look around. There’s so much to be thankful for.

Sincerely wishing you and yours a beautiful, memorable, grateful and Happy Thanksgiving, from my family to yours.

Today for Veteran’s Day, I’m going to kick back with a fresh cup of coffee and watch my all time favorite movie, “Stand By For Action”, 1942 with Robert Taylor, Brian Donlevy, Charles Laughton, and Walter Brennan. I served on the USS Arleigh Burke for 4 years, so watching a movie about a destroyer in action with a crew of truly the greatest generation is an absolute pleasure. I’ve worn my copy of this DVD thin. Later, I’ll be joined by fellow vet Dave Ditullio for some cartoon work, followed by a libation tipped in honor of those still standing watch over us.

Getting syndicated is a massively challenging task and as a result, highly comptetitive. I was extremely fortunate when I had the interest of a major syndicate editor, but due to economic reasons, the launch wouldn’t be possible for at least a year. At the same time, I had been speaking with Bill Kellogg, the Marketing Director for Ink Bottle Syndicate and the man responsible for bringing “Tundra” to over 550 newspapers in the U.S. and overseas – no easy task. As a matter of fact, the major syndicates are very interested in Bill’s success formula, which in my opinion is good, old-fashioned hard work – Bill is one of the busiest people I know! With only a minimum of threats of violence to his person, car, pets, wardrobe, and associated inanimate objects, he agreed to sign “Spectickles” (I’ll remain camped out on his front lawn wearing an intimidating grimace till we officially launch, or until my wife yells at me to stop it, whichever comes first.)

This is an incredibly exciting time, and Bill has begun the long process of introducing “Spectickles” to editors nationwide. If, perchance, you are interested in seeing “Spectickles” in your local newspaper, here’s what you can do:

If you would like to see “Spectickles” in your newspaper, and if you are willing to write a short letter to your paper to request that they consider Spectickles, please e-mail my marketing guy, Bill Kellogg, at bill@inkbottlesyndicate.com with your city, state and newspaper name. He will e-mail you the name and contact information of the person at your paper who handles the comics section. Requests from actual readers can make a big difference.

Well, that’s it for now – I’ll keep you posted as new developments occur. See you in the Funny Papers! Cheers!

So, in early 2009 I went all in. I approached a number of licensing agents, approached some major companies, and started to see some pretty amazing opportunities appear. I had the great good fortune to see my work appear on greeting cards, calendars, figurines, coffee mugs and a whole bunch of other stuff. It appeared I was well on my way to hitting and surpassing the financial goals I’d set for myself.

The reality kicked in, and sales weren’t what they could’ve or should’ve been. This is a humbling experience. I began to seek answers to the lackluster sales in licensing, and one thing immediately became clear: I hadn’t created an engaged, committed audience – I’d skipped that step and went straight to manufacturers. As a result, I had lots and lots of people picking up the products with my characters, enjoying a hearty belly laugh, but then setting them back down and walking away without making a purchase. There was no emotional connection or buy-in, and that made all the difference in the world.

Whether you are a cartoonist or licensed artist, you have to (if you want to be successful in licensing, most particularly character licensing) find a way to connect with your audience, keep them engaged, and provide them with a means to follow you, your story, your art, your techniques, and your future intentions. And keep building that audience – the most imperative element of all. I did a great deal of research with other artists and cartoonists, and this was the brilliant column of light leading to the answer that I’d somehow missed along the way.

I’m not complaining – we’re still signing with new licensees and broadening the possibilities with my characters. But I owe it to the licensees to give them the best chance at not only recouping the investment they’ve made in my art, but of profiting from it as handsomely as my supporting efforts can manage.

So how do you go about building that audience? What tools and resources are out there to guide you in developing a systematic approach to communicating and building an emotionally invested audience? There are countless ways and viewpoints, but here’s a few I found exceptionally helpful:

Books (conventional and Kindle):

“How To Make Webcomics”

“How To Use Facebook For Business”

“The New Rules Of Marketing And PR”

Podcasts: The podcasts cover a broad spectrum of topics within the field of art and comics, but as you listen, you’ll hear about successful techniques, tools and resources that have led to some of these artists having committed audiences numbering in the millions.

“Escape From Illustration Island”

“Webcomics Weekly”

“Tall Tale Radio”

These are just a few to get you started, but sufficient to keep anyone busy for a considerable period of time in learning the methods for effective audience-building. Good luck and feel free to chime in with additional ideas and experiences!

My beautiful Shelly and I beside the small lake, just outside the historic building where we’d had out ceremony and reception.

Two of the finest warriors I’ve ever known and with whom I’ve gone into harms way stood with me during the ceremony – thank you Ed and Dave – your presence made the day extraordinary.

The ceremony just concluded, and Shelly and I are heading out to greet our guests as they enter for the reception. Shelly’s beautiful smile was the beacon that led me home after so many months spent overseas.

My background is a bit far afield of what you’d expect for a cartoonist, but whatever the events that led me here, I’m happy this is the result.

4 year old Aidan is overpowering me, dragging me onto the dance floor.

Thank you to all who follow my work and make every day a pleasure to be a cartoonist.

Cheers!

We’ll be reaching out to more of our Navy friends, family and professional associations and see their reaction. To date, hundreds of Navy Chiefs are excited to see it – we hope not to disappoint! ‘Chief’ and his “Foggy Bottom” gang will be available for weekly newspapers through Bill Kellogg’s Ink Bottle Syndicate – be sure to ask for it in your local weekly newspapers!

The Yang to ‘Chief’s’ Ying is another of our latest characters, ‘Sarge’. We gave him a ‘flat-top’, an appropriate rank tattoo on his right arm, the ever-bubbling cigar, and colors suitable to an Army-related character.

Dave, on the other hand, will be showing ‘Sarge’ around to his fellow Army servicemen and women for their feedback. Again, the response has been very positive. We look forward to hearing your feedback, and if you like it, let us and our syndicate, Ink Bottle Syndicate and its Marketing Director, Bill Kellogg know!

Here’s one of the earliest cartoons I created, heavy on cross-hatching and strictly black and white. Color hadn’t yet entered my skill set.

Like most cartoonists early on, I’d had my sights set on syndication and had submitted several concepts to the major syndicates, all of which were impersonally rejected. The work had been created with that in mind – heavy use of bold blacks, drawn to what I’d understood to be the required dimensions for reduction, etc.

After a steady stream of military deployments, I’d find myself reinventing the work when I’d return home – not really a bad thing. I started adopting a more ‘cartoony’ style, abandoning the chase for a more realistic look, which tends to be less memorable and engaging in cartooning. Part of what’s required for a successful cartoon is a distinctive, memorable look, the start of what some describe as a brand.

You can see here where I began to abandon the cross-hatching style and give the characters a rounder, softer look.

Soon, I began trying to identify traits that I considered visually funny. Among the first was glasses. I started drawing large glasses on my characters and giving them something of a dumpy look. If you look around, you’ll find physical traits that you consider humorous, and when exaggerated, make for a character that becomes memorable and fun to look at. Now, mind you, we’re not looking to do so in an effort to be mean or cruel – I’ve heard some VERY unpleasant stories from caricaturists who draw people who are paying to have their features distorted in a cartoonish way. Turns out, they didn’t like that!

Among the first cartoons where I begin adding glasses as a humorous feature.

When I went to my family home near Albany, New York, my mother has a picture of my great grandparents. I hadn’t really given the matter a great deal of thought at the time, but when I saw my great-grandmother’s glasses, I knew they’d make a great addition to my developing characters.

Among the first uses of the stereotypical “Spectickles” over-sized fifties-ish glasses.

Within a few years, I’d finally landed where I suspect my “Spectickles” characters will remain in appearance. I sought feedback from family, friends, cartoonist colleagues, and the buying market to better tweak my characters, resulting in what you see now. But, as you’ve read, the process took time, a great deal of thought and consideration, and the acquisition of new skills to get where I wanted to go.

I continue to work in new mediums, create new characters and cartoons, and utilize different tools as the mood strikes. All of which are an essential part of developing as an artist and cartoonist. And most importantly, to me anyway, all of which has been enormously enjoyable and rewarding.

I’ve been thinking about this day for a long time. It’s hard to believe that it’s come so quickly. Tomorrow marks 20 years that I’ve been a part of the greatest Navy that ever defended the seas. Any seas.

This is me as an E-nothing in Norfolk, Virginia attending a navigation school. Not to be confused with the more dapper Men In Black.

I joined after being a disgruntled stockbroker for too long. Since I was a little boy I’d always looked at the pictures of other men in my family, standing proudly in their uniforms – my father beaming with pride in his ROTC uniform during Vietnam, my uncle in the Navy in the height of the Cold War, my grandfather with a machine gun in Europe in World War II, my father’s great uncle as a Dough Boy in the trenches of the First World War – even my Great Grandfather’s grandfather as a fresh-faced young Zouave soldier in the Civil War where his brother died a horribly violent death in Louisiana - his bones lie there to this day, and where he was grievously wounded in the same battle. Family legend has it that in his twilight years, a parade was specifically re-routed to pass in front of the porch of his Brooklyn home to render him the honors, since his wounds left him largely immobile for the remainder of his life. From this tradition comes a pride I can hardly contain.

My Great-Grandfather’s grandfather, John DuBois. Brave, young, and forever changed by the horrors of war.

During the years I’ve served, I’ve been a navigator on the destroyer U.S.S. Arleigh Burke – a fantastic ship with the finest crew this nation could ever hope to assemble, and a member of one of the Navy’s Special Warfare units – the Special Boat Teams.

The U.S.S. Arleigh Burke returning across a tempestuous Atlantic Ocean after a very successful first Mediterranean deployment. I wasn’t on her when this image was taken. I’m okay with that.

The selection and training of which, at the ripe old age of 31, was the greatest experience, albeit one that required getting a beat-down of the highest quality, of my life (surpassed in quality of discomfort only by my attending SERE training at the spry age of 44! Still don’t know why I thought that was a good idea). My SWCC and SEAL brothers are, you may be rest assured, the finest, most honorable and dedicated warriors on earth. Period. Even though I am no longer active – my family deserves my full attention after so many years of sacrifice and separation, I still find myself chomping at the bit whenever I see a news story which may, or may not, be a possible arena in which my NSW brothers are operating. God Bless each and every one of you. Honor is a word that can be uttered by nearly everyone, but it’s a concept lived utterly by so few. Gentlemen, you are among the few.

This is me in Iraq. I volunteered to help my team-mates in whatever way I could. If anyone tries to sell you real estate there, walk away.

While the Nation remains mired in a political morass, created largely by the greatest collection of rarified idiots ever to crawl out of the primordial soup, the people of this country never cease to amaze me in the depth of their goodness, in their unselfish response to their neighbors in need, and their resilience whatever the challenge. What greater honor can a man or woman have than to defend such a fine collection of human beings? It’s the intention of this post to state with unambiguous clarity, I love this country, I love our people, and from the bottom of my heart, thank you. Thank you for giving me the opportunity to defend all that I love most, and to be a part of this Navy. There is, nor will there ever be, a greater one.

With my parents and oldest son at a ceremony at the team.

“I can imagine no  more rewarding a career. And any man who may be asked in this century what he  did to make his life worthwhile, I think can respond with a good deal of pride  and satisfaction:
“I served in the United States Navy”"
-John F. Kennedy  (JFK)

As mentioned, rejection is not only a large part of this business, but its a part of life. And just as in life, the better you learn to handle adversity, the likelier you’ll achieve what you want. Simple, right? Not right.

During my brief and colossally unfocused college experience, I learned a few life lessons. One, drinking beer rather than attending class may have a negative impact on your grades. Two, I was intellectually better suited for weight training than philosophical studies. And three, perspective is key. What do I mean by that? In law class, the professor described the importance of obtaining the complete picture of an event. In so doing, you’ll have to talk to every available witness, and compare what they observed with what others observed. Surprisingly, people will witness the same event and recall the experience with total clarity and an abundance of detail. Only it doesn’t match what another credible witness describes – how can that be? Perspective. Hold up a quarter with heads facing you, tails facing outward. Ask someone in front of you to describe what they see. It’s the same coin observed at the same moment, but the difference in perspective will provide a substantially different set of details. So it is with rejection. How do you choose to see it?

I’ve read somewhere an interesting tidbit about Babe Ruth, the legendary home run king. Not only did he knock more balls clear out of the park than anyone else in his time, and for quite a time thereafter, but he also struck out more than anyone else. He wasn’t put off or defeated by the misses, as great a number as they were – more than anyone else’s, but he had to have remained focused on the idea of succeeding. Stepping up to the plate and giving his best every time and letting the outcome be what it will be. Forgetting about the last three strike-outs – it’s only this at-bat, this singular moment that counts. Once it’s passed, it’s time to focus on the next opportunity to swing, and so on. Looking back should be to glean something beneficial from the experience: how could I have done that better, is there an opportunity to improve, what feedback am I getting that I can make actionable and advance my goals? Then turn back around and focus on your next chance to succeed.

Here’s an exercise worth trying. What was your last disappointment? How did you take it? Did you automatically categorize it as a defeat, a rejection not only of your work, but of you personally? Was there a sudden loss of motivation that impacted other areas of your day? From what perspective were you looking at the rejection? Lets take that same event, but flip the coin. Were there any opportunities to learn? Were you still focused on what was ahead of you or were you driving forward while looking at the rear view mirror? Did you ask for feedback – why the work didn’t meet the needs of your prospective client or buyer? Were there opportunities to close the gap between where you are and where you want to be? It’s my belief that you learn far, far more in defeat than in victory, which makes defeat, if we are to call it that, fertile ground for opportunity.

Having had no shortage of rejections, I’ve had ample opportunity to learn some of the reasons why my submitted work didn’t get it done. Sometimes, it’s just not the right time – the company or publication may have run something too similar in the recent past, or the style is redundant in what they already have. It may be a matter of fiscal policy – they’re getting behind another property and can’t invest in anything new at this time even though they value your work. It could be stylistically wide of the mark – great art, but not for their audience. Or it could be the editor or creative director woke up to a broken coffee maker and there’ll be hell to pay, and your submission was the first they vented on. Whatever the reasons, always remember that your perspective is the one that counts the most. Momentum is directed by perspective – forward or backward, you decide.

One of the methods I use to keep my head screwed on straight with regard to rejection, is a term I’ve borrowed from the military, Fire and Forget. I fire off my submissions, forget them and move straight into creating the best work for submitting again in the next round. When rejection comes as it always does, I seek information on how to improve or when to resubmit. With Fire and Forget, I’m too busy setting up for tomorrow to worry about what I did yesterday, and how others reacted to it.

Remember this: your work has value. Some markets, some art directors, and some time frames may not be receptive, but that should have no bearing on what you want to achieve and your mission-oriented drive to get you there.