We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Anthony Campney a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Anthony thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. What’s been the most meaningful project you’ve worked on?

At this point, I’d say the one-page collaboration comics I’ve done for The Comic Jam, which is a Discord group that pairs artists with writers (letterers, too, when they’re available) to produce against voted themes. I’ve done three total for them so far and it’s given me some awesome practice in translating someone else’s written vision into completed comic pages. That said, once I complete the first issue of my independent comic Red Frontier, that will take the top spot for me.

Anthony, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

I’ve been drawing to one degree or another since I was about six years old. I started off by tracing coloring books and comic art and changing the images into something different; this helped my hand/eye coordination get used to drawing character forms and perspective lines well before I even knew those terms. But it was the Death of Superman story in Superman #75 that really and truly cemented not only my love of comic books (particularly superhero comics) but especially my understanding that this was an industry I want to be a part of. I love drawing and using digital tools to build color and effects onto my art, but ranking just slightly higher on my list of passions is writing, or more specifically storytelling. I have entire worlds of stories in my head that I am constantly pursuing one way or the other to bring out to those who might enjoy them; I have a completed urban fantasy novel that I’ve been trying for a couple of years to find an agent for, and completing pages for my sci-fi/western comic Red Frontier can be tricky and grueling when compounded with my day job, parenting my kids, and working on my bachelor’s degree in graphic communications. As such, I’ve been experimenting with different methods of staging out my projects and organizing my schedule to get the most out of my efforts without breaking my own back.

In the meantime, it’s pretty gratifying to run commissions for people that want pinups of their faces on popular characters or a cool new take on a business logo. I tend to charge significantly less than what most marketing agencies or veteran professional artists are charging, but high enough I feel like I’m getting some legitimate reward out of my efforts. Some of the marketing stuff I’ve been commissioned for in the past has helped push my boundaries as an artist and even learn new techniques along the way. I try to make my design process as collaborative as possible, sending my clients sketches to showcase my initial concepts to make sure we’re on the same page regarding what they want and that I’m able to provide options to get my client thinking in specifics.

Is there something you think non-creatives will struggle to understand about your journey as a creative? Maybe you can provide some insight – you never know who might benefit from the enlightenment.

I find it’s easy for non-creatives around me to feel like my talent and skills alone should have earned me fame and fortune by now. For sure, I was very lazy and self-centered in my youth and once that was compounded with being a very young dad (my oldest daughter was born days before my twentieth birthday, and she just recently graduated high school), it took a long time before I had the means, the time, and the wherewithal to even begin building a) my skills to a point where selling my art was a worthwhile effort, and b) determining how to even begin going about making any kind of business out of it. All of that, when explained, most people understand fine but they still tend to feel I should be further along than I am, and this stems from a misperception that the existence of skill and talent will somehow teleport one to stardom in their chosen field. The thing is: it is a crowded, competitive market out there for pretty much any creative talent, and in the comic book world it gets even more complicated as hardcopy comics don’t sell the way they used to and other writer-artists like myself are taking just as much advantage of the tools and resources at our mutual disposal. A famous actor once said “there are no Talent Police looking around to snatch you up just because you’re good at something.” You have to actively grind these things, and that takes time and persistence.

Is there mission driving your creative journey?

Making enough money with my art and writing to make sure my kids never want for anything would be nice. But seriously, aside from the general sharing of ideas with the world that I think pretty much every artist and creator wants (otherwise, why would they put it out into the world in the first place?), I want to build a prolific enough career writing and drawing that some version or another of it becomes my day job. I want my 9-to-5, Monday-to-Friday job to be contributing to cool stories in various media, from comics and novels to film, television, and video games: I want in on all of it. I still have a lot of work to do before I’ve earned my way to that degree of income and prestige as a storyteller, but I have my eye firmly on that endgame.      

Contact Info:

• Website: Patreon.com/antcampart
• Instagram: https://instagram.com/antcampart?igshid=MmIzYWVlNDQ5Yg==
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/antcamp.art
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/anthony-campney-418b4b1b9