Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Brian Damor. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Hi Brian, thanks for joining us today. Let’s jump right into how you came up with the idea?

I’ve always been a creative person. As a kid, there were two things I loved doing; making music, and drawing. I would draw original characters as often as I could. I had such a fascination with creating my own characters just to see how creative I could be. As I got older, the former over took the latter. I would eventually fall out of passion of making music and found myself back into drawing. Around quarantine, my wife started a blog detailing events in her life which I helped create a character for her. I would soon find myself working on her character more and more, which inevitably led to me creating my character. From there, I figured “why not just create a comic series between the two characters?”. That’s when Brain of Brian started.

I would start to release short form comics on Instagram of random ( and often ludicrous) scenarios ranging from Brian hosting game shows to having a stand off duel with my wife over the only iPad in the house. But something was asking more out of me. I wanted to be more creative, tell more stories in a narrative format. Ultimately, I wanted to test my skills as an artist and a storyteller. During quarantine, I would go through a mental spiral on questioning my abilities. I was so caught up in trying to gain “Instagram fame”, I lost sight of what my goal was. My therapist got his money’s worth with me! I thought if I didn’t get enough likes and shares, then I am no artist and never will be.

Then, my therapist asked me this; “if you never made money from doing your art, would you still be happy doing it?”. Immediately, I said yes. Then it clicked. I didn’t need the notoriety. I just needed to be creative. The right people will find me (if at all). And thus, Mind Matter was born. Mind Matter is a story about Brian in the very place I was 4 years ago. He questions his abilities as an artist and further beats himself down with comparisons, until the day he meets an alien living in his basement, and through various circumstance, imbues Brian with the ability to hallucinate his thoughts in real time.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

I like to think I’m a boring guy. I initially started off as an artist doing commissions. But one thing I realized about myself is that I hate doing art for other people. I’m someone that much rather do my own thing and move to the beat of my own drum. I still do commissions from time to time, but only if the work is worth it to me. But to make money on the side, I created my own merch line with hats, shirts, posters, etc. I don’t know how to be anything else but me, that’s what sets me apart from others. I’m an amalgamation of everything I love in life; video games, music, anime, cartoons, comic books. To work in tandem with me is to understand me completely.

If there is anything I’d want clients/followers to know about my brand is that it’s created with passion. I learned long ago that whatever you work on, you should never pull inspiration from the same medium your work is based on. It becomes stagnant and predictable. If you’re working on comic books, pull inspiration from movies to help with cinematography, create a playlist of music to which the characters might listen to, learn about history to see where your story can take you.

And also; dream big. You can accomplish anything you truly believe in with imagination, discipline, and consistency. No one else will initially believe in you if you don’t believe in yourself.

Is there mission driving your creative journey?

To be honest; my main goal is to do what I love. That’s literally it. It’s generating discipline to develop my creations. There will be times you don’t want to work on your craft. People mistake as a lack of motivation when in reality its the lack of discipline. Imagine a fire burning in front of you. Motivation is the intensity of the flame, and Discipline is consistency of the flame. There will be times your motivation will die out, resulting in your flame getting weaker. But discipline will keep the flame burning regardless of how weak it is.

I want to do what I love, and make money doing it. Even if I don’t make any money, I’m still enjoying my time creating. Everything else will fall in to place.

Any fun sales or marketing stories?

Instagram teaches everyone how to self market. It’s a sink or swim kind of environment. One of the draws of social media is that you must keep your ear to the ground and stay on the hamster wheel simultaneously. If you’re under a certain threshold of followers, you’ll likely lose their attention if you do not keep them invested. It sounds exhausting but as I gain more experience, I learn to plan my week and not be at the mercy of day to day struggles. I’m still trying to grow but how I got to my current position was doing exactly what I stated previously. Reels are a big part of the game. Think about it; how often do you send reels to friends a day? If you create art marketing provocative enough, you’ll have people sharing your reels. But its harder than it seems when there are literally millions of reels being created. Around this time, I was creating reels but nothing was interesting enough to pull anyone to my page; until I found a throwaway audio I could use for a reel. It was perhaps the simplest reel I created; it was just my character Brian going through emotions with humorous text describing what’s going on. The reel blew up. Over 2.1 million views and 211k likes. All because I kept watch of which audio was trending. To be fair, the audio helped, but it was the comedic timing of the reel that kept everyone watching. Just like that, over 1000 followers in a matter of days. You don’t think it can happen to you if you never play the game.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://brainofbriancomics.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/brainofbriancomics/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/braindamor