We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Nicky Rodriguez. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Nicky below.

Nicky, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Have you been able to earn a full-time living from your creative work? If so, can you walk us through your journey and how you made it happen? Was it like that from day one? If not, what were some of the major steps and milestones and do you think you could have sped up the process somehow knowing what you know now?

I definitely have not been able to earn a living from working on comics or doing illustration work outside the comic industry! I would love to say that I have and that it was easy, but unfortunately, that’s not the reality for most artists, especially those working in comics. The big secret to earning that full-time living and being comfortable while you’re in between different gigs is to either come from some level of generational wealth, have a partner who earns enough to support you both without issue or to have a living situation where rent is a non-issue (like living with family).

Since I was in undergrad, but mostly upon finishing grad school, I’ve always had some number of day jobs I pieced together to make ends meet in the Bay Area on top of doing zine fests and eventually delving deeper into the comic sphere. The pandemic definitely made a mess of that so I ended up going ‘full-time” freelance a lot sooner than I had planned. I’ve managed to squeak by for almost four years, but that was mostly because of pandemic unemployment. As much as I love the work I do and as much as my dream was to be full-time freelance, the industry, trade publishers and indie alike, simply doesn’t pay enough because artists are severely undervalued and rates have been stagnant for decades.

Since I’m not rich and have no intention of getting married any time soon haha, I’ve just struggled along the way to keep doing what I’m doing. You need a lot of resilience in this industry if you want to survive, let alone get your foot in the door.

Nicky, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

I’m a queer, disabled, Puerto Rican comic artist and illustrator! I studied animation at California College of the Arts and then got my MFA in comics from the same institution. I’ve always been a huge manga fan and had dipped my toe into cape stuff here and there, but my official start in comics was when I panic applied to the MFA program. There, I not only learned about the rich culture and history of zines in the Bay Area, I really got the chance to explore visual narrative in a way I hadn’t.

My first zines were perzines since we did a lot of exploration of personal narrative in the program. I think I made my very first zine in 2018 and have been making them since. My friend Breena Nuñez helped convince me that I’d be totally welcome at zine fests and to give it a go at applying to a few. From there I started traveling a few times a month from 2018-2020 to different fests and cons. It was amazing getting the chance to see the breadth of work out there and incredibly inspiring. The pandemic put a damper on all my traveling, but I still do virtual fests here and there.

Outside of my own work, I’ve mostly just done flats here and there for different projects, webcomics, and stuff from Z2, DC, and Scholastic, it’s really just a smattering of pages that come and go throughout the year. I also do short comics for individual writers or creative organizations, like Hello Barkada. Before doing anything in comics or publishing, I did a lot of zine workshops or panels at different fests and cons. Through that, a friend helped me facilitate a perzine workshop at DocuSign in San Francisco. It was very cool being in that giant millennium tower, not gonna lie!

Two big things that have been pointed out by clients have been my use of color and my dynamic and interesting character designs. Those are aspects of art that I find so important and because I originally wanted to do character design and visual development in animation when I started college, they were things I focused a lot on to get to where I am today. So far, it’s been the things that have gotten me hired for some gigs in the last couple of years. My color choices are mostly inspired by Puerto Rico and the Caribbean, so I’m always pushing my colors to be as varied, vibrant, and poppy as possible.

Alright – so here’s a fun one. What do you think about NFTs?

Trash. Valueless. Over-hyped. They’re a major detriment to the environment because of the high energy usage they require. Instead, go buy a digital commission, save that hi-res file, make it your desktop, or what have you. That eliminates the worry of whether the NFT is just stolen artwork as well as if you’re directly adding to the increase of greenhouse gas emissions. This way you get to directly support an artist while still getting a snazzy, unique piece of art.

In your view, what can society to do to best support artists, creatives and a thriving creative ecosystem?

Raise page rates!! Whether it’s coming from the comics end or major trade publishers, page rates are abysmal and entirely unliveable. Artists can’t thrive if we’re working ourselves to death or crumbling under burnout just trying to survive. We shouldn’t have to have multiple jobs in and outside of comics to sustain ourselves at the absolute bare minimum. Fair page rates mean we don’t have to worry about blowing a deadline as often because we won’t be forced to color 2 books at the same time while also teaching, for example. Higher page rates mean it’ll be a bit easier to get healthcare, especially for the wrists that get fried while working on comics on breakneck deadlines. There’s this asinine notion that because we’re artists and essentially doing what we love, that we’re willing to do it under any conditions, even the worst ones. It’s insulting. All the time and effort we put into learning our craft, honing it, and forming it into a big, beautiful graphic novel should be valued. Comics wouldn’t exist without all the artists working on them and we deserve a much higher page rate with fairer deadlines if we’re ever going to feel even a little supported and with the possibility to thrive.

Contact Info:

• Website: artofnickyrodriguez.com
• Instagram: instagram.com/artofnickyrodriguez
• Linkedin: www.linkedin.com/in/nicky-rodriguez