ONE ON ONE WITH LAURA KNETZGER
Laura Knetzger is a Seattlebased author and artist. She graduted from SVA in 2012. She makes comics about feelings, including the kids’ adventure series Bug Boys.
INK: Congrats again on your recent publication of Bug Boys vol. 1!
LAURA KNETZGER: Thanks!
INK: What’s it like working with Random House Graphic? How did this differ from when Bug Boys was first published by Czap?
LK: Random House Graphic and Czap Books have both been really great! Czap Books is a micropress run by one person, and they worked really hard to make a graphic novel that looked like it was from a huge publisher. It was so fun turning my homemade zines into a proper book with Czap, it felt like I was taking a big step forward. Random House is so much bigger, they’re a “big five.” They can pay me more, print a book with higher production costs, print more copies of the book, and promote and distribute the book way past the capabilities of a micropress. Compared to the step forward with Czap Books, [Random House] feels like taking off in a rocket.
INK: How did the story of
Bug Boys come about? Were these characters that you already had during your time at art school?
LK: I started drawing Bug Boys in the summer between my junior and senior years at SVA. I watched a documentary about bug collection, and tried to draw cute versions of the beetles on screen as a personal challenge. I liked my designs a lot, so I decided to make up stories for them. It was so fun that I started self-publishing zines about them! I drew a couple issues in my room at the Gramercy dorm and printed them in the SVA library computer lab. I just kept self-publishing zines after college and tabled at comics shows and kept going from there.
INK: What advice would you give to current SVA students who are thinking about a future in comics?
LK: Figure out a project that you really, really want to work on. Make it something of your own creation, rather than an existing IP. Break it up into tiny, manageable chunks and
Opposite: Laura’s cover art for Bug Boys: Volume 1, published by Czap Books
self-publish them. The goal is to make something that you finish, and then finish many of them. Even if you’re not interested in self-publishing/ indie comics, it’s beneficial to you to get the drawing hours in and build your portfolio with finished work. Figure out what about comics is fun for you and do that as much as possible. Find the pleasure in making comics.
INK: Your autobio work is incredibly moving, what is your process for creating such heartfelt stream-of consciousness work? Do you plan the whole comic out in advance or is it more freeform?
LK: For short autobio comics, I really just go for it right out of my head. I kind of have to be able to hold the whole thing in my head before I start, so if it’s longer than a few pages I need to make thumbnails. I haven’t really made any expressionistic autobios in a while because I was mostly making them to build a following on Tumblr, and I got tired of feeling like I was exposing myself in
exchange for “likes.” I miss it, but I also might just miss the comics community on Tumblr in 2012.
INK: What is the hardest part of the comic-making process for you?
LK: Hearing people say “This looks just like Adventure Time!” for the 10,000th time. Just kidding, it’s figuring out what the role of the artist is in a world on the precipice of disaster.
INK: What do you feel are the main differences between publishing comics online versus a more traditional print publisher? Which do you prefer?
LK: Online, you can just do whatever you want and get immediate gratification for it. You don’t have to run your ideas past an editor or incorporate anyone’s feedback into your work. It’s immediate, and you can immediately discuss your work with viewers since you’re probably posting it to social media.
In publishing, everything has to be planned out, pitched,
and approved by your editor and other figures you never have contact with, such as the sales and proofreading departments. It all happens agonizingly slowly if you’re used to the immediacy of publishing zines or online.
Print publishing also allows you to have the resources of a giant company behind you. It’s your editor’s job to make sure your book is good and the book designer’s job to make sure it looks professional, not to mention how priceless having them promote the book is. Publishing pays a real paycheck and online doesn’t, in my experience. I know there are people supporting themselves in webcomics thanks to Patreon but I haven’t sunk the time into self-promotion to do that.
INK: How did you come to storyboard for Adventure Time? Is this something you would consider doing again in future?
LK: One of the storyboarders on Adventure Time had gotten a Bug Boys zine somehow, and emailed me to tell me he
liked it. When I was looking for some freelance work, I emailed him asking if they were looking for anyone to draw backgrounds. He said no, but that I could take a boarding test, where you essentially just board one short scene to show your drawing and storytelling skills. I read up on the visual language of storyboarding, which is very specific. Mostly I read the official Adventure Time crew art Tumblr, King Of Ooo (kingofooo.tumblr.com), where they would post the entire storyboards for each episode after they aired. I spent two days drawing the test, turned it in and heard back a month later that they wanted to work with me.
Storyboarding pays pretty well (animation studios in California are largely unionized, meaning even as a freelancer my wage was good) but it is so hard. It takes so many more drawings to convey an action than in comics, and the deadlines are punishing. I would consider doing it again in the future, but I don’t know if I could work as a storyboarder full time.
INK: All of your short-form comics are brilliant, but I’ve been dying to ask: What inspired “Eyes, Ears, Tail or Whiskers?”
LK: I was trying to write something from the point of view of a cat, if one could really talk, but not in a cutesy or sentimental way.
INK: I know you’ve mentioned before about feeling somewhat trapped in New York City, and how the city affected your comic process. Is there anywhere else you would like to live/visit that you feel might inspire a more positive shift in your work?
LK: I currently live in Seattle, where I’m from. I don’t know if moving out of New York gave my work a positive shift, or if it was just the shift happening in my life at that time. Finding a place you want to live can be really inspiring, since cartooning requires kind of a “home base” to work from. I still wonder if I should try living in other places, especially if I could find somewhere cheaper to live that I would like just as much.
INK: Any advice for finding balance in post-graduation life?
LK: Make an effort to make new friends in comics and hold on to the old ones. I lost touch with almost everyone I went to SVA with, which felt impossible when we were together in class all the time, but then it happened so fast. Cartooning is so solitary and we live in a hyper-individualistic culture, so it’s easy to lose people or forget how to be a real friend. Consider connecting to people a skill you have to build, just like drawing and storytelling. Try to build good habits to be creative and take care of your body. Unfortunately, you really do need to exercise.
This interview was conducted on August 18, 2020. Since then, Laura has started a Patreon account! You can directly support her and get daily comics at www.patreon.com/lauraknetzger. You can also find her on Instagram at @ lauraknetz, on Twitter at @lauraknetzger, on Tumblr at laurark. tumblr.com, or on her personal site at lauraknetzger.com. Thank you again to Laura for her time!
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