I think it's good news that cable television is so, so supportive of the Louis C.K.s, the Lena Dunhams, the Matthew Weiners, and the Vince Gilligans. There's just so many people fearlessly making their stuff, you know?
I know my audience, and they're not people that the studios know anything about.
I've seen a tremendous shift especially in indie comics. I see all these young women who are out there creating. They're making these great web comics. Their graphic novels are getting published. They're making all this wonderful art. They're powerful. There's this vital energy about it that's really, really beautiful that years ago I knew existed but I didn't see so clearly.
[on the future of hand-drawn animation] I'm actually not that worried. I wouldn't give up on it completely. Once in a while there are strange, rich people who like to invest in odd things. You're going to have people in the corners of garages making cartoons to please themselves. And I'm more interested in those people than I am in big business.
Today, comics is one of the very few forms of mass communication in which individual voices still have a chance to be heard.
Digital distribution is a whole other way of communicating with your fans and giving them content at their leisure. It's like, there are people making music in their igloos on their PDAs. You're going to see the exact same thing with film.
In a world where we can all be our own filmmakers, the old elites are disappearing and there is no desire to look at somebody else's dream anymore because you can go off and make your own.
Some of my best experiences are with writer/directors. Guy Ritchie is one. I feel they have a clearer view of what they want to do. They haven't got to try and interpret someone's writing; it's all theirs. I really admire that.
Netflix is looking for interesting ideas from interesting creators. They really want to help me make the show I want to make.
Today, the era has changed. Everybody is indie now. Everybody making a random stupid mobile app is essentially indie, because they make it at home; they make it through Unity, and there are so many of them. We don't recognize everybody anymore.
So many people get deals, so many YouTubers get scripts and things made because they're constantly creating things on their own. Even if it's really cheap and it's really simple, if it's just good in itself then that's all that matters.
I would not be in comics if it weren't for independent creators like Kate Beaton, Jess Fink, and Emily Carroll. That's where I found my start and inspiration, through women who did it themselves and built a career on their own terms.
But there's still an avenue for smaller comics and personal expression.
It's what I always dreamed of: that you can make TV and everyone would get out of your way and you follow your vision without watering it down.
The term 'web-series' has a stigma attached to it because it was created at a time when the only web-series that were being created were being created by people who would have loved to have a television show, but they couldn't. So they created a web-series instead, on their own dime. And those series look cheap because of it.
On YouTube, we were our own masters. We could sit on an edit until we got it right, we could choose quality over quantity.
As long as somebody is guaranteed a certain number of sales you know you're gonna keep seeing these vanity projects. I mean they have a place, they serve a function they can bring people into comics.
Independent graphic novelists have already achieved good work in terms of design, but all these great minds are writing in English. There is a need for people to write in Hindi.
Alternative cartoonists have to rely on comic book stores to get their stuff in the hands of readers.
