Cartoonist Rina Piccolo: Ask Me Anything

My friend Rina Piccolo is hosting a week-long #AskMeAnything session over at the #AMAFeed. This is a chance to ask a cartoonist whatever you would like. She will be popping in to answer during the week. Rina is a well known syndicated cartoonist, as well as an illustrator, New Yorker cartoonist and has been in the professional cartooning business for a while. If you want to know how to deal with feedback, how to get published, how to overcome doubts about a cartooning career, and so on -- then this is for you.

Here's a good question and answer from the feed:

Question: What do you think is the secret to getting more readers to take interest in your works?

Rina Piccolo: This is a good question because it raises a point that I've always believed in. I may have even written a blog about it somewhere along the line. Anyway, it's this: basically, if the cartoonist/writer/artist is having fun creating whatever they're creating, it will show in the final product, and chances are good that people will generally like it because the spirit in which it was created will shine through. I never believed in pandering to an audience -- as a younger cartoonist, I sometimes did things, or put things in my comics that I "thought people would like", and they just crashed and burned. I learned a lesson: Just draw and write to entertain yourself-- you aren't that much different from other folks, and so what you find funny will most likely be funny to other people as well. That said, I should add another little secret: Don't try to please everybody. It's impossible. There will always be people who don't like what you do, and so you may as well draw and write what you find funny.

Go look here, and consider asking this amazing cartoonist a question.