2011 Challenger: Robert Worstell
Thanks for this opportunity to show off my artwork. I’ve been doing cartoons and such all my life, but it’s been taking second-fiddle to many different interests, such as “making a living” and “getting through school”, among others. However, I’ve recently been unearthing my old stuff I did in the odd corners of my life and reviewing these to see how I could get these going as a real enterprise – you know, start making money with this stuff and all my various talents.
And it’s encouraging to see how people are doing this, and all the connections which online publication and sales make possible these days. For I started in the days of actual cut-and-paste, having to send submissions by snail-mail and getting no feedback on the rejections. With cartoons and online publishing, I can get them out via my own virtual publishing house, with the whole world wide web to bring new clients to my virtual door. (You can tell I’m a bit excited about breaking into this, can’t you?)
My characters will be based on the caricatures I’ve been doing at County Fairs during recent summers. (Felt-tip pen and crayon-pencils on art paper.) In fact, I found out about 30 Characters from the website of a fellow caricaturist at Columbia College in Missouri (where we’ve shared gigs there for years.)
Here’s a collection of a test run I did last year for a local Facebook celebrity called the Mexico Goat (who annoyed local pet-control officers for several weeks before a literal cowboy caught him with lasso from horseback.)