NO APOLOGIES

Around this time of year, CCS incoming freshman log on to the school’s  message board. They find roomates and post links to their work. They also mentally prepare themselves for the ups and downs of the intense one or two year-long creative process that lies ahead. When someone started apologizing for their work (a common cartoonist affliction which I still suffer from), a few CCS alumni stepped in offered some advice. CCS alumni rock!

“Take it from one who knows from experience. Don’t waste a minute of your time at the school apologizing for how shitty your work may or may not be. It might be shit or it might be gold, and whichever one it is, you might look back on it in the future and realize it was the other one all along. In any case, get ready to make a lot of it and have the integrity to claim it all as yours. Doing good and bad work is all part of the journey. Be prepared to do a lot of it, and put any energy you might have left over not into apologizing for it but into doing even more of it. You’ll be glad you did.”

—Dave Weinar, a.k.a. Kid Clampdown, 2012

“So, I pretty much came to CCS feeling holy crap overwhelmed by the skill levels of my classmates, combined with an already pretty low opinion of my own skill level. I came with pretty much one goal: to get better so that I would be able to tell the stories I wanted to tell.

I can’t say I’m now wow, the greatest artist out there, but if you want to improve you have an opportunity to work your ass off like you’ve never had before; to learn and grow and to develop all sorts of skills. The difference in quality between the work I did at the beginning and what I was able to do at the end was tremendous. Even if I always feel like I have a lot to learn, the two years I spent at CCS were a bootcamp unlike any other, largely in part because I wanted it to be that way.

So yeah, no matter where you are when you come in, you can come out of this experience having learned A LOT. That is a fantastic and amazing thing.”

—Carol Thompson 2011