Avoiding Artistic Imitations

Despite designing games for Netflix and murals in Seoul, it all comes back to cartoons for Ryan Cecil Smith

Art by Ryan Cecil Smith

THE ARTIST’S DILEMMA WITH RYAN CECIL SMITH

Great art is a great story. This week, we’re talking to Ryan Cecil Smith, an illustrating multihyphenate with credits from Disney, Netflix, and Cartoon Network. Despite an impressive portfolio, Ryan’s dream is probably similar to yours: writing and illustrating his own comics for a living.

I’ve yet to meet one artist who prefers to do their work on the side, but creative endeavors don’t always pay the bills. My conversation with Ryan kept returning to that conflict, to finding the balance between steady cash flow and the liberation of creation. It’s worth noting that Ryan’s career is wide; outside of the studio credits, he’s a regular cartoonist for a fashion blog, and was a teacher in Japan. Even in conversation, I got the sense that he was most comfortable in motion. This interview is full of great insights— you can follow Ryan’s Instagram here, or click on the images to view his portfolio.

Tell me if I'm wrong, but you're an artist who falls into four categories. You're a cartoonist, which is what you label yourself. You're an animator, which looks to be your job right now. You're into fashion— you collaborate with fashion brands and magazines. And you’re a teacher. You’re all these things in one: is that accurate?

You said it pretty well. I wish I did more teaching professionally because I really enjoy it, but I'm so bad at pursuing the opportunities. I love teaching.

As far as being an animator is concerned, typically I would say that I work in animation. Calling myself an “animator” is a little loose because I'm a designer on an animation team. But yeah, I'm an animator. Roughly. Animation is what pays the best, so I like to do as much work as I can. It's always more reliable.

The main thing for me though, is being a cartoonist. I wish I could write and draw my own comics full-time, but that's really hard. It’s hard to write a book, it's hard to draw. I love doing it the most.

Art by Ryan Cecil Smith

And the fashion stuff— When I lived in Japan in my early 20s, I came out of art school and I didn't know anything about style and clothes. In fact, I believed that we live in a meritocracy where it doesn't matter what you dress like. That's irrelevant. Maybe it's an artsy thing to dress cool. But there I learned how to dress and why it's important, for whatever sense that means for someone.

When I left Japan, I really missed the clothing. I loved how people dressed. I love the style everywhere. I think in America, clothes and fashion are for rich, hot, artistic people. And I think that's lame. In Japan clothes are something that is worn well by a lot of different people. And there's meaning to it. You see old people and kids and all people dress for their age and they dress for the situation. It's really beautiful. They look great.

Then I come to America, and it's all the same blah, low effort. There's good reasons for that, by the way. We have freedom: we don't have to wear a suit to get respect on the street, you know what I mean? There are good points in America, but I missed it. So I made these zines about style and fashion in Japan. Then I met this guy who runs a website [Put This On] that I loved, and I gave him the zine, and he asked me to do a feature on his site. And he's continued to pay me to do comics about it.

The design for Random Walk’s mural. Art by Ryan Cecil Smith.

Can you tell me about the mural you designed with the Korean retailer Random Walk? How did that happen?

They're a cool store. I love the clothes they have. I think they asked for ideas for an illustration, and I pitched them on that mural and they were into it. I'm a really bad freelance illustrator because you have to figure out how much to charge people and set all these rules. It's so stressful. I feel like I don't know how to ask for enough money.

I think they have great taste. I really like what they sell. And I think it's really cool that they offered me a fair rate. They offered me a fair illustration, but the expectations for notes and revisions can be hard. It's nothing against them. It's just hard for me to work out how to do this for money.

How do you reconcile the art and the portfolio side of it with the money and the business side? Are they clashing at all times?

Yeah, I don't know how to. I'm really bad at it. I don't feel confident in myself as an illustrator, especially on the business side. It's miserable, to be honest.

I hear you. Now by my count, you’ve worked in three different countries: that's Korea, Japan and America.

Well, I lived in Japan in my 20s. And I did a bunch of freelance work for magazines that I love and are really cool. Incidentally, they don't pay great. But they are really cool. And it's an honor to be asked. They're really consistent and the deadlines are really consistent.

So it's kind of different than, for example, Random World. Nothing bad against them, but when I take on a project, I don't know how long its going to go on. That’s the nice thing about working for Japanese magazines: the pay isn't amazing, but they give you pretty good freedom. They're really nice. And it's month by month. You know they have a crazy deadline.

I've been based in the U.S. for about eight years. The Korean stuff came up recently. I'd love to do more of that, but I'm just so bad at sales opportunities.

Art by Ryan Cecil Smith

You have a degree in printmaking, right? I can see how that leads to comics. But how does that lead to teaching in Japan?

Well, it's a fine art degree. I got very little professional development training in university and art school. When I graduated, I didn't know how to make money as an artist, but I knew that I should keep working on my artwork.

I had a lot to learn, a lot to develop personally, so I decided to get a job somewhere interesting and do whatever. I applied for this Japanese teaching job almost on a lark. It was called the Japan Exchange Teaching program, the JET program. And the deal was with the government to get foreigners to teach in mostly rural schools in Japan.

English was a required subject. It was a way to help motivate kids and give them some exposure to people outside of their village, where they were otherwise going to be farmers their whole lives. I think it's a great program. The program requires that you have a university degree. You don't have to have a background in Japanese but a background in teaching is good. I had taught stuff in high school and college, and in martial arts and coaching. I think I have a good personality for that kind of thing.

I felt very lucky to get that job. The good point of the JET program is that they pay you. It was a lot of money for me, and they find you a place to live. They set you up with housing. The bad point is you have no control over where you'll go. You could be in a mountain or a remote island. They don’t give a shit once you’re placed. I had a pretty urban placement. It was an adventure, and it turned out to be great.

Art by Ryan Cecil Smith

I want to ask about your comics. Who are your artistic inspirations?

Oh, thanks for asking. I feel like my main DNA is French comics, like Tintin. French comics are really great because they have this readable format that I think is rewarding. It's not like Marvel Comics, which to me are not inspiring, interesting. I feel like French comics are made to be read, like characters moving and the way the text works.

But when I moved to Japan, manga hit me. I never read manga before my 20s. I actually thought manga was an unserious genre for girls or something. It's such a stupid opinion. It's so stupid and ignorant.

It was really great to learn about manga like Leiji Matsumoto. It was a huge influence on me. Also, Kazuo Umezu, who's most famous for this book called Drifting Classroom. What I like about Kazuo Umezu is that his work is also very readable, very left-to-right, a lot of clarity.

In this almost naive way, he makes a very emotional experience while also prioritizing readability and clarity. There's something about that I think is amazing. He just layers emotion on top of it, like you don't have to be a genius to come up with good stories. You can have a story and tell it in an emotional way. That is exciting for a reader, and it's inspiring as an artist. I feel like he didn't break new ground in a storytelling way. He told it kind of plainly in his voice from his heart.

Leiji Matsumoto is another artist I like to talk about. He was one of the first manga artists to be translated into English for his comics about fighter pilots in World War II, but he's most famous in Japan for sci-fi. There was this 70s comic called Galaxy Express 999, which is about a galactic train that goes to different places.

When I first saw Leiji Matsumoto's comics, I thought they were bad. I thought they were ugly. He has these loose, weird panel shapes. They're vertical and diagonal and squeezed, and his character designs are really squished. It's weird that he has these identical blond girls in all of his comics and these, like, ugly, fat boys. Like, what is he doing?

It just seemed dumb to me. I had a visceral reaction against it when I first read it, but I kept reading it, and I kept enjoying it. I feel like he taps into archetypes from his heart.

Also, he writes with a lot of conviction. I love that his work has strong morals. He has such strong morals that I was actually drawing a pastiche comic of his work, where I was imitating his stuff. Then I read that he hates that does not accept it as a compliment. He's specifically against that kind of thing. He said, “If you're going to draw copies of my work, put it in your sketchbook, don't publish it. That's not your voice. That's mine.” I love that, man.

ryancecil

A post shared by @ryancecil

Just for context for our readers, we met at the IE Print and Zine Fest. You showed me a great rubric that basically converts digital printing standards to the risograph. It’s a grid where you point to the color you want. You input that into the machine, and you get wonderfully complex colors that otherwise wouldn’t be possible. Can you tell me what the thought process was for that?

Yeah. I use a risograph, which is a printer that’s basically a photocopier that was invented in Japan. The prints tend to be lower quality than a photocopier. But the cool thing about a risograph is that they're cheaper and you can switch the ink drum out to a different color.

They're not designed to be CMYK printers. Risographs are not designed to be good color printers. We as artists have learned to trick them out and to use them to make really cool and beautiful art. The value comes from making a lot of them.

The Riso Science Multi-Pack is the result of a lot of experiments I did where I would layer different inks and see how to get the best range of values. What I'm recommending with this guidebook is that in order to get really good colors, you should have a system and you should experiment. That's what I'm showing you: my results from experimenting with the graph color.

There are different ways to use a risograph, and I'm being opinionated, but this is the best way to do it. Basically, I use the CYMK channels in Photoshop, and I trick the computer into making risograph color. This translates CYMK on a computer into my risograph colors. I have to do a little trigonometry in my head-- if I want the print to look like this, I'm going to point to this value on the chart, on the screen it's going to look like this. I can't know how exactly it's going to look until I print, but it really, really helps.

So while I do sell these to people, I tell them that they really need to make their own for their machine and then use it. I show people exactly how I do it and how they can do it. But every machine is different. And the inks are different.

Art by Ryan Cecil Smith

I've spoken to a lot of other risograph artists, and they talk about using your key to inform their own choices. Now, correct me if I'm wrong here, but when we spoke at the fest, you indicated that you weren’t a fan of doing the inverse, which is using software and computer tools to create a more analog look. Is that the case?

Yeah, it's just not for me. It's not what I'm interested in. You know, some tools can create a risograph effect on Procreate or Photoshop. I just saw some really great illustrations in the New York Times by an international artist, and they were done with a risograph effect. The illustrations are beautiful.

But that's not what I'm doing. That has nothing to do with my artwork. I'm making graph prints, and I'm doing my best to make them look really good and clear and colorful and vibrant and bright. I love the nature of the texture. It's one of the first things I loved about it. The off-register nature is part of the charm. And I love that, but I'm not trying to make digital artwork that imitates that. I'm trying to make really good artwork in that medium.

That's a good segue to another topic. A few weeks ago, I interviewed an AI artist. Or, they described themselves as an AI-assisted artist. They didn't like the term.

Yes, I read your interview. Interesting.

I know there are a lot of artists who are scared of AI, and I don't blame them. Its technical capabilities are incredible, but the way you put it, I think, sums up how I feel about that.

I might be technically impressed by that AI tool, but I don't feel anything because a robot hallucinated it. I might be impressed by the science of it, but I can’t compare it to art that a person made with intent and deliberate choices. Do you feel concerned with the immediacy and the speed with which non-artistic folks are using AI? Especially as a replacement for graphic designers and artists of all sorts?

This interview's over. Just kidding. I don't know, Ed.

I don't know who is using AI for what. It's obviously a threat to the economics of people who do similar things to me, if people who pay us are choosing instead to use a computer. However, I will say that personally, I don't know if I work with any clients who are choosing AI instead. I don't know what kind of clients those are.

Llike, all the Ghibli imitations, which I think are kind of garbage and shitty. But they're not shitty because I'm going out of business. The people making those things are just on the internet, making a little avatar. But I think it cheapens the artwork.

If I knew someone who was making artwork in a Ghibli style, I might ask them, “What can you bring to the artwork besides that style?” It's important as an artist to bring more of who you are.

Art by Ryan Cecil Smith

It’s artists with a point of view and some kind of imperative that inspire us. If the New York Times, for example, started using AI art for its pieces, that would be disappointing. As you said, I think people find it meaningful that a person did it, and it just ain't meaningful if it's an editor plugging something into AI. And when you see editorial illustrations in the Times, you know that an art director with taste and purpose in their mind hired an artist who could capture something in their artwork.

So I don't know, man, am I just ranting at you? I feel like this format you've got is encouraging me to rant. What do you think, man?

100% I just want to hear everyone's rants. But no, I think you're hitting the nail on the head. I feel confident that artists as a whole will be fine, because if someone didn't want to hire you to make their logo, they were going to use Canva or a stock generator anyway, right?

Yeah. Who's the client who's going to not pay you a gig worth having, and instead pay someone 20 bucks to output AI? Who is that client?

It would never get to the point of you two having a conversation. I also think the term AI is too broad. It just means “algorithm” for normies at this point.

I'm surprised there hasn't been more practical action from artists. Plus, right now we’re in a period where most people don’t consider art cerebrally or emotionally. It’s a thing to do. You don’t experience a movie, you go to the movies, you know what I mean?

Art is seen as too much like a consumer good. A thing that you just buy. And that’s the thing with the Ghibli AI thing. People are asking why they can’t buy a Ghibli image of themself. There's not enough introspection of like, why do you want a Ghibli picture of yourself? What does that mean to you?

That's a good question. Why do you need yourself to be a muppet or a Disney character?

What is it that you want here?

Art by Ryan Cecil Smith

I don't know, it doesn't seem good. I want to ask about Battle Kitty, and the interactive map you did for Netflix, because… holy cow? It’s just a gorgeous render. Can you tell me a little bit about that work process?

Netflix hired a team of mostly 2D animators to design a 3D show, and we were kind of making it up as we went along. We were basically designing maps using repeatable assets. This is probably baby level for real video game designers. Did you look at the one that’s a big purple forest?

I did.

Two or three episodes in the show would take place in a certain area. It's like designing video game levels. So we had to design all the objects and the spaces, and we had to place those objects in those spaces. We're working with a vendor studio, meaning we're designing everything and then other studios are doing it in 3D using Unreal Engine, which has become a thing in animation more recently. We learned a lot as we went, and that forest area was the most intense. That's when it reached a crescendo of “This is getting insane.”

And, not that you asked this, but Battle Kitty did not get renewed for a second season. In fact, many Netflix projects don't. I'm grateful to have done it, but it's really too bad that despite all the knowledge we figured out at that point, we didn't get to keep going. We got better at working with the animation studio, figuring out exactly what they needed.

You come up with systems for making your game work, so making a sequel or a season two is really awesome because it’s so cost-effective to do it twice.

Art by Ryan Cecil Smith

Absolutely. I can imagine that. You guys built infrastructure, and I thought that map was really great. Before we go, we always ask our guests to advise an artist who’s starting up. What do you tell them that makes their life a little easier in the beginning?

Well, it's very broad.

It is.

Unfortunately, being a good artist, whatever that means to you, is different than making money. And you have to do both.

I'm someone who, my whole career, has had a side job, and I've been totally okay with that. Maybe I spent too much time looking at economic security and not enough time working on projects that are important to me.

I wouldn't say I’m regretful, but it's a lot of work to do both. And I think it's important to know they shouldn't be the same thing. You can't keep painting and painting and think that'll make you money. You have to learn how to make money and take care of yourself. You shouldn't do that through the painting. It might work out that way, but you have to work on both things.

Otherwise, you need to know how to sell paintings. You have to know how to talk to people and network. That's an important skill. Just don't forget to develop those things at the same time.

Art by Ryan Cecil Smith

Is there anything you’re working on that you’d like to share?

Yeah, I'm making a zine. It's called Shorts Folio #1. It collects four science fiction shorts. A lot of it is about my dad. That's kind of the theme, tying it together. And just in time for tariffs, it will probably be 30% more expensive to make. I'm printing in Japan, and I do believe I will be eating those costs. I don't think I'm going to increase the book price by 30%. I think I'm just going to have less of a margin. ⬤

Portions of this transcript have been edited for clarity.

Find more of Ryan’s work on Instagram and his website.

If you’d like The Daily Egg to showcase your work in a newsletter, reach out to us! You can fill out the Artist Highlight form here, or email/DM us for more information.

---

---