Bored Panda reached out to Colm O'Hare, to ask him a few more questions in regards to his art, comics, and himself.
Colm expressed a passion for animation, having worked in an animation studio for a year. He said, "I have dabbled with animation for many years, even working in an animation studio for one year. As much as I would love to add animation to my comics or make short animations for YouTube, sadly animation is a bit too time-consuming at the moment. Perhaps I will be able to make time for it in the future as I always did enjoy doing it. Hopefully, within the new year, I will be able to make one or two short animations using my comic characters. It would be really cool to see my characters come to life, so definitely not ruling it out."
On finding motivation, Colm shared with us, "For me, the most difficult challenge can be simply finding the motivation to draw that week. I have a full-time job apart from comics, so a lot of my free time is used to draw these comics and promote them on social media. After a while, it can be very taxing and you just want a break, but you really don't want to be taking too many breaks.
Normally what I do when I feel like my motivation or my creativity is tapped out is to tell myself, 'Just do a little bit'. Similar to how someone struggling to go to the gym can convince themselves, 'ok, I can't be bothered to do my usual routine, I will just do some push-ups'. The logic being, 'Some push-ups are better than nothing', but usually once you've finished, you find you still have enough energy and motivation to do a bit more, and before you know it you've done your whole workout routine. Art is the same, I just give myself something small to do, some stress-free throwaway sketches, and before I know it I have a full comic sketched out."
Colm also mentioned his growing interest in horror, inspired by books and games. "I've been getting into horror a lot more recently, thanks to books and games with horror themes. It's inspired me to start writing some horror of my own, which isn't something I have a lot of experience in, but I'm really excited to give it a go. I've already dabbled by making a few small horror comics but I plan to take a much more serious approach with future comics."
Discussing audience engagement, the artist told Bored Panda, "I mostly interact with my audience through the comment section when I post my comics to Reddit, Instagram, Webtoon, and Patreon. Most of my interactions happen on Reddit and Patreon. Normally I don't let the audience impact any decisions in regard to the story too much, however, it's great to see how they react to some characters, and their excitement over what I originally considered minor one-time characters. Sometimes the audience can grow really attached to those characters and that leads to those characters coming back in bigger roles. Thanks to my audience I feel like my comics grow and transform into something better. "
As for future aspirations, Colm revealed, "I hope to someday write and draw a full graphic novel. I mentioned previously that I wanted to experiment more with horror and I've begun writing a horror/comedy fictional story - but for now I'm going to keep the details of that under wraps. I'm currently writing out the story and trying to improve the quality of my artwork to begin bringing this story to life. I'm super excited about it and I hope it might find its audience."
