Broken Brain Syndrome

•September 24, 2025 • Comments Off on Broken Brain Syndrome

To be a productive artist means you can’t let yourself be paralyzed by indecision or inaction. It’s fairly easy to become a deer in the headlights, however. After all, there are always millions of creative endeavors that one could pursue, and equally millions of ways to go about pursuing them!

Maybe, for example, I want to make a comic… or would it be better as a short film? …If it’s a film you’ll need locations, the right props, actors… unless maybe it should be animated; but that could take so much longer to make… okay, so maybe it IS a comic. I’ll draw it traditionally- that will feel more intimate… well, if I draw it digitally, it would streamline the production and really make the artwork pop… okay now am I going for a romantic take on the story or a comedic one? …or maybe it’s more noir… or horror… or…

You get the idea. At the end of the day, if you want to get something done, you have to do…. SOMETHING. If it means just making something happen and getting it finished- maybe the simplest thing is the best way to go! The important thing is to keep your workload practical and manageable. If your plans are beyond your capabilities, it’s very good to be rigidly honest with yourself about that. If you need a partner or even a crew to accomplish your ideas, you want to be able to identify that and find the best people for the job. The other important thing is to get results. Simply starting the thing is almost always one of the biggest hurdles. So get started. Big ideas only get smaller if you don’t start executing. When I have an idea for a comic, I like to do rough sketches of what’s in my head before I’ve even written anything down or done any proper planning. For me, it helps make the idea a little more real and seeing the scene on paper in any capacity can be enough to make it easier to visualize, dwell on and improve upon.

What are some roadblocks you find yourself hitting when starting a new project? Can you think of any ways that you can push past it and move on to the next step? I’m sure you can! After all, you’re creative!

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Life’s Too Short To Waste It Wishing.

•September 17, 2025 • Comments Off on Life’s Too Short To Waste It Wishing.

I’m always trying to think of ways to put out more artwork. Sometimes just the FEELING of not putting out art consistently enough can make you feel overwhelmed to the point of burn out. But making nothing is certainly one surefire way to NOT create more stuff.

The thing that always resuscitates my output is the idea that you simply will not always have hours at your disposal to put out amazing artwork. Between work and family, and all of life’s myriad of obligations, it simply isn’t always a guarantee that you’ll find extraneous pockets of time to work on your own personal expressions. That is, if your artwork isn’t the primary money-earning gig in your life. So I always try to remember to look for little 15 minute windows of time that I could use to doodle something out very quickly. 15 minutes may not be the most generous amount of time, but if you view it as such an opportunity; a challenge even, you may find it can be just the right amount of time to throw down some nice little surprises.

When you know time is short yank out your sketchbook and a pencil and scribble something down. Even if it’s lousy, keep in mind that it still has room to be improved when you throw some ink down on top. Erase and pop in some color for good measure. Crayon, colored pencil, a splash of watercolor or markers. When you have to hurry, practice not being too precious. Comic artist Jake Parker has said, “finished, not perfect”, meaning- you got something made- you never said it was Michaelangelo’s David! Which I find to be a good motivating mantra for myself at times. Learn when to let it go!

Finally, I want to say, if you practice working quickly, you will learn that you would be surprised what you can knock out in a 15 minute window. And, more importantly, that even when you think you’re short on time, you would be surprised how often a quick 15 minute window can surprisingly grow into an hour of free time that you didn’t know you had!
-Ryan.

Posted in drawing tips

Night Flight To Neptune.

•August 18, 2025 • Comments Off on Night Flight To Neptune.

This was originally a black and white piece I made for an Inktober prompt. The prompt was “Passport”. I typically try to keep my Inktober drawings loosely Halloween themed. This year I was giving the pieces titles and trying to make them reminiscent of Tim Jacobus’ Goosebumps book covers. I called this one “Night Flight To Neptune”. I didn’t complete all the prompts last year, but this one stood out as a favorite of mine, so I went back to it later on and colored it in Photoshop.

Here’s the original black and white ink drawing from my sketchbook for comparison.

Think I should color some more of these?

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Where In The World Does The Time Go?

•July 12, 2024 • Comments Off on Where In The World Does The Time Go?

I always get worried that I don’t have enough time to draw and work on my art. What I always end up discovering and rediscovering is that the time is there. The trick is to find it.
To me it always seems like family life, my day job, shopping, cooking, cleaning and all the tedium of the days can really box out any ideas of building on something that feels so much like self-interest and hobby work to hold in high regard, when there are bills that need to be paid.

Personally, however, not drawing is not an option. There is little else that brings me such internal peace and joy than when I’m making things up on the page and they start WORKING. I pray I’ll never know the day where I lose my hands. Or my eyes. Or worse! My imagination. And if ever I do, it’ll be all the sadder, if even one idea that I had never got to fall out of my wrist when I had the chance to help it escape.

So, I draw. I draw goofy creatures and impossible characters day after day. Until I CAN’T! There always come seasons in life that try and take it away. But I’ve always refused to let it go. I came up in life with a lot of talented artist friends over the years. It has always baffled and upset me to see people let the art fall away entirely. “What do you MEAN you don’t draw anymore?”
People usually cite their bustling family life, their careers or even an inability to make a career out of their talents as reasons for allowing their craft to wither and die.

My problem with that is that if it ever came to that, it would mean living a life compromised by the demands of others. Which may be noble, potentially. In some remarkable case where someone has given up their passion of drawing for the love of mankind beyond themselves. But for me, family, job and chores have ALWAYS been there. Even when my life has gotten tremendously hectic I’ve found time to work in my sketchbooks- I’m thankful for first-hand experience to remind me- the time is ALWAYS in there somewhere. As long as you want it to be. So more likely, to me, I suspect that the NOBLE sacrifice of your art actually comes out of laziness. Comfort. Ease. (Cowardice, even!)

There’s a part of my brain that really detests comfort. It’s a trickster. The tantalizing promise of Comfort! Right now! hypnotizes you into not doing what you ought to be doing. It does that all the time. Comfort is the devil in disguise. To reference the Twilight Zone, it’s a nice place to visit, but no place to make yourself at home. If you ask me.

For a while now- a few months, after starting a new job, dating and a LOT more driving entered my life, I found myself having a hard time finding time to work in my sketchbooks. The days just didn’t seem long enough to make time for it. But even on my busiest days after pulling double shifts at work, or pulling 12 hour road trips, I always used to make time for 15 minutes, if nothing else, in my sketchbook. Surely, the days are still 24 hours long! Where did my sketchbook time, even those 15 minutes, disappear to? Of course, the answer was in the same place it always is. The Comfort Zone. You want to know where my comfort zone was this time? Twitter. Oops. Sorry- X! X marks the spot. I realized I was now spending so much time scrolling social media when I could actually be working on drawings to post to social media! Which is what I’d really rather be doing in the first place!

So that is my new rule of thumb. If I can’t find time to draw, my first move: Attack the Comfort Zone. Get up earlier. Turn off the tv. Put down the phone. Get back to work.

And so off I go.
-Ryan.

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Am I Awake?

•May 3, 2014 • Comments Off on Am I Awake?

I made this video for a They Might Be Giants music video contest held by the band themselves.

It finished among the top 16 finalists of over 150 submissions.

I directed and animated the video.

Tyler Dewis (dewisfx.com) did motion graphics work

My sister, Kaeli O’Connor (kaelioconnor.com) painted the backgrounds.

-Ryan.

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Alphabetical Zoo.

•July 11, 2012 • Comments Off on Alphabetical Zoo.

Doing an incredible amount of work now that I’ve graduated. I’ve just started inking the second My Neighbor Is A Psychopath! book, and have started some other cool looking book-type projects. One of them is another comic. This one, about a ghost who inadvertently brings death to the living and decides to confront God about it (at least, I think it’ll be about that; the whole thing was begun very spontaneously.) I’m also working on a caricature someone decided to pay me for. I’m very anxious about this project, however, as caricature has always been a very unreliable talent for me.. but I’m hoping to finish this soon as it has been a while since I was asked to do it. I’m working on another VERY important personal project that I’m hoping will make my life just a little bit better in every way. More on that later, maybe… And finally, I’m also collaborating with the very curmudgeonly Tyler Dewis on an animation project for the ARTimation show in September for The Illinois Institute of Art. The thing was written as a team, but I will be doing all of the drawing and animation, while Tyler takes on all the slick special effects.

 

Below are some backgrounds for that animation I’m working on. The missing arms and pupils and such are elements that are going to be animated so are not included in the painting.

Here are a couple non revealing images from that ghost story I mentioned.

I’m pretty proud of the title logo type thing I drew up for it. Looks legit. 

Here are some My Neighbor Is A Psychopath!  images for a non-comic top-secret project. Don’t tell anyone.

 

Well, back to my top-most secrets. G’bye, everybody.

-Ryan!

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Whacked Out Bliss.

•March 24, 2012 • Comments Off on Whacked Out Bliss.

These are exciting times for me. Just finished school this week. Forever! Was nervous about my Portfolio Show that took place yesterday but it was a pretty exciting success, it seems! Tons of folks loved my comic book, which I nervously brought along. Turned out to be a pretty popular piece! People loved the animation and I got to talk with a lot of very intriguing folks about their really cool companies. 

I just now posted some newer images to the gallery here, and I’m working on uploading more animations to the site as well. 

Starting this week I’ll be starting a short animated film on the My Neighbor Is A Psychopath characters Tom & Sid. It is going to be about Sid (the titular psychopath and the kid with the eraser in my demo reel) and his imaginary friend Wesley who is part human boy, part lobster, and part deer. 

The idea is to finish that by August so I can enter it into the film festival my school holds every year.

Thanks to all the folks who showed up to the portfolio show! I had an absolute blast, myself! And congratulations to all of my graduating compadres! 

-Ryan!

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Counterfeit Stare (My New Book For SALE).

•March 18, 2012 • Comments Off on Counterfeit Stare (My New Book For SALE).

Hi, everyone.

If folks are interested the first part of my comic called My Neighbor Is A Psychopath! is out now.

That is for sale exclusively at Lulu.com right here. It is priced at $6.27, and only that high in order for me to earn anything at all off of them. I’ll be working on part two very shortly after I wrap up my college days later this week.

If you do buy one I’d really appreciate it. I have never sold any artwork in my life at this point, and the idea of that potentially changing is really exciting to me. However, if you’d like to see the thing for free the pages can be found at the My Neighbor Is A Psychopath! blog.

The only thing about the physical copy that is different is that you get the newly designed front and back cover, and also the intro and outro I composed for the book. At the front there is also a foreword written by my good friend Tyler Dewis.

If you do buy a copy maybe let me know about it! I’d be excited to hear from you!

Thanks, friends.

-Ryan!

Posted in information., merch., mniap.

Lumbering Onward.

•February 8, 2012 • Leave a Comment

New images, new animations, new tweets, new DOMAIN name (though the wordpress one still does the trick.)!!

Buried deep in my work right now as I prepare to graduate. While scouring my computers for work I may have forgotten about I found some old things I worked on as well as old things I’ll be continuing to work on. Dig the newly posted gallery images.

Also new is this animation I’m very happy to show off simply titled: Car Jump.

Furthermore, I’ve now included a spot for all the tweet-tastic tweets I tweet. Feel free to join in and get my tweets sent directly to YOUR tweets, or whatever that website does with the stuff I type into it.

And finally, I recently changed the domain name to the place, so you don’t have to type in that unsightly WORDPRESS word anymore (though you can if you want).

So with all that said and done, I invite you to enjoy the stuff that I just talked about.

LOVE.

-Ryan.

P.S.  Be sure to tell your grandmother and stuff about all that junk I told you. Thanks!

Posted in cartoon, information.

Baffled Rapscallion.

•February 5, 2012 • 6 Comments

I went searching for this sketch I did some time last year thinking it might look really cool colored up.

Here’s the inked version while I actually start coloring it.

 

Last night a very shy coworker had another coworker ask me if I would draw her a picture so that when I was a big, famous cartoonist she could say that she knew me. That was the best thing that ever happened.

I’ve got to do something very special for her. Don’t know what yet though..

-Ryan.

Posted in toast.

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