Burnout is insidious. I’m on the mend, and doing well now that I successfully have diagnosed the problem and begun to address it in earnest. I’ll explain.
For 19 years I did freelance illustration work. I did all sorts of nifty art for lots of nifty products, but I was really focused on being a comic book artist. At the time that seemed important to me, although now I can’t really see why. I admired my comic artist heroes so much, greats like John Buscema, Gil Kane, John Byrne, and John Romita Jr. What I didn’t see was the excessive hours of work, no days off, no vacations, no health care, poor page rates, etc. I always got the prices I charged, and customers kept coming back for more, but it was a punishing career choice. I never broke in with Marvel or DC, but the situation there would have probably been similar.
Around 2004, I got fed up with drawing other people’s properties, so I dreamed up Johnny Saturn. For the most part, an exciting decade followed, I garnered a lot of attention in the comic world, made a lot of fans, did a lot of conventions, and really opened up to my inner salesman and promoter. It was a heady time, and I don’t regret it, but It didn’t end all that well.
By 2012, I was producing the Johnny Saturn webcomic twice weekly, and penciling, inking, and coloring two pages a week for a vampire comic for another publisher. The vampire job paid decent, the owner was easy to work with, and it kept us afloat financially. But, burnout was building.
First, I blew out my wrist and needed carpal tunnel surgery. Then, my thumb wore out, and my right shoulder. Spending hours and hours on a computer every day was taking its toll, and it became excruciating at points. Probably because of the pain I was developing a serious hate for making digital art, and that’s not a good thing for an illustrator, I can assure you. I’m sure that my avoidance issues was due to pain and long-term, serious exhaustion.
To alleviate the issue, I began hiring different digital colorists to lesson my burden. I had talented people from all over the world working for me, even some Marvel comics colorists, and at one point I had seven different creators working for me. I probably could have leveraged this into an illustration agency of some sort, but managing that group of willful creatives was a full-time job in its own right.
I limped through 2012, trying my best to work through the pain, but by 2014 I was done. I ended Johnny Saturn, ended working for other publishers, and ended my punishing schedule of doing anything and everything I could dream up to promote my work. Promotion had become frantic and exhausting in its own right, and I easily could have kept a full-time promoter busy. Like I said, in 2014 I was done. I still did book covers for publisher/writer friends, but I already hated digital art, and I just couldn’t do it anymore.
Be sure to come back for the next post, the Aftermath. Happily, the story does turn around for the better.
Scott is known for the rich detail, clever storytelling, and organic quality to his art. As a cartoonist, Scott is an all-purpose creator– he writes, pencils, inks, colors, letters and designs. Scott Story has also done advertising art; covers for books, CDs and tabletop games; movie, event and concert posters; interior art for tabletop games; logos and website graphics; and a wide range of other media. Scott was trained in traditional media, such as acrylics and water colors, but now he divides his time between the traditional and digital art worlds. He is in demand for his digital painting skills, used on covers, posters and prints.
As the creative director of Story Studios LLC., he has published two graphic novels, Johnny Saturn: Synns of the Father, and Johnny Saturn: Homeland Insecurity, with two more in the process of being completed. Story Studios has also published seventeen comics, a sketchbook, and a pinup book. He has written articles for Blueline Pro’s Sketch Magazine, and prose stories for print anthologies and the web. His webcomic, Johnny Saturn, is a past winner of the Webcomics Readers Choice Awards, and Scott was a speaker at the prestigious Graphic Engagement academic conference hosted by the Purdue University Comparative Literature Program.
Scott is a member of the Indy Webcomic Group, and he was the creator and a founding member of the highly successful Collective of Heroes, a juried collective of indie superhero webcomics.
- Thrice-Forged RPG News - November 1, 2025
- Absolute Planetary - November 1, 2025
- A Great Lesson Learned - October 25, 2025