Cameron Comix - Bad With Directions
Cameron was drawing at an early age and “started taking art a little more seriously” in 6th grade. Today, he’s 16 years old and has nearly 8,000 subscribers on his YouTube channel, CameronComix.
“I had some classmates who also enjoyed drawing, and that’s when I started trying to improve and learn different techniques,” he says. “And I started going into the digital art space around 2016.”
Early on, Cameron mostly sketched cartoon characters. He took art classes last year at Southaven High School in North Mississippi — this year, as a 10th grader, he’s homeschooled — but his skills have been almost entirely self-taught.
About three years ago, he says, “My friend showed me some YouTube channels, and they did similar things to what I do now with digital art, and I got inspired. I didn’t really have any equipment at that time, so I used my iPad and drew cartoons.”
He practiced on his iPad using drawing and animation apps he found in the app store, switching through multiple programs, testing and learning more along the way. “It wasn’t the best situation,” he says, “because it was low quality. Sometimes I would draw on paper, and I would get my iPad and take a picture of it and then trace over it in the iPad with my finger.”
Cameron started sharing his art with the world via Instagram (@camerconcomix), where he initially posted digital art comics. From there, he began to search YouTube for tutorials on how to create animations and make videos. “I slowly learned, and then I started posting videos,” he says. “I gained a little bit of subscribers, and I’ve kept working and working and working since. It’s been growing a lot more.
“I watch a lot of YouTube channels that I take inspiration from,” he says. “I’ll see something and think, that’s a great idea, I may try to incorporate that. There are a lot of elements that go into it, and story-building and writing are huge parts of it for me now, so I’ll listen to other people’s stories and see how they build the stories up, and for jokes, how they deliver the punchline.”
Cameron’s animations are humorous — about clumsiness, school, camping, and being lost in Walmart — often exaggerated versions of real-life stories. “I tell stories of things that have happened to me that are boring by themselves — relatable kind of stories — but I like to make them funnier with jokes and writing.”
Today, he uses a computer and drawing tablet with a stylus, so he can make his creations on the tablet and then project them onto the computer screen. He uses a program called Toon Boom Harmony to turn those drawings into animations.
The animation process is time-consuming. “You draw one frame, and that’s one drawing, and then the next frame, you slightly alter that drawing,” Cameron says. His most recent video animations have been four to six minutes long, which can mean upwards of 4,000 individual frames/drawings. One video can take him up to four months to complete.
His hope is to one day be able to monetize his YouTube channel, which would mean paid advertisements being placed before his videos and a percentage of that money going to him. “A few years ago, they changed the criteria, so now you have to have 4,000 hours of watch time, which means that 4,000 viewers have to watch at least an hour of videos, and that’s hard to do when I’m only doing videos monthly,” Cameron says. “I’m working a lot harder now, though.”
Cameron uses other social media platforms, like Instagram, Twitter, and TikTok, to interact with fans. “It’s really cool,” he says. “The way that YouTube and social media are moving now, it’s becoming more viewed than mainstream media. I really want to pursue YouTube as much as I can for now. I don’t know if that’s going to be a stepping stone to something else, but I want to see where it takes me.”
To support Cameron’s work, visit patreon.com/cameroncomix. Find his content on YouTube or Instagram by searching for CameronComix.
