'Digitalization gave me more time for creativity'
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Ji Gang-min / Korea Times photo by Baek Byung-yeul
This is the fifth in a series of interviews with resident cartoonists of the Korea Manhwa Content Agency's Manhwa Business Center. ― ED.
By Baek Byung-yeul
In the past when cartoonists had fresh and innovative ideas that would leave their readers panting with desire for more, working through the night was essential for them to meet the deadline.
However, more and more cartoonists these days are adapting to digital technologies to make their work easier to do so they can concentrate on developing new ideas.
Cartoonist Ji Gang-min, best known for his smash hit webtoon, or online comic strip, “Welcome to the Convenience Store,” said he is one of the cartoonists to benefit from adapting advanced technologies and said that using these devices enables him to lead a more reasonable life.
A cover image for cartoonist Ji Gang-min’s “webtoon” or online comic strip “Welcome to the Convenience Store.” / Courtesy of the artist
“My life motto is not to skip a meal and not to pass a night without sleep. I am fully benefiting from my digitalized environment. These are my driving forces to keep my life in balance,” Ji said at a cafe at the Korea Manhwa Content Agency in Bucheon, Gyeonggi Province on Sept. 17.
The 37-year-old cartoonist said he used to bury himself in paper in the early stage of his career as a cartoonist, but nowadays Ji takes a break once a week while featuring his new comics series “The Commute Family” twice a week.
“When I began drawing cartoons, I had to work seven days a week as there was tons of works to do, not to mention coming up with new ideas for my cartoons. At that time, I needed five days only to draw my cartoon while I spent two days creating scripts.
“But, these days, I use about four days for story composition and two days for drawing. It is because I don’t have to consume my time for routine processes, such as drawing background of the comics after adapting 3D rendered backgrounds,” he said.
Milk, bottom, and ice cream featuring characters from cartoonist Ji Gang-min’s webtoon “Welcome to the Convenience Store.” / Courtesy of the artist
The star cartoonist made his name in several cartoon contests before he reached the age of 30, but his breakthrough came just after he turned 30 with “Welcome to the Convenience Store” in 2008.
Based on his two and a half years working at a convenience store, he began running his comic strip on Naver (www.naver.com), Korea’s largest portal and webtoon operator from 2008 to 2014, portraying various types of customers and workers at a fictional convenience store.
“I promised my parents that I would quit drawing cartoons unless I won a contest backed by the Seoul International Cartoon & Animation Festival. As I didn’t have much time to meet the contest deadline, I adapted my work at the convenience store and I won the “excellence award” and “popularity award,” and that led me to run ‘Welcome to the Convenience Store’ on Naver,” Ji said.
Though he was supposed to deal with part time workers at the store at first, he soon changed his plan to focus more on customers as well because he received great responses from various people.
“At the beginning, I only tried to describe the routine of part-timers there and wrote episodes about them. But I received many unexpected responses from readers. Especially from teenage girls as they liked my cute drawings of characters,” Ji said.
Pioneering example of ‘one-source, multi-use’
Thanks to the huge response, Ji’s webtoon has been adapted in different formats such as TV animation, smartphone games and printed books.
The characters in the comics also featured different kinds of products in the convenience store franchise 7-Eleven ranging from milk to ice cream bars. Characters of the comics were made into toys by Korean toy maker Oxford Blocks.
When asked about how he accomplished such a great feat with his webtoon, Ji said the answer lies in focusing on finding universal themes.
“Webtoon has great accessibility. It is open to everyone and I am only to find a portion that everyone can sympathize with. Of course, it is hard to find common feelings between readers and creators. I think these are the keys to success,” Ji said.
In his new webtoon series “The Commute Family,” the cartoonist seems to go ahead with what he emphasized as the characters in the comics, including a taxi driver father, a bus driver mother, an older sister who drives a subway train and a high school student who rides on a bus and a subway to commute to school.
He now publishes it on Kakao Page, another content provider specializing in mobile devices.