Interview with Eric Goff - Creator of Outcast Studio's

First off... lets start with your name on your site. Goff. What is its origin and whats your real name?
My real name is Eric Goff and that's where my screenname comes from. When I first "came up" with my screenname I didn't realize that I could try and come up with something clever or cool so I just used my name. Everyone in highschool called me Goff so that's what I used.

Can you give us a history lesson on Outcast studios. When I joined a few years back, it was much different. It felt like a comic publishing company. Was it and what direction is it headed now?

Well it all started way back when an friend and I were making a comic for my character Cedric The DragonSlayer and at the time I thought it would be a good idea to try and start one of these crazy new web-site things to help us get our names out there. When I chose the name I didn't want to be too specific with the site because I always thought that it would be nice to have some room to grow. So instead of using Outcast Comics I decided Outcast Studios was a pretty cool alternate.

At the time there were a few sites out there with groups of artists showing off their skills and I was always impressed with the following they had. Blind Monks is the site that I remember most. I always thought it would be cool to get more artists and writers together as a true on-line studio creating comics. Not just cool artwork but an actual honest to god comic company. It wasn't long after starting the web-site that my friend and I parted ways creatively and I started to focus my energy on the web-site.

Within the first few months I had another writer and artist on board working on a comic (that never saw the light of day). The writer Bucky Carter has been with me since essentially the beginning. Since then we slowly added artists and writers. We found that it was especially hard to produce comics in a timely manner. We were never able to get anything off the ground on-line or in print. We always ran into problems with the artist not being able to keep up with the work. Often we'd have an artist finish up 1 or 2 pages and then fall off the face of the earth never to be seen again. Then the next artist would start off with the same two pages of the story and again fall off the face of the planet.

Not long after having eternal problems with artists working on projects we decided to move in another direction with our off shoot site comicbookinsider.com. It was basically intended to be a comic news site. We started off really strong with about 8-10 writers writing columns on a regular basis and interviews with some heavy hitters in the industry from Ryan Scott Ottney. He interviewed people like Kevin Smith and Joe Quesada which was good for our initial traffic numbers but as with other projects the passion seemed to fade for our writers and eventually we shut the site down.

So with no artists interested in our in-house projects and most of our writing core disbanded I made an extra effort to seek out on-line comic creators with their own comics. This was a double edged sword for the site. On the one side it was great for content. We had good period of time where we had several on-line comics running on a regular basis simultaniously. The down side to this was the studio was becoming more and more about the individuals behind the individual project and less and less about Outcast Studios and our place on the internet.

Eventually most of the individual comics and creators moved away from Outcast Studios to have their own sites and persue their own endevours. That leaves us near present day where I decided to try and remake the site AGAIN into a place where all comic creators can come and be part of a studio atmosphere. I thought about changing the name of the site but eventually couldn't part ways with my baby. So Outcast Studios still remains 8 years and thousands of changes later.

We've outlasted some pretty big name sites and for that alone I'm proud of what we've tried to do and the things that our members have gone on to do. I've been lucky to be surrounded by a lot of talent through out the years and it's always helped to inspire me to never give up.

Have you ever created a web site before? What made you decide to create one like this?

This was the first web-site I ever started. I had ZERO experience in creating a web-site. It's been really frustrating at times becuase I still don't have any idea what I'm doing unless I taught myself how to do it. And I'm pretty lazy so I haven't learned much See previous answer for the WHY.

I notice your not an advanced cartoonist like some of the guys on your site but still, your there drawing every single day. Do you ever want to just toss the pen in the bin and give up? I know I do.

Heck yeah in fact I've told myself a few times that I should just give up and focus on other things that I can do for the studio and it's members. But I always come back to drawing becuase it's fun. Nothing I can do to make it stop being something I enjoy

What things are you working towards now? Such as, your art, your life, your web site?

Truthfully I try not to think about goals becuase most of the time I just disappoint myself. I'm not good at sticking with goals.

With my art my intentions are to get good enough to enjoy what I see when I finish a drawing. I'm getting closer and closer to that. Some say you never get to that point as an artist but I have pretty low expectations of myself

My life? Wow! I have nothing. Absolutely nothing. I wish I could be one of those people driven towards a goal but that's just never been my style. I would call that being "Too Laid Back" but my girlfriend would probably tell you that I'm a lazy ass.

The web-site? Honestly the web-site is really starting to drain on me. I've seen my dreams build up and then crash and burn with the web-site so many times that I've lost count. I've come to the realization within the last year that it would probably be a load off my mind to just shut it down or let someone else take over. Don't get me wrong I love everything that I've accomplished with the site but to the outsider there really isn't much to show for it. Trying to keep my energy invested in ideas on the web-site that continually explode in a firery ball of flames can drag you down so really I don't see myself continuing for much longer. In other words it's not something I think of when I see myself five years down the line but then again if you had told me everything that was going to happen when I started the whole thing I would of thought that it would be an awesome ride and definetly something I wanted to do. So who knows? I don't.

Do you have any "pearls of wisdom" for the readers out there?

Even a person who has no idea what they're doing can do something as long as they know it's something they want to do.

I don't think that makes any sense. Last thing would probably be "Never underestimate the stupidity of internet users."

Thanks so much Eric. Best of luck in life and I hope you keep the strength to keep the site running. Its an asset to many of us.

Scott out