Creator Spotlight: Hunter MacLeod

Dan here (don’t worry, having guest interviewers doesn’t mean I’m not doing them still!), with an interview with webcomic creator Hunter MacCleod, artist and author of Light Earth Defenders.

D: Alright, Hunter, tell us a bit about yourself.

H: Well, I go by Hunter M. I’m in my early twenties, living in Canada, I’m usually referred to as a boy but I’m cool with whatever. I’ve been drawing since I was a little tiny child, got interested in comics a good while later, and in the last couple years I fell in love with giant super mecha, which leads me to my main project, L.E.D. I’m currently juggling around a few commissioned artworks, as well as working on my comic, looking to set up a standalone site, establish a reliable schedule, a Patreon project, and really go hard at making this into my actual job. I’ve been working on this current project for about a year, so I’m pretty much a fresh-faced newbie!

D: Another Canadian! Man there seriously must be something in the air there that makes you all creative or something! Which part? Do you like where you live?

H: It’s probably the free health care making us not so stressed over getting “real jobs”, haha! (i don’t know anything at all about health care) Suffice it to say I’m closer than you’d think, but further than you’d hope~ And yeah! I’d like to move out somewhere else sometime, but probably not that far, this part of Canada is just right for me.

D: Any hobbies or interests/passions outside of art and comics you’d like to share?

H: Well, like a lot of kids, I spend way too much time playing video games! Don’t even get me talking about Dark Souls, or I won’t stop for hours. I dabble in a few other artforms as well, but nothing I’ve really committed to. I have a pretty great voice, and know how to use it sometimes, so I do some acting once in a while. I also have a knack for animating, but wowzers it’s hard work! Mad respect to animators.

D: Any particular singing/acting/animating projects you’d like to talk about or link to?

H: Oh, nothing concrete that I really work on at the moment, but I fiddle around and get some practice at them once in a while. I pal around with some small-time VAs, and they let me know about projects I should try, but it’s mostly like, Naruto and Free fandubs, haha.

D: Why do you want to get into comics? What’s the story behind that?

H: I’ve kinda been drawing all my life, so a lot of people told me I’d do it as a living someday, so I sorta rebelled and was really doubtful of it for a long while. Recently though, especially with all the opportunities and venues the Internet provides, I’ve thought about it and realized “wait no this actually does feel really right for me, like this is what I feel great doing, and I can actually make money from it.” Not a really dramatic story, haha.

D: Tell me a bit about L.E.D. What’s it about? What inspired it?

H: Light Earth Defenders takes place in 2099. An incredible energy source called Prisma Waves began flooding the solar system in 2064, and now powers almost everything inexhaustibly. However, new technologies powered by Prisma energy discovered a hidden alternate Earth opposite our own, and the scouting satellites were all destroyed. Now, whatever lifeforms live on “Dark Earth” have declared war on Earth, sending an army of mutated cyborg dinosaurs through wormholes to destroy us, so a team called the L.E.D. that was preparing for such a possibility must deploy and take down these invading monsters with their giant mecha fighters! L.E.D. is inspired by a lot of classic 70s super robot anime, but is really just everything I love about all mecha series mashed together into one, but also a vehicle for expressing a lot of my criticisms of the genre, like the lack of positive female and racial representation, as well as the insistence on being “manly” and “badass”, among others.

D: LED sounds fun! Like a giant mecha tribute AND parody. What are some of your goals for LED in the coming months and years? Your own website? Color?

H: I prefer to not think of it as a parody, to be honest! It’s having a bit of a laugh, but it’s a really sincere, heartfelt thing, y’know? The only times I ever see giant robots come up in webcomics is either as a throwaway/background element, or just a big goof and spoof, never as this central, legitimate thing trying to be a part of the history. In this coming year, I’m definitely going to be establishing an official site, a Patreon fund, working on promotion and networking, and getting the first volume book printed out! Longer term, yeah I have a lot of rad story plans! There’s an ending in mind, subject to change of course. Basically we’re still just so much at just the beginning it’s almost painful, cause I want all my neat story ideas on page already. Colour’s a really interesting subject, cause there’s plenty of great arguments for or against it. Personally, I grew up on manga like the gen Y trash I am, so that sort of B&W focus on lineart was always appealing to me, but colour is a significant theme in L.E.D. For the first episode at least, I’ve opted to go black and white, with splashes of colour indicating significance or focus, but I am open to that changing in later chapters.

D: You described yourself as an “excited up and comer”. What’s it like being “new” in the field? What has been your experience with other creators, readers, etc?

H: Well, technically my first comics I posted online were about 8 years ago (no I won’t share, they’re awful) but I’m very new to being a “serious” webcomic artist. My experience with online communities, the approachability of other creators, and the accessibility of crowdfunding and distribution that have been pushed for were the main things that made me consider this as a career path! I’m still really shy, but there are so many artists that are just casually chatting with fans on tumblr and twitter that it reminds me how not-that-distanced they are from where I’m at now. It’s often a much smaller world than we assume, and that’s really encouraging.

D: Any advice from your experience you’d like to share with readers or other creators?

H: First, don’t wait as long as I did to start taking your artwork and passions seriously. I’ll be just fine, but I could have developed better habits even earlier, and be struggling less now. And second, I’m lucky to have a stable home right now, where I don’t need to treat my art like a job, and that’s exactly why now is the time to treat my art like a job. I can practice strong work ethics and work through the slow startup years while still having a safety net to fall back on. Basically, appreciate your privileges and don’t let them go to waste!