About

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THE CARTOONIST:

cartoon  mil bilder

mil‘s real name is Ioannis Milionis. He`s the eldest son of greek immigrants and was born in 1972 in Germany, where he’s still living. He has funny hair, a cheerful disposition and a bunch of more or less useful talents whereby drawing could probably be counted among them.
In the course of time he had many different jobs to earn his living but working as a cartoonist, which he`s doing part-time since 1992, was and will ever be his favorite occupation.

THE CARTOONS:

The Cartoons on this website are being produced since August 2007 and presented on the Web since October 2007. They are currently being published on many other websites too, have been published regularly until October 2008 in the swiss student’s magazine Unikum and sporadic in different german, austrian and swiss magazines, newspapers and other print-products. The English version of the website with the translated cartoons, however, went online at the end of September 2009 and none are published in print so far.

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS:

How is your first name pronounced?
Well, as it is written, though with every “i” being pronounced as “ee”. But usually even in Greece the easier and more common form Yannis respectively Yanni is used, when somebody`s talking to me.

Why the pen name mil?
Because my full name is difficult for some people and mil is way easier and self-explanatory. Sometimes I wish I had a more common name, like Fred Schwarz, that wouldn´t cause any trouble at all and I’d even be able to use a cool pen name like fresh

Why is your site named mycartoons?
Because cartoons.de, cartoons.com and any other domain with just cartoons in it was already occupied. Since the website was at first planned to be just an online-portfolio for my comicstrips and cartoons anyway, mycartoons seemed very appropriate.

Do you earn your living solely by cartooning/drawing?
No. I`m earning money with drawing, but not enough to be my only source of income. Making a living just by cartooning isn´t even remotely possible for me at the moment. I would love to change that in near future though and concentrate just on cartooning. So, if you know any editors who are working for publishing companies, magazines or newspapers give them a hint, perhaps then someday it will be possible to become a full-time cartoonist.

Why don´t you upload everyday a cartoon?
Because I can only draw cartoons for this site in my free time and this needs much time and energy which, unfortunately, I don´t have always on my disposal. You can be assured that if I miss a cartoon upload, I´m either sick, working to earn some money or have to attend to other pressing and important matters.

How long do you need to produce a cartoon?
Three to six hours, sometimes longer, rarely lesser.

Where do you get your ideas from?
Honestly, I don`t know, they just appear in my head. I know cartoonists who have to work their gags out, who search the daily news and headlines for useable ideas or have different other methods to come up with a funny idea or punchline, but I`m not one of them. I just wait for flashes of inspiration, images popping out of the rear of my brain synapses and surprisingly that worked always out for me up to now. Unfortunately the ideas come often in unconvenient circumstances like when I´m sleeping so that I´ve to wake myself up in the middle of the night and make some notes or scribbles otherwise I’d forget them until the morning.

Are you buyable?
Well, yeah, since I have to make a living anyone can buy my services and for the right price make use of my cartooning/illustrating skills.

Would you draw a comic/comic-series for me?
Only if you`d pay me. I´m sorry but anything else isn´t possible since the time and energy I would spent on drawing for free for you would be time that I couldn´t spent making a living or drawing my own cartoons. Besides that, working for free for people -with the exception of family and friends- wouldn´t be fair to colleagues who are earning their living through drawing and neither to clients who actually appreciate my work enough to pay me for it.

Can I use your cartoons for my website/my forum/my christmas card? Yes, as long as it is for non-commercial purposes you´re welcome to use my cartoons as you like. But if you want to make money with my work, directly or indirectly, e.g. by using the cartoons to make your commercial website more appealing or to put them on promoting flyers for a party that people have to buy tickets for, then you should get in touch with me for the permission to use them.