Interview With... Ryan Estrada

Ryan Estrada is a man who knows adventure. He creates webcomics whilst travelling through the four corners of the Earth looking for action in his Ryan Estrada Expeditions, so we tracked him to a secret location to ask him some questions.

What got you started with the idea of doing the "Ryan Estrada Expeditions"?
I've been travelling the world since 2002, and along the way I started making comics about my adventures. And it changed the whole way I looked at travelling. Now, even if my trips were disastrous, I was still happy because it made a good comic! But I starting having so many adventures so often, that it became impossible to document them all.

So I started filming them.

You get your fans to become involved, setting you mini-challenges to do, what has been your weirdest?
Yeah, the whole concept of the show is that people send me missions, and I go out and solve them. Things I've done in past episodes include kissing a rat, bringing joy to a child laborer, interviewing a bandit... in upcoming episodes, you'll see things like visiting a leper colony, and offering my hair to the Gods. A big one that I'm still working on (I have 9 weeks left!) is to get a role in a Bollywood film.

Is there something that you forgot to do and now wish you had done?
Well, I'm in India for a couple more months, so hopefully I'll be able to complete all my missions before I go. But this summer I'll be moving to Mexico, and my website is going to become my full time job. So I'm really going to take the missions up a notch. What I plan to do one day, is my mystery trip. I'm gonna set aside some airfare money with someone I trust, and let them set up a secret forum to let my readers decide where to send me. All I want is an envelope with a ticket inside, and the time and gate number written on the outside. I'll bring an iPod to block out any announcements, take a sleeping pill to fall asleep on the plane, and try to get as far into the trip as possible without knowing what country I'm in.

Do you think webcomic artists should always be giving their fans different content like your adventures or going into animation, etc.?
I think that each artist has something to offer. For those that do long running series, and can maintain the quality and enthusiasm, my hats off to them. But me, I can't focus on one thing that long. I always get new ideas and start new projects. I couldn't ever work any other way. I've tried doing long series, and I've never gone more than 6 months before needing to put it on hiatus to do something new. But I like to think maybe that variety is a positive point that balances out the missed updates?

You feature in Flight 4, which is on pre-order, what can we expect to see from that?
I am so amazed and honored to be part of Flight. Anyone who has seen the previous volumes knows the quality of the work you'll find inside. It's basically a bunch of the best comic artists in the world getting together and doing their most personal projects. I almost had a heart attack when I got invited to work with them. My story is called "Mystical Monkey". When I was in college, I took a meditation class, and at the end of the course, made a video about my experience. Parts of that video went on to be featured in an Emmy-winning documentary. Problem is, I always hated my video, and I searched out and destroyed every last copy. So this is a sort of fictionalized retelling of that experience, to sort of set things right and tell the story the way I had intended the first time around. It answers the question "what if your power animal is a jerk?"

You created a 168 hour book called Ped-Xing in a caravan, I wondered are you gonna challenge yourself to do a longer event?
Yes sir, I do miss my challenges, and I can't wait until I turn full time so I can do more. The next record-breaking challenge will probably be right after my three Ped X-ing spinoffs are done. At the end of the book, the three kids went their seperate ways. Now, each are getting their own comic about what they did in the year following. Tyrone is the star of "Mystical Monkey", Aki has her own graphic novel called "Aki Alliance" and CJ will star in a book partially involving an Indian call center. Once all 3 of those are done, I'll team the kids up again for "Ped X-ing 2: A 336 Hour Comic" But I have other ridiculous ideas in the works, including a "1-Month Animated Feature", and more "24 hour comics-for-hire"

You're involved in the Tastefully Done calendar yet again and also the Kid's Book Project - what gets you involved in such things?
Well, it's always good when you find a project that combines two of your biggest passions. For example, The Ryan Estrada Expeditions combines my love of travel and my love for filmmaking. However, some passions would be horribly illegal to combine into one, such as children and full frontal nudity. So we have to do two separate projects. A nude webcomic calendar and a kid's book.

What is the future for Ryan Estrada?
My biggest goal in life is to have my best adventure after the age of 90. So I'm gonna spend the next several decades giving myself lots of things to top.

The Kid's Book Project is currently on pre-order as is Flight 4. Tastefully Done 2008 will be released in October this year.