KUPD again

Hey there blogosphere. Is it still called the blogosphere, or has technology already moved on from that? I think someday no one will know what anything is called because things are advancing so fast, their names will change before we even know what it is.

Well, no new work yet so, here's another KUPD comic from 2004. This time I decided to explain why Holmberg's nose is like it is. I think this was inspired by that independent two divers trapped in shark infested waters movie that was out around that time that I never saw... or it was shark week on discovery... or I just watched Jaws...or I just read Old Man and the Sea...or I was thinking about that shark tattoo that I designed for someone many moons ago or, or, or...

It was interesting, well to me any ways... I was reading something that Charles Schulz had written the other day. He was talking about how many young cartoonists approach the creation of a daily comic strip in the wrong way. I won't go into detail, because I will OF COURSE forget something, but the gist was as follows... don't keep trying to make a statement, make it funny to begin with and eventually, the characters will start dictating what you do. That's not it exactly, but it's what happened with these "strips" that I was drawing. I started to treat them very much like a newspaper comic strip. I caricatured the personalities of the guys on the radio, and one day, these drawn personalities took on a life of their own. It was no longer only a commentary of what happened on the show, but the characters started dictating what would happen.

This strip is a perfect example of that. At least, as far as I can remember. There was no real reference to this idea on the show, it just popped into my head, and it was the caricatured/simplified personalities that developed from these characters that dictated this story to me. It was a strange realisation, that the characters were informing what I would draw, and not content from the show. There were still drawings inspired from something said on the show, but the characters definitely took on a life of their own.

It taught me this, that if I put my mind to it, I could probably draw and write a daily strip. A MASSIVE undertaking I realise, but the fact that these characters were in essence "writing for me" showed me that it is possible to sustain stories in that format. Yes, lots of amazing cartoonists have done it, but I always thought that I would run out of ideas. This showed me it was possible, now the only problem is to create characters of my own... ones that will sustain and generate tonnes of stories... where's Bill Watterson when you need him?