pleas teal all

I have made so many comics over the years that I don't even remember what my first one was, so I'll just talk about the three I have posted here:

Psych Ward came about because I wanted to publish a comic in a newspaper, even if it was a college rag. That plus I'm an opinionated asshole and wanted people to know that.

Bad Apple came about because I wanted to try something on the opposite spectrum from Psych Ward. Something that was a little more "friendly", I should say. Needless to say, it was just an experiment.

Negligence came about because I wanted to make a comic that had character development again. That plus I wanted to show off my Watterson/Schulz influences more.

Tell! It's tell!

In any case.

I made my first comic when I was five or so, and went on intermittently for quite a few years. I used to have a super-involved world of anthropomorphic dogs that I'd draw as stick figures with markers, called Y.E.s (pronounced why-ee). The main character was "Matt-Dog" and his little brother "Billy Bob". They were kind of proxies for my little brother and I, I think. It was about all the mischief and mayhem them two would cause. That was my first series.

I assume I started that for the same reason I'm doin' it now: to tell stories. And like now, most of the stuff I'd put in my comics back then was at least inspired by real-life events or discussions or hijinks or whatever. The only thing that's really changed is that I've moved up the obscenity ladder, from "poop", "pee" and "butt" to... well, you know. Oh, and also I can draw a tad bit better.

I think we've had this thread like 2 times, and the other 'what make comic good' 5 times. You should go back through the forum archive or something.

Skullbie
I think we've had this thread like 2 times, and the other 'what make comic good' 5 times. You should go back through the forum archive or something.

You teal 'em what's up, Skullbie!

i blue all my money gambling so now i'm doing this.

Guess'n this doesn't necessarily mean first webcomic.
Hrm, I made a two book comic adventure in a haunted house of my friends and I. It was inspired from Maniac Mansion. I called us the J.A.W. crew, since it was the first initial of our names.

I know who you are, 'Hannibal', and I'm watching you.

'Hey I'm on a webcomic hosting site. Guess I should make one.'

I'm a stupid bastard.

when I was in eighth grade, my friends had very low thresholds for amusement.

Before then, I drew some comics sporadically (maybe around 6th-7th grade) but they were for my enjoyment alone- sort of like focused daydreams. (that's where stuff like this comes from.)

because I've been trying to make sense of the world we live in.

newspaper comics. first exposure I ever had to the art form. after many terrible attempts at comedy (I was, like, 5, after all.) I gave up and didn't start again until I discovered manga and Neopets at age 10 or so.

skoolmunkee
I know who you are, 'Hannibal', and I'm watching you.

Have the webcomics stopped screaming yet, Clarice?

It was in elementary school for sure-- I was actually interested in animation, but in those days animation was out of the scope of what a kid could do casually (this was in the crossroads where film (ie super-8) had just gone out, tape was in, and the Apple IIe was still the king of computers). So I resorted to comic strips to play out all the stories in my head.

LOTS of Mad-style parodies of my favorite TV shows, movies, etc.

Grade school. Far Side. I doodled my own. Mom told me they were funny.

mmmmmm....
mmmmmmmmmmmm,,,,
MMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM....

Well, maybe just for fun. If I have fun drawing stuff, then I'll draw stuff! ^^

fun fun ane mour fun

I found the site, I drew a crappy comic with a talking banana, thought 'this is good', and uploaded it to the site. Time makes fools of us all though...

Desperation.

A love for art and storytelling...

I also copied everything my sister did for the first 10 years of my life, and comicing was one of her interests for a good 5 years. I just... carried on with it, I suppose.

Asterix made it look like fun.

A love of the beautiful comics of the 60's and 70's and the idea of telling stories through words and pictures........and all the hot babes that dig my art supplies.

Well, before I had started doing comics, I usually had something to do creatively. Creating stories and all that good stuff.

But it wasn't until about the 7th grade I found one of my friends, and he told me of a comic book he was making, and we actually had art class together, so he'd draw it. And I already had a terrible sonic-fan-character made up (even worse than the Hedgewolf thing), so I was like, "Yeah. I can do this. Totally.", so every day in art class (and even at home), I would sit down for maybe an hour or so at a time, cranking out, what was at the time, good pages. All only in pencil, and all with the same number of panels, in the same area. I wrote the story in my head, and it was terrible.

I hated doing it, because I practically forced myself to get pages done. Drawing soon became a very much hated thing. I cranked out about 12 or so "issues" not necessarily containing that many pages each (first issue had like, 2, lol) and they're all on printer paper, and stapled together.

I'm proud of my old self, actually.

(goes back to read them)

I love drawing and I love making up my own stories. I combined the two.

I was about eight years old and I wanted to draw comics like my idol (at the time) Stan Lee. Then it began to take over my life.

I drew my first real comic at work one day when I was bored. Everyone kept telling me how funny it was and that I should do something with it. So here I am.

I was looking at this website, and said 'fuck it', so I churned out something incomprehensible.

Drasnus
I was looking at this website, and said 'fuck it', so I churned out something incomprehensible.

haha that's what I did

After something of a haitus from them I got back into comics and graphic novels again in a big way around my late teens. I had the typical clichéd line of thought "I'd like to make something inspiring like this!"

Since then I've churned out plenty of abortive failures, someday I'll get it right though. Someday...

This is basically my Comic Artist Bio. I do the Der Hundt comic (DUH!):


Dear Readers,
My adventures in cartooning began in the year 2000; I was 14 years old, a freshman in high school, and my best friend was a pen.
I was always more of a writer than an artist, but that year was one of those unpredictable years where happy accidents occur at inopportune moments. I was in a French class that year, as my high school forced everyone to take a language (I guess they felt the need to teach students that there was more than one mother tongue in the world), and our class was asked to combine our “artistic talents” to create a banner for some kind of languages celebration. I’ve always been sort of a recluse when it came to working with people my age or younger (I’d preferred the company of adults probably because I felt they’d understand the thought processes that went into engaging conversations; conversations that would eventually get me into tangles with my friends, but that is another incredibly long story to go in between parentheses) so I sat at my desk trying to doodle little pictures of my beloved hairy dog, Muffin, who would come to inspire the character of Minogue in ‘Der Hundt’. I was actually trying to make her look realistic, but my pen slipped, drawing a swear from under my breath; my picture was ruined! But I looked at it again. Not half bad, I thought, it looked like a cartoon animal… Thus, the unique stylized eyes were born as the trademark feature of all of my characters.
As I began to draw more and more of these stylized eyes whenever I felt a dire need to produce more than one picture of my dog, I realized that this was a new way of doodling for me. The next time we made a banner in my French class I did a mock-up of a Poodle wearing a beret, and promptly transferred the picture onto the banner as a wagon-train of dogs climbing up a mountain. Luckily, for me, my classmates liked these unique little dogs and that was the beginning of an obsession for me.
I drew these dogs whenever I got the chance and my first ever comic was drawn around the time when the country was running out of phone numbers and callers would have to dial the area code of the number they were calling before they could dial the number itself.
I then drew a series of no-paneled comics as boredom relief in class and gave them to my father (who tacked the messy pieces of notebook paper with my favourite red ink sprawled out on the page in the forms of Minogue, Duke, and Fifi up near his cubicle) who thought they were actually pretty funny, unlike the comics in the newspapers these days, he said. I called this comic series ‘DAWGS.’ But unless I wanted to make a death wish to go meet gold-toothed rappers with over-sized bling in the parking lot or some equally embarrassing and potentially harmful occurrence, I would have to change the name.
This was all before I discovered a great comic, both funny and touching, in the T&G called ‘Mutts’ by Patrick McDonnell; it became my new favourite comic next to Charles M Schulz’s ‘Peanuts’ and ‘B.C.’ by Johnny Hart. Also around this time, I found old copies of ‘Bloom County’ in our basement and loved the sheer genius in Berke Breathed’s artwork and ability to tell a good story. Breathed has had a great career drawing characters like Milo Bloom, Steve Dallas, Binkley, and Opus the penguin. Spin-offs of ‘Bloom County’ included ‘Outland’ and ‘Opus.’ I even recognized his work of a fictitious comic (that is, a comic that never existed) called ‘Walter and Jasmine’ in the movie entitled Second Hand Lions featuring a pubescent Haley-Joel Osment.
These favourite comics were all potential precursors for my inspiration to design and write ‘Der Hundt’. At first my work and plots were too similar to Breathed’s and I had to take a breather from comic-writing. I then realized that it was also similar to McDonnell’s work and I thought I may give up on the whole thing. Then a year later, while studying German on my own during free time, I came up with the title ‘Der Hundt,’ unwittingly spelling the word for “The Dogs” incorrectly. But the name stuck and I was left with building what I think is the bridge between ‘Mutts’ and ‘Bloom County.’
Now, nearly ten years later, I have decided to scale my hobby up a notch and turn it into a daily webcomic that everyone can see and enjoy.
So, just like a newspaper’s comic, you can get ‘Der Hundt’ in black-and-white from Monday to Saturday and a coloured one on Sundays.
Please read and enjoy the comic as much as I enjoy creating it every day.
If you have any questions, concerns, or comments, please e-mail me at cupid14@verizon.net. I would love to hear what you think of my comic and am open to suggestions and constructive criticism.

Again, please enjoy the comics.

Sincerely,
The cartoonist,
Holly Fiore


So that pretty much explains how I got into cartooning... I y'all found that an interesting and informative read. 8D