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The DrunkDuck Interview:
Amelius
Our first interview is with Amelius, creator of Charby the Vampirate, one of the top DrunkDuck comics.
The Vital Stats
Comic: Charby the Vampirate
Pageviews: 4,414,650 (as of 12/15/06)
Age: 23
What part of the world do you live in:
Michigan, USA
Are you single/boyfriend/girlfriend/married:
I do have an awesome boyfriend.
Children: Nope, and don't plan on it, ever!
Day job: Hehe...not at the moment, it takes me long enough working on the comics (and other projects) already, but I'm trying to make a career of it.
What inspired you to make the comic "Charby the Vampirate?"
It all started with a picture. A random character I drew in a spiral notebook while sitting at a Denny's restaurant, a vampire boy with spiky hair thinking "I like Chicken". It was somewhere in very late 2001, and that character sat there for a long while, dormant. The notebook was likely lost in the clutter for a while in my room. After I graduated high school, I went to a summer art program. While sitting amongst the collective artists, mulling for ideas, I suddenly got the idea to combine the words "vampire" and "pirate" together and make a character. I seriously don't know why that popped into my head, though! I flipped open my sketchbook and drew that little vampire again, and instead of the stuffy, cliché "Dracula" garb I'd had him in originally, I gave him a striped pirate shirt (based on an actual shirt of a male friend of mine, whom I said reminded me of a pirate in said shirt) and a couple of pirate hooks. At first I was going to call him Rondo (an amusing name of a street, which later became another character) but after hearing the name "Charby" (a nickname someone I know made up to log a pal's cell-phone address, turns out it's a real name after all) I thought it would be much cuter for the character (and piratey-er because of the "ar" in it). Soon I had all sorts of ideas and characters, though the bulk of the cast was selected from old sketchbooks and remodeled designs. I blame a bit of the character explosion on reading some vampire/mythology encyclopedias along the way though. CTV was originally intended to be a direct spoof on the horror genre, but then I decided to do a lot more with it. Much of the early archives on DD were these horror parodies, as well as a few "wishful thinking" comics where Charby of Hexavier get back at certain people, who happened to be a slight caricature of individuals who were rude to me in real life. A lot of early CTV was just me channeling my anger into the comic and it certainly helped me feel better!
How long have you been doing Charby?
Well, I started posting the comics on Drunk Duck (well, redrawing then posting) in January of '04, but CTV as a comic has been around since the summer of 2002.
How long have you been making comics in general?
While I did draw a few nonsense comics about a cowardly dachshund in elementary school, I "officially" started to do comics in middle school. My first comic endeavor was around 9 years ago with the ultra-violent one-panel comic "Beck the Ferret", about a mute ferret with horrible luck. I did over 500 pages of those, plus another comic called "Zero and J", which I didn't put quite so much effort into.
What process do you use to make your comics?
First I pencil sketch it onto printer paper with a mechanical pencil, then ink over those lines and erase the pencil. Sometimes I have a layout in mind, others I just draw haphazardly onto several sheets of paper and sort it out on the computer. I scan it into my computer and use Photoshop to color it with a mouse. The supplies I usually have are: either a Zig Millennium, Faber-Castell Pitt, or Micron pens for the inking process, any mechanical pencil that won't snap the lead into my face (usually .07 or .09 lead) and a kneaded eraser (no annoying eraser debris!)
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