There's nothing cuter than a cat. It can be noisy, it can scratch your leg or puke on your pillow, but it's always cute. And cute, or "kawaii", is something today's artist sure does know about, as he created a blog full of "aaaw" creatures that he called Boximals. As we totally had a crush on those adorable little ones, we had to share it with you. Please everybody welcome...
-Jeffrey Jang !
-How old are you?
-20 years old.
-Where do you live?
-Coquitlam, British Columbia
-What do you do for a living?
-I currently freelance as a graphic designer and illustrator, but otherwise work at a warehouse doing repetitive things all day.
-What's your story?
-I actually wanted to be a concept artist coming out of high school, but decided to give graphic design some thought as I could still work on my illustration skills on my own while learning how to be commercial through design school. I realized I had a much better flair for design than illustration, and haven't looked back since then.
-What are your projects?
-When not occupied at my day job, the major projects I devote time to involve revising my portfolio, my personal website, and Boximals.
-Can you tell us about your blog/website?
-Boximals came about after I designed a line of characters for a client. Disappointed that I couldn't use them myself I decided to go and design my own characters and brand. I'm mainly focusing on building more designs first, but have been communicating with shirt printers and will redesign the current website to incorporate a shop soon.
-What inspires you?
-It's probably odd being an artist that I only have one person as my inspiration. Kristen Perry is one of the talented concept artists at ArenaNet (think Guild Wars), and has been my friend, mentor and teacher for a few years now. I owe her everything, even though she'll deny it if went and asked her.
-What makes you laugh the most?
-Humor like that of Family Guy or The Whitest Kids You Know will make me laugh quite a bit. Most of the time I am just pretending to laugh at things to be polite, but I'd never let you know that.
-Why did you choose this FML?
-When looking through the FMLs I was mainly looking for one that involved animals as I wanted to use my Boximals characters for it. This one not only had a cat, but a very cute twist that I was able to work with.
-Do you have your own FML anecdote that you can share us?
-It's not as crazy as some of the FMLs here but every day I think about how I haven't found a graphic design job and go "FML". To be fair I haven't been at it for very long, but I figure it's good form of motivation until I get one.
Many thanks for your illustration Jeffrey !
Boximals: http://boximals.com/
If you want to be the next published artist, send an email to alice@fmylife.com including a link to your website/blog/DA. But DON'T send your illustration right away! You need first to get in touch with Alice who will tell you what you have to do!
Cock-a-doodle-do everybody! We're pretty excited because today we're welcoming a big beaked artist who sure knows how to please us with chickens, without grilling them or pulling their wings off. You must have once come across one of his comics: a yellow background, simple black lines depicting talking chickens that actually make you laugh. Well, the author is here with us today, and we're enjoying it so much we got to interview him.
What's your name and surname?
Doug Savage
Where do you live?
Doug Savage : Vancouver, BC
What do you do for a living?
Doug Savage : By day, I'm an editor for a giant software corporation. By night, I'm a cartoonist. At parties, I introduce myself as a cartoonist because it leads to more interesting conversations.
What's your story? (school, job..)
Doug Savage : When I was a kid, I wanted to be a cartoonist. And then somehow I ended up working in an office. I forgot about my cartooning dream. I even forgot how to draw. And then years later, the lack of creativity really started to get to me; I started getting migraines with increasing frequency -- big nasty migraines with what they call "aura" side-effects, which basically means that your vision goes all wobbly. I knew something had to change. And then I started doodling chickens on sticky notes, and having a creative outlet made life so much better. Haven't had a migraine in three years! (Knock wood)??.
What are your projects?
Doug Savage : I draw Savage Chickens, a cartoon drawn entirely on sticky notes. I'm working on a book of the chickens for Perigee Books, which is due out in March 2011. I also do occasional stop-motion animation projects, such as the "July Flame" music video I created for Portland musician Laura Veirs.
Can you tell us about your blog/website? (How did it started, etc..)
Doug Savage : I started putting my cartoons online in January 2005 and I've been posting a cartoon every weekday since. Almost 1500 cartoons so far! The site really started to take off when I got featured on MyYahoo and Blogger.
Why chickens?
Doug Savage : By the time I started drawing again, I had basically forgotten everything I ever knew about cartooning. The only thing I remembered how to draw was chickens. So I drew chickens!
What inspires you (artists, movies, etc..)?
Doug Savage : Like most cartoonists, my work is inspired by everything around me: pop culture, life experiences, overheard conversations, etc. But to be more specific, I'm personally inspired by creative people doing what they love. People like Wes Anderson, Brandon Bird, Tina Fey, Frank Gehry, Ricky Gervais, Andy Goldsworthy, Jim Henson, James Hill, Geddy Lee, Steve Martin, and so on. Creative people doing creative things and having a blast.
How can you be that funny?
Doug Savage : I don't know any other way to be! I think a lot of humor comes from being able to mentally step outside of the world and look at it from an outsider perspective, because then you can see how ridiculous it is. Humor is really a way of perceiving and deconstructing the world around us. Some people react to the world by throwing up their arms and saying "Augh! It's a cruel world!"; I prefer to say "OMG! This place is hilarious!"
What makes you laugh the most?
Doug Savage : Absurdity. Things that don't belong together being mashed together, or things that are bizarre and completely unexpected. Or fart jokes. Everybody laughs at fart jokes even if they don't like to admit it.
Why did you choose this FML?
Doug Savage : I read through a whole heap of them and this one caught my eye because it took place in Denmark, which immediately made me think of Hamlet and I started thinking how he might be involved in this person's bad day.
Do you have your own FML anecdote that you can share us?
Doug Savage : Heheh yeah I fell asleep in a meeting once. I know, that happens to a lot of people, but this particular meeting was just me and one other guy. Pretty embarrassing.
Clic to see the illustration on FMyLife.com
You're unique Doug, that's why we love you. Let's eat birseeds in the poultry-yard to celebrate our love.
Doug's website full of chickens HOW COOL IS THAT : http://www.savagechickens.com/
If you want to be the next published artist, send an email to alice@fmylife.com including a link to your website/blog/DA. But DON'T send your illustration right away! You need first to get in touch with Alice who will tell you what you have to do!
"Oh, you're here, we didn't see you, sorry." Horrible feeling, huh? Don't worry folks, you know the FML team isn't like all those co-workers or schoolmates who have a certain taste for humiliating you. It's mean, it's cruel, yes, but, it's also really funny when you're not in the firing line, and that's why today's artist Joe Combs chose to illustrate this particular story. Let's have some fun being mean, shall we?
-How old are you?
-33 (side note: years? liters? we'll never know.)
-Where do you live?
-Twin Cities, Minnesota
-What do you do for a living?
-Programmer. I hope to one day do illustration and design full-time, but until then, those mortgages don't pay themselves.
-What's your story?
-I was born and raised in Kentucky so I bring a lot of country to the city. On the flip side, when I visit my hometown, people say that I'm too city these days. It's a lose-lose.
-What are your projects?
-My main project is my long-running webcomic, Business Casual. It focuses on business, technology, and the pure inanity that lives in all of the offices around the world. I also create a webcomic called Rusty The Wonderdog that's an odd, single panel webcomic with no real theme. Business Casual currently updates 3 times a week while Rusty The Wonderdog is a comic that I just do in bursts. I also occasionally create mini-comics, sketch cards, and do some freelance web design and illustration.
-Can you tell us about Business Casual and Rusty The Wonderdog?
-Business Casual started in 2003 as an outlet for some frustrations that I was having in my job at the time. I created some simple comics poking fun at co-workers and the things that went on at my company. After sharing them with others around the office, I threw together a quick webpage and put the comics out where anyone could read them. As of September 2010, the archives now contain over 550 strips.
The idea for Rusty The Wonderdog actually started around the same time as Business Casual. I would doodle cartoons on the whiteboards at work all the time and Rusty started showing up more and more often on them. After a while, he became kind of a mascot for myself and the office. And when I wanted to do a new comics project a few years ago for a 24 hr comic event, I immediately thought back to that odd little dog I used to draw all the time.
-What inspires you?
-Daily life is probably my largest inspiration for what goes on in my comic. While I do have artistic and humor influences that I can point to, actual life provides me with most of the situations that I lampoon in Business Casual. As for other influences, I enjoy reading and am always inspired to create more after finishing a good story, comic, or a collection of comic strips.
-What makes you laugh the most?
I really enjoy witty humor and sly wordplay in the style of the Marx Brothers and Monty Python. However, I'm not above laughing at the simple-pleasures in life like people falling down.
-Why did you choose this FML?
-Since the Work category plays to my strengths, I wanted to choose another FML from that category as I did with the last FML I submitted. This particular one caught my interest because it reminds me of some former co-workers of mine. I've worked with both the quiet, shy ones that you can hardly tell are at the office and also the ones who would lock the door and turn the lights out on a coworker as a prank.
-Do you have your own FML anecdote that you can share us?
-Today, my youngest son just started walking and getting into everything that not's either locked or nailed down in my house. FML
Click to see the illustration on FMyLife.com
Many thanks for your second illustration Joe, we're not going to forget you anytime soon.
"Oh, you're here, we didn't see you, sorry." Horrible feeling, huh? Don't worry folks, you know the FML team isn't like all those co-workers or schoolmates who have a certain taste for humiliating you. It's mean, it's cruel, yes, but, it's also really funny when you're not in the firing line, and that's why today's artist Joe Combs chose to illustrate this particular story. Let's have some fun being mean, shall we?
#638 - Illustrated FML - On 09/10/2010 at 5:53am by - 4 comments
Men, women, join us for our new Saturday illustration. Grab a beer, take off your clothes, and now we're ready to welcome today's artist. See, when our moderator Rachel told us she had an idea of an artist we could call, we were still young (well, most of us were) and innocent (KIDDING, do you really think we could still be innocent after reading all the stories you've sent to us?) but we swear to whoever created the world and Dita von Teese that we’ve never played for both teams. But that was before we knew about darcomic.com and meeting Erika Moen. Now, we love Arthur and Martha, and we know now that Britney's hit "Peter, Paul and Mary" is such a great song. Let's go for a new interview full of love.
-Who are you Polly Magoo?
-Erika Moen
-How old are you?
-27 (June 25, 1983)??
-Where do you live?
-Portland, Oregon with my handsome, British husband Matthew Nolan.
-What do you do for a living?
-Full-time cartoonist and freelance artist at Periscope Studio (http://www.periscopestudio.com) This is my dream job and I'm grateful every day for it.
-Once upon a time...
-For over a decade now I've been making comics and putting them on the internet, though it's only in the last two years that I've been fortunate enough to make this my full-time gig as a member of Periscope Studio, the largest comic book studio in North America. In 2006 I graduated from Pitzer College with a self-designed degree in Illustrated Storytelling (which is a fancy way of saying "comics"). From 2003-2009 I produced a weekly autobio comic called DAR! (darcomic.com), which was about being a lesbian who falls in love with a man and a whole bunch of dick and fart jokes. Hilariously, I met my husband because he'd been a fan of my comics and art for years online. Drawing comics gets you laid!
-What are your projects?
-Currently I am working on two different graphic novels that I hope to start serializing online towards the winter of this year. One is written by my studiomate, Jeff Parker (Agents of Atlas, Mysterious the Unfathomable, Underground), and is a dick'n'fart joke murder-mystery about a boy called Bucko. The other is a young-adult fantasy story about a girl's sketchbook that comes to life and she has to battle her own drawings to bring reality back, which is written by my good friend, Brendan Adkins and the working title is Grimm. They're both incredibly talented writers and I'm having a complete blast working with them.
-Since when have you been running a blog?
-Since 1996, I've been making websites to showcase my interests and artwork! I guess I just wanted attention and never grew out of it /:) This last year I've kind of been taking a bit of a break from maintaining my sites as I focus my energies on my new comics projects. Of course I'll have to get off my ass when it's time to debut these stories online, but until then everything else is kind of out-of-date and sporadically updated. Although I am keeping up with my Twitter pretty well (@erikamoen)??
-What inspires you (artists, movies, etc...)?
-My husband, Matthew Nolan, is my biggest source of inspiration. He's full of wonderful story ideas and suggestions for me and a really good eye for making compositions work; all my best comics have been his fault. Comics-wise, my biggest inspirations are Dylan Meconis, Lucy Knisley, Meredith Gran, Steve Lieber, Jeff Parker, Danielle Corsetto, Jill Thompson, Hope Larson, Raina Telgemeier, Ellen Forney, Colleen Coover... so many more I'm forgetting to mention. Artistically, I'm very influenced by religious medieval illustrations and Renaissance paintings. I'm also a huge fan of Alphonse Mucha and L'art Nouveau. More currently to the times, Jason (Stuntkid) and Elizabeth Levesque, Elisa Lazo de Valdez (Visioluxus) and Dwam/Ipomee have been making me want to create a whole bunch. I’m very drawn to images that focus on and celebrate the human body, as well as sexuality. I like beautiful, well-rendered, elegant illustrations that show off people.
-What makes you laugh the most?
-My husband, no question. After that, it'd be my friends and studio mates, the comic Girls With Slingshots and the movie Scott Pilgrim was pretty awesome.
Clic to see the illustration on FMyLife.com
Your illustration is so hot, all the FML moderators starting singing "Aquarius", and taking off their clothes, while touching each other, so thank you for that.
Oh, and for your comic, of course.
Erika's G spot: http://www.darcomic.org/
If you want to be the next published artist, send an email to alice@fmylife.com including a link to your website/blog/DA. If you don't have one, attach some of your drawings. But DON'T send your illustration right away! You need first to get in touch with Aaaaaaaahlice, who will tell you what you have to do!
GOODMORNING READERS, PEOPLE, STUFF, HOW'S THAT SOUND? LOUD? Good because we all received our vuvuzelas to help us write the article and it's LITTERALY BREAKING OUR EARS and our nerves. It's Maxime Dupont's fault but we're not blaming him since he illustrated a FML story again, just for you. It is a good thing he's back, since the last time we featured him, he was about to travel all around Africa; now he's in France and he's ready to tell us about his wonderful trip. Get waka waka guys, Maxime is here !
-Tell us about your trip ?
-It was a little humanitarian trip to Africa, more precisely to Ouagadougou (in Burkina Faso). I went there with my girlfriend to discover Africa as we had it in our hearts, in a kids treatment center, called "Kheur guney"= "the children's house.” We spent 3 months there sharing the life of fabulous kids who delighted us with theirs smiles, laughs and immoderate joy of life, in spite of the horrible living conditions they were dealing with. We worked with them to help them succeed in school, and we created thousands of games with them. In addition to that, during the first month I had the hard task to create a 60-meter long illustrative fresco with three young people from 18 to 25years old. To help me achieve this project, went on some great motorbike road-trips without a helmet through the marvelous landscapes of Ouagadougou, not that it was like on tropical islands with heavenly views, but we were all alone in those almost arid areas, completely preserved from any civilization. It was a huge heartbreak when we had to tell all those orphans that we were going back to France, and a very emotional moment the day we left when we lost all those little brothers that we took care of during our journey. Amazing journey during which I made about thirty portraits of the kids and 1200 pictures that will help me create a comic book about the center some day.
-What are your projects?
-I registered for multimedia training courses, hoping to be in a company that works principally on web design so I can learn how to build web sites and be a polyvalent graphic designer/web designer/illustrator, but I know that someday I'll end up doing comics illustration exclusively. I already have some comic books plans and hope that someday I’ll contribute to a project that gathers lots of artists to create stuff such as dofus and wakfu.
-What inspires you?
-Artists inspire me a lot concerning the different styles of drawing or coloration techniques, movies inspire me more for their storytelling but also for the camera angles, dialogs, style effects, etc. My teachers used to compare me to a sponge, I absorb anything I can make use of, I'm open to whatever I come across, movies, comic books, illustrations, mangas, anything will do, and give myself the chance to learn whatever I can from everybody.
-What makes you laugh the most?
-FML makes me laugh a lot, so does the sharpness of some movie dialogs, I'm often the only one laughing at that, but otherwise I laugh all the time with everybody so everybody makes me laugh a bit. I even find myself laughing at my dad's old-fashioned jokes that are not really funny…
-Why did you choose this FML?
- I never know why I choose an FML in particular; if I had the time I would illustrate all of them. I choose very quickly, the first one that makes me laugh and that constrains me to try a new technique, or a specific drawing that interests me.
-Do you have your own FML anecdote that you can share us?
-Today I was doing cocktails in the bar where I work as a barman, while using peach cream (the one with alcohol in it) instead of syrup. All of my coworkers got drunk. FML
Clic to see the illustration on FMyLife.com
YOU'RE A GREAT BARMAN MAXIME,
Maxime's chili con carne: http://or--ange.deviantart.com/gallery
If you want to be the next published artist, send an email to alice@fmylife.com including a link to your website/blog/DA. If you don't have one, attach some of your drawings. But DON'T send your illustration right away! You need first to get in touch with Alice (thank you Yousra, seriously), who will tell you what you have to do!
Friday 18 July 2014
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