-Are there any big projects you can tell us about?
-Commercial projects: An illustrated storybook of mine was recently published in France, entitled Princesse Pivoine (Princess peony)--great to finally see the fruits of my labor. More recently projects include a comic for an anthology and artwork for iphone applications, both of which are as of yet unreleased. Personal projects: I'm kicking around several comics in my head that I really have to start--sometimes they feel like they're gonna overflow! So yeah, look out for my webcomics.

Hi guys,

Every day we get sent a whole bunch of FMLs, and we rely on your help to decide which ones to publish when you guys vote "Yes" or "No" on each one via the Moderate the FMLs form.

We'd like to thank all the moderators who already help us, day in day out, through rain or shine, to select the best stories. It's thanks to you people that the website got to where it is today and is still going strong. And as there are hundreds of you taking part, we are now able to give you a "moderators rank" chart which will show you your ranking amongst the other moderators (if you are logged in when doing so). It's just for fun really, and we sincerely want to thank each moderator, whether they are first or last in the chart, 'cos it's really them guys who make this website so alive and brings us so many lulz each day.

PS: as for how the chart placings are calculated, it's a complicated mathematical formula that only Guillaume understands (and we're not even sure that he does:) - so please don't ask us to explain it, otherwise it'll give us another headache.

Hello everybody! Who's in a relationship right now? And who's planning to break up? Before you do, carefully choose the way you're going to make the big announcement. It can be funny or smart, but be sure you select a way that can't be misconstrued. For example, buying a ring with "we should break up" written on it isn't such a good idea, because if you choose a horrible way to say "goodbye my lover", he or she might end up on FML and spill the beans. And it could end up as an illustration. Yep.

- And that's the story you choose Sara, but first, please present yourself to the world.
-I'm Sara Bloem I'm eighteen years old. I'm a whippersnapper! I'm nearly always the youngest person in my class because my birthday is at the end of November.

-Where do you pay your taxes, and, you know, live?
-Currently, because I attend the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD), I live in one half of a dorm room in Providence, Rhode Island. But I'm from Olney, Maryland, and went to high school in Rockville. This is what Marylanders like to call the Washington, D.C. area, because most people out of state don't know much about Maryland. But then, if you say you're from D.C. and someone who actually lives in D.C. is around, they'll nail you on it.

- "Once upon a time..."?

-I think my mom almost had an aneurysm when I told her that I wanted to take life drawing classes. I was 13, which is when most girls are playing field lacrosse or something, and what I really, really wanted was to draw nude models in a poorly-lit classroom at the local community college. My background is also Mormon, so you know it was a huge leap of faith for my mom to fight to get me into the class, which was for age 16 and up, and then actually drive me there so I could watch and sketch a naked person for three hours in the evenings. After the first class, my mom asked me how it went, which I knew partly meant, "How did you feel about watching someone totally naked, possibly a man, for hours on end?" That night was, in fact, a man, but I don't think I mentioned that; I just remembering assuring her that it was fine and falling asleep in the car. That's how much my mom loves me.
I've lived most of my life in Olney, Maryland, which is a very small town that collectively mourned when its one cinema shut down in 2008. Then I went to high school in Rockville, Maryland, which is a slightly larger city known mostly for being the Rockville of R.E.M.'s "Don't Go Back To Rockville".
Joking aside, I enjoyed high school a lot and dabbled in art during my time there. I was a member of the drama sound tech crew who didn't actually know much about sound technology, but made cool T-shirts with spray paint and stencils that made all the other tech crews jealous. A lot of my summer experiences had to do with art; I volunteered at a lot of day camps and worked at the Hirshhorn for part of a school year. I also took classes with Ms. Ruth Fishman, who inspired me to think differently about art and not see it just as an artist-sits-hand-draws kind of thing.
I didn't take art very seriously until I competed with a team of my friends at the 2008 International Space Settlement Design Competition finals in Houston, Texas. I was on the automations team, but I ended up handling a lot of graphics during the competition. Modeling and illustrating robotics was a total blast for me, and it made me see illustration as a field with so many more possibilities than I had previously considered. I decided to attend the Rhode Island School of Design so that I could pursue that, and I'm reaching the end of my first year here.

-Do you have a job to pay for school?
-I'm lucky in that my parents are paying for my schooling right now. I love you guys!

-What do you enjoy the most about illustrating?
-What I really like about illustration is that it offers the opportunity to synthesize a lot of different ideas - often totally unrelated to art - and then requires that you communicate that synthesis in a way that's appealing, attractive, funny, or clarifying. I love the whole premise of it, making the world a little more interesting and fun and easy to understand. And I enjoy learning, and by translating your learning you can give something back to the world. I'd ultimately like to try art directing. Since there aren't a lot of spots open in that field, though, I'd also like working for any company that ultimately distributes art to a lot of people, like a magazine, a video game company, or an animation studio. I would like my art to be used and appreciated as part of an overall communication strategy, like the art on the packaging for video games. No one treats that art like it's a Da Vinci, but think how sad and empty the box would be without it!

-Can you tell us more about your current projects?
-Right now, I've got my hands full with my school work. On the side, I'm doing some art for a Chinese phone company - that's due in a week - and I'm also very slowly working on an animation with my friend. I'm very interested in two-dimensional animation lately - when the world is complete and whole, I think it's really seductive. There are so many more possibilities to the medium than we've ever seen from Disney. On the other hand, drawing over a thousand images by hand can be pretty much the anti-fun.

-What about your blog?
-I set up both my fun (digication) and "professional" (coroflot) websites this January, ever since RISD Career Services told me I needed to have some kind of website for resume purposes. (Speaking of resumes: will someone in the DC area offer me an internship this summer? Pretty please?)

-www.mylife.com/Ilove, go ahead:
-I love reading and always read a little bit at night right before I go to sleep! My favorites are Dostoevsky and Nabokov, but I also enjoy Vonnegut, Kafka, and random hits from the New York Times bestseller list that I sneakily buy for myself as little presents. Right now I'm almost done with a book by Richard Dawkins; before that, I read "The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks" by Rebecca Skloot and reread "The Defense" by Nabokov. When I'm at home, I love pretending that I can play tennis and racquetball, when really I'm quite terrible at them. (So terrible, in fact, that I once hit myself in the face with my own tennis racquet.) I also like running with friends, which also usually turns into slowly jogging with friends, then walking, then sitting on a lawn and talking, then going to get frozen yogurt. Ha ha. As for little pleasures in life, I sometimes buy myself chocolate bars at CVS on rainy days and save them all the way home until I'm in my dorm room and can eat them without anyone judging me.

-Why did you choose this FML?
-A few months ago my first ex-boyfriend and I broke up! As with many first-time break-ups, I think, there was the usual silliness and I was quite sad. After a while, though, I started being able to see the humor in things again; I chose this FML because I felt ready to poke some fun at relationships. It could be either a boy or a girl being the selfish, silly one; ultimately, I think, the take-home lesson is to roll with life's punches and not take ourselves too seriously. (I also chose it because I think the boyfriend in the FML was a genius.) Unlike this FML, though, I can confidently say that my relationship was not that lopsided!

- Why did you decide to send an illustration to FML?
-A lot of the FMLs are pure epigrams of genius; I read the site every day looking for those. I also used to tutor someone in French and part of our warm-up exercises would be to translate some of the French VDMs. (Who now knows how to say "I'm 45 years old and still a virgin"? My fortunate tutee, that's who.) In short, we go way back. When I noticed that I could combine what I like - FML - with what I love - illustration - and then that I could apply for it and didn't have to be asked - I fired off an email within five minutes of making that observation! No hesitation.

 

"No hesitation" is a hot thing to say. Thanks for your illustration Sara, may your future boyfriend never give you a bear !

Sara's website : http://risd.digication.com/sarabloem/Home//

If you want to be the next published artist, send an email to alice@fmylife.com including a link to your website/blog. 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 anamorphosed Alice, who will tell you what you have to do!

-All right let's do this! Hey Chris, we're glad to have you back on FML!
-Thanks!

-You're officially our first "second round" artist, how does it feel?
-I feel pretty special, like everybody got their slice of cake at the party and there is one left and I get to eat it.

-How the first part tasted according to you?
-I'm excited for my second slice.

-And here it is, second interview, second illustration, second time we're welcoming Biff to FML, how does he feel about that? According to the comments, he made a huge impression on FML's audience, maybe as huge as his eyebrows.
-Biff isn't aware that he exists in a comic strip, and seems pretty oblivious to the outside world.

- It's a shame, being the hero of a 4 year old webcomic is pretty exciting. It's even so exciting you're publishing your 4th book "The Book of Biff: Squid Tank", can you tell us how your webcomic ended up in a book?

- When I first drew Biff comics back in college I would make little photocopied collections of them to send to people. They were called "The Book of Biff."When I started drawing them again as a webcomic thebookofbiff.com seemed the obvious domain name. Chris: So right from the start since I had the word "book" in the name of the website people were asking me when the real book would be available. So I learned how to put a book together and deal with printing companies and such. And now I make books! And people smile. It's a pretty good system.

- You provide us happiness
- It feels good.

- It feels good both way, how great is that?! Okay, sexual innuendo time is over. Two of your webcomic's particularities are the fact that every day, each webcomic is a success, plus, you're even capable of creating a funny image where the main humoristic action isn't even shown, and yet, it works, it makes us laugh! The second particularity being: Biff's eyebrows. Seriously, what, how, why, those eyebrows?

-Eyebrows - It's possible that Biff is part alien, or he may be part cockroach. We're not quite sure. When I'm writing the comic I see all of the action in my head. In a way most of them are like 3 or 4 panel strips where I'm only showing you the first or last panel. A lot of the humor comes from what I leave out between the image and caption. When your brain fills in the gap is where the laugh comes from.

- Ok, clever move. Let's talk about "Squid Tank", give us 3 adjectives, 2 verbs and 1 quote to describe it
- 3 adjectives: absurd, surreal, ridiculous.
2 verbs: smack, crunch.
1 quote: "Do not read this book too closely, you will get paper cuts on your eyeballs."


- Mh it works, if we didn't already have your book in your hands, we would be buying right now, right here. Are you a fervent reader of other webcomics?
-There are a few that I follow daily and others that I like to read in book collections. A great thing about going to conventions is being able to meet other creators and buy their books directly from them.

- Can you give us some names or webcomic addresses?

- A few of my many favorites are:
http://www.chainsawsuit.com/
http://nedroid.com/
http://www.smbc-comics.com/
http://harkavagrant.com/
http://gunshowcomic.com/
http://www.gunnerkrigg.com/

- And of course, our last question: why did you choose this particular story?
- I spent a few hours browsing the most recent entries and made note of the ones that sparked an image in my head. Of the 10 that I got from the first round this was the one that had the funniest image/caption combo. It's a fun exercise since it's so different to my normal working process.

 

Once again Chris, thanks for your illustration!

 

Once again, don't forget to visit: http://www.thebookofbiff.com/

If you want to be the next published artist, send an email to alice@fmylife.com including a link to your website/blog. 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 in 3D Wonderland, who will tell you what you have to do!

Good morning gums! Are you ready for today's new illustration? If not, that's too bad, because our artist certainly delivered the goods! Dentists, teeth, decay, drill, lovely little pleasures that Delia Barrio sure didn't forget! As she positively responded to our interview, we decided to share her full story with you. Those who read it until the end would be awesome. And well-read.


-Okay here we go Delia, hold on tight to your seat because it's going to be the questionnaire of your life! How old are you?
-24 years.

-Heavy stuff. So now, what do you do all day?
-Be awesome. No actually, I currently work from home as a freelance designer and illustrator. I've done odd jobs for a few animation and game studios, but nothing that's actually made it into other mainstream media. I'm currently looking for a more solid job, though. It'd be nice to have some steady income.

-What do you enjoy the most about what you do?
-What I enjoy most is character design. I try to put an emphasis on personalities and designs that work together so they come off as believable, no matter how unrealistic they may actually be. (Though more relatable characters are my forte) I've been working more on digital painting and full illustration recently. (I can't afford real paint or I'd do that, too.) I'd really love to illustrate a children's book. Kid's books were a huge part of my life when I was growing up, my dad would read them to me every night. They're always so fun and whimsical, it'd be great to work on something like that. But I think, more than anything, I want to make a video game. The ability to interact directly with characters and environment is something you can only do in a game- film and other media sources only allow for you to watch. To fully experience a fictional world, simulation is the way to go. *thumbs up*

-Since when does your blog exist? Why did you create it?
-DeviantArt has been around since the dawn of time. I joined up shortly after my friend Hannah discovered the place. I've watched this place grow and change for over seven years, have been a staff member, and even designed a bit of artwork that was used in the site's layout. (it has since been removed with newer updates) Like any community, it has its ups and downs, but for the most part is a great and easy way to share your art and meet other like-minded people.



-What do you like in your life? What are your passions, hobbies, little pleasures..?
-I have a truly, deep rooted passion for music. While my carpal tunnel syndrome prevents me from playing any of my instruments for more than about ten minutes at a time, I have still never lost that interest. I feel that music has the ability to instill emotion at a much deeper level than other forms of creation. It helps me visualize emotions so I may better put them down on paper. I am an avid collector of songs, I don't really have a specific genre than I prefer. I'll listen to anything from southern ragtime to dub rock and ska- sometimes even rap and hip hop or classic jazz. Whatever sets the mood, I'm on it. Music aside, what also drives my creativity and passion is a nice scene. Landscapes, cityscapes, waterscapes - anyscapes. I'll find beauty in anything or anyone, so long as the conditions are right. A nice setting can really drive my mood and ambition. I try to surround myself in things that are harmonious. I sound like a real woodland hippie right now. I can accept that. Lastly, I'd have to say I really enjoy driving. I blame Erik for this mostly- but even before he got me interested in cars, I really enjoyed putzing around in my little white '91 Ford Escort wagon. It just feels downright nice to be out and about, the scenery changing, knowing you can go anywhere you want. Freedom I guess. Something akin to that.

- Now we want to listen to the Beatles. Why did you decided to send an illustration to FML?
-Several friends of mine looooove Fmylife and I've been a good fan of it myself. I feel that finding humor in the worst situations can help one overcome just about anything. Also giving people something to compare their own bad situations to helps ease some of that stress. Nobody is alone when it comes to bad luck, we've all had our share. Being given the chance to draw something up for this site was really an honor! I'm just sorry it's taken me so long to get around to it. You know, life has it's things that pop up and get in the way. That's what this site is about, after all.

-You sure understand us. Last question Delia, why did you choose this FML?
-I have an extensive dental history. In my lifetime, I've had three teeth removed (one was an adult bicuspid which has left a lovely gap on the upper left side of my jaw), four cavities filled, had my upper jaw widened to fit my teeth, headgear to fix my overbite for two years, and braces for eight. After all of that, my teeth are still crooked and ugly. FML.

Anyway, we love your illustration Delia, thank you for creating one for us!

Now go visit Delia's DA : http://delya.deviantart.com/

If you want to be the next published artist, send an email to alice@fmylife.com including a link to your website/blog. 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, who will tell you what you have to do!