SO here’s the thing with silly ideas. For me, when I let one silly idea in, they breed like rabbits or pennies. All of a sudden there’s a bunch of silly ideas and I have to do drawings of all of them. My silly ideas come from thinking of how to make something more absurd, hearing things wrong (a lot, I do this A LOT), weird mash-ups free floating in my brain space and funny mix ups of someone else’s suggestions with a crazy one of my own.

For a while, I studied anime and manga design. Well… let me go back. There was a time, many moons ago, when I wasn’t doing much with my art. I suppose I was feeling jaded and thinking I need to be a normal person. Being an artist isn’t so easy, the creativity wants to get out. Trying not to be an artist, with creativity splooshing out of your head, is like trying to bail a boat with a spaghetti strainer. Gigi the Giraffe is what came of that. One mad New Years, I had to make Gigi. So I did. Then something sad happened. And I couldn’t sleep for months, so I started watching anime. I got hooked on anime, manga and japanese culture. I decided to see if it’s possible to learn a language all on your own. I played with anime character design. I finally picked up my sketchbook and made the resolution to sketch while I was bumming around in front of the TV.

That’s how I got over the mad notion of ‘I don’t have to be an artist, I can just be a normal person’. This is how I decided I must find a way to be happy as an artist, since be happy as a normal person, wasn’t working out. Don’t get me wrong, being normal (which is to say not a creative type with ideas haranguing you) is great. PG Wodehouse said, ‘It takes all types to make the world go round, eh Jeeves?”. The world would be too chaotic if we were all the same. We need Jeeves and Woosters. I am glad to now be at peace with being the artistic type who can see how funny the Avengers would look, Chibi-inspired (aka anime style), as a bunch of goof offs.