This Artist Draws Comics With Unexpected Endings (30 New Pics)

Once again Bored Panda reached out to Chris but this time with even more questions! First, we asked the artist if he had any major influences in his life that might've helped him to develop and refine his style.

"My biggest influences are the wonderful people who have been in my life and I really feel the need to highlight them. I really hit the teacher jackpot. My high school had an animation class run by Paul Messerle (2016 San Diego County Teacher of the Year) and I had the most wonderful life drawing teacher, Jacqueline Nicolini. My college at Cal State Fullerton had so many good teachers (Joe Forkan, Brian Kennon, Marshall Vandruff, Don Lagerberg, Dana Lamb, Joe Biel). And my colleagues that I started ToonHole.com with (Ryan Kramer, Mike Nassar, John Martinez) continue to push and guide me every day after all these years.  'If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants.' - Isaac Newton.

But now for the answer, you were really looking for: my first inspiration was really Tom & Jerry cartoons. I really loved classic cartoons: Looney Tunes, Goofy shorts, Fleischer cartoons. The art styles gave the latitude to do broad and subtle jokes and it's stuff that's really hard to do. I'll work my whole life trying to draw and paint like a lot of those artists did in the 1940s."

Art, in any kind of form, takes a lot of time not only to practice but also to produce, therefore we asked Chris how long it takes him to fully finish his comics.

"In general, I think about 4 to 6 hours for most of my comics but it's hard to gauge. I like to do a lot of things in batches. I'll pencil 3 or 4 comics on watercolor paper in a couple nights, then ink them all in one night, then try to color a couple comics at a time. It's easier with watercolor because you can move onto the next panel while the last panel dries, and you can use the colors you just mixed to keep the panel colors uniform. But sometimes I'm doing my comics digitally in Photoshop and just try to get it done in one sit down."

Being an artist is not easy, one can easily encounter a lack of inspiration, burnout, etc, so we wanted to ask the artist about his ideas for the comics.

"Really classic artist problem: the blank page stares back at you, blankly. My remedy has been embracing limitations. It's a hard task to just "be funny" with no footing to hold onto, but much easier to pick a specific topic to jam on. It can be observable things from my everyday life (e.g. writer's block, weekend plans, drought conditions) or things I hear about other people talking about in their lives (e.g. parent-teacher conference, first date, tattoo removal).

I have a small sketchbook I keep in my back pocket (with all the topics written in the back) and I always have a pen on me. I tend to do most of my writing to stave off boredom. So if I'm waiting for an oil change or eating lunch outside or supposed to be paying attention to an accountant that's doing my taxes, I'm probably thinking of comical ways I can look at a topic like 'headstones.'"

As we mentioned before, sometimes creative work can cause quite a burnout, therefore we asked the artist if he had dealt with that as well.

"My day job is working in animation as a storyboard artist/writer. I did 11 years of a hard time working on television shows (Looney Tunes Cartoons, Spongebob, etc), and now I've jumped over to working on feature films. I record music and put out vinyl records on the label I co-run, King Volume Records. We regularly put out ToonHole comics and have been working on animated shorts and pitching TV shows/movies of our own. Frankly, I don't have time to be burnt out and I think that's the thing that's been keeping me going all these years. "