Inspired By Quirky Life Events, I Created The “2 Hairy Potatoes” Comic Series

I made two potatoes talk. You’ll see that they’ll have a lot to say, but this is just the first episode of the 100 I’ve already drawn…

I’ve been doodling since I was able to hold a pen. So I guess I was drawing before walking and I’m pretty sure I will doodle until my last breath (yes, I’ll turn into a ghost after to be able to carry on drawing). I went to art school in Paris and I’ve been working as an art director ever since (drawing sketches and doing storyboards are part of my job – lucky me). My life revolves around drawing and always will. I think in my past life, I was a comic or cartoon character. What will I be in my next? … The ghost I mentioned before, or maybe a pen or paper sheet!

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I’m a big fan of short story comics (comic strips) like Calvin & Hobbes (by Bill Waterson) or short cartoon videos like Larva (from South Korea TUBA Entertainment), for example. So, I’ve always wanted to develop a comic strip on my own using an iconic “couple” or “duo” like those 2 examples. I wanted an absurd duo of lazy friends that bully each other most of the time about stupid things, because this is what most friendships look like, ah ah ah! And then 2 potatoes came to my mind (because potatoes are not supposed to have a brain, it’s ideal to make silly stories). I made them hairy to make them look more unique, and memorable and because I’m hairy too.

When I want to create a new story (which is constantly, even under the shower – yes, I shower sometimes), I need to make sure that, first, it can be developed with an interaction of my 2 hairy potatoes, then it has to be simple to draw because I don’t have so much space in my comic strip: there is a big potato already in it that takes up all the space, this fatty! (I should have made 2 small potatoes…). The last thing is that I need to make sure that I can tell the story in 4 steps, my comic strips only have 4 frames. I’m as lazy as my 2 hairy potatoes, after all.

I’m facing 2 challenges when I develop my comics. The first one is about the number of episodes for each story: each story is always under 8 episodes on the same subject and sometimes, it’s not easy to have 8 ideas of episodes per story… but I realize that over time, ideas come up as I keep on feeding my brain with whatever creative is around me: It can be a discussion with a friend, watching stupid videos on social networks (yes, I’m one of those zombies), going to art exhibitions, reading books, etc.
The second challenge is that I’m developing this in 2 languages on Instagram (English and French): “2 Hairy Potatoes”… and “2 Patates Poilues”. So I need to make sure the dialogues and ideas stay consistent between the 2 languages (and that’s not easy!). I did give up on ideas that were not working in the other language. Too bad.

Inspiration comes from quirky life events or objects I experience in my day that can be very burlesque sometimes (like losing hair, seeing a bird making a nest in a weird place, facing an annoying bee that sticks around, receiving stupid useless gifts, being stuck in a flood, etc.) and then I push myself to think outside the box, which I literally did in one story of my 2 heroes going outside their box on the paper. Everything can become a story. When you create, there is no limit.

I draw in a quick doodling style (2D, simple, no background) so I just go to the essence and can focus on the interaction of my 2 characters. I draw for real on paper with China ink but I then scan to color with Photoshop. For the quirkiness approach of my scenario, I’ve been inspired by the videos of Mr. Bean (Rowan Atkison), the Larva videos (TUBA Entertainment – South Korea), by Anatole Latuile comics (Anne Didier & Clement Devaux), Calvin & Hobbes (Bill Waterson) and many other stories we can see on the net.

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