29 Slice-Of-Life Comics Inspired By My Own Experiences

Pup 2 (sunglasses) is mostly quiet, genuine, and mysterious. However, he likes to be a non-biased, well-informed citizen by diversifying the news outlets that he reads from.

As a kid, like many other kids that had immigrant parents, my parents would work long hours almost every day. Many times I would be jealous of other kids that had their parents home all of the time.

Hamster can be a little dramatic, but who wouldn’t be for a sweet treat? It’s the only thing that can bring happiness in this bleak world.

Red Panda struggles a lot with completing tasks and staying focused. Here Red Panda brings up solutions to this never-ending struggle of living in a world that measures people’s worth with their productivity.

I have always been fascinated by the thought of collective consciousness. I’ve been sitting on this gag since the beginning of this comic when it was only done in pencil. When I switched to inking my strips, I found this gag a lot easier to realize.

Red Panda and Rabbit spend a lot of time having discussions. Rarely do they come to the same conclusions. I enjoy this dynamic because it lets the reader see different angles in an argument. I make my own views public and I have definitely seen my own fair share of hate comments. I do not regret being vocal.

I go through moments when all I can do is sleep and other moments when I get no sleep trying to do the most with my days. Also, this is a Mac Miller (RIP) reference, if you haven’t noticed.

I’m a big fan of horror movies so I had to express my love for them in one of my strips. If you watched the Scream franchise, this scene might be familiar to you. What caught my attention the most in Scream 2 was the sign “No Eating in Living Room”. The sign gets cut off with the composition for just a few seconds, which only makes the sign read “No Living”. Being a film major with a focus on animation, this small moment left a mark on me. This was a small detail that most people would miss out on but it adds to the eerie tone of the scene.

Rabbit is very knowledgeable when it comes to nature. The outdoors also acts as a safe haven from the stressful responsibilities that society pushes on the general population.

The concept for this was in regard to how fragile human existence could be. This relates to how a lot of Cham history is lost due to cultural erasure.

Hamster loves to talk about her time at work, what else can I say.

Volleyball is to "Diary of Red Panda" just like how Calvin Ball is to "Calvin and Hobbes" or ice skating is to "Peanuts". In "Diary of Red Panda", volleyball is used to share my personal experience with sports and other experiences that people go through.

This is a love letter to all the people that feel insignificant and also to the creator of "Calvin and Hobbes", Bill Watterson.

When creating these strips, I enjoy inserting small moments that Red Panda and Hamster share. These are often inspired by interactions with my girlfriend and I.

I watched a supercut of Frankenstein references to find a bunch of different compositions for this strip. Mary Shelley’s "Frankenstein" had a huge impression on me when I was in grade school.

There was a time in my life when I lived in the hometown of world renowned artist Keith Haring. There was a fitness court dedicated to him but I noticed that they kept out many details about activism in his life. The world loved his art but they failed to share the messages that he wanted to put out to the world.

As a teenager, I was much like Pup 1 in regards to his studious behavior. There’s nothing wrong with doing great in school but sometimes you need to take time to be a kid.

I feel like I can never express exactly what I want with language. However, I find language funny since people can always misconstrue your words. I tend to do this a lot and take what people say very literally most of the time.

The frustrations that a lot of artists go through can be heard in a lot of rap songs. It’s no wonder that a lot of rappers can be seen as arrogant/cocky when they have overcome so many obstacles.

There is a song that I enjoy titled “I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry” by Hank Williams, which contains the lyrics. Hear that lonesome whippoorwill He sounds too blue to fly The midnight train is whining low I'm so lonesome, I could cry I never fully understood these lyrics until I went camping with a friend in the State College area. I heard a whippoorwill cry for the first time and my brain exploded.

Being a substitute is my day job and seeing the interactions of the youth is pretty hilarious. Many days can be mentally exhausting, though.

This is based on when I wrote an essay on the Ancient Kingdom of Champa in middle school. The teacher gave me a failing grade on it because she didn’t believe it to be a true civilization. It was pretty traumatizing and many of my friends couldn’t really understand the pain that came with it.

Hamster is a native Spanish speaker and Red Panda is just trying his best.

Music is life, music is love.

This is the first comic strip of “Diary of Red Panda”. The comics originally started as pencil comics with watercolors and slowly progressed into fully inked strips. I have fond memories of making this after going through so many job interviews and submitting so many job applications to no avail. Who would have guessed that I would still be working on this after 2 years? Who knows, maybe one day I can catch up with the amount of "Peanuts" strips that exist. Sometimes quantity can be just as impressive as quality if the quantity is big enough.

Hamster loves birdwatching, so you’ll see some interactions she has with these feathered friends.

This strip was drawn without any pencil sketching so if I messed up a panel, I would have had to redraw it. Some of these panels took hours to make despite how simple they look.

I often write a lot of my scripts in the notes app on my phone. Many times these scripts stay on my phone for a couple months and even years. This is mainly because I don’t know what I want the characters to do with the script or even which characters would fit in the script. A lot of these times my scripts are written without any characters in mind.

If I can make enough money with my art, I would totally become the unemployed friend at 2PM on a Tuesday.