Bored Panda reached out to Alexander Fridlin and asked him some questions about the “Fossil Fools” series. We were curious about who influenced the artist’s unique style in creating comics. We discovered that: “The drawings by Charles M. Schulz in The Peanuts inspired me a lot. I think the way Snoopy is designed is just genius. The character looks so simple with no unnecessary details, yet you can clearly recognize it as a dog. My favorite comic artist, however, is Eiichirō Oda. I’m a huge fan of One Piece.”
When asked how he comes up with ideas for his comic strips, Alex responded: “To me, coming up with new ideas is the hardest part of making comics. Usually, the first thing I do is sit down and watch something funny to get in the mood. After that, I start collecting ideas. Many of my comic strips are based on real-life events. Often I would look into my diary to see what happened a year ago or so. But there is not only one way to come up with ideas. Sometimes they just come out of nowhere during my day when I take a shower, have a walk outside, or when I'm in bed at night.”
We also wanted to know what Fridlin’s creative process from concept to the finished product looks like. The artist shared with us: “After I come up with an idea that I’m satisfied with, I start writing the script. Of course, it’s not as sophisticated as a movie script. I just write one sentence per panel and the dialogue between the characters.”
The author of “Fossil Fools” continued: “Next, I draw a quick storyboard in my sketchbook so I know which angle is the best and where to place characters and speech bubbles. Based on that storyboard, I create the actual drawing. For drawing, I use a non-photo blue pencil because it can be removed digitally later on. Once the pencil drawing is done, I draw the outlines with black ink on top of it. Then I scan the inked page and remove the blue lines. Sometimes I also need to correct something, for example, when I happen to smudge the ink.”
Alexander added: “Lastly, I add colors and text and export the comic so I can upload it on Instagram, Patreon, etc.”
Lastly, we asked Fridlin what advice he would give to aspiring comic artists looking to break into the industry. The illustrator said: “Don’t forget to take breaks. If you want to produce good output, you also need to have some input every once in a while.”
