We got in touch with Joe Holtby, the artist behind the Portuguese Geese series, and asked some questions about his recent comics. First, we were curious about his approach to creating characters for his strips and learned that: “My approach to character design is to keep things simple. I make the characters pretty basic, but I leave room for expressive faces. Drawing faces is my specialty, so I try to show as much personality and character there as much as I can. One rule of character design is to have a recognizable silhouette, which I try to keep in mind while designing.”
Asked how his art style has evolved over time, and what factors influenced these changes, the artist answered: “The biggest evolution in my art style over the years is that all of my human characters have been turned into geese! This was something I wanted to do for at least 2 years, but I was nervous about making such a drastic change to my already established comic. The audience reaction turned out to be way better than I thought, and I've been trying to perfect the style ever since. I always try to improve my art as I go, and I like to believe that I've gotten more consistent with my drawings.”
Then, we wanted to know what Holtby considers the most rewarding aspects of being a comic artist. Joe shared with us: “One of the most rewarding aspects of being a comic artist is seeing reoccuring fans show up everyday to new comics. Knowing that people are closely following my work warms my heart, and keeps me motivated to keep going. There's also no feeling like posting a comic online and seeing such a huge positive reaction to it, sometimes even going semi-viral. Working close with other comic artists on my YouTube channel has been a blast as well. We get together and do crazy drawing challenges and riff off each other and it's tons of fun.”
Lastly, we asked Joe to give some advice to aspiring comic artists looking to break into the industry. The author of Portuguese Geese said: “Advice that I would give to any aspiring comic artists would be to make comics that YOU would like to see. This may sound simple, but it can be easy to find yourself chasing trends or trying to copy someone else's work, resulting in a mediocre or bad comic. No one's first couple of comics are gonna be amazing, so you should draw a couple before posting any online. Once you get more comfortable with creating comics, you should start to see yourself improving and eventually you will create comics that are way more personal and represent your sense of humor well. Once you find your voice, the fans will come!”
