Bored Panda has reached out to Yaplaws to learn more about his work. We were interested in the artist’s creative process and how he comes up with ideas. He described it simply as “Capturing a random spark.” Yaplaws elaborated, “On most days I start with a blank page and zero ideas of what the comic will be. I might doodle a shape on the page and see what it tells me it wants to be. Visualizing that shape will then evoke an idea. It could be a shoe or my character just sitting in the middle of the panel. As I begin to lay it out, I can see a condensed narrative forming. I am generally not starting with a particular story in mind.”
Yaplaws’ comics often touch on deep emotions, but somehow manage to have an underpinning of humor. We wanted to know how he found that balance. He told us: “I never wanted to create comics simply about being sad or being knocked down, but instead - about the subtle nuanced shades of emotion that can come out when we are faced with difficult times in our lives. Humor is the bit of magic that makes these sometimes dark stories relatable. Finding perspective when we are close to real pain can require us to sometimes laugh at ourselves and our situations.”
The look of Yaplaw’s work has remained fairly consistent since it first was shared in 2018. But we wanted to know if the artist felt that way. “As with any skill, I do believe I have improved in my drawing abilities through the sheer amount of time I put into it. It has been a daily practice since I started. My rendition of my character has changed a lot from the early days. But as I grew used to rendering him again and again in so many comics, he became ever more refined. The general idea had not changed, especially the color. I just published my first book on Amazon called 'The Box - a book about where everything goes', and it includes a new look for character. It’s paler and uses a whole new coloring technique that is looser and more improvisational.”
As with most artists that work and share on social media, followers and engagement can be key to finding your audience. We wanted to know how important followers are to him and if it ever influences the work. He said: “When I first started, I was just making comics for fun and was happy to find a place to post them. I was surprised when I grew from 100 followers to 1000 and then even more. I have always felt that finding an audience of what I call 'Kind Readers' was what I really wanted. This meant an audience of people who understood and found value in what I was doing. I do consider my audience when posting certain sensitive topics, as many of my readers are quite young, and I am not looking to shock or scare them. Now, only a few years later, the power of social media is just not there. As creators, we can still create but we will need to find new more innovative ways to reach them.”
One last thing we wanted to know from Yaplaws was if there was any bigger message he wanted his audience of “Kind Readers” to take away. “I would love to think that in my own tiny little way, I make them feel less alone and that there are humans wandering around just like them. They need not feel like that mood, or that feeling is only targeting them. We all have felt it, we too can laugh about it - together.”
