Bored Panda reached out to Bill Whitehead to gain insight into his creative process and personal journey. The artist revealed that cartooning, for him, is a perfect blend of his passion for drawing and his love for humor. "Ever since about the age of 8, I’ve wanted to be a cartoonist. I devoured the newspaper comics every day and copied them line for line. Over time, that helped me develop my own style. I taught myself to come up with ideas through trial and error. Roughly two-thirds of the ideas I come up with are actually usable. I would say I’m my own toughest editor."
Bill shared that he prefers doing single-panel cartoons because, for him, the strip format is too confining. "I get bored with the same characters every day. I like each cartoon to be a brand new world of its own. A single-panel cartoon is like directing a tiny movie or play that takes place in one moment, in one scene, with one line of dialogue, or no dialogue at all. I set up the shot for maximum effectiveness and try to get the best performance out of my characters with their facial expressions and body language."
Bill freelanced for various publications for years before landing a job writing humorous greeting cards for Hallmark. "I worked there for 23 years until I retired. After that, I got my Free Range panel syndicated with Creators Syndicate, based in LA, California."
The artist told us that he draws inspiration from reading, consuming media, and exploring the subject matter of other cartoons, often taking those ideas in new directions. "At Hallmark, I found it extremely valuable to sit around a table with other writers and read through all the ideas we came up with that week. It shows you what makes some ideas work while others fall flat. The pile of rejected ideas was always way bigger than the accepted ones."
Some of the cartoonists that influenced Bill's style are Charles Addams of The New Yorker, Gary Larson of The Far Side, French cartoonist Jean-Jacques Sempé, Argentine cartoonist Guillermo Mordillo, and MAD cartoonist Sergio Aragonés, just to name a few. "Their work has inspired me for decades and never gets old."
