Given the chance, Bored Panda reached out to the artist behind the comics! When asked about the inspiration behind creating "Weekends Off Comics," Anime4000 said, "I can't remember specifically why I made the first strip, but I do remember being inspired by a canvas webtoon called 'English Project Daily Shorts' by Doubtcent. It was about this guy who would just write whatever into a comic and tried to post every day. I thought the frequent updates were pretty cool, and even if they weren't always joke-based, I enjoyed reading his thoughts on things. I have a list of a lot of the comic ideas I drew for 'Weekends Off.' If I couldn't think of a fresh idea for a comic, I would make a comic from that idea list."
Regarding the main character in her comics, Anime4000 explained, "The main character in my comics is usually me. I already had the design figured out from an older comic and just tweaked the colors and art style to match 'Weekends Off.'"
Describing her creative process, she shared, "Usually I would get an idea from a random thought I had or from something that happened to me recently. Then I'd write it down in my idea list. If I picked said idea from the list the next time I was drawing a comic, I would open up ibisPaint X on my phone and start drawing. What I like to tell people is that you don't need fancy materials to be an artist. If I can make a relatively successful comic series with just a free drawing app and my phone, then they can do it too."
Anime4000 engages with her audience in various ways, stating, "I engage with my audience often by responding to comments on my works and have occasionally taken ideas from those comments. As for interactions that have influenced my work, I think one of my favorites was when I talked with fellow comic artist Chris Naish (creator of 'Admiral Wonderboat Comics') leading up to the making of episode 80: 'Advice.'"
When discussing the end of "Weekends Off Comics" and her future projects, she noted, "'Weekends Off' has been wrapped up as a series. As explained in the last few episodes, I needed to free up time to do some of the other things that are important to me. Posting a comic every weekday is a very time-consuming project, and I was spending roughly 10 hours a week on it. So I decided to end the series with a big finale, for the 100th episode. Currently, I'm self-publishing a series on WEBTOON called 'Broken Compass.' It's about a random dude who gets teleported to a vast open field and tries to figure out why he was sent there, with the only thing given to guide him being the titular broken compass. Aside from that, I'm hoping to publish a printed book sometime this or next year (the pending title is 'short-lived'). I also infrequently post small one-shot comics and art pieces over on Reddit (u/Anime_4000) and Instagram (@the_anime_4000), respectively."
Anime4000 also offered advice for aspiring webcomic artists: "During the time I posted semi-daily, I would get loads and loads of comments on my work. It got to the point where there were way too many of them to respond to, and I was getting bogged down by some of the negativity. What helped me and may help other comic artists is setting a time limit on how much time you can spend reading and responding to comments. Turning off notifications helps too. You can't make the negative people be nice, so it's best to just limit your online interactions rather than ignore how the comments make you feel and keep on spending all your time on them."
The comic artist concluded the interview with us with a piece of wisdom from her dad, a former musician: "'I always figured, "I'm playing for the people who like me, not the people who don't."' Despite any negative feedback and nasty comments I might get posting my comics, as long as one person besides me enjoys them I think that's enough reason to keep posting."
