"We are in the tech industry and we wanted to make comics that captured that experience," Harry, Ali, and Carly from Michigan, who stand behind these comics, told Bored Panda. And they unveil their lives in fun comics full of nerdy and dry-wit humor. The kind of humor that doesn't necessarily make you laugh out loud, but rather blow air through your nose because they often are so reminiscent of our modern world that you would almost feel bad for laughing. That would mean that you are laughing at our society and its undeniable flaws, which is not a bad thing when you think about it, as it's much easier to handle the anxieties of life with humor.
Bored Panda wanted to get to know the creative team behind Bits and Pieces. We talked to Harry, who is a software engineer by day and artist by night about how he started drawing.
"I have been drawing since I was little. I went more towards the software side because I didn’t think it could be a career. After working for a couple years, I felt an urge to express my creative side," Harry said.
Besides Harry, the team is comprised of two other masterminds—Ali, who is a PhD student in cryptography, and Carly, who is a PhD student in cancer research.
"We met in high school and there really is no friction at all. We believe our collaboration is our advantage over other creators. We met Carly in high school as well and she is more on the consulting side."
The biggest inspiration and motivation to create is being able to express their artistic thoughts that couldn't be expressed in a professional environment.
"Our comics are about mostly tech, but also things we see in the world. We want to be more laymen," said Harry. "We feel like we’re funny and we want to share that with people. Being in serious PhD programs and the tech industry, there aren’t many opportunities to be creative."
Cleverly hidden in the name of webcomic, Bits and Pieces often toggles technology subjects with "bits" of programming humor. The logical build of technical people's minds leads to a specific dry sense of humor that might come across as trolling. Although some professional terms such as "SQL" or "authentification" slide into strips here and there, the comics are approachable to people with low-level technical knowledge. At the same time, they offer an exciting glimpse of the technology industry we might have never heard of. But for the most part, the themes Bits and Pieces touches upon are often painfully relatable to us, such as the global pandemic and its effects, trending political topics, or problems of the age of technology. You will particularly fall in love with the comics if you are a little bit of a pop culture and games nerd yourself.
Ironically enough, Harry says they are not trying to put dark undertones in their comics intentionally: "We don’t try to be dark, I think we’re all just depressed and we express that through our comics."
"I hope we can relate to people who feel like they can’t make it in the software industry or people dealing with depression. A lot of our comics have been about impostor syndrome because that’s something I personally deal with."
In light of the current pandemic, most artists try to use their art to express their frustrations and help them deal with it, Bits and PIeces are no different.
"The pandemic is definitely something we wrote about to deal with it as we’re quarantined. We didn’t think our comics would still be so relatable now so long after the pandemic started but here we are."
If you agree that one hilarious webcomic a day can keep the harsh reality away or just want to take off your mind off something that's bothering you for a short moment, show some love for Bits and Pieces' Instagram page, which has just started thriving since the pandemic started. They admitted that not seeing more followers finding their content is the most challenging thing in the procees. The artists have a little over a thousand followers at the moment, so you have a chance to get to know them "before it was cool." Bits and Pieces also have ambitions to write a book, so don't miss that idea coming to life!
If you like absurd and dark humor, Bored Panda regularly gives credits to the best out there. Here is just a small share of our recent articles with a good dose of dark jokes, absurdity, and twisted endings by talented artists who are definitely worth checking out: hilariously dark comics about games and pop culture by Arcade Rage; The Square Comics about a pessimistic guy, his a condescending dog, and strange friends; classic War and Peas comics with unexpected plot twists; ridicule of life in Perry Bible Fellowship's comics; and random and bizarre thoughts of Dogs on the 4th.
