Bored Panda reached out to Doods, the author of the webcomic series "Irregular Galaxy Doods." First, we asked the artist if they had any major influences in their life that might've helped them to develop and refine their style.
"You know that punching bag in Super Smash Bros? I have no idea why, but I always thought that thing was just peak design—like, it's so cute (you feel guilty pummeling it) but it's just two lines for eyes and doesn't even have a mouth. I'm not sure why, but I've always found something inherently adorable in drawn characters with super minimalistic faces like that, they have to physically express themselves entirely through their eyes and gestures and I think there's something oddly endearing about that. I also thought if I ever wanna animate any of this stuff then boom, no lip syncing required either, mwaha! ^___^ In terms of the shape and style of my characters, they mostly have a rounded, chonky look—I went with it because it's simple to draw and replicate, generally round and smol is cute and it means they fit nicely with text in a lil square frame."
Art, in any kind of form, takes a lot of time not only to practice but also to produce, therefore we asked Doods how long it takes for them to fully finish their comics.
"Far too long! And it takes even longer if I'm drawing while I *should* be doing something else. To be fair my art style is simple; there isn't a ton of action or dramatic movement because... I'm not that confident at drawing haha. My comics are mainly built around conversation, which makes things easier in terms of the time it takes to make them, but presents a challenge when it comes to thinking up ideas consistently when you can't rely much on "physical" comedy. A comic idea can either materialize in my brain like it's being phased in or I'll sit there with my mouth half-open staring at the wall trying to think of a dumb pun.
All that being said, if I'm lucky one day with a quick idea I could get it written and drawn within an hour, on other days I could have some elaborate story I wanna tell at the expense of eating and sleeping. If you scroll down to the 5th of May 2021 on my Instagram you'll see a comic with a fridge I had to rapidly throw together with my hand in a bandage. Earlier in the day, I'd done a big oopsie on my finger while I was helping carry a fridge and had to go to the emergency room (A&E if you're bri'ish). I was waiting in there for hours to be seen and at the back of my mind, I was hyper-aware that I didn't wanna miss a day of posting. I walked back from the hospital with 6 stitches and a huge bandage on my finger, I clumsily cobbled the fridge comic together when I got home and got it posted minutes before midnight. Btw that was dumb and unhealthy, don't do what I do."
Being an artist is not easy, one can easily encounter a lack of inspiration, burnout, etc, so we wanted to ask the artist about their ideas for the comics.
"I draw inspiration from conversations, everyday objects, and a generally overactive imagination. I have an ungodly amount of note files on my phone with a ton of ideas, half ideas, incoherent jive, and puns. If it was 15 years ago I'd be the guy on the bus furiously scribbling ideas on a notepad like I'm Eminem in 8 Mile - except instead of writing scathing rap lyrics it's stuff like [ lego man: "I come from a broken home" - "I think it's a spaceship now" ] - lol I literally just found this in my notes I don't even remember writing that."
As we mentioned before, sometimes creative work can cause quite a burnout, therefore we asked the artist how they dealt with that as well.
"Yup haha, it's a double-edged sword making comics every day (sometimes triple or quadruple edged like a phillips screwdriver) - it's cool having that consistency and a solid reason to keep drawing and improving... but on days when you don't feel like being too cheery or you're drained or you have writer's block it can draaag - that's where the big list really comes in handy; you can just scroll through and find an easy one to keep you covered for that day.
Burnout is a lot more frequent with creators these days on Instagram; myself and my artist friends have had our reach slashed to ribbons. A few years ago a single post might get you, 500 followers, whereas now you're lucky to gain 20, of course. we do what we do because we enjoy it but it'd be nice to even pretend we could gain a following and make a living out of it. We shouldn't have to pay for ads just to keep our community going when at the end of the day Instagram makes a ton of money off the backs of the artists on the platform, so it'd be nice to feel even a little bit appreciated. It used to be a fantastic place to grow but it feels like the water is stagnating, y'know? - All that being said it's the community amongst artists and our followers that really keep us going, you never know how a short comment on a post might be just the thing someone needs to hear. It's just nice having a place you can dive into anywhere in the world too; throughout lockdown in particular chatting with and making friends through my comics helped so much, and it's that community aspect that I think keeps a lot of people sticking around when things are tough."
We also asked Doods about how people reacted to their work.
"When I first started posting I honestly thought I'd be in for a barrage of abuse. In my mind I was an easy target; I had no technical skills, my jokes were dumb and my handwriting was particularly atrocious. To my surprise though then, and every day since, the people who've found my comics have been the most genuinely lovely and supportive people you could ever hope to interact with. Before I started; the thing that put me off most was worrying about making myself vulnerable to criticism - but the best thing I ever did was ignore that doubt and dive in, I'd have never improved if I hadn't. Oh and if someone writes something nasty in the comments, don't engage, just block them and delete their comment, focus on the good people because they're the ones you're doing it for... and yourself, ofc."
The creative process is not easy, but there are many enjoyable parts about it.
"100% pressing 'post' on a finished comic, it's an exciting little moment because for all your hard work you don't know whether people will respond to it well or it'll stumble backwards down the stairs with its pants down - it's fun! It's always super rewarding too when you try something new and it works out, even if it's seemingly a super minor thing. Like, I've always really struggled drawing humanoid characters, which is why for the most part I've stuck with drawing animals and everyday objects - but I thought one day "I really wanna draw a vampire character", so I spent ages looking at reference photos, drawing and re-drawing each limb and chunk of hair until eventually, I'd finished drawing Clara. She wasn't perfect, none of my characters are, but I'd drawn her and I knew that that was something I'd never have come close to doing just a few months earlier."
We also asked about the inspiration behind the artist's Instagram account.
"Practice! I've always wanted to be able to draw, or at least have an art style, and I kept seeing comics and artwork online and I guess that lil bit of jealousy motivated me - I thought if I set myself the task of drawing a small comic every single day then I'm accountable, I can't just choose not to do it otherwise I'll break the streak - I thought it'd be nice to have a running record of my progress too, you can scroll through my timeline and literally see every tiny little improvement, it's bananas to see how much my style has changed. I tried from the beginning not to put *too* much pressure on myself; there were a lot of compromises where I wasn't totally sold on a character design but I put it out there anyway. My logic was I could draw and post 10 comics worth of trial and error and improvements in the time it would take me to get one comic to my idea of "perfect". Even though I've improved as time's gone on I still have that nagging feeling that "maybe I should change that, or resize this" - but then another part of me likes that my style isn't striving for perfection, you can see where the lines overlap or the colors run, if you give yourself permission to be imperfect you allow yourself to get better."
Artists tend to get motivated by a lot of things such as curiosity, the search for beauty, or even meaning. Therefore, we asked Doods about that too.
"To be honest it's changed a few times since I started. I first started drawing comics purely to practice drawing - I had the idea that eventually I'd like to create animated story-time videos like Jaiden Animations or The Odd 1s Out (which was another reason why I thought a "modular" design was a good way to go!). In terms of the content itself I've always tried to keep it light and sort of universal, I kept to a muted color palette and a warm background color so it wasn't super "in your face"; aiming for the kind of comic you could read in bed without making your eyes sizzle. As time went on I started putting more and more effort into making the recurring characters more... believable. They talk like either me or people I know; they all have their own personalities and motivations - they're not just vehicles for a punchline.
Some comics are more cut and dry silly jokes than others, but I do slip in the occasional wholesome comic or something with a bit more of an overt message, it's always nice to see how my followers respond to those and it feels nice to have a balance of comics that attempt to make someone laugh and comics which address issues that are meaningful to me. Ultimately I'd love to be able to draw for a living, I'm sure that's the dream of most artists to be fair - which is why it still absolutely blows my mind when I get a new subscriber on Patreon. The thought that someone out there likes my comics to the point that they want to actually send me some of their hard-earned dollarydoos to keep me going is mesmerizing... I'll never stop being grateful, it really bumps up your faith in humanity!"
Digital art and art, in general, is not easy and requires a lot of patience, time, resources, and in most cases even money, therefore we wanted to know how the talented comic artist started their own career in digital art.
"I got a C in art in high school. I was always pretty bad at drawing but I quite enjoyed making things out of cardboard and tape - I think tactile stuff like that is simpler (at least for me) to wrap my head around because it's modular, you can see the shapes coming together and if things don't look right it's simple enough to fix. I think that's what appealed to me most about digital art, it's more forgiving for a beginner because you can make your strokes smoother, you can press CTRL + Z if you mess up a line. That modular element really helped me as well, I draw each element of the character on a different layer and color-code them: arm layers are orange, legs are purple, eyes are blue, etc. It made it easier for me starting out like that because I could visualize it more 3 dimensionally, if I don't like the way a character's head is tilting I can select the head, eyes, and hat layer and tilt them forward without compromising the whole panel - it was about finding a way to draw I was comfortable with and I think my particular "constraints" helped me developed my own little art style."
"Just to sign off I'd like to finish by saying how unbelievably grateful I am for every ounce of support I've been given since I started making comics. From the first folks who followed me back in February 2019 to Bored Panda thinking I was even remotely interesting enough to be interviewed! I've always struggled with my confidence so it honestly means the world. Support your artist friends, hug your family, stay hydrated. I have no idea what I'm doing."
