This is just my experience – you won’t find below an amazing tip for how to finally create your own characters for a comic, story, or film.
However, I can say that I had heard “They’ll just find you” before, and I didn’t believe it.
But that’s what happened.
In all the years I spent tracing Calvin and Hobbes strips or trying to draw a good Garfield, what I really wanted was to have my own characters. A lack of self confidence and an average drawing ability made finding something I was more exited about a challenge. I gave up easily. I drew a character a handful of times before eventually deeming them uninspired crap and returning to copying others’ work. Which really wasn’t that bad, in hindsight, since it did teach me lessons about cartoon styles and storytelling approaches I could apply later on.
But anyway. My characters came to me not when I was hoping they would, when I was crouched over my desk, sketch pad at the ready, but when all I had lying around was lined paper and a pencil.
It was 2020, and I was inside with my then-partner. We were high on Cinnamon Toast Crunch, lying on our bed, watching the rain fall. I had a page of paper handy, probably with a list of groceries or things to do on it, and I got an idea to draw a cartoon puma. I was already calling my partner a puma since she has many catlike qualities, and her playfully “mrrowr’-ing while strutting around was kicking around in my head. I then drew a cartoon bear, using a design I had played around with before. The bear was leaning on a fence, dreaming of a hot dog. In my mind, he was an unusual color – grey. My partner might have suggested I draw a raccoon next – I can’t remember – and that’s what I did. For no good reason, he was flying in-between the puma and the bear. He had a big, floofy tail and wide, surprised eyes, like he didn’t know why he was flying either. Of course, I wanted to name him Rocket, but I knew Guardians of the Galaxy had already staked a claim on that name. Weeks of trying to think of an alternate “R” name went by before I gave up and just kept calling him Rocket. It took a few years (surprisingly) to find another name (his current name) that I liked just as much.
I recall feeling some sparks when I saw these three characters emerge on paper but – knowing how I had abandoned or lost interest in earlier characters (including my first run with the bear character) – I tried not to get too excited. A few months on, I set pencil to paper again and started drawing comics with the puma, bear, and raccoon all living together in essentially the apartment I was sharing with my partner. Puma was based on her, Bear was based on me, and Rocket was both a combination of us, as well as a caricature of someone completely different. I didn’t plan out any of my early comics – the only guiding lights were actual events or arguments or weird observations I was pulling from my wacky COVID life
Five years later, I’m not only still drawing these characters, but I’m also creating a whole universe around them. Most significantly, I’ve created Cora. She’s a thirty-something, a freelance writer, and a Scottish knitwear obsessive who tries to keep Puma, Bear and Rocket (now Rhombus) in line. Meeting Cora is like meeting me.
She emerged not from a breakfast cereal sugar high nor an old sketchbook, but from my own personal exploration. Sometimes it’s hard to be yourself in public. But if you can draw (or write, or film, or sing…) what’s in your mind, it’s kind of a substitute.
I guess I’m saying, draw what you know, or what you want. Something you’ve dreamed about for twenty years? Draw it, write about it as though it were real, and maybe you’ll find inspiration. Maybe you’ll find a character, or maybe even your character. Don’t try to be completely original all the time either, especially at the outset. It might interrupt your flow, make you overthink things. Back when I did NaNoWriMo, the mantra was “Ignore your inner editor,” and that’s sage advice for drawing, too. While I don’t think anyone is drawing Puma, Bear, or even Rhombus the way I am, just by drawing a mountain lion, a bear, and a raccoon, I’m probably doing something similar to others who have drawn the same animals before.
Be that as it may, when all’s said and done, I’m doing my own thing. As long as I’m not directly imitating another artist’s style, or doing something like “inventing” a cat character that loves lasagna and hates Mondays, I’m just being a cartoonist. And myself.
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