bilgebonfire

I can’t draw. It’s my big secret. I wish I could. I’m probably an enormous fan due, in part, to my lack of visual talent. I’ve always loved comics and animation—two different mediums that, for me, have always seemed linked. Some of my earliest habits were to curl up with a gigantic pile of Calvin and Hobbes collections, or volumes of Peanuts, and read and eat candy. I was a very unhappy kid, and my reading habits, coupled with my viewing habits—I adored “The Simpsons,” “Beavis and Butthead,” “Liquid Television,” “Ren and Stimpy”—became a source of happiness, my safe place. And while a lot of kids stop watching cartoons as they mature, I never did. I took a more scholarly interest in the cultural impact of cartoons later on and made it an object of study—my senior thesis in college was The Image of the Hillbilly in Cartoon Animation (I’m originally from Eastern Kentucky and had a minor in Appalachian Studies), and I actually delivered an undergrad lecture deconstructing “Squidbillies.” Review: Run 3 online.

I took my research seriously in learning how Sharon and Mel would work. I spent a lot of hours looking up equipment—Cintiqs, drafting boards—and read as much as I could about technique. YouTube has made learning about craft a really lovely, immersive experience, because you have a lot of practitioners who post step-by-step videos detailing their process, and you get that visual and aural sense of the work as well. Of course, you never want your research to overshadow the central story, but I did want to honor what Mel and Sharon live for. What they make, and how they make it, is important to who they are.