Old Faces

Posted by Kevvo at 7/8/2008 1:20 PM
Categories: Scribbles
When I did the entry last week about Tales From My High School Locker, it got me thinking about my art and some of the projects I've worked on - where I've been and where I'm going.  That prompted me to update my current portfolio and revisit my old site, whatsakevvo, in an attempt to put it back together... at least as well as I can with the files that I still have.

Part of that process took me back to some of the comic strips I used to draw.  I'm ashamed to say it's been a few years since I did my last comic strip and I think it's something I'd like to get back to.  Of course right my efforts are focused on finding paying work... but that won't prevent me from taking a few minutes to touch base with a couple of old friends of mine.

Waaaay back, during my first year of college, I was a contributing cartoonist to my college newspaper.  While I don't remember the name of the paper, the name of the comic strip was 2 Real and it featured a motley cast of Kat, Donn, Ross, Tina and Rolanda.  It was also my first syndicated experience and I even won an award at the end of the school year for having the most consistent comic strip to appear in the bi-weekly pages.  Although now I shudder at the quality of the work, at the time I was thrilled with what I was doing.  This is the first comic strip I ever saw in a newspaper:



That was the first taste of Kat and Donn but it wouldn't be the last.  When I went away to college to actually study comics I learned a lot and honed my craft considerably.  By the time I was out, I was back to drawing regularly, but this time I aspired to national syndication.  The comic strip that resulted from that was called These Friends of Mine.  From the original cast, only Kat and Donn survived (although Ross reappeared as the reconfigured character, Ryan).  In an homage to my previous endeavors, the first strip for These Friends was a redrawn copy of the original 2 Real strip:



I hope you can tell a difference...

While national syndication continued to elude me, I worked on a couple of other series after this - one of them based on Kat's family was a comic strip called Home, Sweet... Home? and it was also syndicated in a weekly newspaper for almost half a year.  

At this point I have a fairly large cast of characters to draw from should I decide to pursue comic syndication again.  While it's a tempting consideration, I think I'd be wise to wait until I can afford to spend the time and money needed.  Until then, here's a recent drawing of the two who started it all for me:

 

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