Well I know its hard to believe but two years ago I had a dream. And in that dream God came to me and assigned me the task of bringing his good will through my drawings...
What...you don't believe me?
Ok so maybe I exaggerated a little bit. Actually the true story is that I had no intention of making comics in the first place. You see some friends of mine just happened to sign up for the newspaper at the last college I attended and wanted to know if I wanted to tag along and do something artistic. Sorry its nothing more dramatic but if you want I'll tell you I fought a pack of zombies before I went into the room just to make it more zesty. And what creepy, moany, very undead zombies they were. Happy now?
I've been working on College Breed for almost a year now and so far I've gotten positive feed back from students. Some faculty members don't see the humour in a few series but that's to be expected. The last college I was at published only about half my series because they simply refused to print anymore of my comics half-way through the year. I won't tell you that the name of this crappy college was FDU because, heaven forbid I disgrace their perfect little school. So when I got the chance to introduce College Breed, this time I lept to the challenge. I didn't really leap, 'cus I barely have enough energy to do anything productive so leaping is out of the question. I think it was more like...crawling into opportunity. But how did I define my characters? No...I'm asking you...how did I? Does anyone...Does anyone know how I made up these characters? Oh wait...I know that one!
At first I wanted to go with my original designs I had created from my last attempts at a comic. The idea was to use myself as the main character because it's my comic and I'll do what I damn well please. The first comics I ever created had characters as humans but after careful consideration I thought that I might strike a larger audience if I used cute little dogs to embody my sarcastic spirit. Besides I'm a huge fan of Bugs Bunny style cartoons and I really like dogs so I figured, why not mix? Of course the first sketches of the characters were a little too involved...at least it was too detailed to draw out for every other week. And since everything I draw on paper goes onto the computer it would take even more time...Time I could be using to do more productive things...like eating or complaining that I don't have enough time to do anything productive. I also planned to have them in color but since most papers don't have a colored comic section all I would have is shades of grey. So I decided on your basic black and white. I also designed the comics to roll a storyline before the punchline, such as in many comic strips. But with a little advice from a very intelligent and very beautiful friend (*cough cough* Kate...*cough cough*) the one frame idea was produced. You'll also notice a change of font on one specific character. This is my actual handwriting. I came up with this idea to show the main character's individuality in his comic world. Every other character uses the Comic Sans font, which shows that the way these characters think and talk is the same. I.E. society has the characters in the clutches of normality. Though Jeff's character uses that font, I like to think his personality is portrayed through his use of it. Again, all this is thanks to that super-dee-dooperly intelligent and beautiful person. Think of College Breed like Family Circus. Only more funny and less stupid and pointless. Well...more funny at least...
College Breed is a comic based entirely around the lives of two "average" college students. I try to point out the funny and serious things about college. Though most of the jokes anyone can get a good giggle at, quite a few are based on life at college, so other students are more likely to catch on. And of course there's always that "out there" humour that I enjoy throwing in a couple of times. I seriously restrain myself from using profanity within my comic because honestly I'm not sure what the legal issues of that would be and the censorship crap I may have to put up with. Of course there's nothing stopping me from saying things on the internet. I also refrain from using character names. Although they are based on real people I try not to bring that into the series. This way the reader can make up his/her own mind about who they are and maybe can apply it to their own lives.
So now you know a little bit about College Breed.