A couple days ago, the CartoonSNAP blog celebrated its 3rd birthday! Take a look at the first tentative step toward bloghood, this photo from my 2002 roadtrip around the great state of Ohio:
I posted that image because I was just experimenting with Blogger for the first time, and I needed something to put on there. Later in the day I posted my "How to Draw SpongeBob" video, which was another "toe-dipping" experiment in video.
I was inspired to start the blog due to two very dear friends: Chris Duffy and Vince Burlapp. Vince was the one who got me to sign up for Blogger in the first place. As a professional movie extra, Vince had plenty of downtime, and he used it to post about his avocational passion: cars! Inspired by his Burlapp Cars blog, I decided to start my own. I threw a couple of posts up there, but didn't know what else to do with it. No direction, no point of view.
Enter Chris Duffy. Chris is the (former) editor of Nickelodeon Magazine, and a great friend and collaborator for nigh on 14 years. Chris started blogging about comics on his "Comic Books Are Interesting Except When They Are Not Interesting." blog.
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| Chris Duffy - Lover of Comics |
| My favorite kind of funny animal obscurity |
Since this blog began I have also been able to share tutorials on inking and painting, links, drawings, paintings and articles. Just last week I was contacted by the great-niece of a Hal Cooper, a cartoonist whose work was featured here. A couple months ago, the grandchildren of animator Dan Gordon wrote in to thank me for the biography I posted. One obscure golden-age comic book artist whose work I posted contacted me to say that he's been working as a sculptor and professor emeritus at a college in New York; Lou Trakis was very excited to have his comics work dug up after half a century.
I've learned that even the most obscure cartoonist has an epic life-story behind them, as well as family and friends who fondly remember them and their work. The best part of all this blogging for the last three years is all the cool friends that I have met both online and in "the real world." It's weird that I have friends across town and across the world that I have never seen face to face (let alone never even heard their voice). But those "blog buddies" are true friends nevertheless, and my life is much richer for having known them.
It's the back-and-forth with people that are equally passionate about cartooning that makes the effort worthwhile.
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