Character Studies

They don't always work out.

The sad truth is, not everyone can be a cartoon. Sure, their personalities can be stretched beyond the confines of their outward characteristics, but they still fail to excel in the four panel world of sparse dialog.

In the cartoon world, any character starts out as yourself. You think, “Hey, I’ll draw a funny banker who’s eleven feet tall!” Then, consciously or not, you mentally make yourself eleven feet tall and pretend you’re a banker as you draw a tall, skinny dude with a big nose.

It’s a common situation.

The trick is to base your new character on a real person. So you’re not only writing what you know but who you know. You just have to find somebody you know who isn’t boring.

Ok, maybe not boring, but predictable. If you walk into a group of bankers to make your eleven foot character, you may find that they all have similar personalities and talk about similar things that include their similar problems. It’s all interesting to them, but ultimately too boring for outside entertainment.

You need to find the banker with problems. Problems are funny, often self-induced, and a predictor of our fate if we don’t get our act together.

Find the banker who has his car repossessed while at work because of missed payments, make him eleven feet tall, and you have your character. He may be dividing his time between screaming into the phone about his car and advising customers on compound interest rates.

He’s interesting.

But it’s not just problems. It could be a person who is unusual in the opposite way. She could be extremely uptight and fussy about every detail in her life. Banking isn’t her occupation, it’s her religion. But she always has a spot of mustard on her blouse because she loves hot dogs. She can’t connect with people on a human level because everything is math to her.

She’s interesting.

When I first started the comic, I thoughtlessly tossed in Tisha. I have no idea where the name came from, but she was a mixture of different people. One day she could be inspired by real life Jeff, and the next it could be real life Amy. Meh.

Yeah, this is Tisha being me.

This was something I said about another employee. That employee ultimately gave me the idea for Tabby, so she is forgiven.

Here we have the second appearance of the Raptor manager. Do I have to say that the raptor was based on no one? His main personality trait was that he attacked customers and staff. There wasn’t anywhere else to go with him.

This was just another real conversation. Tisha was a good facilitator for that.

Ah, the haggard employee at another store. This is worth exploring further. Hmmm.

I love writing Vickie. Vickie is very real and is based on quite a few people from different jobs. Comics with her aren’t usually as popular as the others, but I can’t help bringing her back. And, yes, we had to tell a staff member to stop greeting customers with “How’s it hangin’?” She chose not to.

Kirk. I loved drawing kirk. He was based on a quirky, conflicted guy that I worked with. That person was ultimately a little too frustrating to work with and his cartoon counterpart suffered because of it. I reintroduced Kirk last fall and haven’t gone back to him since. I think he’s wandering around in the back somewhere.

I saw the greatest breakroom I’ve ever seen in a large store. It was always empty.

Dan was a character of necessity. Berle needed a boss, so we got Dan. I don’t know what motivates Dan or what his hopes and dreams are. I just ask him to be on time and say his lines correctly.

Dan, Kirk, and Tisha are welcome back to the high turnover world of retail at any time. We have their application on file and will call them when we need them.