Jake told us all about the origins of his viral comics. Like lots of great things, it started out with something done entirely for fun.

“I always liked drawing little comics, but I haven’t really done anything with them until 6 months ago when the social media page started,” Jake said. “It all started when I watched a movie about a spelling bee that inspired me to make a ‘word of the day’ for my family to see. So I got a tiny whiteboard my dad had, put a hook on my door, stapled some twine onto the back of the whiteboard, and hung the twine on the hook. I wrote a word of the day for a while, but finding an interesting word every day got harder and harder until I gave up and l left the whiteboard blank.”

However, the teen soon found other uses for the whiteboard. “I occasionally doodled on it and made comics sometimes (out of boredom), some of which my dad loved. My dad took pictures of them, and once we got around 50, my dad asked for permission to put them on an Instagram page. I was reluctant at first, but I gave my dad the green light to put the comics up. The page got 10,000 followers in two days, and I drew comics on the whiteboard more frequently. And that’s how it all began!”

The 14-year-old also revealed what it’s like to draw his comics behind the scenes and let us in on his secret to coming up with great daily content.

“It usually takes around five minutes, sometimes longer because of my hand erasing the comic while I draw (markers are not the most effective drawing tool). My dad usually gives me critique on the comics so that can take longer, too.”

However, coming up with new ideas is much tougher than drawing them “Ideas are more complicated. My main source of comic ideas is my overactive imagination. I’ll have an idea for a comic, think, ‘Hey that’s actually a good idea,’ and write it down on a sticky note for future use.”

He continued: “If that fails me, a good idea generator is ‘What if…’ For example, what if...

• ...you divided 0/0 on an experimental calculator?
• ...your fridge was, literally, running?
• ...a man hated puns so much he would kill over it?
• ...you played a sport with a ball filled with enough helium to make it fly?
• ...there was way too much caffeine in someone’s coffee?
• ...people noticed that whatever they say comes up in a speech bubble above their heads?”

Jake said it’s a great method for generating comic ideas, especially when he’s running low on them.

Meanwhile, Jake’s dad, David, says that his son has impressed everyone with his art, insight, observation, and humor.

“Every night, he would draw something funny on his whiteboard, and I recognized how awesome they were. But the drawings would simply get erased and drawn over so I felt I needed to preserve them somehow. The easiest way was to just take a snapshot with my phone, and decide what to do with it later,” David said.

“Eventually, the comics got funnier and funnier, and I decided I needed to post them online—if nothing more than to preserve them. I thought one day he would look back and see how creative he was at age 14.”

Jake was reluctant for his dad to upload his drawings onto Instagram at first but gave in. “Things kind of took off from there,” dad David said.

He explained that the main goal of this whole project was to unleash his son’s creativity. “Throughout this whole adventure, the goal was only to let Jake be creative as he wanted to be, and if it made people smile—then that was a bonus. The fact that over 20,000 people now have followed him on Instagram and Reddit is pretty mind-blowing, but as his dad, it doesn’t surprise me. He’s quite an amazing kid.”