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Brian Russell is an illustrator whose humor might seem familiar to many - the situations from the comics he draws are just like those most of us experience in our daily lives. This is probably because Brian’s art comes from a pretty personal place.

“The family of characters is based on my family. Me, my wife, and my three kiddos,” he told Bored Panda. “We're always making each other laugh with real and imagined scenarios. The co-workers and other people that show up in the comics are generally based on people I've met.”

Scroll down to see the newest work by Brian and also don’t forget to check out the artist’s previous post here.

More info: Instagram | twitter.com | youtube.com | Facebook | theunderfold.com

We asked Brian about his creative process: “The drawing portion of my comics usually takes me around two hours from beginning to end. I usually sketch with a pencil on some paper that I have a template for, then ink on my computer. Now, the writing part? That’s unpredictable! Some jokes are easy and they write themselves, and some have been sitting half-written in my drafts for years!

I don’t know that any of my techniques are unusual, per se. Something I don’t know that other people do is laugh while making my comics. I guess it’s a good sign that I think what I’m working on is funny! Ha! But there are many videos of me from my weekly Twitch live streams where I’ll draw one part and just crack up.”

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“It’s almost always difficult to come up with new ideas,” the artist says about facing creative block. “Lately, I’ve made a choice to not force too many ideas. I try to jot down life-based ideas as they come up. I’ll write notes on my phone or whatever and sometimes they make sense and sometimes they don’t. If the idea isn’t working, I’ll set it aside and work on something else.

For me, it does help to have some deadlines. My brain likes boxes and restrictions, so sometimes just knowing the deadline is coming up will help some of those ideas organize into place. There are many times when I’ll start to ink a comic and realize that the joke doesn’t actually work as well as I thought it did when I sketched it, but you just have to work it out or pivot. I try to have at least two comics in progress in my brain so that if one doesn’t work, I can move over to the other one.”

#4

This Artist Uses His Family As Inspiration To Make Hilarious Comics

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Debriana Brazzanovich
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2 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

One of the best investments I've made has been a portable air compressor that plugs into my car!! Tires low I don't have to try and make it to a gas station I just plug it in, air it up and go on my merry way.

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This Artist Uses His Family As Inspiration To Make Hilarious Comics

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Brian says that there are many great artists out there who inspire him: “Brian Gordon (Fowl Language Comics) helped me hone in on my joke-telling and focus, Michael Regina (Adamsville, The Sleepover) inspired me to take a little more time for the art, and Jon Baker (Alarmingly Bad) showed me the ropes on beginning to animate my comics.”

We wondered whether it’s hard to develop a unique style with so many other creators around. Brian replied: “As for developing a style, I think you just have to start drawing and you can figure out your style along the way. There are a bunch of my favorite comics that I made 5 or so years ago that don’t look like 'my style' anymore because it’s just evolved over time. I found different pieces that I liked almost on accident and just started doing it differently and adapted moving forward because I liked how it looked. Sometimes you just have to start and allow yourself to evolve over time.”

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When asked about future plans, the artist told us: “I’ve really been enjoying doing slightly animated comics for TikTok and YouTube. The more I get into doing those, the more I think about how a comic will look animated and it’s influenced the way I draw the comics. I hope to keep practicing with this style of animating and voice acting and have a great time with it. One day it’d be great to put another book together, but at the moment, I’m having fun simply making people laugh with comics and animations.”

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#14

This Artist Uses His Family As Inspiration To Make Hilarious Comics

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Johnny
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2 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

I think the right answer to "If I don't do it on vacation, am I fired?" is "Looks like my vacation will be much longer than expected, send my final paycheck to my home address"

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#17

This Artist Uses His Family As Inspiration To Make Hilarious Comics

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Supa79 (He/him)
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2 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

*cough cough* the guy in the blue shirt is a trump supporter and an anti-masker and an anti-vaxxer and is homphobic and racist *cough, cough cough cough*

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This Artist Uses His Family As Inspiration To Make Hilarious Comics

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#28

This Artist Uses His Family As Inspiration To Make Hilarious Comics

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You cant stop the truth
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2 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

TV series = way too much time commitment. Movies have a beginning and end. Sure there's almost zero character development so you don't really care about the characters, but at least that's also less emotionally taxing. Movies FTW. TV = time sink.

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This Artist Uses His Family As Inspiration To Make Hilarious Comics

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Ms. Who
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2 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

yea but when i do it everyone turns into just enough money for another year of nexflix

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#31

This Artist Uses His Family As Inspiration To Make Hilarious Comics

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J. F.
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2 years ago (edited) DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Always depends on how it's delivered. Bad example is Hollywood with their "Show men their place", "Blame white people for their privilege" and "call everybody a bigoted Nazi that needs to be teached" attitude. Making people think about issues is the key, preaching lectures to make them see their wrong ways never had any success. (Generally spoken, not directly aimed at the artist's work)

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