Talking about inspiration, I always find artists like Reza Farazmand (Poorly Drawn Lines) and Sarah Andersen (Sarah Andersen Comics) fascinating as they have developed this ability where they are able to translate even complicated ideas into very minimal comics. I see many wholesome memes and stories which just trigger the 'Happy Tears' emotion in me and that is where I want my comics to go someday. More than the drawing part, I have been focusing on precise storytelling in my comics for a few months now. I hope that this practice helps me make even better comics this year!

A lot of young artists ask me about how one can handle criticism. I believe that the comic is mine for the time I am creating it. Once it is uploaded on the internet, it belongs to the people. So one cannot avoid the opinions that people want to share. What I do is not instantly react to criticism. Instead, I try to understand what they are trying to say. And once that happens I can decide if I want to incorporate that as constructive feedback or ignore it. Because at the end of the day, it is not about how people react to it, but about the process of making the comic which brings me joy.

The best part about creating comics is that it helped me realize my ability to make people feel better by sharing the positive. People from around the world often write to me about how they were having the worst day but it changed once they came across my comic. This made me realize that basic feelings are common across countries and cultures. My goal is to create a wholesome community where people can come together when they feel the need and also spread positive wholesomeness with their family and friends.

I love watching animal documentaries. It was always fascinating to me how they would add some background music and narration and the whole thing would turn into a story. So I started building a similar story around animal pictures. Initially, I would look at animal pictures and just make a story around them, but over time the process has transformed.

Now I keep some basic topic in my head that I want to talk about, and then break it into a story and at last find a relevant picture. I browse Instagram and Pinterest to find such images. Sometimes the sweet people of That Doodle Guy community send me pictures and I use those.