My Life as a Cartoon Character is my webcomic, written, drawn, and produced by me, Victor Wiebe. It has its genesis in my job firmly based in IT – a very routine, boring, stale, 9-5 IT job for a large corporation with little sense of humour. One of the best things about working in IT is the people you get to work with are just ripe with humour, despite their not knowing it. From dry project managers to literally-worded managers, the corporate world is ripe for the plucking. Lucky for me, I see the humour they provide on a daily basis. Unluckily for me, they control my destiny while I exist in their domain on a daily basis. The irony really sucks.
While at work one day, bored, feeling myself wasting away for want of anything creative, I started jotting down ideas. Back in high school and university I used to write a lot – not so much anymore, but I used to. And I started to write, then realised I was looking for something much more immediate, something that could offer more instant gratification than writing a short story.
And I thought to myself, “Cartooning! I can cartoon!”
And then I reminded myself, “But I can’t draw worth shit!”
So I hurried to the bookstore and bought myself a couple books on how to cartoon. I realised afterward that I could have probably gotten the same information and tutorials online, but I like the books.
As I began jotting down ideas for comic strips I began to further realise a number of things:
- Not all my ideas are family friendly.
- Very few of my ideas are family friendly, in fact.
- Not all my ideas are work-related.
- In fact, a lot of them come to me at the most random times, like listening to a high school open house, or watching Star Trek.
So here I am, writing and drawing stories inspired by my life and my work and the things that I do. This comic strips purpose is to provide me with a creative outlet that I sorely lack elsewhere while simultaneously letting me learn a new art, namely that of cartooning. I’m not yet the cartoonist I want to be, but I do get better with each and every strip, and I do enjoy it.
My Life as a Cartoon Character is currently updated thrice weekly, every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.
