Mike - Duck'd - Pg 3 of 3

Dated 02/05/2010


Things are bad enough when you've been shrunk down and left in the big outdoors by one of your so-called 'friends' with a long, treacherous journey home. But shy scrawny Mike somehow lends himself to abuse by just about anybody. Now even the ducks are picking on him.


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Being into the wide variety of things that I am, my moods fluctuate wildly between a variety of different species, scenarios and fetishes. Bizarrely, for the past three years, I seem to have ended up drawing birds in April. In particular, April 2010 brought with it a very intense desire to draw birds with webbed feet - a desire which lasted for about 2 weeks and generated some impressive productivity by my usual standards.

One of the products was this three page comic involving a generic cartoon duck. I don't know about anybody else, but growing up, I always found something rather appealing about the way that the likes of Disney and Warner Bros drew feet on the likes of Daffy Duck, Donald Duck, the cast of DuckTales etc. - despite their crude form, their feet always looked so big and supple. This particular idea came to me having been reminiscing for rather too long about a scene from some similarly duck-infested cartoon that involved a rather fat giant duck stomping somebody into a sandy desert floor before the typical annoying 'strong micro lifts up giant's foot' shot. (Should it ring bells with anyone, please enlighten me as to where the hell I remember this from!!) Deciding that I wanted to explore my long-held desire for this brand of cartoony duck feet, I tried a few sketches of my own designs for such feet - as well as a typical cartoon duck face in my own style - which gradually evolved into 12 panels of stomplusty action. Given the simplicity of the design, it was actually incredibly good fun; not to overplay it but it was so much fun that it generated inside me an enthusiasm and enjoyment in creating my artwork that I have been lacking ever since about May 2009 when that giant art block first kicked in. In truth, it led me to rediscover my cartoony roots from a time before I obsessed about technical proficiency or anatomical accuracy, and as such, it was pretty liberating.

As well as going back to my cartoony style, I also decided to start playing with speech bubbles again. Corny and mildly distracting as they may be, the combination of words and pictures has always worked well for me when imagining any given scenario. As such, despite the apparent cartoonish harmlessness of his actions, the speech seeks to express a violent, intentional cruelty about the duck's behaviour. Quirky in its own way, but it pushes my buttons pretty well. And of course, it's always enjoyable when Mike is involved on the rough end of things...!


RRRex