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False Knees 10 Year Anniversary
🕑 Added 2021-11-17 03:00:25 +0000 UTCAs of this month, I've been making comics for 10 years! To mark the occasion, I've gone digging back in the FK archives to share a small collection with you.
The one that started it all. It's got vomit and crude language–off to a great start! That hatching on the cat looks familiar though.
I painted my comics in colour right from the very beginning, but I only have black and white scans of the first ones because the newspaper didn't print their comics in colour when I first started. That changed pretty quickly, which I think had a great impact on the quality of my work.
It seems obvious that animals should be the main characters of False Knees now, but I really didn't want to do that in the beginning. I remember thinking that anthropomorphism was a gimmick used for selling children's stories, and might even have negative effects on the wellbeing of real wildlife. Though my opinions have shifted a bit, these ideas still inform the choices I make.
Haha, I still like this one. Who wouldn't want to dress up like a big cactus?
I was very interested in steering FK into dinosaurs. I loved dinosaurs as a kid and thought they would be so fun to draw. But I found them quite difficult to draw, and the only reference pictures for dinosaurs are other artists' renditions and I didn't really want to copy other artists. So many attention landed on the natural successor...
This isn't the first comic of mine with a bird, but it does feel a little prophetic for where FK ended up. At this time, I had just moved to live with my parents again after finishing university. I had no idea what I was going to do. I was basically living for the small (but very encouraging) feedback I was getting for my comics on Tumblr and Reddit.
I really like how my coat looks in this one.
This business game comic took me so long to make! I drew it traditionally like all my comics, but painted it digitally. With a mouse. I also probably learned most of what I know about photoshop while making this comic.
I like seeing instances of me experimenting with different media. It's a great reminder that 1) it's just fun to switch things up, and 2) you can achieve a great sense of 'strange' by using new tools.
This one is a great example of a kind of dull idea being painted really well inexplicably? I think my lettering has gotten better though!
There was a long stretch of FK where the speech bubbles are all painted bright, distinct colours. I was also playing around with simpler styles and nonsense ideas during this time.
I was over the coloured-speech-bubble, but had just started organizing the strips into squares (rather than long 1x4 rectangles) to suit the formats of the more popular social media. I had also just started doing brightly-coloured backgrounds, alternating in vibrance, to make them more inviting to look at.
Sometime between the pig comic and this crow one I quit my job(s) to do comics full time. I started to do some comics in this tall rectangle format for a local paper in the hopes that I would get noticed locally and potentially get a paying gig from it. That didn't happen, but I'm glad the comics from that time exist!
Crows doing crow things! I used to paint my crows so pale because I had drawn so many ///LINES/// that I didn't want covered up! This comic also starts the canon that in the False Knees universe, birds chew their food.
Backgrounds were starting to get a little bit more important for me. Artwork overall too, including the appearance of the birds. Have I not made a red-winged blackbird comic since this? I need to remedy that soon.
How did it get those seeds to stick out of its beak like that?
Hey, one of these times it's going to be right. The loud, monologising bird is now a staple in False Knees.
This one was a direct homage to my arborist days where I would regularly find myself facing an incredibly scary tree to climb and cut.
Another pencil crayon one that I like. I should probably do that more often!
One of the first comics I made in lockdown. Can you tell I was trying to distract myself with that third frame?
I had so much fun painting this one. It was super satisfying painting that mud.
I read Uzumaki a little while after drawing this one, making the third frame my favourite accidental allusion.
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Thanks for reading everyone! And thank you for following along with me after all these years. I'm so excited to think about what will become of False Knees over the next ten.
- Joshua
Comments
Sandy Kavanaugh, of Hens' Haven.
The dinos were cool, but needed feathering. I adore your birds. So real; almost like the real ones!
Dewin Laborie
Aaawww that's a great trip down memory lane. Loved it! Et c'est parti pour 10 ans de plus ! ;)
Lori Stokes
Congratulations! Keep on drawing
JJ Harris
Here’s to 10 more years. ..And he’s also clever and hilarious.
Kaja
amazing to be part of this journey - thank you for sharing and thank you for... all those small moments of joy!
Destynnie K. Berard
Thank you for the update! I really enjoyed reading it and seeing the insight into your world. Your comics are by far my favorites and I'm looking forward to more in the future! Even if I'm not commenting in Patreon (it's not great on mobile web) I read every single update in my email and it's a real highlight of my day
Mako Ferreira
What an amazing journey it has been to follow your work since tumblr! Thank you for sharing your comics and your humor with us. I’ve always found them brilliant! Looking forward to the whatever is next :D
D.S. Randol
You're incredible, man! I'm happy to be here for it!
Bicycle Safari
This is a great anthology/history tour, a lot of fun to read. Thanks for walking us through it. What a ride!
Erin Schulthies
I feel so privileged to read this and watch FK progress. If I had to guess of the top of my head, I think I’ve been following you steadily for about 6 years. This really makes me inspired to try my hand at comics or at least try my beak at being a bird.
Zach Mitro
Happy 10 years! Looking forward to all the bird (and other) shenanigans to come :)
Jessica Stalvey
I laughed at that first one until it hurt. I can definitely see my cat thinking the same thing.
GerritTD
Oh wow, congrats on 10 years and thank you for all you've done! I think I found your comics around 2016, it's been great following you since then :)
Jack Terranova
What a wonderful trek through time. It also reminds me how long I've been blessed to see your comics. Your work feels so ubiquitous that it is timeless. Happy 10 years and thanks for all you create!
Skebras
Amazing! Congrats on the anniversary! Your comics bring so much happiness into our lives! Me and my friends always share the newest ones with each other! Thank you for all you do 🐔❤️
Adrian Bartoli
What a transformation!
