I explain my decision to draw a comic about Peak Oil. I describe my aim to make my comic ‘the ultimate Peak Oil primer’ for uninformed readers.
Read the rest of this entry »I explain my decision to draw a comic about Peak Oil. I describe my aim to make my comic ‘the ultimate Peak Oil primer’ for uninformed readers.
Read the rest of this entry »The making-of “Jimi Hendrix vs your climate-denying uncle”. I describe my conversation with a red-faced climate denier that inspired me to draw the comic.
Read the rest of this entry »I reflect upon the storytelling approach used in my Rat Park comic. Cartoonists like me are creating little ‘landing pads’ for readers to understand unfamiliar issues. We create accessible ways for readers to absorb new information.
Read the rest of this entry »This is a lengthy blog post about the behind-the-scene ‘making of’ Rat Park. Includes historical photographs of the actual Rat Park experiment from the 1970s, and interesting tidbits which I couldn’t quite fit into my comic.
Read the rest of this entry »This is a reflective essay about my comic Thin Air, about the counter-intuitive fact that trees build themselves from carbon, hydrogen, oxygen and nitrogen. They are built from exactly the same stuff that breezes past their trunks! This essay describes my research process, including my view that van Helmont was actually a bad scientist.
Read the rest of this entry »This is a reflective essay about my comic Type III. I describe the underlying concept of ecological succession, and reveal how I decided that Mount St. Helens should form the backdrop to my comic. I also mention real-life examples of Type III systems, such as the Kalundborg Eco-Industrial Park.
Read the rest of this entry »This is a reflective essay about my comic Supernormal Stimuli. The comic is about the work of ethologist Niko Tinbergen, and was inspired by reading a book by psychologist Deirdre Barrett. I discuss where my dinosaur ‘reptile brain’ artwork concept came from.
Read the rest of this entry »This is a reflective essay about my comic Purpose. The comic was hugely influenced by the book Ishmael by Daniel Quinn. This essay shares the headspace I was in when writing Purpose.
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