Ryan Hudson, from Salt Lake City, UT, is the creative genius behind the webcomic Channelate, an eclectic mix of the absurd, dark and always hilarious adult comics.
Ryan's comics, which began a decade ago as short 3 or 4-panel drawings filled with dark sense of humor, has lately expanded to include live-action cartoons on Youtube, as the cartoon artist to dedicate more and more time to his passion. But how did it all begin? “When my family first got the internet in like 1998 - 99 I found this flash cartoon site called JoeCartoon.com,” Ryan told Bored Panda. “I knew from when I saw that, that I wanted to make web cartoons, but I literally had no idea how I would go about that. When I first started to post dark humor comics, my webcomic inspirations were The Perry Bible Fellowship, Thingpart, and Cyanide and Happiness.”
While his drawing style is clean and straightforward, his sense of humor is anything but. I think it's fair to say that Channelate will appeal to the dark, cynical side of your soul, giving you those explosive kinds of snort-laughs that you just can't control, a kind of laughter against your will. And as we all know, these are the best laughs! Kind of reminds you, South Park, a bit, doesn't it? “I was inspired South Park a ton,” Ryan said. “I look up to Trey Parker and Matt Stone a lot. I had been a huge Simpsons fan as a kid and when South Park first aired, it blew my mind. It was my kind of humor. Something I hadn't seen anywhere else.”
Going back to Ryan's comics for adults, he says that his process is super simple compared to some other cartoonists he's spoken to, but making Channelate animated has been a fun challenge. “I draw in Adobe Animate CC (Flash) on a Wacom Cintiq,” he explained. “I start with a sketch layer. The ink over top of that with a new layer then exports the image to color in Manga Studio 5. I used to do my comics entirely in Manga Studio, but I had to learn Flash for a job, and I am a very hands-on learner, so I decided just to start doing my comics with it. It forced me to learn it quickly.”
“I don't make my entire living from Channelate, but it has opened a lot of doors. In a lot of ways, the comic has been my demo reel and resume. I've worked on some amazing freelance projects that wouldn't have happened if not for my comic. But it was only a couple of years ago that I partnered up with Chase Suddarth to make Channelate animated. It was definitely challenging in some of the technical ways, but the writing and the art were very second nature since it was all the kind of thing I had been doing with the comic. I learned a LOT about making web animation by working for Cyanide and Happiness on the first few seasons of their animated show. After watching their videos for a decade, it was amazing to be able to be working under the hood. It was a lot of on-the-job training that I will be putting to use on my own work forever.”
Scroll down below to check out some of Ryan's work for yourself, and let us know what you think in the comments!
