Bored Panda wanted to explore the inspiration behind ‘Strraycat’ and how its creator first got into making comics. Caroline kindly shared her story with us: “Well, I started off always drawing about very serious topics. But then I came to a point in my life where I realised that when people describe me they always mention ‘funny’ or ‘weird.’ And I started noticing that people often laugh hard about my jokes and that they enjoy listening to me when I’m my weird self. So then I started to embrace the comical side of myself who likes to see the fun side of everything, not taking everything so seriously anymore. And short comics were an easy way to share it with people.”
The illustrator shared more about the recurring themes in her work, explaining that they often revolve around relatable, uncomfortable situations in daily life. She elaborated: “Feelings of awkwardness or frustration and stress. I like to draw an insecure character having unfortunate things happen to them.”
We were curious about how Caroline finds inspiration for her new strips. The creator of ‘Strraycat’ answered: “I come up with ideas for new strips by just looking around in daily life. It can be varying things. For example, when something awkward happens to me and I feel ashamed, I try to see it from a different perspective. One where I can laugh about how awkward I was acting. Also when I see people that are just horrible in a way of stupidity or rudeness I try to stop being upset and I just picture them in the form of a super dumb little character. And then it makes me laugh and wanna draw it.”
When asked about her personal favorite piece she has created so far, Rodriguez Velasco responded: “The favourite cartoon I ever created, I think, is this one. It’s not a comic but it does tell a story.” She continued: “I have a special love for Satan and the absurdly evil character that people created around him. And something absurdly evil would be to sell extremely expensive ice cream in h**l, where it’s boiling hot. So all his demons would have to pay up real quick.”
Lastly, we asked Caroline which fellow artists she admires and draws inspiration from. Here’s what she told us: “My favourite comic artist is maybe Nathan Pyle. I love how he looks at people's behaviours and tries to see them from an alien’s perspective, which makes everything we do seem really stupid and funny.”
