Dieter shared with Bored Panda that he finds most of his inspiration for cartoons in real life: "For example, I see or read something about schoolkids riding in a bus and in my head, there is this voice that says: 'Hey, wouldn’t it be fun if, instead of just kids, there would also be an alien xenomorph in this school bus?' And then I try to develop this idea in a cartoon."
Dieter gave some more examples on how he comes up with ideas for his comics: "I see a picture of a fancy interior in a magazine and I start to think about who would live in a place like that. Then my mind starts to wonder and I imagine that the classy living room does not belong to a human being but to a flea: I see a flea standing in this posh interior and it is boasting to another flea: 'We also have a poodle in the Hamptons.' So I changed the setting from a house or an apartment to a dog."
"It is this replacement of humans by animals that can sometimes create a comic effect (because it creates an absurd situation). For instance, two sharks sitting at a table in a restaurant. Or you can mix human behavior with animal behavior: some female spiders eat the male spider after mating. This is something that happens in real life: it’s a rather tragic fact and not funny at all. But you can turn this fact into something funny by drawing a cozy living room and then putting a female spider in it (wearing human clothes). This spider is then seen using her dead husband as filling for her meat pastries and all the elements combined (the human setting, the animal wearing human clothes, the fact that it makes pastry) can create a comic effect."
Dieter revealed that he is motivated by a lot of artists. After being asked to name a few, the artist mentioned Gary Larson, Bill Watterson, Matt Groening, Robert Crumb, John Callahan, Ed Steed, Chas Addams and a lot more. "There are too many to mention, really."
Comics are an important part of Belgian culture. Dieter admitted that he read all the Belgian classics when growing up: "I read 'Jommeke' by Jef Nys and 'Suske en Wiske' by Willy Vandersteen. Also 'Lucky Luke' by Morris, of course." Later the artist turned to "Nero" by Marc Sleen and "Guust Flater" by Franquin. After that Dieter discovered the foreign comics of Comès, Muñoz/Sampayo, Altan, Charles Burns, Claire Bretecher, Jim Woodring and many more.
"My favorite comic when growing up used to be 'Guust Flater.' You probably know him by his French name, Gaston Lagaffe, but I grew up in the Dutch-speaking part of Belgium (Flanders). Why was this one my favorite? Because Gaston’s adventures were always hilarious and they were brilliantly drawn by Franquin. My favorite Gaston story is 'The Bravo Brothers' in which Gaston buys three chimpanzees from a circus and takes them to his work office."
We got curious about what part of the creative process Dieter enjoys the most. The artist admitted that he still likes to draw on paper, so drawing his first sketch is his favorite part: "Transferring an idea from my mind to paper. I really love that part. After this, the work is a bit less interesting because from then on it’s more 'manual labor,' so to speak: refining the sketch by adding details, changing the position of the characters, adding the background (if any), stuff like that. When the drawing is finished, I feed it to my scanner and then I digitally add color using Photoshop."
"About putting it in color: I think I’m really terrible at coloring my cartoons. Maybe I should just leave them in black and white. I'm not sure if my cartoons improve by coloring them. Also, I think my drawing style is still a bit too 'clean' and boring. Sometimes I try another style but I’m never satisfied with that either. Maybe my drawing style will still undergo some changes as I grow older (hopefully for the better), who knows..."
The artist started his Instagram page one year ago (in November, 2020) because he wanted to show his work to as many people as possible. Right now, he has almost 5,000 followers. "It's nice to see that one year later, a lot of people are following me."
