First, we asked the artist if he had any major influences in his life that might've helped him to develop and refine his style.
"I started reading Gary Larson’s books in 3rd grade and even wrote him a letter I was too anxious to send thanking him for all the laughs. When I started cartooning six-ish years ago, I bought and studied The Complete Far Side.
Some other influences are comics like Chappelle, Key & Peele, Broad City, Demetri Martin, Mitch Hedberg, and loads of contemporary cartoonists like Kanin, Paul Noth, Ellis Rosen, Kim Warp, Mr. Lovenstein, Dogmo. And all the great art directors featured in Archive over the years like Menno Kluin."
Art, in any kind of form, takes a lot of time not only to practice but also to produce, therefore we asked Andy how long it takes him to fully finish his comics.
"If my brain is on fire, I can concept and draw a comic in 45min-2hrs. Color takes longer. Complex or difficult drawings take longer, like a crowd of cows or big piles of food. Refining the joke halfway through a drawing takes longer. I still have to remind myself, get the joke right in the sketch, then draw."
Being an artist is not easy, one can easily encounter a lack of inspiration, burnout, etc, so we wanted to ask Babbitz about his ideas for the comics.
"Most of the time I concept four ideas in the first hour of the day and spend the rest of the day drawing them. I’ll think of what happened to me in the last day looking for truth nuggets—any social interactions, odd formalities, embarrassing moments. I write those in an ongoing ‘Ideas’ note as a single ‘explainer’ sentence like: 'I ain’t a cowboy, I’m a cowman” or “Subscription service to keep track of all your subscriptions'"
As we mentioned before, sometimes creative work can cause quite a burnout, therefore we asked the artist how he dealt with that as well.
"Yes. I’m burned out on comics right now, so I’m making what I call 'tab art' in Safari and a fun product. Like they say at the end of the Cirque du Soleil Extreme Abs video, 'If you wake in the morning and don’t feel motivated...don’t beat yourself up…do one thing that aligns with your goal…just keep going…there’s a certain satisfaction when doing a workout you didn’t feel like doing in the first place.'"
We also asked Andy about how people reacted to his work.
"A laughing emoji. Or for my tab art, they say 'sus' because they sometimes look like Among Us characters."
The creative process is not easy, but there are some enjoyable parts about it.
"Trying something new and people enjoy it. It’s always freaky and exhilarating trying something new, whether it’s a new visual style, joke structure, or subject matter. When you finish and people respond to it positively, I can breathe again."
We also asked about the inspiration behind the artist's Instagram account.
"It’s the best way I knew how to reach the most people and have a conversation with folks. Now there are lots of great places—I’m on TikTok too."
Digital art and art, in general, is not easy and requires a lot of patience, time, resources, and in most cases even money, therefore we wanted to know how the talented comic artist started his own career in digital art.
"I’m an advertising art director by trade. I do some graphic design as well. I appreciate the level of polish an idea gets in advertising. The team takes a seed of an idea and everyone is responsible for pushing it as far as they can. Sometimes to fail, sometimes to a whole other level. Teamwork’s cool."
