Teefury

Jeffro Kilpatrick interviews nakedderby!

As long as I have known you, you have never been ashamed to call yourself a cartoonist. Amazingly, your wife is hot (dispelling the myth that all cartoonists are lonely clowns). Explain to us a few ways that one can use cartoons to pick up chicks?

Being an artist or cartoonist has never seemed to be a burden when meeting members of the opposite sex. I've always held the opinion that it's something about you that's a little different that might help to grab someone's attention. Also, It's one of the few professions that you can actually say the phrase "Would you like to come back to my place and look at my etchings?" to a woman, and mean it... Now when they do get back to your place and they see your action figure collection? That's another story altogether... 

 

Even when working digitally, almost all of my work starts from a sketch. I need to get a handle on my idea on paper, before I can try to complete it as a pen and ink piece, painting, or digital illustration. Aside from that, I find that if I do a few projects as digital pieces, that I will soon get the urge to do something traditional, often switching back and forth over short periods of time. It helps to keep up your skills in different disciplines, so to speak. It really just depends on my mood and what I feel like working with...

 

Funny you should mention that, as I recently had the opportunity to meet one of my musical heroes as a result of a piece that I had done based on his music. A number of years ago, I created an illustration based on a lyric from a song by Elvis Costello. "Death Wears a Big Hat (Cuz He's a Big Bloke)" was based on the song "Tokyo Storm Warning", one of my favorite Elvis songs. I put the image on some t-shirts, gave a shirt to a friend, who then wore the shirt to work to be seen by another friend. This other friend (Let's call him Peter) then got the opportunity to meet Elvis a few weeks later, presenting him with some prints of the piece, and one of the t-shirts. About a year later, "Peter" called me up asking if I'd be interested in going up to NYC to visit the set of the Jimmy Fallon show and "hang out with Elvis". Uh, yeah, I think I'd be interested in doing that. So we got to meet Elvis for about an hour and a half, discussing everything from the economy, to the body's immune system, to artist's rights in the digital age. After that, we got to sit in the audience for a taping of Late Night with Jimmy Fallon, in which Elvis played a rousing version of "Black and White World" with the Roots. Musical history in the making...

Side note to that story: A framed copy of the very same artwork can now be seen almost weekly on the NBC television show "30 Rock" on the wall of Liz Lemon's office. 

Besides that, I've also been privileged to partake in a jar of home-made tomato sauce made with vegetables from the garden of Tom Waits...

My little guy definitely seems to be following in my footsteps. He thoroughly enjoys sitting down with me either at the kitchen table with paper and crayons, or in the driveway with handfuls of colored chalk. He's still in the scribbling phase, but he likes to call out requests for me to draw various super-heroes like Batman and Robin, or characters from kid's TV shows like the "Imagination Movers" or the "Wiggles".

 

Working with Jensen and Katie at Gallery 1988 has really helped to get my work exposed to a larger audience. The gallery's aesthetic is popular culture; film, TV & cartoons, comic books, toys and action figures, popular music, graffiti, video games, etc. They started the gallery to cater to people like us; Young folks who grew up and now have disposable income, retaining their passion for the things that they enjoyed in their youth. There seems to be a great cross-over audience between Gallery 1988 and Teefury.com...

Do you know how many highway reconstruction projects I could get done in one day with the use of a power ring? All of them! Folks could then get to work on time without having to wait in ridiculous traffic, and everyone would be happier, which would eventually lead to world peace. After that, I think I'd just fly around a bit, visiting the great drinking establishments of the world....

Hmmm. Tough one. I think this question would do a great disservice to the many, many influences that I have, whether they be artistic, musical, or vegetable...Everyone from Tom Waits to Jean Michel Basquiat to  comics artists like Evan Dorkin, John Byrne, Bruce Timm, R. Crumb and George Perez have influenced me in someway, eventually showing itself in my work. The strongest influence that I draw from to this day are the artist friends around me, most specifically the members of the Philadelphia Cartoonist Society. Guys like yourself (Jeffro) and Tom "Strongstuff" Whalen and Dave "Montygog" Perillo, have really had an effect on the quality of my work and my drive to be a better artist. The fact that I can interact with you guys every day, or simply pick up the phone to touch base and compare notes helps to keep me productive and inspired...