Clarice Tudor

0:04Right thank you very much for bearing with me it's time now to meet our first speaker now if you're ever in need of a good laugh and let's face it we've all been there this year then illustrator clarisse tudor will sort you out based in liverpool clarus creates work that is bursting with originality and hilarious characters who come in the form of friendly planets sassy dogs with an attitude and high-heeled boots there's even a self-doubting star she joins us today today to discuss humor and how she imbues her artworks with her own brand of fun and claris you can turn on your audio and video now.

0:34So we can say hello hello how's it going hi good thank you how are you I'm very well thanks yeah very excited to see this I love your background as well there's like the brightest background we've probably had all year to be honest got some stranger things vibes going on in here yeah definitely yeah really good color scheme I love it. And this I'm going to let you get on with your your presentation so over to you to share your screen and just a reminder to everyone else if you do have any questions for claris please drop them in the chat and we'll do our best to get around to them afterwards but yeah over to you.

1:06And I'll guess I'll be back in 10 minutes or so nice one here we are thank you matt and thank you too it's nice that for asking me to be here and talk about my work today right hello everybody I am karis tudor I'm a british illustrator comic artist and cartoonist you may remember me from such comics as sad dog gets rejected and sad dog gets rejected you know let's not forget sad dog gets rejected again christmas edition keep it festive but hey you know don't turn off just yet I'm not a one-trick pony I'm in fact a two-trick pony and my other gag is cool dog saves the day and hey you know let's not forget cooldog saves the day again right now you've been thoroughly introduced to my comics I've been asked to share with you an insight into the sense of humor that goes into my work right I hate to break it to you but you've all been completely hoodwinked I don't even make jokes I just I'm just completely honest I'm saying exactly how I feel and what I mean and I'm trying to pass it off as a joke just like I've been doing for the whole of this presentation. And intend to continue to do so right. So you know that phrase many a true word has been spoken that sums up me and my work.

2:36So well because honesty and self-expression are completely integral to my work what I'm showing you today is mostly my own personal practice with a few commissioned projects thrown in here and there like this one that I did for it's nice that's indoors not too long ago that was really fun and as you can tell from this my comics are largely autobiographical quite often confessional I'm not gonna lie they're you know they're occasionally a bit cynical although I'm trying to be less cynical lately you know it's not going well at all but speaking of being confessional right how to roast boys who hurt you and call it arms I have a really hot tip for you if you draw your enemies as an evil flower the sun or an evil dog no one will ever know you're talking about them normal no it's just a diss track right you know well they will now I guess the cat's out the bag hey but here's what I think I think humor can be used to make heavy topics more comfortable and I find somehow it makes the audience more willing to listen in my work I use a lot of self-deprecating humor and sometimes people are like why can't you just be serious and vulnerable for a second sorry about it but you know it's I always think that humor is not a deflection like it's not it's not a defense mechanism well maybe it is but here's the key thing any tool that helps us express ourselves should be cherished in my opinion I think it's a complete lifesaver that people who would usually struggle to be vulnerable me can just crack a joke about it instead of bottling it up and dying never underestimate the cathartic power of a depressing joke but as you can see from this one it's not all depressing jokes I love a wholesome meme nearly as much as I love a pun you just cannot be a good person in my opinion right someone has to give you the lowdown on the humor in my work right here's the big secret I simply make hand-drawn memes for a living and that's all. There is to it the other day someone said to me oh your personality is 90 internet culture and I was like yeah it's so true I felt so owned because it is just so true I love the internet it's humor it's language it's universality so I feel like that's only appropriate for it to be reflected in my work and the weird thing is quite often like a decent knowledge of memes is essential to understand what I'm getting at in my work which is just honestly probably the funniest sentence I've ever said so a great example of that is this recent collaboration I did with hello kitty sanrio and although this design makes perfect sense at face value you don't really need to know anything else but it.

5:49Actually contains several internet references which I shall now analyze for you sanrio and hello kitty memes oh they're really just having their moment at the minute they are just so big my instagram explore page is just sanrio memes I've included some fantastic examples for you like these particularly these two characters in the middle which are my melody and kuromi and they have been totally reclaimed by the lesbian and bisexual community who make memes about them being girlfriends in the actual cartoons they're supposed to be frenemies and there is a weird like internet argument discourse about this the the die-hard samurai fans are like they're just friends which reminded me of another meme which I included in this design which is you know gal pals which kind of it draws on the way that historians in media outlets often dismiss really obvious queer relationships as close friendships and just being gal pals here's another example so yeah those are the things that fed into this design and I hope that maybe it makes more sense now or or maybe I'm just mansplaining memes to really smart people and but yeah as well as internet references appearing in my work the visual language that I use like the layout of computers features really heavily not that I'm critiquing technology or internet as such but more as just a vessel to express ideas or to communicate how flawed a character is like with this one here. And I'm in this right I'm in this facebook group called what if phones but too much where it's just reposts of boomer memes and boomer comics about how social media has ruined this generation and you know what I would just like to think that I'm the antithesis of those because I really wish people would stop blaming the internet for holding up a mirror to us it's quite easy to lay the blame there because that's where everything is collected and exhibited but I often feel like the internet just amplifies what was already wrong with us and one of the things that feeds into that is people feel so like anonymous on the online where whereas it's actually probably where we're the least anonymous if bill gates wanted to know everything about you mate he already knows he doesn't need to create a whole global pandemic and a vaccine just to know what you're up to mate he already knows do not get it twisted in my opinion all the internet does is organize and exchange information on a scale like we've never seen before and the actual information is largely our responsibility and it's a reflection of ours and a reflection of the people who are online it's just the biggest communal project and resource go in if that makes sense I think if you're online you're responsible for your digital backyard and I also feel like that anonymity has people acting some kind of way like take trolling for example it's as if every mean comment you've ever made sitting on the couch with your mom watching gogglebox like oh gary barlow looks the right state pay your taxes it's like all those comments all those savage burns have been gathered up and exhibited in one place and it's called twitter right I will very reluctantly admit that. There are some things wrong with the internet that are completely out of our control like the privacy issues the censorship mark zuckerberg public enemy number one making artists pander to the algorithm just to survive at this point but that's because you know the internet a fake world where anything is possible power hungry billionaires are still the problem I said what I said right.

10:01But I'll ignore those points because they just don't fit into my main point really I'm still adamant that the internet is more a force for good than it is a force for evil like look at the great strides it's made for social justice for example and in an art context like breaking down the barriers to getting your work seen is just so incredible I mean I would say that.

10:25But it's taken so much of the emphasis away from like daddy's checkbook and his friends in high places and I am so thankful for that honestly yeah growing up on the internet though I think especially when the internet was just finding its feet it's really fed into this obsession that I have I'm so nostalgic for like windows xp and neopets and microsoft pain in my this on screen right.

10:51Now is a project that I did with tumblr which was super fun and I think this msn messenger kind of sparkly cursor aesthetic really appeals to like gen z and millennials who are also super nostalgic for this kind of thing I think you know.

11:07That's the same with most of my work they already posted gen z and millennials definitely because of the internet language and humor that I use sometimes when family members read my work I'll be worried that it won't translate that well across generations like sometimes I'll show my mum my work and she'll be like what's this savage flex wig and who is stan we're working on it we're working on it like now when I've been on a date she asks me hey clarisse what's the tea love that love that for her I swear I'm not a boomer phone this age-appropriate thing goes both ways so like I think my work obviously looks very appropriate for children and sometimes it is sometimes it really is sometimes it's really not like one time this kid came up to me at an art fair she was like six years old and she's like dad can I have the cute dog and the dad was literally like no I cannot imagine why he said no really it's just a complete mystery to me honestly yeah I thought about keeping it professional in case I ever wanted to make a children's book but you know.

12:21I just what's important to me is wanting to put as few constraints on my self-expression as possible like when I was in uni I interviewed ben montero who's like my favorite artist favorite comic artist and he said something that really resonated with me he said work as much as you can until the hand and the heart start to connect always keep that in mind when I'm making these comics and he's the reason I started making comics in the first place like yeah I suppose my advice to people who asked me how I got here and how I create these comics is just say what you gotta say and hope to god someone gets you and yeah that just about concludes what I have to say here so thanks for coming to my ted talk thanks karis that was amazing you can you can now yeah stop sharing but thank you so much for that that was absolutely brilliant and great great more memes I think than we've ever seen in a nice tuesday talk and a lovely impression of your mum as [Laughter]

13:19a well of questions for you I guess off the back of that I mean you obviously have a very recognizable style and I'm sure people yeah who've seen your work before know unmistakably when when they're seeing a piece of your work did that come I mean I guess like when did you develop that when did that start clicking was it always has it always been like that or has it taken time to develop yeah it's taken ages to develop I suppose when I was at uni for the first two years of my degree I was just making pure nonsense in the third year I started making comics but they were like really sad depressed comics with no words and now I only make comics with words like that's the starting point for all my work now.

13:56So I guess that's changed so much only within like the last year or two have I really started making these like colorful funny dog related things yeah okay great yeah yeah and I guess I mean one of the things that really interests me just even seeing the work you put up in that in that presentation I guess like there's such an important part played by narrative within your your humor I guess you know sometimes it's a four-panel comic sometimes it's three panels does it like change I guess how you you know some of them are just one the gag is in one image but sometimes you're building up to something that then there's a kind of payoff in that fourth panel does it I guess when do those ideas come to you and how do you kind of get them down on paper is it like do you sometimes think okay this needs to be just a one-page one-image thing or I guess I'm curious about that yeah. So essentially I have a list that is ridiculously long of just pure nonsense that I've thought of in the day or when I was daydreaming or when something stupid happens and I write it down. And I would genuinely be so embarrassed if anyone ever saw it they would think I've completely lost it.

14:59And that's really where I start with each thing like I'll pick a little thing that I've written down in a daydream or whatever. And I'll take it. And I'll kind of plot it in my mind how many panels would this work best in like what's the best for the kind of comedy timing like where is the payoff where's the gag what works best yeah but sometimes sometimes I leave like I'll make like a really sad comic or a really sad few comics I know there's going to be a payoff and a happy ending at some point but people start getting so mad they're like I swear to god if you hurt this dog one more time it's like it's not a real dog it's not real this isn't animal abuse yeah interesting very very interesting and I guess finally I mean I've been asking everyone all year you know yeah what are you kind of how are you dealing with everything. That's been going on this year I guess you know.

15:46Now that we're kind of coming to the end of 2020 what are you looking forward to doing next year that you probably haven't been able to do as much of this year is there any one thing that you're like okay when yeah when the vaccine's out there when we're kind of out of this.

15:57This is the one thing I want to be doing yeah definitely so anyone who knows me will know this that I have just been so sad that there's been no art fairs in art markets I was supposed to be at like thought bubble comic-con this year in november but obviously it's all been cancelled and I've just moved to a new city a couple months ago.

16:14And I literally have no friends because the place I make friends is it art markets like that is just the best place that I cannot wait like an art fair print fair anything I'm so excited invite me to the mall please I'm sure you'll be taking up on that listen thanks so much charis we're gonna have to leave it there but thank you for your amazing talk and yeah hopefully see you soon yeah hopefully thanks so much cheers you