Colors Gallery, meet eeMcCutcheon
@eeMcCutcheon is known for creating comics with an incredibly distinct style reminiscent of 2D and 3D vidoe games. They have created multiple comics here in the Colors Gallery that are all well worth a read! Before you read their awesome comics you should start by reading their interivew first!
Who is eeMcCutcheon? What would you like the Colors Gallery to know about you?
"My name is Eric Edward McCutcheon! I work as a parks maintenance worker by day and make art to tell my stories in my free time."
Your style is so distinct! It kind of reminds me of 2D point & click adventure games I've played in the past and old webcomics. What are your inspirations?
"Videogames are definitely a very big inspiration! Suda51 games like No More Heroes and Killer 7 are what inspired the hard, almost polygonal shadow look that I like to use, as well as the sometimes surreal-looking gradient backgrounds. Also, games with street punk aesthetics like Tetsuya Nomura’s The World Ends With You or Sega’s Jet Set Radio are a big inspiration for some of my character designs. And I really like exploring metaphoric visuals like in a David Lynch movie where what is being shown to the audience has meaning beyond the literal."
KILLER 7 by eeMcCutcheon
The Amazing Alligator of Country A is a pretty charming comic we see that you post on our discord often! What's the story about and inspired you to make it? Why an alligator? What other comics that you've made should people know about ? Where can they find them?
"It all started with the first image. I was going through a rough spot emotionally at the time, and drew a scientist cradling a little alligator like a mother holding a baby. And as I looked at it, the characters of both Theodore, the alligator, and Tinsley, the scientist, formed in my head. I drew one more illustration continuing their development… and another… and before I knew it, all of the characters were living their lives!""
"Theodore, to me, represents anyone who has been discriminated against. In your life, you may be treated differently for circumstances beyond your sphere of influence. I’ve experienced some things myself in my life, and I’ve seen how other people have handled similar situations differently. Sometimes negatively, sometimes positively… I want to show Theodore becoming happy and loving even the people who treat him badly just because they’re afraid of him or don’t know any better, and I want to show how Theodore becomes happy through this."
"He’s an alligator because, as an anthropomorphic animal, he is visually distinct from the human characters, which creates a divide in how the audience sees him without needing to explicitly say anything. Originally I accidentally drew him with crocodilian features, and as I learned the differences between alligators and crocodiles, I slowly changed the color of Theodore’s scales to be darker like an alligator’s."
"The difference?"
“One you meet in a while, and one you see later!” Hahaha! (Jokes aside, crocodiles are known to be territorial and violent compared to their alligatorid cousins, which are more docile and get more abused by nuisance humans. Of course, don’t go messing around with wild alligators! Please do the responsible thing and calmly call animal control if you ever see an exotic wild animal in a residential area so it doesn’t get hurt.)
"Originally, Amazing Alligator wasn’t going to have any dialogue at all, but as the story went on and Theodore became older, there were some plotlines that I wanted to get across that couldn’t have been communicated without dialogue or text! I ended up contextualizing this change as Theodore becoming more vocal and mature as he gets older, so the audience receives more dialogue because that’s what Theodore is getting as well."
The Amazing Alligator of Country A.
You crank out a lot of cool characters & comics!! What's your typical design process? What's your mindset as you go?
"Aww, thanks! I usually sketch out pages of my comic and character poses to make sure they fit the canvas before doing anything else. That can be the hardest and most time consuming part of making a comic."
"Like with environmental storytelling, I try to design characters with visible souvenirs or scars which communicate aspects of their individual backstory or personality."
"I have a tutorial about how I produce my backgrounds on Newgrounds, as well as a workshop about the process of character design, for anyone interested!"
https://www.newgrounds.com/art/view/eemccutcheon/tutorial-backgrounds
https://www.newgrounds.com/art/view/eemccutcheon/workshop-character-design
What programs/mediums do you use in your art making ? What role does Colors Live play in that process?
"For tough character poses or dynamic angles, I’ll sometimes pose character models in Garry’s Mod, a physics playground game available on Steam. Then, I’ll grab a screenshot and import it into GIMP and draw a skeleton based around that. The skeleton will be resized to fit the canvas better, and then I’ll draw over the skeleton in a proper contour line layer.
Below the contour line layer is another layer for the shadows and a layer for the colors. Sometimes, I’ll include a transparent gradient layer over both of these to give layers below it a tint to match the temperature of the background."
https://www.newgrounds.com/art/view/eemccutcheon/civilians-exercise-4
"Since migrating to PC to draw, I basically only use Colors 3d to sketch when I have ideas late at night, using the 3ds’s convenient bright screens without needing paper or another source of light. However, as a result of me only being half asleep when using it, most of what I’ve drawn on Colors 3d these past few years isn’t fit to be published."
You post your art fight artworks in discord often too! What is artfight for those who don't know about it and may be curious? What should they know if interested in participating?
"Art fight is an art trading game where artists pick a team and draw fanart for artists’ characters on the other team to earn points every July! Last year I pulled off one attack every day, and that’s the pace I’m keeping for this year as well. It's a lot of fun to see how other people interpret my character designs as well!"
Artfight is July only, but if you miss it, you can make an account, prepare characters for next July, and browse art any time of year at https://artfight.net/!
What art & comics are you most proud of ?
“Always the next one,” Hahaha!
"Jokes aside, I’ve been especially proud of a lot of the character design exercises I’ve been doing recently, the character concept of Stripes in particular is one I’m very excited to explore more in the future. Theodore’s story is the one I’ve got the most time and effort invested into at this time, and there are still more story arcs planned out for him. However, in time, the characters from the character design exercises will be taking center stage."
https://www.newgrounds.com/playlists/view/d9969f3961d8300a2c2dc7da84ca0506
Who are your favorite artists both on and off Colors? How do they inspire you?
"There was a French painter by the name of Séraphine Louis, a woman in the early 20th century who led a rough life and produced intense paintings of flowers by candlelight when she wasn’t working her many day jobs. Her work was largely unknown until art collector Wilhelm Uhde showed off some of her paintings. (She was working as a housecleaner for him at the time.)"
"The story goes that one day, he had some neighbors over who thought the paintings were fascinating, and wanted to know who the artist was. “You mean you don’t know? These were made by Séraphine de Senlis! She’s really good, I’m surprised you haven’t heard of her.” (paraphrased.) And this sort of gaslighting helped propel her into financial success."
"Tragically, Udhe wasn’t able to financially support her during the Great Depression, and she would be committed to an asylum in Clemont, and die there alone with no artistic outlet and no friends."
"It’s really morbid what happened to her in the end, but that story about the way Wilhelm Udhe basically gaslit his friends into thinking Seraphine was some well known artist fascinates me. The study of how information spreads in an ecosystem is known as memetics, and I love it."
"Satoshi Kon was a Japanese film director who made well known animated works such as Paprika, Paranoia Agent, Perfect Blue, and Tokyo Godfathers. He had an almost magical control of the camera in his films; whenever he cut to another scene, he would maintain the camera’s motion or the follow through of whatever was in center frame. It's difficult to describe, but the thoughtfulness that went into his films is something I try to emulate in my comics and art."
"Lastly, I live a few blocks away from a railroad crossing, and I frequently get to see hundreds of thousands of boxcars with beautiful murals and calligraphy drawn on them. Of course, I strongly suggest that everyone reading this stick to making art on paper and digital canvas instead of vandalizing railroad company property, but when you see something on a passing train, take a moment to appreciate it, because it might be a genuinely well-crafted composition, and you’ll probably never ever see it again once it passes across the road."
Are you able to name 3 of your top 3 Colors artworks?
My top pieces… I didn’t end up following through with it, but the HOME RUN comic logo was a lot of fun to make, and I feel it still holds up to my current standards of graphic design!
The dream sequences in Wanderjahria aren’t very good compositionally, but they were a fun way for me to explore the characters’ personalities without needing particularly polished artwork. Of these, I’d say Mondo’s dream about someone who falls in love with a vase is my favorite. It's an on-the-nose criticism about how some people seem to fall in love with products and things, illustrated here literally.
And the Alien Sighting pic was a lot of fun as well! There’s something magical about depicting someone weird looking or supernatural doing normal and mundane things like going to the supermarket.
Advice for people who may be interested in making comics or any art advice in general?
"Utilize the artistic medium to its fullest potential! The marriage of text and visuals allows a comic to communicate things like smells, the passage of time, atmosphere, and other sensations not as easily or explicitly communicated in a movie or book. But if you’re breaking your back to produce visuals to accompany text, or produce text to describe confusing visuals, then your story might be better off being told through another medium."
"Use the art to communicate things that can’t be easily described or broken down into text, and use text to communicate things which can’t be conveyed through just the visuals."
https://www.newgrounds.com/art/view/eemccutcheon/the-amazing-alligator-of-country-a-025
You once mentioned AI art which is a very taboo subject among artists. What are your thoughts on it?
"Yes!"
"To quote Psychonauts creator Tim Schafer, “[I’ve] never read anything that was meaningful or important or worthwhile from AI. Again, super impressive, but also completely like: who cares?”
"We may have programs that can imitate techniques and produce images that resemble other images and styles. The thing is, we don’t have AI that “thinks” about what it’s doing. (We shouldn’t even be calling it Artificial Intelligence because the technology doesn’t have any actual intelligence.) Human art will always be distinct from generated images because human art can have Weight to it. It's hard to put into words, but all of the information, the emotions, the thoughts that a piece of art conveys through visuals alone are what I like to call “Weight.”
"A good piece of art is like a Rube Goldberg motion machine; dominoes that fall into other dominoes, pulleys that shoot marbles down little rails, guided by gravity… in art, the audience’s eyes and thoughts should be guided along a certain logic. This logic is something artists usually construct subconsciously, while generated images can’t produce images with any Weight."
"So-called AI technology is just another Silicon Valley fad. And when this current AI bubble pops, a lot of investors are going to be very upset, because they’ve wasted a lot of money on this current fad, and a lot of engineers are going to be out of work, so everyone who stands to profit from exploiting this trend wants everyone else to believe their new current technology has applications beyond what’s already been explored, and that you should give them lots of money to make it happen. None of those engineers or investors will ever be able to make a computer generate art that has more Weight than what you can produce. So please, don’t even waste energy worrying about cheap imitation when your art is infinitely more substantial!"
What are your goals in the future? I remember once on discord you said you were looking for voice actors for a big project? Anything you want to share?
"I’m always looking for help with audio since I can only produce pictures by myself! My current project is a Doom mod tie-in called Crossfire to wrap up one of the last arcs of Amazing Alligator, and I’m using Newgrounds to find voice actors and actresses. I already commissioned someone to produce the soundtrack, which is a big part of any game experience, and am eagerly awaiting what they come up with."
"My dream would be to be able to produce the perfect video game; a stylish action game with a mission based gameplay structure, opt-in cutscenes, “chao-garden” type item collection which ties into a character customization system and incentivizes gameplay, and to be able to introduce surreal, abstract concepts to the player in an unobtrusive and interactive way. But for right now, I’m prioritizing my comic."
Since you pump out content so frequently I'm guessing you're all but immune to art block? If not, how do you recommend combating it?
"I’ve found that the best cure for art block is time. If you force yourself to make art while in a block, it usually ends up not looking too great because you’re not doing what you’d like to. Relax! Watch a movie, play a video game, read a book, take a shower, take a nap, hang out with friends, just take care of yourself physically and emotionally! Give yourself the time you need to become inspired again, and then produce art when you’re good and ready."
Anyone you want to shout-out?
"I met my best friend @Esai2005 on Colors, and he’s since helped me to recover from one of my darkest periods a few years ago, so please check out his work and show him some love!"
Zombified by Esai2005
"Also, the feedback I’ve gotten from my friends in the Art Commissions discord has been absolutely instrumental in maintaining the quality of my comic."
That wraps up our interview with @eeMcCutcheon ! We at The Colors Team would like to thank you for talking the time to talk with us and also showing everyone your awesome comics and characters in the Colors Live discord! Anyone who wants to join the conversation please do so at colorslive.com/discord !
If you want to check out even more of their works visit their newgrounds page where they upload often!
https://eemccutcheon.newgrounds.com/
Check out the interview with our previous artist of the week @The_Adjudicator here
http://colorslive.com/page/Meet-The_Adjudicator
For those who may need a reminder
The Artist of the week will be posted every Friday so be sure to tune in! Prior to that, the artist may be contacted via email or other means at least a week or more in advance so be sure to check your emails( and spam) so you don't miss out on a chance to be featured. If you don't reply within 48 hours another artist may be chosen to be featured for that week instead and you will be in a future artist of the week update.
The announcement of who is the upcoming featured artist will be announced at least 2-3 days in advance or eariler so look out for that too! If you would like for any of your questions or comments to be featured in an upcoming interview please check out colorslive.com/discord and visit the official artist of the week channel to submit questions/commentary for a chance for those to be answered before Friday.
Suggest a new artist for artist of the week on the forum post on my gallery or by posting with the #heyzyik tag.
eeMcCutcheon makes some very interesting characters! Another interesting character is the "Gas station Unicorn"! Join #wc514 and show us how an interaction with this unsual character would go! The deadline is Sunday August 6th, 2023!
Stay creative!
Zyik & The Colors Team
