The Artist Himself

My name is J. R. Cook and I'm a college student attending Northwest Missouri State University in Maryville, MO. I'm almost 22 years old (April 28th!) My interest in Cartooning started at a VERY early age when I grew quite fond on Garfield. I used to watch cartoons on T. V. and absolutely loved all the Garfield specials and Garfield Books (Garfield even helped me learn to read!). I remember spending days on end trying to draw Garfield every which way without actually tracing and I believe that's how I got my form of drawing from.

Most of my life my dream was to become a great cartoonist such as Jim Davis. I even remember in early high school that I wanted to try and be a Disney animator for one of those great animated Disney movies! But then I discovered the Internet and high school and found a new love in computers. All my life I had always loved Video Games. I started at a very small age with an Atari, and then at the age of 8 I got my first Nintendo along with Super Mario Bros. I played that game forever. I would then eventually move up to a Super NES, Sega Genesis, and now the Playstation and N64. But when I discovered the Internet it opened a whole new aspect of gaming... playing ONLINE against other people! This took me by storm, along with hours on end chatting online. And well, let's just say my interest in computers and the Internet grew so much, that instead of aspiring to be an art major I decided on Computer Science.

A Couple years later NWMSU adopted a program called Interactive Digital Media. The major was mostly about Web Design and Internet things. It put together 3 programs (Computer Science, Mass Communications, and Art). I decided to take up this new major and focus on Visual Imaging (which is more into Graphic Design) So that got me back to interested in Art.

As for Cartooning. My First "comic strip" was when I was very young... I'd say around 10. I started a comic strip called "Dog Town" and it had some Donkey's in it and some Dogs, one was named Schnaps...and well...I was a kid.

In high school I created a character named "Freak Boy" and I actually had about 3 notebooks full of this character doing various weird (and sometimes uncalled for) things. Needless to say it was dirty humor... but then again it was high school.

While surfing the net one day I came across Real Life Comics an online cartoon. I had never really realized that there were such things so I soon find out there were others. Finally, my dream to become a cartoonist had finally come through. I can now draw a strip, throw it up on the web, and have viewer feedback and be able to interact with them as well. I think web comics is one of the best things that have ever hit the Internet and I'm happy to be contributing to it!

All of the characters created for the Normal Guy were my own inspirations with some dealings in my own real life, and some from inspirations from my roommate. Me and my roommate have come up with the settings and stories using our own experiences and have thrown them into a comic. Everything is actually purely fictional, it's just a humorous representation of what we have seen or heard. And yes, I do consider Kellogg a CO-creator. He helped me come up with the ideas for The Normal Guy and continues to help me come up with ideas for future toons.