The Shark Podcast: Episode 3

 

Annoying people virtually is simply not the same.  As much we love our own space, this pandemic has shown us that we are indeed social beings and going without human interaction for long does crazy things to our minds. All the zoom and FaceTime calls cannot match up to ten minutes at a coffee shop in person. 

Remoras, Pilots and Copepods

It's good to be back. I've always enjoyed cartoons that help you put your tiny problems in perspective while also teaching you wonderful lessons about life and the world. For those of you don't know the companions to the sharks, we have:
Pilot Fish:
While these fish do prefer Oceanic whitetip sharks, I had to choose between a sucker fish on The Shark vs being followed by a striped fish and I think the latter appealed more. Here's a bit more information on pilot fish.
Remora:
These unique fish have a suction cup on top of their heads which helps them to attach themselves to sharks and other creatures. This way they can eat scraps around their host and clean their host's skin too.
 Which brings us to why the Greenland shark is annoyed. There's a tiny little parasite, a copepod (Ommatokoita elongata) that attaches itself to the EYE of these sharks!
So, when one considers all that they have to complain about for the day, do remember that at least you don't have a copepod hanging from your eye. If you do, I suggest you try and make friends since you're going to be together for a long time.

Sharknados and dreams!

I've never really swam with sharks or gone diving to see sharks and I made it my goal to do so before this year ended. I'd been dreaming of diving with Cristina Zenato for ages and I decided to plan such a trip this year. I started planning in April or May (and even got corrective eye surgery done to allow the right amount of resting time), found a travel buddy, accommodation, flights, solved the visa problem and planned other things to do in that part of the world. I did this drawing a week before I was scheduled to leave as a gift for Cristina. I got to the US and was preparing to head to Miami before flying to the Bahamas. And that's when Hurricane Matthew hit. The poor island was quite damaged and resorts were closed - I could have still braved it and gone on an adventure but by then I was quite disappointed (that's an understatement) at the failed plan. But that's just what it was - a plan thwarted by nature. It wasn't a broken dream because the dream is still very much alive and I hope I get to fulfil it soon.

Sunny friends!

It's been a while since I did a comic strip - and it's been a while since I featured La-la-la bear. It's my sister's birthday so I thought I'd draw something apt for her. I got this idea from a tweet by Lydia the shark (@RockStarLydia) where she posted my beach buds drawing and captioned it "Friends are the sunshine of life". I had to go and do this.

Hugging Day?

I was supposed to post this yesterday. That's how much I care about "hugging day". I can't believe they actually have a "hugging day".

Chennai will rise again!

Some of you may not have heard much about the Chennai (Madras) Floods. I was mercifully spared from the worst of it because I had to leave the city a couple of days before the rains started. I heard from friends that the water levels were rising. Something like this happened in 2005 and we didn't have power for 2 days. But it wasn't as bad as this one. People had water levels reaching up to the first floor of their houses. Many of them didn't have power, food, medicines, transport or drinking water. There was no way to get out of their houses and soon communication devices died. This would have been a hopeless and miserable situation. Then something amazing happened. Everyone reached out to each other. Homes were opened up. Food shared. Amazing people braved the flooded roads to get people out. Stories after stories poured in about how every available resource for used for the victims. The 'victims' became volunteers themselves. When disaster strikes, the beauty of humanity gets the chance to shine through. And the people of Chennai grabbed that chance with both hands. I'm so proud of them. Chennai will rise from the waters.
I hope the cause for such destruction will be discovered and if man-made, they will fix it. I also hope that once the city is restored, the people will continue to strengthen the bonds that were built and that they will make the city even better.

Shout out to "Sharktopia"!

I came across some amazing shark art the other day and sent an email to the artist saying how much I liked it. The website was "Sharktopia" with the tagline "Awareness through art" (which I love and agree with). Almost immediately I got the most enthusiastic and encouraging reply from the extremely talented Caitlin Cove saying that we shark artists need to unite and proposed we do a bit of a cross over awareness. This is me giving "Sharktopia" a shout out and here's to many more collaborations and hoping many more shark artists will join hands (pens/ pencils/ paintbrushes/ wacoms/ whatever) to create a greater awareness for sharks.  

You can also find Sharktopia on Facebook and Instagram.

Sharks in my living room

Remember my first "Sharks are friends, not food" drawing? I've wanted to do a coloured version of that one since I did the Central Perk one. So here it is.

Sharks are Friends Not Food #2

I wanted to update my previous "Sharks are friends not food" sketch and this time I thought I'd throw in a small tribute to one of my favourite TV shows.

Nightsharks #2

This was part of my original vision for my Nighthawks parody. I think it would be rather fun to have coffee with Shaaark!  by Phil Watson and Sherman from Sherman's Lagoon by Jim Toomey. I was worried that I wouldn't be able to draw their sharks but they look recognizable enough, don't they?

I'd like to have a fourth shark to take the place of the barista though.

Comic Con India - highlights

So, I had my first Comic Con experience at the Bangalore Comic Con. It was quite interesting. It was also really exhausting.
I had one of the smallest stalls there but had the most number of friends helping me which was such a blessing. We sold books, posters, art prints, mugs, t-shirts, badges and stickers. It struck me that the whole event was more commercial than comic art related. I expected to see more individual artists being showcased but there was only a handful of those and more of the bigger/famous comic/pop culture merchandise.
Here are some of the highlights from the event. I wish I could show my friends who helped but I don't even have comic characters for most of them. The best part of the event was that there were some people who really cared about individual comics and supported them. There were some people who'd actually heard about my comic (a big thank you to everyone who shared!) and others who asked really interesting questions and seemed genuinely interested in sharks. It was worth it just to meet all these people.
As much as I love tigers, I couldn't understand why everyone was more surprised at a cartoon shark than they are about cartoon tigers. I mean, the chances of us Indians being killed by tigers are probably higher than being killed by a shark, right? The villagers in the Sundarbans would probably ask the question "But why a tiger?", huh?
I bought a shark hat on ebay which was what everyone was interested in. Even the ones who were surprised at the shark theme or didn't even notice the shark theme.
Many people didn't know about shark finning at all. I hope we could get more people to see how amazing sharks are and how rare they're becoming.

Fisher of fish

Those Oceanic whitetips are always surrounded by those striped fish! They must be pretty cool. The rest of my annoyance speaks for itself.

Pet wolves and zombie roadkill

I've wanted a pet wolf for ages. I may have to move to Canada or Alaska for that, right? I once adopted a wolf from the Sawtooth pack of Nez Perce via one of those adopt-a-wolf things. The wolf I wanted (Kamots) died by the time they got my application so they gave me another one (Wahotts).
Can you tell that my wolf drawings are inspired by Balto?
A friend of mine refers to ferrets and possums as roadkill. Zombie roadkill just seems funnier.

Shark Stanley and friends!

Shark Stanley and friends from Shark Defenders are looking for supporters and friends all over the world. It's fun to see how many countries they've been to so far. It would be great to see you all in the list too. Please check out sharkstanley.com or sharkdefenders.com for information.

Eye biting sea-rats!

The origin for the random idea behind today's comic is from a couple of our friends who decided to play a prank. They texted me saying that one of them went swimming and got bitten on the eye by a rat. Now, I fell for this prank (and got slightly worried) because the said friends are highly capable of swimming in rat-infested waters. However, picturing the event caused me to crack up and sparked off a comic idea. This is what one of the texts said: "My eyeball is out of my skull and is in a rat's mouth running down the beach! aaah" (at this point I probably should have known that this was all in jest). How could I have not come up with this? If I were a bit more "Happy tree friend-ish", I'd have made it a bit more graphic but no.

The danger of aiming too low

I have this friend whom we call the "philosophical one" among us and it's her birthday this week so I thought I'd put this up in honor of that. I'd gotten the idea a while ago (when I read this quote in someone's email) and finally gotten around to drawing it.

I wasn't sure if it ought to have said "trip on it" instead of "trip over it" but I didn't want it to be misunderstood as a drug reference. 

Everybody wants to be an Emo cat

Emo cats have been known to randomly spring up and do dance numbers on fences. Therefore, the second panel makes total sense. These ideas come to me at that point between sleep and awake - luckily I can now jot them down on my ipod and not lose such fabulous thoughts. I wonder what Steve Jobs used to make a note of his ipod idea (This is not really a Steve Jobs tribute, by the way - I am very grateful for my ipod though).
It is, in fact, a birthday wish to the bestest Emo cat inspiration.

So much for "Survival of the fittest".

This story was inspired by two interesting house guests I had earlier this month. One of them apparently had her lip blown up by a cockroach and in my head this was how the picture formed. The image of a cockroach trying to blow up a shark is hilarious especially since they're both creatures that existed since before the dinosaurs.
I actually don't know which has been around the longest - the shark or the cockroach. Apparently there's even an unanswered question on wikianswers!
I like how my cockroach turned out - especially the "yee-ess" response in the 2nd panel.

Scary Beaver Foo Foo, Happy birthday to you!

I'm a bit late but this is for my friend for her birthday. The song in question is "Little Bunny Foo Foo" which she introduced to me. It's funny to think that I once found this particular friend quite scary. Maybe I still do.

ps - My beaver seems to evolve quite a bit.
pps - I am not making fun of Canada. It's top on my list of places to go. Almost on top. ;)

So much for being punch proof!

There are actually two porcupine-ish characters in my cartoons - each inspired by a different friend. This one is for a friend whose birthday it was yesterday. Actually, I drew it this morning but dated it as yesterday (In my defense, I had the idea last night). You know, I needn't have even revealed this information and let you think I'd actually drawn it on time for someone's birthday. It's because of personality flaws such as this that I wouldn't make a good politician.

The friend involved has this weird notion that I used to beat them up when we were younger. I have no idea what that's about... that doesn't sound even remotely like me!