Adam Koford is one of my new heroes. He is doing something so basic and simple in his drawing of comics, but utilizing all the best things about the internet, to do what he likes to do. Quite simply, he will draw a drawing for you for $20 B&W, $50 color. But he's used the web, blogs, Flickr, and YouTube to promote himself, and it's brilliant. It helps that he is so damn talented to boot. Anyone who ever had a knack of drawing silly little pictures was surely asked at some point in school to draw a picture for someone. Perhaps you refused, feeling a bit like you were being treated like a monkey for someone's amusement (I know I did). Sometimes though, people will offer you money for your work. I may have been offered money too a couple times (and I'm sure I took it).
What Mr. Koford does with the internet really hits me deep inside as just an unbridled desire to do what you love, on the simplest terms, and make a little money doing it. In these times of "e-commerce" his approach resembles such a basic structure of economics that seems forgotten in this ad supported content world, where everything on the net is free for a price. Koford's work stands on the most basic desire any of us creative types would ideally like to live by - I draw you a picture, you give me money for it. Koford dictates the style, the characters, and even allows your input, but everything he produces, whether you own it or not, is still his by execution. I am adding a link to my side bar so that you may check out his work yourself. For Adam Koford, the internet is the lunch room, and he'll gladly sit next to you and doodle what you like, if you have $20.
Laugh-Out-Loud Cats is Adam Koford's fictitious depression era comic strip by his Great Grandfather Aloysius "Gorilla" Koford. The comic is actually consists of "found" panels that are posted everyday - simple punch lines existing without previous panels set ups, is both very post modern (in a good way) and of the moments (now and of the great depression). They slyly reference the I Can Has Cheezburger phenomenon of the LOL Cat memes, and create an alternate comics history by recycling these memes as final panel punchlines. Kofords style for these addicting little comics is very much in the vein of classic cartoonists such as George Herriman's Krazy Kat. The absurdity of it all, the grass roots growth in popularity of Laugh-Out-Loud Cats which itself references a on going internet joke, is perplexing yet has been born a new with its self reference. Check out this little Boing Boing post that shows how many levels a Laugh-Out-Loud Cats comic works.
