Full disclosure: this is my friend. His name is Isaac Littlejohn Eddy. I like him. I met Isaac when I was 16 and he was older. We chopped wood in the rain together on a rock surrounded by the Atlantic Ocean ten miles off the coast of New Hampshire. If you had met Isaac when you were 16 while chopping wood in the rain you would have liked him too. In fact, if you met Isaac in less specific circumstances it’s safe to say you’d still like him. Isaac Littlejohn Eddy is what you’d call a likable guy.
Isaac is also what you might call a successful guy, a member of the Blue Man Group. But he isn’t letting that get in his way. Isaac has a new project made up of comics, animation, a want to create 100 single panel comics in 100 days, and a one man show. I emailed Isaac and asked him to explain himself. This is his response:
The single panel comic is the BEST exercise in distilling a funny thought to it’s most potent kernel of raw honest truth. We all have funny thoughts or observations throughout the day. Try and strip that thought down to something that is universally understood but still hold the uniqueness that made it funny to begin with. And try doing that with just one still frame and maybe a line of dialogue. It’s a mind bending trip. I perform with the Blue Man Group nightly [Editor’s note: Isaac has been doing so for the last six years] and am struck by this idea of humor that is able to dance on the line between the universal (cliche?) and the unique (abstract/absurd?) each time I put on the makeup. I’m trying to toe that line with my own writing each time I make a comic.
So why post a single panel every single day for one hundred days? Creatively I normally play it safe. I store up ideas and then leak them out one by one so I’m never tapped out. With this project I’m forcing myself to cull the dregs of the noggin. My best stuff has come when I’m convinced there’s no ideas left.
I grew up with Gary Larson, I learned how to read with his cartoons and quoted them every day from elementary school through high school. I still think of his stuff all the time. That said my biggest influence is Roz Chast. She has literally broken the boundaries of what can be done with the medium. She can be really out there but she’s able to set up her worlds so efficiently you feel like you’re inside her brain. That’s what I’m trying to do.
Recently I’ve learned this archaic form of animation – to call it animation is not really fair, it’s really just cutting and pasting in real time. The best part about it is it makes it so I can collaborate with some of the best musical artists out there right now: the Terrordactyls, Steve Jewett, St. Mannequins, Karen Rockower, and film scorer Chris Bowen.
In terms of the look my style looks very elementary, like a bad version of Ivan Brunetti‘s people. But I’ve worked really hard to get them to be simple while still having some weight and volume. I do all my drawings by hand with pencils, pens, markers, and a light box for tracing. Even if you don’t know that you’re feeling it – everyone can tell when something is initially done by hand, it’s the same in film. I do cheat a little in photoshop but mostly just to punch up the contrast.
I’ve written a one man show and I’m hoping to put it up in New York in the late spring. It’s called, “The Search for My Inner Alpha Male” and it’s about how I’ve re-evaluated my male identity after a major bout of stage fright after I’d performed as a Blue Man for over five years. With some awkwardly funny stories I compare my relationship to the archetypal alpha male to my dad’s and his dad’s relationship to it it. There’s going to be animation and great music. And it’s supposed to be funny. We’ll see if I can frame it in the right way to make it universal whiles still keeping it honest.
