Cartoon Beginnings.

Apparently today, the 5th of May, is National Cartoonists Day. In honour of that, I pulled a story from one of my speaker keynotes and dressed it up for you, to show you my humble cartoon beginnings.

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I have drawn since before birth.

But the first time it dawned on me that I could make someone's life a tiny bit better with my drawings was when I was twelve.

When I was twelve we were living in Hong Kong.

My younger brother was very badly pigeon toed. So much so that he couldn't walk properly and had to have an operation on his legs to correct this.

I’ll spare you the gory details but suffice to say that while he was recovering from the surgery he was in a lot of pain - we weren't allowed to touch the bed – he had this special frame to hold the blanket off his legs. My mom said that even the weight of the sheet was painful.

Oops.

This was my little brother; normally so lively and annoying. But there he was only ten years old, looking so thin and pale and obviously in pain. It dismayed me to see him suffer.

So I drew a series of cartoons and comics to try to cheer him up...

…and make him smile.

It totally worked!

The kid was in a cast for many weeks, and had to learn how to walk all over again. By the time he was done, his legs were nice and straight and he had some mighty battlescars.

I asked my now-grown-up-brother if I could post this story here and he reminded me of all the drawings I put on his cast.

Apparently I even drew a cowboy gun and holster; I don't remember it, but it sounds just like the kind of thing I would do.

And here I am still drawing cartoons all these years later.

Did anything pivotal happen to you when you were a child, that shaped you towards who you are today?

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