DMA#43: The Nooks & Crannies of New York City with Tom Chitty

If there’s one thing I’ve been banging on about this week more than anything, it’s that finding a genuinely distinct visual voice in the modern cartooning landscape is brutal.

You need to be instantly recognisable. You need to be deeply funny. You need to build a world. (Oh, and try to make a living doing it.) Tom Chitty has built an entire universe. He is a British cartoonist based in Toronto, a regular contributor to the New Yorker, and an absolute master of the absurd and whimsical (okay, ‘silly’). His characters feature blocky bodies, wide stances, and an otherworldly charm. We sat down for Draw Me Anything yesterday to decode the mechanics of his highly specific, deeply funny brain.

Here is exactly how he builds his worlds…

The Serial Killer Sketchbook

Young artists obsess over perfect sketchbooks. They paint immaculate, highly composed spreads and post them online. It is a complete lie. Real sketchbooks look like the manifesto of a deranged serial killer. Look at the horrendous s**t I just found when I flicked open one of mine…

Tom learned this the hard way in animation school. A tutor looked at his work, told him to stop designing, and ordered him to just start generating ideas. he dropped the pressure of making a pretty picture. He started treating his drawings like handwriting. He now keeps a sketchbook on hand constantly, capturing raw, unfiltered nonsense. Six months later, he opens the book and finds completely forgotten, bizarre ideas that actually make him laugh.

You can’t force inspiration by sitting down and staring at a blank piece of paper. Taking a leaf out of every great artist’s book, he walks to the coffee shop every morning after dropping his son at school. Moving through the world and seeing the horizon literally dislodges ideas from the deep dark recesses of your skull.

The Regret of the “Send” Button

Pitching cartoons is an exercise in psychological torture. You curate a batch of ideas. You arrange them like you are sequencing a Radiohead album. (Yes, we’re exactly the same as Thom Yorke. Thank you.) You convince yourself the order matters. Then you hit send on the email.

The regret is immediate. You look at the batch two hours later and see nothing but glaring flaws. You wonder why you ever picked up a pen in the first place.

Tom survives this weekly cycle by treating it as a boot camp. He gets up, generates ideas, and commits to the sheer volume of the work. Early in his career, veteran cartoonists Matt Diffee and Bob Mankoff gave him ruthless, honest feedback. The ultimate lesson is simple: Do not draw what you think the New Yorker ‘wants’. Draw what makes you completely unique.

Ghost League Baseball and Wonky Parsnips

Tom is launching a Kickstarter on April 1st for an absolute masterpiece. It is called Nooks and Crannies of New York. It is compiled from the fictional chronicles of an eccentric explorer named Baron von Schoogenheimer.

The book is a staggering achievement in world-building. It took him three and a half years to draw. He documents Ghost League Baseball teams, including the Mysterios and their star pitcher Hodge Wang, famous for his penguin-wing throwing action. He documents subterranean trolls making furniture in the interborough tunnels. He draws Roof Mables, who live in disused water towers and help New Yorkers retrieve lost memories.

He grounds the absurdity by pulling from his own family history. He turns a childhood memory of eating Dutch Speculaas biscuits into an elaborate drawing of Schneek’s Belgian magic pedal-powered hot dog production cart.

He also understands the phonetic rhythm of comedy. Some words are just inherently funny. Tom used to run a website dedicated entirely to words with intrinsic humour value. Balloon. Spoon. Guff. Wonky parsnip. He injects this phonetic absurdity into every character name and fictional contraption he draws.

The Caboon and the Fly Ball

Halfway through the stream, we flipped the cameras and started scribbling. Tom uses a Staedtler 0.3 fineliner to achieve his incredibly detailed, controlled line work. After a suggestion from Hue Walker of a Frog on a Bat, he and I began drawing a Caboon, which is a feline-looking primate from his book that accompanies French Canadian taxi drivers to judge the character of potential passengers.

Meanwhile, the live chat was throwing out prompts. Paul Nesja suggested drawing the above-mentioned frog catching a fly ball. I sketched it out, immediately regretting my lack of reference material for amphibian anatomy. Drawing live while trying to conduct a coherent interview is basically an extreme sport, but it forces you to rely entirely on your muscle memory.

Wrestling with glitchy streaming software, fighting the algorithm, and writing these detailed process breakdowns requires a heady cocktail of caffeine and sheer willpower. If you value this virtual bullpen and want to watch the full, unedited video replay of Tom and me drawing live, please consider upgrading to a paid subscription for just $1 a week. It keeps the inkwell full, repays the massive labour, and keeps Morris supplied with the treats he demands.

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