Every day and more artists all over the world are using their art to raise awareness about the issues we are facing every day, be that environmental, social, political, or all of them at once. One of these artists who has decided to spotlight how plastic waste affects marine life is Rob Lang.
Rob has been making comics and cartoons for a long time, and he started doing all that motivated by boredom at school. “ I remember (on more than one occasion in various math classes) teachers would write notes on my tests that said, “If you’d just stop concentrating so much on cartoons and a bit more on math, you’d get better grades,” said Rob when reached out by Earthwonders.
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“I’ve always been interested in nature and natural history. Along with things like X-men comics, I’d read books about evolution and biodiversity. Around 2017, I started seeing stories about all the junk that was in the oceans so I made a few comics about that subject. Then the Plastic Oceans documentary (it was on Netflix for a while) people contacted me and they had me make some shirt designs for them, and I just kept thinking of jokes on the subject. But my main goal is to make comics about how everything’s connected. And our own decisions can have a huge impact, not only on our own lives but on the other lifeforms that we share the planet with!”
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To create comics like these, the artist spends a lot of time outside just listening to the birds, insects and all industrial noises that people make which are quite in contrast with each other but serve a great deal of inspiration to the artist.
“Sometimes I’ll think about or discover an animal by reading about it and then try to come up with a joke about it. Other times, I’ll read about how humans are influencing a creature and if I can put a funny spin on the situation, I’ll go for it. Also I love illustrating lifecycles. There are so many bizarre ones. For instance, check out how figs depend on wasps. It’s pretty crazy,” explained the artist for Earthwonders.
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Rob shared that he’s thinking of making TikTok videos called “make comics the lazy way” or something like that. It’ll illustrate how rushed and imperfect, yet effective his comic-producing process is. He also shared that his comics seems not all about darkness and how humans are destroying the natural world (which we are). Most of his comics are about how animals adapt to their environment in crazy ways and the importance of the abundance of life.
His work is truly amazing, and if you want to be updated regularly follow his Instagram page, where Rob also creates a daily Instagram poll, which is a question to his readers about anything and everything. It’s usually a comment on some pic he snaps walking outside with his pup or maybe just a rough sketch. It’s also a good place to find out what merchandise is new and on sale. And if you want to help the artist to continue making more comics, buying merchandise is the way to do so.
Scroll down below to see some amazing comics that raise awareness over an issue we face globally.
More info: Instagram | patreon.com | underdonecomics.com | Facebook | twitter.com | Tiktok