It’s easy to see cute animals, and I think the inside is just as pure and beautiful. But are they really? They may have the same pessimistic thoughts as we do about everything we know. What if all these fascinating sounds they make aren’t so poetic, they’re just the same mundane conversations we have? You may not know for sure, but thanks to Joshua Barkman and his webcomic False Knees, you can at least imagine the answer. This series has changed significantly from the traditional online animal story of forest creatures involved in various existential crises. Burkeman has the skills to find his angle and make it work, and his Instagram followers now exceed 590,000. A resident of Kitchener, Ontario, he often frames native animals such as Canada Goose and Muneakagojuchou.
Profile info: False Knees | Facebook | Instagram | Tumblr
I’ve always loved painting and didn’t have much art education, but I was fortunate to get a lot of encouragement from my friends and family, -Chip pen and watercolor. Right now I mainly paint with gouache and ink. Joshua’s cartoons are incredibly beautiful. Strokes, colors … his carefully crafted frame is like a window to nature. If you put it side by side with a character with a rough nuance, it will be a really unique series.
The show’s star is a bird, but Joshua is still working on making real bird friends. Neighborhood crows aren’t interested in the giant peanut bags I bought specially for them. Several black-capped chicks visit my bird feeder from sympathy. That doesn’t work.
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Joshua’s path to such a concept was not straightforward, but it was intuitive. There are several reasons why I decided to make a bird cartoon. When I was training to become an arborist in 2015, I spent more time outside and became more interested in the natural world around me. By that time, my comics were a kind of pseudo-reality in my life and I was ready for change. It also kept my attention that my animal cartoons were much more popular than my motorcycle cartoons. But above all, I wanted to make beautiful comics (and I still do). I think birds are particularly well suited to that goal, explained the artist.
