Snow Sam

With it being winter, and the festive season just about out of the way, I think it's time I said a bit about the backstory behind one of my many cartoon creations - I'll cover the rest at some point, but right now, I'm going to concentrate on my walking, talking snowman character Snow Sam. (tagline - "Move over Frosty, there's a new snowman in town")

A couple of things inspired this character - the first was when I walked into a post office in Durham in winter 2005, and saw a little snowman toy for sale, at a reduced price. Couldn't resist, so I snapped it up.

 The snowman toy bought from the Post Office

As well as that, both the song and the character "Frosty the Snowman" had a hand in it as well - and while the sketch of the character was originally intended to just be a seasonal one-off, I found myself wanting to try out a comic strip with a walking, talking snowman, and it didn't take me long to give him a name - I chose "Snow Sam" because it sounded similar to "snowman".

  The very first picture of Snow Sam, from December 2005

Snow Sam was officially created on 15 December 2005, and his first comic was created on 16 December 2005. Keeping in mind Frosty the Snowman, I decided to make him a friendly and cheerful, yet sort of "anti-Frosty" character who likes to take a grounded yet humourous view of life as a snowman, and everyday things around him - he's never short of a witty remark or two.

Sam's not alone in his comics - in Snow Sam Comic #2 I introduced his clumsy, baseball cap-wearing fellow snowman friend Fred, followed by a more feathered friend in Comic #3, Rosco the Robin. Completing the cast was another snowman, the adventurous and portly George, who I introduced in Comic #6.

Another twist to the Snow Sam artwork and comics is that I mostly only draw and upload them at winter-time (with the odd exception), as the comic is meant to be set in my home country (UK), and of course we usually only get snow during the winter months (again, there have been exceptions), so that's the premise that the comic schedule is based on. It's also so I can have time to work on other comics and artwork, of course.

 The cast of "Snow Sam" (l to r): George, Rosco, Fred, Sam

So there you have it - all you need to know about Snow Sam. If you want to check out his comics and artwork, just point your cursor at one of the links below:

Snow Sam artwork: http://bluebottleflyer.deviantart.com/gallery/949436

Snow Sam comics:  http://bluebottleflyer.deviantart.com/gallery/556370