About
Can I Be Drawn Better?, also known as Drawn Girl, is a webcomic illustrating the progression of a character sketch of a young woman as she requests the artist to add in details to make her appear more attractive and intelligent. The comic inspired the creation of numerous parody versions on image boards, discussion forums and art sharing sites.
Origin
The original comic was illustrated by an anonymous artist who goes by the handle Psudonym,[6] which depicts a stick figure who is subsequently illustrated with more detail as a woman with a diploma before saying “thanks Dad” to her creator. According to an interview with artist, the first version of the comic was created in a 4chan thread when he was challenged to illustrate a comic entirely in MS Paint (shown below).[5]
The earliest known posting of the redrawn version of the comic was submitted to a 4chan[1] thread on February 28th, 2009 (shown below).
Spread
On April 6th, 2009, Deviantartist[7] Mr-Culexus uploaded a parody of the comic featuring an illustration of the table top role-playing game character Cultist Chan[8] (shown below, left). On October 20th, 2010, Psudoynm’s redrawn version of the comic was submitted to the /r/pics[2] subreddit, where it received over 6,000 up votes and 660 comments. On November 6th, Deviantartist[9] matheusrosa94 uploaded a parody of the comic in which an illustrated girl is turned into a furry anthropomorphic animal character (shown below, right).
On August 11th, 2011, Redditor borscht submitted a version of the comic to the /r/pics[10] subreddit, in which the illustrator is revealed to be the character Light Yagami from the anime and manga series Death Note (shown below). Prior to being archived, the post gathered more than 590 up votes and 40 comments.
On November 17th, 9gag[11] user ccc submitted the Psudoynm comic, where it accumulated upwards of 4,400 up votes and 70 comments in the following two years. On June 25th, 2012 Psudonym posted the redrawn version of the comic to his Tumblr[12] blog, where it received over 374,000 notes in the following year and a half. On November 4th, the comic news website Webcast Beacon[5] published an interview with Psudonym, in which he discussed the comic’s inception on 4chan and addressed several criticisms it had received on Tumblr.
Search Interest
External References
[1]Wayback Machine – Can I Be Drawn Better
[2]Reddit – Can I Be Drawn Better
[3]Deviantart – Drawn Better
[4]Digg – Can I Be Drawn Better
[5]Webcast Beacon – Interview with Psudonym of Drawn Girl
[6]Pseudofolio – Pseudofolio
[7]Deviantart – Flavor of the month
[9]Deviantart – Drawn Better
[10]Reddit – Just as planned
[11]9gag – Can I be drawn better?
[12]Tumblr – Drawn Girl Tumblr Cut