I had good relationships with stores. And I was like, "All right, I'll self-publish it. But I'm only going to do 1,000."

The thing that was interesting to me about Relationshapes - as opposed to most of the other cartoons I've ever made - was I knew when one worked and when one didn't work, but I couldn't really explain it.

I felt really conflicted about making money off stuff that's creatively satisfying.

I wanted to get paid to sharpen pencils originally just because I thought it would be fun.

The thing I hear about a lot is when people over-sharpen their pencil with a single-blade pocket-sharpener and then when they put the pencil to the page, their tip breaks and pencil points always break irregularly. It always gets all jagged and you have to refresh the point. That's a common complaint.

I'm interested in the structure of art and how it works. And the content is also interesting, but I don't want to keep the same structure and just plug in new content every week.

I assumed that the pencil market was collapsing, but then it turns out that from 2010 to 2011 in the United States, pencil consumption went up by over six percent. I mean, those are all foreign-made pencils. Those are probably Chinese pencils, mostly, and Mexican pencils. I mean, it is an archaic communication technology, but it is still ubiquitous.