Cartoonist draws The Walking Dead episode tributes

Eric Keyes challenges himself to draw tribute cartoons for episodes of The Walking Dead in addition to his full time jobs.

Eric Keyes or Monkeyes as he is known on Twitter is a professional cartoonist and character designer on The Simpsons and for Famous Monsters of Filmland Magazine. He is also, as he calls himself, a doodler.

I’m thrilled that I found him through Undead Walking and our mutual love of The Walking Dead. Eric doodles and uses his cartooning skills to do what he calls challenge art. He draws tribute art for the characters and the episodes of The Walking Dead. 

He has completed a few seasons of episode art and some characters in the style he called his “minis”. Even the producers got the mini treatment.

Eric Keyes. Mini. Scott Gimple.

Eric Keyes. Mini.Greg Nicotero.

Eric Keyes. Mini.Gale Anne Hurd.

Eric Keyes. Mini. Robert Kirkman.

Eric’s work is adorable and still very The Walking Dead! For his tribute work for episodes, Eric chooses a scene that represents something important in that episode and a quote from the episode and cartoons it.

The result is often quite stunning. Usually there is a big central focus and then some tiny things out toward the sides. It’s amazing how the cartooning can capture the essence of the characters and can convey such heavy emotions at times. A The Walking Dead fan is immediately brought back to the moment in the episode from looking at the scene.

Xander Berkeley and Justin Kucsulain were properly thrilled to be cartooned in Eric’s latest tribute to Knots Untie!

For season 5, Eric used his humor to create comics with a twist to really give fans of the show a treat. He would take lines from the show and set them to a little different scenario, but with characters from The Walking Dead. It was genius!

Eric is a super nice guy with a great sense of humor. He is one of our Twitter followers and one night I was playing a game with our followers called “Who’s missing?” where I blotted out characters. Eric had fun doodling in little people on my color blots and sending them back to me.

Eric shared a great story with me on how his tributes challenge got started.

"Here’s the one that started it all, I drew it, texted it to Scott, he sent it it Norman who posted it… then once people saw I was a designer on the show it started trending… kinda funny."

Next: Oscar Rodriguez III puts the fan in fan art

Eric is currently finishing up season 2 and 6 of his challenge art while holding down his 2 full time jobs. He is as excited about the start of season 7 as the rest of us. He made a Negan mini! Follow him on Twitter!