With a new cookbook published and a store on rue Saint-Jean to visit, we caught up with Juraj Straka for a behind-the-scenes look at the universe of @cartoon.called.life. “It all started in a very innocent, non-planned way, when my boyfriend gave me the nickname – My Little Bunny. I come from Slovakia. He was learning Slovak. He asked me how you say ‘rabbit’, which is ‘zajac’. He loved the word. He kept on repeating it and it became my nickname. That was the birth of this whole idea.” “When I was writing a post-it or something – ‘please do the dishes’ – instead of signing it, I would just do a little doodle of a bunny. I gave him a nickname also, he was Bear – ‘Medveď’. So the early adventures of the cartoon centred around Bunny and Bear” “Cartoon Called Life is created for a gay audience, but we have a lot of followers who are beyond the LGBTQ umbrella. We’ve created a universe that can speak to everybody while still speaking on a certain level to our community.” “Soon after I arrived in Belgium, I met @laurentfg. He saw the potential in the whole project. We self-published the book. It was so overwhelming to learn about the whole process. Plus, I had very specific ideas about how I wanted the book to look. It was a huge project, but it was all worth it. “Publishing the book was the moment that Bunny went from being a hobby to being a brand. It triggered an avalanche of ideas. The book launched our company. Soon after that, we started producing merch and selling through our online store.” “One of the reasons that we decided to open the store in Brussels was we wanted to connect with people in a more physical way. The store is a boutique gallery. This space gives us the opportunity to show the entire universe of Cartoon Called Life. The art pieces in particular work much better in the store than just online.” “We joke that we’d like to become the gay version of Hello Kitty. Our most recent publication is a cookbook. It was unexpected, we like to surprise people.” Full story: link in bio #ketmagazine #brussels #queer #magazine #cartooncalledlife #queercomics #lgbtcomics #brusselsculture #queerbrussels #visitbrussels #bxlove #lgbtbrussels