Former KU student wins cartoonist award

By Jennifer Torline

Thursday, April 9, 2009

— Slideshow by Lauren Cunningham

Grant Snider recently won $10,000 with three simple tools: pen, paper, and a dry sense of humor that can turn almost anything into a cartoon.

“Some of my comics are political-editorial themes, others are humorous, semi-autobiographical stuff,” he said.

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Photo by Matt Bristow

Former KU student Grant Snider, who designed 20 new Weather Jays for the University Daily Kansan last year, recently won an award for his cartoons. Snider studied chemical engineering at the University, but he is now a dental student at the University of Missouri - Kansas City. Snider says that dentistry and drawing are actually very similar.

Snider, a former KU student and cartoonist for The University Daily Kansan, received the Charles M. Schulz award, an elite national journalism award from the Scripps Howard Foundation given to a college cartoonist every year.

Snider and his wife, Kayla, will travel on April 24 to the National Press Club in Washington D.C. to attend a banquet where Snider will receive the award.

Snider, now a dental student at the University of Missouri – Kansas City, submitted 15 comics to apply for the award. Some of the comics were political and others autobiographical, but none of them were a traditional editorial cartoon, something that Snider said might have made his comics different than other submissions.

“The amount of time I put into a single comic strip might make it stand out more than a single panel cartoon or something done on the computer,” said Snider, who is not a fan of online or computer-generated comics.

When Snider received an e-mail several weeks later that told him he was the winner, his reaction was nothing short of complete shock.

“I freaked out and took my dog outside to calm down a bit,” Snider said. “I came back in and let it sink in a little bit.”

Now that it has sunk in, Snider said that he did not have any extravagant plans for the $10,000, but that he would probably use it to pay off student loans or buy more pens, art supplies and graphic novels for drawing inspiration.

Long before the $10,000 award, Snider’s love for drawing started when he was little boy. He and his identical twin brother Gavin used to put together comic books when they were little. Gavin, Mulvane senior in architecture, said they would each take a side of an easel and create an imaginary world with different characters, stories and people. When the boys got older, they wrote and illustrated books of poems.

“We had characters we’d make up and we’d each draw our characters,” Gavin said.

Although Snider continued drawing in high school, he did not seriously start drawing until he came to the University to study chemical engineering. During his junior year, he started drawing a daily opinion cartoon for The Kansan.

Soon after, then-editor Erick Schmidt asked Snider to redraw the Weather Jays that appear on the bottom of The Kansan’s front page. The Weather Jays being used at the time were more than 30 years old, and Snider drew 20 new Jays.

“It was a pretty easy project and fun to do,” Snider said. “That was my biggest cartooning commission since.”

Now, Snider draws between one and three drawings a week for The University News, UMKC’s weekly student newspaper. Last week, he started drawing a comic strip for The Kansas City Star’s Thursday Preview section.

Gavin said his brother’s dry sense of humor appeared in his comics, poking fun at political figures, laughing at personal experiences or commenting on the music industry.

“Sometimes they’re even more funny ’cause I know what he’s talking about,” Gavin said of his brother’s comics about personal experiences. “The best ones have subtle, dry humor that will hit you over the head.”

Michael Detamore, assistant professor of chemical and petroleum engineering, taught Snider in several engineering courses. Detamore said Snider sometimes drew in class, not because he was daydreaming, but because he was a bright student who easily understood the material.

“He’s multi-talented,” Detamore said. “In addition to his success, he’s a heck of a nice guy.”

Snider also helped Detamore with research in testing the jaw joints of pigs, something that stemmed from Snider’s interest in dentistry. Snider’s research with Detamore was published in the Journal of Dental Research, something that Detamore said was a significant accomplishment for an undergraduate student.

Snider insists that dentistry and drawing are easily related.

“They’re both pretty detail-oriented, using meticulous hands skills,’ Snider said. “You have to have a critical eye for what you’re working on and it’s all visual.”

— — Edited by Carly Halvorson

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