Previous Post Your Costco trip inspiration seems to shed light on the creation of "Hamboy", or at least how your mind might be capable of working in those directions. I honestly can't pin down many "Eureka!" moments when it comes to my characters. Of course, they are mostly just archtypes for these kinds of stories, so they didn't really need a breakthrough moment of originality to come into being.

The story behind the Ham-Boy name has nothing to do with shopping. I wasn't the one who even came up with the name.

During my time in College, I was taking an Art class & a woman who had missed her class session with my teacher wanted to sit in with my class, my teacher said it was ok. She sat next to me, I being a person with a seat next to them that was near the door. She had this knit hat on, a hat which I though looked like a Ham. It wasn't the color but more of the pattern. During the course of the class we talked about random stuff, one such random thing was wearing Hams as Hats. Another thing I remember talking about was french speaking Buffalo but I'm sure why.

The class ended I didn't think much of the conversation but I did think more about the ham as hats idea. I did a doodle of two what a "Ham Hat" might look like. I probably still have the sketches somewhere. Now this class wasn't the last time I saw her. Apparently I had made an impression on her since when ever she saw me, she greeted me with a nickname. Yes, she had christened me: Ham Boy! Now I didn't consider the name all that odd or embarrassing, I've had other nicknames given to me by people I hardly knew in the past. (The name for the Chad character came about in a similar fashion during High School).

The only time that it was a bit embarrassing was when she saw me a store & yelled out the name after seeing me. I was with my parents. I had to explain who she was & why she called me that after we parted ways. Thinking back I don't think she even knew my real name & I don't I even knew her real name either.

Around this time I had started writing stories for the PV & thought the name "Ham Boy" sounded super heroic even so I made a character around it. The reason why Ham-Boy wears a Ham cowl/mask is nod to those "Ham Hat" drawings I did.