'Rory The Dinosaur'.
Liz Climo is best known for her charming web comics, which she has published online since 2012. All of them depict animals in adorable scenes of friendship and/or parental love. She is also the creator of the children's book series 'Rory the Dinosaur'.
Early life and career
Elizabeth Shearon "Liz" Climo was born in 1981 and grew up in Silicon Valley, California. She comes from an artistic family. Her grandmother was a children's book illustrator, much like Climo's mother and sister. One of her siblings married famous painter Mark Rothko. Climo counts Bill Watterson, Paul Klee and Shel Silverstein among her graphic influences. She studied art at the State University at San José, but was rejected when she applied a course in animation. As luck would have it she applied for a job on Matt Groening's TV series 'The Simpsons' and was hired two weeks later. She revises storyboards and cleans up characters before their final screening. Climo also wrote storyboards for Seth MacFarlane's web cartoon series, 'Seth MacFarlane's Cavalcade of Cartoon Comedy' (2008-2009).
Webcomics
In her spare time Climo enjoys drawing comics. In 2012 her husband encouraged her to bring them online. She had low expectations about this proposal. When she launched her own blog on Tumblr, she didn't even bother to sign her work. Much to her surprise, her web comics were quickly shared by many users, including actor George Takei (Sulu on 'Star Trek'). Climo quickly started signing her comics afterwards. She specializes in gag comics about anthropomorphic animals in recognizable everyday human situations. Contrary to most other funny animal comics, she is less focused on punchlines and more on adorable and heartwarming themes, such as friendship, parenthood and kindness. Running Press brought out two compilation books with her comics, 'The Little World of Liz Climo' (2014), 'Lobster is the Best Medicine' (2015), 'Best Bear Ever!' (2018), 'Please Don't Eat Me' (2019), 'You're Mom' (2020), 'You're Dad' (2021), 'You're Loved' (2022) and 'I'm So Happy You're Here' (2022).
Rory the Dinosaur and other illustration work
Climo's gentle and child friendly style lends itself naturally to illustration work for children's books, such as the 'Rory the Dinosaur' series, about a little stegosaur and his father. Climo also livened up the pages of Ame Dyckman's 'You Don't Wanta A Unicorn!' (2017) and 'You Don't Want A Dragon!' (2020), Jory John's 'Can Somebody Please Scratch My Back?' (2018), 'First Day Critters Jitters' (2020) and 'Summer Camp Critter Jitters' (2021). Her work has been translated in Italian, French, German, Chinese, Japanese, Taiwanese, Vietnamese and Korean.
