Thomas K. Dye

Thomas K. Dye (born 18 April 1969) is a furry and a web cartoonist. He is the creator of the web comic Newshounds (one of whose characters, Kevin J. Dog, is his own fursona), and of the comics Something Happens and Manifestations.

Thomas was a guest of honor at Midwest FurFest 2003 and 2009. He was born in Reno, Nevada, USA and lives in Washington state.

History
Dye started creating cartoons in 1984, when he created Newshounds characters Kevin J. Dog and Alistair Katt. In 1991, he created the strip Pet Sounds (which was published in The Montclarion) and later a comic book The Boy Shop Pets; his first attempts to make a proper comic. Pet Sounds was dropped in 1992. After this, Dye started to create new characters, such as Wolfram Blitzen, Sam Shepherd and Ferris the Rat. This lead to the creation of Newshounds.

After several failed attempts to get Newshounds published in the printed media, Dye turned it into a webcomic in 1997, with the help of another web cartoonist, Albert Temple. In 2003, he created the spin-off online graphic novel Manifestations, with the help of Tim Tylor.

In 2006, he started another webcomic, the satirical Something Happens, a series of unrelated cartoons. On 13 August 2006, Dye announced on the Newshounds website that he would "start working towards using art in a professional career." Newshounds would therefore start running as a Sunday-only strip, though Something Happens was still intended to run normally.

In 2007, Dye's collection of Newshounds strips entitled All the Newshounds Fit to Print won the Ursa Major Award for "Best Anthropomorphic Other Literary Work".

Other
Dye has previously tried to be an actor, a musician and a novelist. He can play the keyboard, and is fan of the rock band Kansas. He also likes the band Jethro Tull, using the lyrics from Another Christmas Song in a Christmas edition of Newshounds.

Of all of his characters, Kevin is one that Dye identifies with most, whereas he considers Renata to be his favorite. He also considers Wolfram and Sam to be the hardest characters to write for.

Dye says he is "influenced by Hanna-Barbera's Tom and Jerry and Charles Schulz's Peanuts." Apart from Albert Temple, he also admires D. C. Simpson, Bloom County, Alice in Wonderland and Monty Python.