Baby Alien, 'Most Dangerous Man On Instagram' Or 'Greatest Living American Artist?'
A Q&A With The Internet's Leading BBW Cartoon Expert
Who Is Babyalien_onearth?
A video of Lois Griffin twerking is your rare Reels pull of the day. Its creator, Baby Alien, is somewhat prolific. Name a cartoon character, he's probably drawn them, morphing them into a beautiful plus-size woman.
Gender-swapping, camel toes and stretch marks are all part of the recipe. Almost nothing is sacred when he's surfing channels late at night.
On the other hand, he leans towards domestic southern scenes with figures following the same XL build, but without the Nickelodeon rights attached.
He's married and on a phone call with us this month, we caught him on a car ride with his wife running errands. (The brunt of our conversation took place in the Walmart parking lot while she was inside shopping.)
Baby Alien makes art for his community, which is the hood. But a large portion of his internet following is irony-poisoned meme page admins who don't understand where it's coming from. He wants followers who understand him, but at the same time, he's impulsive, and it automatically produces some impulsive images of forbidden characters, spoken in the language of IP, resonating passed his line of sight.
He's got some good stories, a nice laugh, and deep cartoon knowledge. If you've been following him for a while, this is what he has to say.
Explain what you draw.
Well, you ever seen '90s art with Bugs Bunny and he wearing baggy clothes? At first, I probably drew Lola Bunny, like plus-size. Back then it was a joke but it ended up being an ongoing thing to where I'm drawing a whole bunch of cartoon characters reimagined.
It's like cosplay but in a cartoon format, in a plus-size way.
And I'm not into drawing men. I like to draw plus-size women because that's what I know.
I thought plus-size women was a normal thing until I reached a certain age and realized that it wasn't normal to be fat. Then I felt kind of like, why is it not normal to be fat? Like, why is it not accepted?
I thought something was wrong with skinny people when I was growing up. That's why my art's so freshly detailed because fat's what I accept and what I know.
So when and where did you first post your work?
Facebook and it was in a small little group. Before that, I learned how to draw in elementary but I got better at drawing when I went to jail.
When I got outta jail, I started self-teaching myself how to do digital art and that's when I started posting up on Facebook and getting feedback. It just went from there. I'm pretty sure that was 15 years ago.
So when did your page start blowing up? What was the post that really went off?
When I started doing animation. I think it was twerking Dora? Dora was the first time I hit 2 million views.
What's your earliest memory of drawing?
My daddy used to draw when I was a kid or whatever. That goes back to what I said. He used to spray paint Bugs Bunny up on buildings—draw the little old school Bugs Bunny with baggy clothes, saying, "Kicking it old school," or whatever. He used to do that and I used to be like, "Stop drawing fucking men all the time."
But, like, in third grade, I couldn't draw people but I could draw, like, a detailed vagina [laughs].
And the reason why I couldn't draw a person was because all of my classmates was into Dragon Ball Z and shit and I hate drawing men—sweaty six packs and all that… Wasn't into it. So I had to find something that I was into.
I got in trouble about that in the third grade. So I had to stop drawing for a little minute… Like a good little, up until like high school. That's when I started drawing full figure women, coming out way more detailed and shit.
When I went to jail, I ended up doing about three months, and all I was able to do was just draw and draw. That's when I got so good at stretch marks and all that extra shit.
What did your friends in jail think about your art?
I was drawing for like snacks and shit because they used to tell me to draw a vagina or something so they could go whack off in the closet.
That's how I got in trouble in third grade too because I had ended up drawing a vagina for one of the kids, and I think the teacher went through his binder, and they seen a picture, and asked him who drew it, and of course I had "Baby Alien" signed on there. They said, "Who the hell is Baby Alien?" Because I've been saying Baby Alien since I was a kid.
They found my notebook with all my drawings in there and they just, yeah… That was some real weird shit, to see like a hundred pages of vaginas.
But in jail, I probably draw a lady spreading her booty cheeks for a honey bun. So it was cool in jail. Shit was fun.
You've had "Baby Alien" since you were a kid? Do you remember where the nickname comes from?
I got high one day. I got so fucking high… And then the question just popped up in my head because "Baby Alien" is really a question.
I got high and I asked everybody in my household—my mom and my sister; oldest brother and two of their friends—I asked each one of them a question, "What would you do if you see a baby alien right now? What would you do if a baby alien was sitting in front of you?”
They responses was just so fucking funny. One of 'em said they'll kill him. One of 'em said they'll hide him and take care of him. And the other one be like, "I'll keep 'em away from the world because they're going to want to basically explore who the fuck they is." Like, "It's a baby alien!" You're like, "What the fuck?" You're curious!
They responses was so crazy but I kind of connected with it because that's what it is when people first see me. They don't know what to think of me. They don't know how to approach me. I done heard all type of crazy shit just because I'm just drawing a fat character.
Yeah, it's a baby—so you don't want to kill it—but it's an alien so, maybe you do want to kill it.
Yeah, like, this shit is not normal…
Read the rest of our interview with Baby Alien on the 65,000 website.