This TikToker has the golden recipe for viral meme art: buff cartoon characters

Nobody arguably needs to see detailed line art depicting Monsters, Inc.’s Mike Wazowski with the muscles of a world-class powerlifter and a chin so chiseled it could cut a diamond, but that hasn’t stopped millions of people from wanting to.

Sam Barquin is a student and artist who has made a name for himself online by redrawing beloved cartoon characters as swole gym rats. Over time, he’s mastered the not-so-subtle craft of viral meme art. On platforms like TikTok, the simple gimmick has taken him far, with a single video amassing more than 33.6 million views. Polygon spoke to him about what brought him to this particular corner of the internet and what it’s been like to draw in the same style for so long. According to the artist, he’s slowly found his niche by tailoring it to trends new and old.

“I would definitely describe my account as sort of meme-y, you know, like meme art, and just drawing certain cartoon characters in different ways,” Barquin said in a call. “If someone asks, I say, ‘My current thing is just drawing cartoon characters, but handsome.’ And that usually doesn’t really have them asking too many questions.”

Barquin’s art is all at once hard to describe and immediately recognizable to those immersed in the vernacular and imagery of online humor. Each video plays out the same bit more or less, starting with some hand-drawn pen and ink art. As the recording progresses, we see a few snippets that feel like reading a very short comic. Regardless of the premise or character in each story, each video culminates by revealing a character redesign that depicts them with chiseled features and an overly buff physique.

For example, a video featuring characters from Avatar: The Last Airbender shows a scenario where Sokka and Katara discover Aang in the iceberg. Afterward, Sokka asks Aang what he’s been doing for 100 years. In response, Barquin’s art shows that Aang did all he could while staying frozen. He mewed, and as a result, the once round-faced child emerged from the ice with a newly defined jaw and transformed GigaChad face.

The bit isn’t just inspired by the comedy of seeing a baby-faced character in a new light; it’s deeply informed by internet comedy and trends. Barquin told Polygon that the origins of this particular joke go back to a TikTok trend from 2022 where artists would draw fictional characters getting jacked after being rejected by a romantic interest, and his work often employs popular internet vernacular.

For example, “mewing” refers to a tongue exercise popularized on platforms like TikTok that can supposedly help a person cultivate a more defined and masculine jawline and, thus, the cutting cheekbones we see in each video. The word “mog” is more vague, but can be used to refer to anyone who looks more in shape and better in a photo than you. (So if you outshine someone else in a photo, you’d be the mog.) The general body of references makes sense given that these clips have been inspired by the larger “looksmaxing” trend, where people try to optimize their best looks by working out a ton and through other lifestyle choices.

“I want to say in November of 2023, the looksmaxing trend started going around. Since I already had experience with drawing people like that, I was like, Maybe I could try to draw them again. But this time, with defined cheekbones and stuff,” he said. “I made a few videos, and those seem to do really well. So I started just making more with different characters to see what I can do with them.”

The creator has been drawing similar art and sharing videos for over two years and shows no signs of slowing down. In fact, he seems content to create this kind of art for now.

“I would have thought that it would get boring by now, but I’ve kind of realized that each creator needs to have their own niche,” Barquin said. According to the artist, he previously had dabbled in other kinds of content but struggled to find a consistent video format. “Once I started doing these drawings, I just really enjoyed doing them. I thought that they were really fun to draw, number one, and two, they seem to perform well. And people kind of have followed me for that stuff. And so I just decided to keep doing it,” he said.

That doesn’t mean he has no plans to take his work in a new direction down the line. Barquin and two other artists he met online are starting a comics company and plan to release a graphic novel featuring an original story. So far, the team hasn’t released any significant details of the project. Whether or not that original story will feature some buff characters of its own remains to be seen.