Adult colouring books have become popular among university students. Many find it relaxing to colour for a few hours without thinking about assignments. However, none of these books seem to actually have adult content. Connor Thompson, a student at Western University and Chris Elphik, a student at Niagara College, created one that does. Cockadoodles is a colouring book filled with images of penises.
Q: When and how did you come up with the idea?
Connor: Last November I was in a Chapters with my girlfriend and one of her friends, both of whom are very into adult colouring books and I commented “Well adult colouring books don’t really have any adult material, how adult can they be?” Then I made a comment about a graphic colouring book and it stuck with me.
Q: Why penises?
Connor: Dicks are both easy to draw and interesting enough that there are many differentiations so it’s funny in a number of ways.
Q: When did you decide to start working on it?
Connor: I didn’t know how to draw digital images so from January to February, I learned how to draw and then in mid-February we started the story board.
Chris: It was slow starting because Connor would send a picture and I would be disgusted by it, or there’s something about drawing one of these that really just drains you of all energy.
Q: Has your university/college influenced with your idea for the colouring book?
Connor: Realistically the answer is no this is in no way related to our schooling.
Q: Are people offended?
Connor: No, when we first came up with the idea we ran it by people to see if there was interest and for the most part it was laughter followed by a request to see some examples. There was one person who said, “Oh that’s a fun idea, not for me.”
Chris: And I voiced my concerns, I don’t want people to be offended by it.
Q: What’s the funniest response you’ve had to these colouring books?
Connor: At a family dinner my grandma, upon finding out this was project said bluntly, “Oh, so you’re into porn now,” and that was very uncomfortable.
Q: Do you have any plans to expand and create colouring books of other adult things?
Connor: To be honest with you, the idea of the title Cockadoodles 2 is pretty exciting cause it’s very close to cockadoodle doo so if this goes well we might make a second one just for the pun.
Chris: It all hinges on how well this does, but I’d certainly like to branch out and make more.
Q: What does your family think of these colouring books?
Connor: Both my parents think it’s funny, but neither of them are particularly excited about the content, I think they get the opportunity.
Chris: I’ll tell my dad if it raises enough money.
Q: What was the hardest part of creating it and actually making it sell?
Connor: There’s a fine line between dicks on a page and pornography and we wanted to basically make it a colouring book about dick jokes so I think the hardest part was figuring out every single page and how to make them different but all the same because obviously they all have the same theme.
Q: Do you have any tips for students who are looking at starting a business or releasing a product of their own?
Chris: My advice would be look at Shia LaBeouf’s example and just do it. I tend to over think a lot of things and see a lot of potential issues with it and I think that keeps me personally from doing a lot of stuff.
Connor: We’ve known each other since high school so that friendship goes back over 10 years, but I’m more, “let’s just do it and see what happens.” Whereas Chris is more reserved and more methodical about it. So there’s certain things that we bring to the table that work well together, but there are enough differences that require us to make compromises which I think it really important.
Their book is available to buy online at Indiegogo.
