ANOTHER EXCITING GLIMPSE INTO THE WORLD OF CARTOONING

Greetings all!

Once again I've decided to pull back the curtain and give you a peek into the mysterious world of cartooning! This journey is not for the faint of heart, so those with delicate constitutions should turn back now. As for the rest of you, remember, you've been warned!

Anyway, what I thought I'd do today was show you the entire process I used to bring a recent cartoon from idea to finished art.

Okay, first the idea. To make a long story short I was watching T.V.when our yorkie, Logan, went into full wolverine mode and attacked our german shepherd, Ranger, who was getting on his nerves. This got me thinking about small dogs and how they tend to think of themselves as the alpha males, and, lo and behold, a cartoon idea was born.

Next came the rough sketch.

I always keep a pad of paper in my living room so I can sketch out any ideas that may pop into my head. The drawing on the left was the rough that I did that night (as you can see it was done on the bottom of a page that I had previously been drawing on, thus the figures at the top). The next day I did a cleaner version of the rough (seen on the right). Astute observers will notice that I chose to draw a wiener dog instead of a yorkie - the reason for the change of breeds is simple: yorkies are really furry, and furry things are a pain in the ass to draw. NOW GET OFF MY BACK!

I wasn't happy with the look of the dog so I played around with the image on a scrap piece of paper until I found one that worked for me (indicated by the pointing hand). You can see on the same piece of paper a reworking of the female character, which was used in the second rough seen above.

Note the lake in the painting, which looks like a deformed pancake.

Using the second rough and the new dog drawing I did the inked version using a brush pen and a light box. I tend to make quite a few mistakes at this stage. In the bad ol' days I would have fixed the errors with great big gobs of white-out, but in these modern times I make my corrections in Photoshop. (As you can see I indicate my screw-ups with a small arrow so I don't miss any.) The next step is to scan the drawing and drop it into Photoshop where I clean it up. I then add the border and punchline. This is the result:

TA-DA!

 

 

The final step is to add some colour and, voila, a new cartoon is born!

 



Nothing left now but to send it out into the world, then sit back and brace myself for the soul crushing rejection letters.

Well, I hope you enjoyed today's post. See you next time!

UPDATE: I was looking over this post when I realized that the deformed pancake lake can still be seen in the cleaned up finished line art. This is because at some point I decided to keep it, but in the colouring stage decided it had to go. What can I say - I'm a bit of a flake.

GILLIGAN!!!!

Oh, the much maligned desert island cartoon, so cliché and so unloved, singled out in submission guidelines as the one cartoon type editors do not want to see, and yet I don't know a single cartoonist who doesn't have at least one in their body of work. Why? What's the allure? Quite simply, they're fun to do! In fact, I did one today, and here it is:

 

I have no idea how many of these things I've produced over the years, but it's quite a few, so I thought, hey, why not share a few more with you good folks?

 

 

 



This cartoon was described as a deformed frog in space sitting on a potato.

 

 

 



Well, that's it for now. Maybe one day I'll treat you to a series of cartoons featuring a guy crawling on his hands and knees through the desert. 'Til then...

Later, people.


EXCITING UPDATE: Okay, that may be overstating things a bit, but I did come across this short interview with Bob Mankoff ( Cartoon Editor for The New Yorker ) about - of all things - desert island cartoons! You can find it here.

 

I SEE DEAD PEOPLE...

When putting together features for my original Fortune St. web site I wanted to offer something different from the usual galleries of cartoons and illustrations, something you probably wouldn't find at other sites. One such was feature was...

which, despite the name, had nothing to do with zombies, but was a gallery of cartoons about well known individuals who had cashed in their chips (because, you know, nothing says "funny" like a dead celebrity). These are not to be confused with cartoons drawn to commemorate the passing of someone in the public eye - rather, those depicted in the cartoons were very much alive when I drew them, then shuffled off this mortal coil sometime later. 

Morbid, I know, but it was something different.

Anyway, thought I'd share some of those cartoons with you now, because, well, I'm just that kind of guy.



 I did this cartoon back when Siskel and Ebert were the hosts of Sneak Previews on PBS. They had that whole bickering-like-an-old-married-couple thing going on, and were well known for their thumbs up / thumbs down rating system, so I had Ebert cheating on Siskel by thumb-wrestling with another well known critic at the time, Gene Shalit.

Jerry Falwell, for those who are unfamiliar with the man, was the founder of a Christian lobby group known as The Moral Majority. I generally ignored what these yahoos were up to, but when ol' Jerry came out and accused Tinky Winky (one of the Teletubbies) of being gay, well, that was too good to pass up.



 

I did this cartoon when Charles Schulz, probably the most successful cartoonist to ever hold a pen, announced his retirement. Sadly he died soon after. I could have changed the headline on the newspaper to read Charles Schulz Dies, but it just didn't seem right.

 

 

Ha ha... Mr. Roger's Neighbor hoods... still cracks me up.

 



 

I really liked Carl Sagan - his PBS show, Cosmos, remains one of my favourite science programs (I even own the book!). I would like to think he would have found this cartoon funny.

 

 Well, that's it. Sorry if the formatting of the material is a bit wonky - Blogger started screwing up on me near the end and I couldn't be bothered to start over.

 

Enjoy the weekend everybody!

 

 

 

DAMN YOU, WINTER, YOU WIN THIS ROUND!

Well, it was my intention to get started on a new cartoon this morning, but nature had other ideas. It just won't stop freakin' snowing!!! Not a lot, mind you, but the wind is having a field day blowing it into waist-high drifts in my driveway. If we hoped to ever leave this place before the spring thaw something had to be done, so my lovely daughter, Sarah, and I went out and spent a few hours clearing it away. I guess that's par for the course when you live in Canada, but it's still a royal pain in the ass!

Here's the truth about Canadians and winter - the common belief is that we Canucks are a hardy breed who laugh in the face of blizzards and freezing temperatures that would cripple a city in other countries, but in reality there are only three types of people who enjoy this weather: kids, skiers, and the mentally deranged.

Oh, and my dog - my dog loves the snow.

And so that brings me to today's cartoons. These were done for the good folks at BigGameHunt.net, though the second one, featuring the snowman, never made it onto the site for some reason, so I guess that makes this a WORLD EXCLUSIVE!!!
(Try to contain your excitement.)

Anyway, on with the show!

Well, that's it for today. I'm off to get started on that cartoon. (Haha, just kidding - I'm going to make a coffee and then sit here on the computer until the city plow pushes a big mound of snow across the front of my driveway and I have to go shovel again - God, I hate winter.)

Later, people.

THE POPE HAS LEFT THE BUILDING

Unless I'm mistaken today's the day that Pope Benedict XVI tells Almighty God and 2 billion Catholics to take this job and shove it. He will wear his funny hat for the last time, and while I am not a Catholic, I find this sad for a personal reason: I find him very easy to draw.

The thing is, I suck at doing caricatures. If the need arises I can generally get the job done, but it's a struggle. But Pope Ben was a Godsend! (See what I did there?) Let's face it, we're not talking about a particularly attractive man, and when it comes to drawing caricatures, for me, the uglier the better.

Which brings me to today's cartoon. In the reign of Pope John Paul II I did a cartoon which still remains one of my personal favourites. Here it is:

 

I still think this is one of my best cartoons, but it has one glaring flaw - my caricature of Pope John Paul. If he wasn't being identified as the Pope in the word balloon you'd probably think he was just a friendly asian man!

 

Anyway, when Pope Ben came on the scene I decided to update the cartoon, and this is the result:

 

 

 

Now, maybe that's not the best caricature anyone's done of this guy, but I'm pretty pleased with it, and it's a big improvement over my John Paul drawing. Plus it took no time at all to get it right!

 

And so I bid a fond farewell to Pope Benedict and his funny face - I wish him all the best as he returns to life as plain old Joe Ratzinger. Here's hoping your replacement has a face only the virgin mother can love.

 

Later, people.

 

 

 



 

 

A GLIMPSE INTO THE EXCITING WORLD OF CARTOONING!

Hey there... It happens on occasion that I'll come up with multiple punchlines for the same cartoon image - this isn't all that unusual and usually results in one punchline being scrapped in favour of another. What is unusual, at least for me, is coming up with two or three punchlines for a single image and liking each one equally. Take the first cartoon I published on this blog:

 

 

This is actually the third version of the cartoon. The first version was this one:

 

 

 

Others might disagree but I think a gorilla filling up on his own feces before a dinner date is comedy gold! That said, even while I was drawing this one up I knew the market for it was rather limited. I no sooner put it to bed when I came up with the second punchline:

 

 

 

Not exactly cutting edge humour, I know, but I still found it funny and, on the plus side, the gag would appeal to a broader audience.

 

The third and (hopefully) final version came about when I was hunting around for ideas for Valentine's Day cards, which is what it evenually became.

 

I really have mixed feelings when things like this happen. I can't help feeling like I'm cheating, milking several gags from a single drawing - on the other hand, it wouldn't make much sense to draw three different gorillas dining with three different women and talking to three different waiters, now would it?

 

Well, that's it for today. I'm off to play Portal 2.

 

'Til next time...

 

 





HAPPY PRESIDENT'S DAY

Hey all... So, it's President's Day in the good ol' U.S. of A. Being Canadian I have no idea what people do to celebrate the occasion. Do you get the day off, or is it like Arbor Day? I haven't got a clue. But, fear not, I didn't let my ignorance stop me from drawing a President's Day cartoon! I did this one for BigGameHunt.net.

 

 

Here's a fun fact: I originally had the deer dressed as Lincoln, but then I thought, considering the whole assassination thing, that would be in poor taste, so I switched to George Washington.

 

Anyway, hope everyone has a great President's Day! Later, people!

SUNDAY FUN DAY!

Hey kids, it's SUNDAY FUN DAY!! (Don't you hate when someone makes up a stupid rhyme in a lame attempt to be clever? Yeah, me too.) Anyway, I thought, this being the Lord's Day and all, I'd drop a few religious themed cartoons on ya - nothing that will corrupt your soul and condemn you to hell, but if you're particularly touchy when it comes to religion you may want to skip this post. You’ve been warned.

 

That’s it for SUNDAY FUN DAY! Hope you had a good time. Now you can scurry off to confession, or flagellate yourself, or whatever it is you normally do today.

Later, people!

Shameless book promotion

In my last post I wrote about The New Classics, a book which features cartoons by a great many artists, including yours truely. I figured I might as well continue with the shameless self promotion and mention that I also have an ebook for sale for the Amazon Kindle (I'm trying to prepare a version for other readers, but for now the Kindle is it). It's called Breaking the Scorn Barrier and features 125 original cartoons for $3.00 (that's .024 cents per cartoon!) And don't worry if you don't own a Kindle - Amazon has free downloadable programs that allow you to view the book on any device. Here's a look at the cover:

I'd provide a few sample cartoons but the "look inside" feature is active at Amazon so you can check out a few pages for yourself. Here's the link: Amazon.com

Canadians can download it here: Amazon.ca

United Kingdom go here: Amazon.co.uk

Germans go here: Amazon.de

Later, people!

Cartoons, cartoons, and more cartoons!!

Hey, kids, you like cartoons? Well, who doesn't?! Recently I was pleased to be part of a new book put out by Ink Bottle Syndicate. The book is called The New Classics and can be purchased on-line at Createspace. Here's a look at the cover:

 

The book is jam packed with great cartoons by some of the best cartoonists working today. Again, I can't provide samples of other people's work, but here are a few of mine that you'll find inside.

 

This is my first experience with a print on demand service like Createspace and I must say, I'm quite impressed with the quality of the book. Definitely worth picking up if you're a true fan of cartoons. Enjoy!

 

 

 

Valentine's Day

Yesterday I posted a Valentine's Day card I did for the good folks at Nobleworks Cards - today I present you with a link to a Valentine's Day cartoon I did for BigGameHunt.net. I've been doing a weekly cartoon for BGH for a few years now and you can find them all in the site's cartoon archive (177 at last count). Here are a few samples of what you'll find.

 

They also have some great cartoons by Jerry King and my good friend, Geoff Hassing. I don't have permission to post any samples of their work so you'll just have to discover them for yourselves at BGH.

Kicked to the curb by my server

Hey all... so, my server has decided to shut down its web hosting, which has left me adrift in cyber space. Please bear with me as I attempt to reestablish my web presence. In the meantime, here's a Valentine's Card I did for Nobleworks Cards.