The cartoon blog of Andertoons cartoonist Mark Anderson. He discusses his cartoons, cartooning, comics and, oddly enough, LEGO.
Well, looking back, it was a big improvement over Smart Alex. But, to be fair, if I were the syndicate I woulda passed on this one too.
Oh well. Here’s hoping my next strip is as big a leap forward for me.
Here’s the last of them…
(Click on each strip to see the large versions.)
I’ve been wanting to do a blog for a while where I chronicle what my typical day is like as a stay-at-home dad/cartoonist. The caveat being I didn’t want to plan it.
I didn’t want to decide what I was going to wear, or what I was going to do, or what day might be the most interesting. That just seemed like cheating. So, I shelved it for a while and figured I’d get to it sometime down the road.
Well, yesterday was the day. It hit me early in the morning after the day had begun and I just sort of went with it.
So, here’s a pretty typical day:
5:00 Alarm goes off. Curse daylight, roll out of bed, and put on my sweats.
5:10 Check email and website/blog stats.
5:20 Walk the dog, drink coffee.
5:45 Shower/breakfast/CNN Headline News/more coffee. (I have an idea for a business cartoon involving a souffle in the shower, but the more I think about it the worse it sounds. I scrap it.)
6:30 Wake up Henry. Get a load of diapers washing. (My wife and I use cloth diapers, so I wash a load just about every other day. It’s not as bad as it sounds. You’d be amazed at what you can get used to.)
6:50 My wife heads to work and I feed the boy.
7:05 This is where I officially had the idea to document my entire day. Track down the camera. (I had to sort of backtrack for the first few hours, but it’s pretty right on.)
7:20 Clean up Henry, take the first picture, and get down to play-time.
8:15 Vacuum the house. I try to get my head in cartoon writing mode, but nothing comes.
8:30 Run to the bank to deposit some cartoon checks. Drop by Krispy Kreme and pick up donuts for my father-in-law. (He’s coming over to watch Henry so I can go to the dentist.)
8:58 I sold a cartoon! An industrial sweeper/scrubber company purchases this cartoon for an upcoming presentation.
9:00 More play-time.
9:15 My father-in-law arrives and we both marvel at Henry.
9:35 The dentist. The hygienist asks why I’m taking pictures of myself. I try to explain, but I don’t think she understands.
10:37 Off to Subway to pick up sandwiches for my father-in-law and myself. (I almost always get seafood with lettuce, onion and pickles for those of you playing at home.)
11:00 Chit-chat with father-in-law. Continued marveling at Henry.
11:30 Lunch.
12:00 My father-in-law heads out and Henry and I head outside to, as my Mom puts it, “blow some stink off.”
12:30 Back inside for play-time and stories.
12:55 Henry goes down for his nap and my cartooning day officially begins. I waste some time checking my email and surfing.
1:15 Actually get down to work. I usually write first because that part is the most difficult for me. I’ve gotten a lot better over the years, but there’s still no real method. I sit and think about stuff and try to let my brain run free.
1:35 Everything I’ve written is crap sp far. Here are some examples:
Businessman to other – “I’d love to show you my business model, but the glue isn’t dry yet.”
Worker at auto dent removal place to customer – “Sorry, we don’t do pocketbooks.”
Old man to another – “You know what I miss? Nostalgia.”
Grocery clerk to kangaroo – “Paper or pouch?”
I get up and start to walk around to try and jumpstart my brain.
1:50 I get my first decent idea.
Female snail on couch next to salt shaker remarks under breath to another female snail seated across from her – “I’ll change him.”
1:52 Another decent one.
Owl on couch to psychiatrist – “Anymore I just don’t give a hoot.”
I just need one more idea, but the last one always comes slow. (I try to write as many cartoons as I plan to draw for the day. Today I’ll be doing three.)
2:05 Got it.
Ostrich in emergency room to ostrich with head stuck inside hourglass – “I told you that thing was trouble.”
2:10 Pick out three older gags, get Ed Wood going on the DVD, and sit down and start to sketch my cartoons for the day.
2:25 Sketches went relatively quickly today. I start inking.
2:55 The time I save on sketches I more than made up for in inking. Two cartoons got drawn three times each to get them right. I start shading the final inks.
3:10 Shading is all done and I take a second to check my email.
3:20 Scan in the cartoons, make changes and add captions in Photoshop.
3:30 The mail comes and I resist the urge to jump up and get it.
3:45 All three cartoons are finished and I allow myself to get the mail. (I’m a mail junkie!) There’s nothing good today.
4:00 Get Henry up from his nap and give him a snack.
4:20 Margie comes home and plays with Henry. I get some housework done; the sink in the kitchen gets a good scrubbing.
5:15 Dinner. (Beef stroganoff, Jell-O and some crescent rolls with apple butter. Yum-yum!)
5:55 Upload pictures and get them ready for the blog.
6:40 Dessert!
6:45 Play-time with Henry and Margie
7:15 Margie reads Henry his bedtime stories and I begin blogging in earnest.
9:00 The blog is finished and I’m done for the day.
9:15 Now for some reading and some well-deserved sleep.
Released online, then to DVD for a quick profit in early 2004, this collection of Flash-animated Looney Tunes doesn’t necessarily disappoint, but it’s not very good either.
I’ll give them credit for trying to advance the characters into the modern world. There’s plenty of timely parody and pop-culture ‘in’ jokes, but the writing and performance just doesn’t have that sparkle and dead-on timing that we’ve come to revere in the Looney Tunes of old.
The DVD starts out with seven episodes of Daffy hosting “Mysterious Phenomena of the Unexplained” in which he runs a-fowl of everything from Sasquatch to Shakespeare’s ghost.
These are a nice fit for Daffy and do have some funny moments. I liked the subtle rubber glove donning of Marvin the Martian in “Who Wants to Be a Martian-Aire”, and I could swear that Yosemite Sam is doing a Fat Bastard impression in “Loch Ness Mess.”
But for every decent laugh, there are at least three heavy-handed jokes, flat performances, or nonsensical plot turns that just leave you sort of depressed.
“Twick or Tweety” stands alone and stars Tweety, Sylvester and Witch Hazel in a parody of numerous horror flicks. It’s pretty lame, but I enjoyed watching it just to hear June Foray again. One thing that really bothered me in this episode was Tweety remarking upon having his feathers shaken into the cauldron, “it’s a living.” Were the writers watching a Flintstones marathon that day or something?! Yeesh!
Next comes a series of “Royal Mallard” episodes revolving around a posh building that acts as a background for supposed zaniness. These range from barely serviceable to downright poor; the one bright point being the Escher staircase pizza delivery in “Gone in 30 Minutes”.
There’s a really sad Foghorn/Dog window washing exchange, Bugs and Daffy making it difficult for Elmer to file his efficiency report (no, seriously), and a disturbing one in which Porky calls on Pepe Le Pew’s escort service. (OK, computer dating. But ‘escort service’ is funnier.)
Other shorts include “Island of Dr. Moron”, “Tech Suppork” (which actually made my wife laugh twice), “Satellite Sam” and a couple of seemingly untitled shorts.
The disc wraps things up with the “Planet of the Taz” trilogy in which Duck Dodgers and Porky work their way through the old Planet of the Apes films. Again, there’s one or two funny moments (love the Soylent Green reference), but these largely disappoint.
All in all the animation is better than average for Flash, and while obviously not as lovely as the classic Looney Tunes, works well enough.
But I honestly could have tolerated terrible artwork/animation if the writing was at least decent. To paraphrase Jerry Maguire, show me the funny.
(Quick joke – What did Renee Zellweger say to Bill Cosby? “You had me at Jell-O.”)
Still, I’d prefer more of these pale imitations of the classics to the current Loonatics re-imagining debacle-to-be.
Can I recommend Stranger Than Fiction? No. But if you’re curious and you run across a copy at the library or something, it might be a way to waste ten minutes or so.
OK, not a scintillating Andertoons Cartoon Blog last week. (There. I said it and I’m glad.)
I dunno why exactly, but it was a crazy week and the blog just wasn’t at the top of my list. Hence two, count ’em, two entries about tech issues with the blog itself, a cheesy Halle Berry/Catwoman thing and only a link to a really interesting editorial cartooning article that I still need to finish.
And there was a ton of good stuff to talk about too! The Ted Rall thing, Boondocks…
Anyway, I’m back on track and I should have some good stuff for you this week. Thanks for hanging in there!
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Every so often I get an email from someone who doesn’t understand one of my cartoons.
To be fair, sometimes even I don’t understand some of them. Often I think of them in the shower before my coffee, or at night when I get up to use the bathroom, and by the time I get to actually drawing them a week or so later, even I have to wonder what I was thinking.
But, those cartoons are not infrequently purchased/published, so I’ve pretty much given my brain free reign.
Here are a few that I get asked about a lot:
This one is mainly an art issue I think. For some reason that day I just found it damn impossible to draw chameleons! The joke is supposed to be that one of the chameleons is wearing camouflage to blend in even further. But when you can’t tell what the hell the two main characters are, the joke becomes a lot harder to get.
This Halloween cartoon is sort of a weird one too. The art is pretty good I think; I even looked up the original movie poster for Poltergeist to make sure I got all the details correct. Anyway, the “Bawk Baaaawk…” is supposed to be the “They’re heeeeere…” line from the movie, but maybe that’s too far back in pop culture to be immediately recognizable. Got me. It makes me laugh.
Another cartoon that I spent waaaay too much time on for sort of a lame pun. The idea here is they’re all outside, so no one will get a joke that’s apparently inside. Looking back, this shoulda hit the recycle bin…
Sometimes a cartoonist is really digging deep for subject matter, and this cartoon is the result of perhaps looking too far a field for material. The word ‘orange’ is largely considered to have no words that rhyme with it, and I thought that would really piss poets off.
You’re not missing anything in this cartoon, it’s just really weird. I think I was heavy into some Jack Ziegler at this point and this just sort of popped out.
And finally, this cartoon has caused a lot of folks to scratch their heads. The idea here doesn’t revolve around the fact that it’s the letter ‘g,’ but on the font. The font is Times New Roman (if I remember correctly) and that seems really serious to me. So I guess if a Times New Roman ‘g’ had an agent trying to get him work, it might be hard to perceive that letter as funny.
Whew! It feels good to get some of that off of my chest. I’ll dig a little deeper and see what other stuff I can find later. I’m fairly sure there are more that are confusing, obtuse, and just downright odd. (I think I just wrote my epitaph!)