Month: September 2011

Examples of Custom Cartoons

andertoons

Custom cartoons are a large part of my business here at Andertoons, and, of course, there’s a gallery showcasing some examples in the custom cartoon portion of the site, but I wanted to showcase a few examples of work I’ve done for clients and go a little more in depth.

We’ll start with this cartoon that I did for a client that makes software:

custom cartoons example 1

This was a few years back when the idea of cloud computing was just gaining traction. My client actually suggested something very similar and I ended up tweaking it just a bit. The end product was a calendar of software related cartoons that they gave out to their clients as a thank you.

custom cartoons example 2

I did a whole series of custom cartoons for a company that manufactured in-home intercom systems. Every month they’d include it in their newsletter which was targeted at installers and technicians.

My client was great about suggesting topics, especially since I didn’t know a lot about intercoms to begin with, and we came up with some really fun stuff that was quite popular. They had to cut the cartoons after the housing bubble burst and construction went kablooey, but it was fun while it lasted.

custom cartoons example 3

This is a cartoon I did for a company that produces a special type of hospital gown. It not only covers you up (unlike most gowns), but it attaches to a device that pumps in warm air. It’s really neat!

We did a whole series of these and I think I wrote 55 hospital gown jokes that we whittled down to a nice dozen. The color was fun to do, as was the plumber butt.

The next two cartoons are a good example of how a subtle change can make all of the difference to a client.

Take this first one:

custom cartoons example 4

This was done for an online training company. The joke is good, and the scene reads well, but the client was concerned that the person at the computer didn’t look young enough. So I made a few small changes:

custom cartoons example 5

I think they were dead on and I was happy to make the change.

custom cartoons example 6

Another one that a company used in a calendar of custom cartoons. They wanted to have some fun with project planning and flowcharts, and I must admit that, based on my days in corporate America, this rings fairly true. Especially when doughnuts were rumored.

OK, last one:

custom cartoons example 7

This cartoon was for an IT publication targeted at, you guessed it, IT people.

While I have some proficiency in the tech world, I’m certainly no expert, but I suspect that this has happened sometime, somewhere.

Hope you enjoyed a more detailed look at the process, and feel free to check out my custom cartoons section of the the site. Cartoons are great for getting your point across in a novel, fun, and engaging way, as I’m sure my clients for the above cartoons can attest.

Creating Custom Cartoons

andertoons1 Comment

Here’s a short video to show you how I create custom cartoons. Enjoy:

Video Transcript –

Hi, I’m Mark Anderson of Andertoons.com and this is a short video about how I work with clients to create custom cartoons.

We’re going to start here with an example of sort of a generic finished cartoon. I’ll read the caption here for you:

“As you can see, thanks to Product X, sales are through the roof! On a side note, the roofers will be here on Thursday.”

Now I’m going to show you how this cartoon was created in three easy steps: writing, sketches, and of course the final art. Let’s begin with writing.

Writing

The way I start is by asking a client for a few ideas to work with. This can be some words or phrases, perhaps a product or attributes of that product, the company, or perhaps the entire industry.

From there I’ll brainstorm a number of ideas and whittle that down to what I think are the three best, and I will email them over.

From here a client will pick one and often there is a little bit of tweaking to be done here or there. Of course we’re going to work until we get the caption exactly right and exactly what you want, that’s no problem at all.

Once we have that we move on to the sketches.

Sketches

Now for the purpose of this short video I’m just going to show you one pencil sketch to sort of give you the idea of what you would be receiving.

Often I get what the client is looking for on the first try, but if I don’t that’s not a problem, we can go back and fix and change things until you’re happy.

This is the time to make larger changes to the cartoon. So if you want to change a character, or the background, or anything else in the art of the cartoon, this is the time to do it.

We’ll keep working on it until we get it exactly right, and then we’ll move on to the final art.

Final Art

This is where I take our original pencil sketch, and turn it into this, the final cartoon.

As you can see the caption is typeset, the art has been inked and it’s crisp and clear, and we can either do a traditional sophisticated gray ink wash like this, or of course we can do it in color.

Once the final cartoon is approved I will email it over as a large JPEG. It will be 300 DPI.

You can use this in advertising, in your newsletter, in your presentation; lots of great ways to use these cartoons.

So to recap you can get your own custom cartoon in just three easy steps: the writing, the sketch, and the final art. And you end up with a great cartoon customized to your needs that’s engaging, memorable, and, of course, easy to share.

Thanks so much for watching this, and feel free to contact me at Andertoons.com for a reasonable quote on your very own custom cartoon.

Adventure Hero Spider-Man

andertoons

adventure hero spiderman

While checking my Flickr stats recently I noticed that this old set (2006!) of my weird Spider-man Adventure Hero toy pics had recently gotten insane amounts of views. (Thanks, io9!)

So in case you missed them five years ago, or again just a few days ago, you really owe it to yourself to see Spider-Man dressing up as an archer, a fisherman, and a bug catcher.

Enjoy!