Cartoon Close-Up – Robert Half

Cartoon Close-Up is a recurring feature where I highlight Andertoons cartoon subscriberscustom cartoon clients, and customers who just buy the occasional cartoon.

Cartoon Close-Up Robert Half Technology Blog

This edition’s answers come from custom cartoon client Clea Badion at Robert Half.

1) Tell me a little about yourself and your job.

I’m a freelance writer, editor and content manager. Currently, I’m a blog manager for Robert Half Technology. I plan, write and edit content for the blog, working closely with the Robert Half Technology brand team. I’ve worked with Robert Half, mostly in a freelance capacity, for almost 15 years. I’ve been fortunate to get regular, interesting work from the company, and being a freelancer gives me a lot of flexibility with my schedule.

2) How do you use your custom cartoons from Andertoons?

IT professionals are our audience, and they’re a group that can be challenging to reach and engage. Our blog content includes career advice for tech professionals and hiring managers, trends impacting the industry and jobs, and suggestions on what programming languages are most in demand and why. The cartoons are a fantastic way to engage this audience in a different way, and they always perform well. Sometimes we post them on their own, but recently we’ve been integrating them into posts on the same topic. They make an otherwise straight-forward post more visually engaging and, of course, funny!

We use the cartoons on social channels, too, and they not only get a lot of engagement, but they also drive traffic to our blog.

3) Please give me an example of how someone has responded to a cartoon.

When we shared a comic on the topic of girls who code, we used the hashtag #ilooklikeanengineer. The woman who started that movement, Isis Anchalee, retweeted it with some kind words and we consequently got massive engagement on the post. It was very cool to make that connection with someone who led a social media movement

4) Which cartoon is your personal favorite?

I have many favorites. This is a recent one created to go with a story about tech nightmares. We posted it around Halloween and I love how it turned out:

Custom Cartoon 1

This one about how hard it is to find .NET developers still makes me laugh. It’s very specific to this audience, obviously, but I think any hiring manager having trouble filling a specific role can relate to it:

Custom Cartoon 3

I also really like this one about things you can’t put on your LinkedIn profile:

Custom Cartoon 2

5) Where online can people find out more about you?

They can check out my LinkedIn profile.

6) Do you have any questions for me?

Yes! How and when did you decide you wanted to create cartoons for a living? Was this your first choice as a career? How do you prepare for a career as a cartoonist?

As a kid I always read the comics and thought it would be pretty much the best job ever. Turns out I was right.

I actually went to school for music and then worked in fastener sales, metal coil distribution, and advertising. It was only after my wife and I knew our first child was on the way that I decided I’d quit my job and try to make a living as a cartoonist full time. It’s a crazy journey.

If you want to know more you can check out my talk at the National Cartoonists Society event last year.

 Thanks so much to Clea for her time and terrific answers!

If you use Andertoons cartoons and would like to be featured here on the blog and in our monthly newsletter, drop me a line!

Cartoon Close-Up – Busey

Cartoon Close-Up is a recurring feature where I highlight Andertoons cartoon subscriberscustom cartoon clients, and customers who just buy the occasional cartoon.

A Cartoon Close-Up – Busey

This edition’s answers come from subscriber Erin Brownlow at Busey.

1) Tell me a little about yourself and your job.

I support Busey’s commercial & cash management sales teams and manage our corporate websites. I love that my job involves doing something a little different every day—research, event planning, writing. . . you name it. I am fluent in in movie quotes, love Excel and have a passion for good grammar.

2) How do you use the cartoons from your Andertoons subscription?

A Cartoon Close-Up – Busey

I use Andertoons in weekly communications to business partners and centers of influence in the communities we serve. They provide some much needed levity to emails about financial topics like rates, fraud warnings, regulations and more.

I also love finding and sharing cartoons with my coworkers. The wide variety ensures I can find something for any situation. I also highly recommend signing up for the Daily Cartoon. It’s nice to open my email first thing in the morning and see something fun amid all the financial newsletters.

3) Please give me an example of how someone has responded to a cartoon.

One recipient told me the cartoon is the main reason she opens my emails, and as a bonus, she sometimes reads the rest of the copy!

4) Which cartoon is your personal favorite?

I absolutely love #6326.

A Cartoon Close-Up – Busey

I think we all have both a loathing and a fear of the reply all button, whether it’s because you receive a million responses to something inane or accidentally hit reply all on something you definitely don’t want to share.

5) Where online can people find out more about you?

Visit our website at busey.com to learn more about how Busey can help you achieve your financial dreams, or link with me directly at https://www.linkedin.com/in/erinbrownlow.

6) Do you have any questions for me?

Just three:

1. What is your name?
2.What is your quest?
3. What is the air-speed velocity of an unladen swallow?

Ok, maybe one more. You can identify Andertoons just by looking at them – they have a very unique style. Do you draw/paint/doodle in other styles just for fun?

Not really. The thing is I’m completely self-taught. Growing up I of course copied a lot of other cartoonists; I used to trace Peanuts and Spider-Man, and I tried really hard to ape Don Martin there for a while. But other than your standard school art classes, I have no formal art education at all.

As a result, my style evolved really slowly over about 20 years or so and I’m just now getting happy with it. So, long story short, I really don’t know any other way to draw, and even if I wanted to it’d probably be another 20 years before I got good at it.

Also:

1. Mark Anderson.

2. To draw cartoons.

3. “If we settle on an intermediate Strouhal value of 0.3: We can estimate the airspeed of the European Swallow to be roughly 11 meters per second (15 beats per second * 0.73 meters per beat).”

Thanks so much to Erin for her time and terrific answers!

If you use Andertoons cartoons and would like to be featured here on the blog and in our monthly newsletter, drop me a line!

(Thanks to to Jonathan Corum for the swallow info!)

Cartoon Close-Up – Austen Marketing & Communications

Cartoon Close-Up is a recurring feature where I highlight Andertoons cartoon subscriberscustom cartoon clients, and customers who just buy the occasional cartoon.

Austen Marketing & Communications

This edition’s answers come from subscriber Dora Cheatham at Austen Marketing & Communications.

1) Tell me a little about yourself and your job.

I’m a Marketing & Business Communications consultant that focuses on brand & business development and marketing communications.

2) How do you use the cartoons from your Andertoons subscription?

I use your cartoons in my blog and LinkedIn posts to illustrate the articles/posts with humor. Plans include to extend use to include them as a daily posts in a Twitter feed.

 I want my posts to be “educational” but I love to laugh and – let’s face it – the world of business can be funny. Your cartoons really hit the nail on the head and I nearly always find something that illustrates the subject matter.  In fact, I always try to have my LinkedIn post appear with one of your cartoons next to it. Here are a couple of the more popular posts:

Help! I need a Better Business Plan!

Marketing for Small Business – 3 Steps to Success

3) Please give me an example of how someone has responded to a cartoon.

I’ve had comments like “I love what you write and your little cartoon man” and “This is great! I love how you broke it up with humor. Although business plans are not a joking matter, a good laugh does help the medicine go down.” (This one appeared under the first article above.)

4) Which cartoon is your personal favorite?

In the scientific world they use the acronym TNTM (too numerous to mention).

As a marketer and former business development manager that attended more sales meetings than I care to remember, I can really relate to 2310…

Cartoon 2310

6106…

Cartoon 6106

6720…

Cartoon 6720

… and 6965.

Cartoon 6965

5) Where online can people find out more about you?

People can find out more about my business at www.austenconsulting.com and me in particular on my LinkedIn profile.

6) Do you have any questions for me?

How long have you loved LEGO?  My brother owns several LEGO stores in Singapore  – I sent him a pic of my Andertoons lego kit – so what if he does have all the other limited editions???

I loved LEGO as a kid, but only delved back into them about 10 years ago when my son started getting into them. It was great timing because since cartooning had become my job, I needed a new hobby so I wasn’t just drawing sun up to sun down.

BTW, if your brother wants to send any of those limited edition sets this way…  (wink wink)

Thanks so much to Dora for her time and terrific answers!

If you use Andertoons cartoons and would like to be featured here on the blog and in our monthly newsletter, drop me a line!

Cartoon Close-Up – Indicator Warehouse

Cartoon Close-Up is a recurring feature where I highlight Andertoons cartoon subscribers, custom cartoon clients, and customers who just buy the occasional cartoon.

Indicator Warehouse

This edition’s answers come from subscriber Adam Halpern at Indicator Warehouse.

1) Tell me a little about yourself and your job.

I’ve always been interested in knowing how things work. Be it machines, social systems, and most of all, people. It’s probably why I feel so at home in the day trading world. It’s a mix of modern technology, economics, human emotion and psychology that swirls up into a waveform shown on a price chart.

2) How do you use the cartoons from your Andertoons subscription?

The cartoons are great additions to articles I write on the blog –

https://www.indicatorwarehouse.com/the-big-picture

I also use them for social marketing –

https://instagram.com/indicatorwarehouse
https://www.flickr.com/photos/indicatorwarehouse
https://www.facebook.com/NinjaIndicators
https://twitter.com/IndicatorWH

3) Please give me an example of how someone has responded to a cartoon.

The cartoons are “Like” magnets on social networks.

4) Which cartoon is your personal favorite?

The personal favorite is the custom cartoon you made for me years ago:

Indicator Warehouse Custom Cartoon

5) Where online can people find out more about you?

www.indicatorwarehouse.com

6) Do you have any questions for me?

Do you ever need help coming up with captions for the cartoons?

When I was a little too busy with custom cartoons a few months back I tried using a writer to help out and give me some more choices. But I found that clients were still mostly choosing the cartoons that I wrote, so I stopped using her and reworked my schedule to allow more time for my own writing.

It’s not always easy, but creating the gags is my favorite part.

Thanks so much to Adam for his time and terrific answers!

If you use Andertoons cartoons and would like to be featured here on the blog and in our monthly newsletter, drop me a line!

Cartoon Close-Up – Worducate SAT

Cartoon Close-Up is a recurring feature where I highlight Andertoons cartoon subscribers, custom cartoon clients, and customers who just buy the occasional cartoon.

Cartoon Close-Up 1

This edition’s answers come from subscriber Jodi at Worducate.com.

1) Tell me a little about yourself and your job.

Jodi has a background in psychology and marketing while Jim has a background in programming and entrepreneurship. We are both currently in the process of developing several educational and gaming iPhone apps. We find it interesting and challenging to keep abreast of new technology.

2) How do you use the cartoons from your Andertoons subscription?

The cartoons from our Andertoons subscription are a great fit for Worducate SAT, our iPhone SAT study app that utilizes synonyms to help students improve their SAT and ACT scores. After studying our synonym cards of SAT vocabulary words, students are directed to a practice section. They have been hard at work learning new vocabulary words, and then they see a fun Andertoons cartoon that lightens the mood.

The Andertoons cartoons add an element of humor and irreverence to our study app, to keep students engaged while they use Worducate SAT to raise their SAT and ACT scores!

Cartoon Close-Up 1

 3) Please give me an example of how someone has responded to a cartoon.

Prior to using your cartoons we tried using motivational stock images, but our test audience described these with comments such as “cheesy” and “not my thing.” As soon as we switched to Andertoon cartoons, we got a much more positive response–and a few laughs! They are a much better fit for our audience of students because they show the humor in the mundane. Studying for the SATs and applying to college can be challenging and stressful. It’s important to take a moment to laugh and enjoy the process.

 4) Which cartoon is your personal favorite?

I love this one! It is so funny and relatable! It also speaks to our desire to be recognized.

Cartoon 6586

 5) Where online can people find out more about you?

People can download Worducate SAT on the Apple iTunes store (our anticipated launch date is September 2015). We are also planning versions of Worducate to help people study for the GREs as well as to expand everyday vocabulary and aid ESL learners. You can contact us through our website, Worducate.com.

 6) Do you have any questions for me?

How does it feel to know that your work puts a smile on people’s faces? 

Aw shucks…

Long answer:

One of the weird things about being a cartoonist is the disconnect between you and the reader. A comedian gets an immediate reaction from an audience, but cartoonists mostly never get to see their work being enjoyed. You just send your cartoons out into the world to fend for themselves and hope for the best.

Occasionally, however, you get to watch someone read a cartoon of yours and it’s both terrifying (during the read) and exhilarating (when they laugh).

Short answer:

Awesome.

Thanks so much to Jodi for her time and terrific answers!

If you use Andertoons cartoons and would like to be featured here on the blog and in our monthly newsletter, drop me a line!