Category: Cartooning

Editor vs. Art Director

andertoons4 Comments

So I’m considering a postcard campaign featuring my cartoons. I’d like to try to drum up some new business with magazines that don’t currently run cartoons.

I have my mailing list service at the ready, but I’m wondering who I should send these to. Editors? Art Directors? Both?!

Cartoons are often seen as content, but are often perceived as art as well.

So, all you artists and graphic designers out there, whatcha think?

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My Gag Reflex

andertoons6 Comments

One of the disturbing things about being a cartoonist is you never really stop being on the lookout for gags.

Often my wife and I will be discussing our days and she’ll notice I’m drifting off into what she calls “cartoon land.” What’s happened is she’s said something that triggered my joke reflex (not to be confused with joke reflux, which I’m glad to say there’s now medication for), and I’m working out the joke.

I’m sure it’s gotta be annoying, but, God love ‘er, she puts up with it.

Anyway, the other day I was talking with someone about a recent death. They said that the doctor had given the person three months to live.

And my mind was off…

Doctor holding shotgun to patient – “I said you had three months to live, and, by God, I meant it.”

Kinda macabre, and I feel weird about the circumstances in which it came about, but I like the gag.

Welcome to the inside of my weird little noggin.

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Chocolate Cartoon – Part 4

andertoons7 Comments

OK, I think this is the final final version. (Let’s hope!)

Chocolate-Cartoon-2



I’m gonna consider this finished. But I really enjoyed all of the input!

Of course, “cartooning by committee” like this wouldn’t be prudent normally, but it was a lot of fun to see so many different ideas!

While this is the last of the design/art phase blogs, this is by no means the end of the blogs about this. Stay tuned!



And thanks again everyone!

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Things I Hate To Draw

andertoons13 Comments

Horse 2A

I like to draw cartoons. And it’s a good thing, because it’s my bread and butter.

But even someone who loves to draw, and does a fair amount of it, finds some subjects they just hate.

So here’s the stuff I hate drawing in cartoons:

  1. Horses – Mine always look like sausages with stick legs. Seriously. If I ever get a horse I’m going to name it bratwurst.
  2. Orchestras – I used to be a musician, so I get lost in the details. Plus there’s a crapload to draw. If I did these more often I’d really have to do some research to see how other cartoons have done it.
  3. Cars – I always have to go out to the driveway, take a picture of the car, and work from that. And it still looks awful. Cars today are just so roundy. Oh for the days when cars were either boxy or jet-inspired.
  4. Wolves – It’s had to find the right balance between a dog, and Wile E. Coyote.
  5. Bananas – You have to get the curves and straight lines just right, or it looks like one of my horses without the stick legs. And that little stem portion is a bugger too.
  6. Skeletons – I can do it, and make it look pretty good, but it’s gotta be a really killer skeleton joke to justify the time. I guess you could say they’re the bone of my existence. (But you shouldn’t.)
  7. Cell phones – It used to be you could show that little nub of an antenna, or the open flip phone, but now it’s difficult to tell if your character is talking into an iPhone or a bar of soap.

I’m sure there’s more, but that’s some of the worst.

There’s plenty of artists that read this blog. What about you guys? What do you hate to draw?

Obsessing on Cartoon Captions

andertoons8 Comments

When I caption my cartoons in Photoshop, one of the things I tend to obsess on is how the words work underneath the graphic.

Here’s a recent cartoon, and you can see initially I had the word “very” on a different line than the word “impressive.”

Caption

I didn’t like the way that flowed, so I changed the caption so the two were on the same line.

Caption1

But then the caption looked too large, and I didn’t like the shape of the caption, so I changed it to this:

Caption2

It might be better with “potty-trained” on the second line, but I always like the topmost line to be the largest, so I left it like this.

To be honest, I have no idea if any of this makes any difference whatsoever in the reading of the cartoon, but I tend to sweat the small stuff, and I’m fine with that.

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