So Tiny Titans’ Art Baltazar lives like right by me. I found out in a Trib article on him.
Gotta drop him a line and say hello.
Category: Cartoonists
Mike Lynch at the Bunny Bash
Mike Lynch has a great bunch of pics from last week’s Bunny Bash. Go check out the party-goers and the Hoest-ess with the most-est!
Cartoonists I Admire – Clay Bennett
One of the things I love most about Clay Bennett is how deceptively simple his cartoons are. I think another editorial cartoonist would have beaten you over the head with gaudy art and lazy labels, but Bennett is beautifully, quietly devastating, and you just have to admire that.
Technorati Tags: andertoons, cartoon, cartoonist, cartoons, comics
Cartoonists Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Knight
So recently Keith Knight posts this after crashing the NCS cocktail party:
Having been a member of the NCS, and having not renewed my membership, I agreed with pretty much everything Keith said.
Daryl Cagle responded and had some good, reasonable things to say.
Then the whole thing blew up at The Daily Cartoonist with the usual suspects calling each other names and blah blah blah blah blah…
*Sigh*
I was going to put a whole lengthy response together, but then decided I couldn’t put it better than Ted Rall:
I can understand why cartoonists who are pros in every respect other than earning most of their income via cartooning would feel offended at not qualifying under NCS admission rules. Professionalism is like porn–you know it when you see it. And of course many well-paid pro cartoonists do really crappy work.
On the other hand, if a group isn’t interested in having you as a member, why would you want to join?
And then on the third hand (I’m an alien), it’s easier to join an existing organization and/or ask it to modernize than to start a new one from scratch.
I’ve long wondered why NCS doesn’t seem interested in becoming more than an annual drinking society for wealthy cartoonists. But it seems to me that the loss is really theirs, not the cartoonists they’re excluding. They’re like newspapers 20 years ago. They’re going to turn around someday soon and wonder why they’re going under. And it’s going to be because they decided, over and over, to reject the future and wallow in irrelevance.
Dead on, Ted. Dead on.
Technorati Tags: Andertoons, cartoon, cartoonists, cartoons, NCS, comics
“Fillmore” Cartoonist “Lucky to Have a Day Job”
Mallard Fillmore’s Bruce Tinsley…
…has no illusions about where the cartooning industry is headed.
“I don’t know how many cartoonists are still going to have jobs in the next few years,†he says. “But I have a son who’s 11 and wants to be a cartoonist, and I tell him, you better learn all this computer stuff, because the online world is booming and it’s the future. I’ve talked to more bloggers in the last few months than I have in my entire life.â€
OK, yes, you have to know all of the “computer stuff,” but I think more aspiring cartoonists could benefit more from a basic business education.
Know some basic accounting. Get some phone chops. Read a book or two about selling. Because the days of being able to let someone else take care of the business end of things for you are pretty much gone, and frankly, I wouldn’t have it any other way.
Hat tip to the WSJ’s Speakeasy.
Technorati Tags: andertoons, business, cartoon, cartoonist, cartoons, comics