47 Reasons I Didn't Become A Cartoonist: Part 7

Animal Inadequacies

Creating cartoons about misfit animals as a cry for help concerning my own social inadequacies? Nah...

I'm trying to figure out what I was going for in the partially erased version of this one. It looks like he's spitting out the ant...maybe an anteater that doesn't like ants?

Thanks to his fin implant, Bruce is finally able to strike fear into the hearts of innocent swimmers.

"How embrassing"?

At least my mispellings are consistent. :P

Where does a giant octopus get an enormous fountain pen? Where does he keep his inkwell?

Character animation in Flash

One of the sites I visit regularly, Cold Hard Flash, posted links to a bunch of Flash tutorials a couple months ago. This past weekend, I finally got around to watching one that sounded particularly interesting: Drawing and Animating a Character in Macromedia Flash MX 2004. It's an hour long video and I HIGHLY recommend it. Good advice on how to quickly and easily translate your physical pencil sketch into well formed shapes that aren't bogged down with too many points. Tips on keeping file sizes down. Demonstrations of some common moves, including some 2d moves that make your character look 3d.

47 Reasons I Didn't Become A Cartoonist: Part 6

Grab bag!

Today's batch takes us just over halfway through the journey. I know, I know...when will the fun ever start?

Anyways, here's a small group that didn't really fit neatly into a category.

"Benjerman Franklain"? Is that supposed to be a joke, or just really bad spelling? I do like that you can see the first attempt with the second having more weight and movement to the drawing.

The furnace is only lit every other day, so he has a fighting chance.

Observational humor at it's finest...

Flash doodler

When I did my last big bunch of scanning, I included a few sketches that I've been wanting to flesh out with in Flash. Last night I tried to do just that using bezier curves...which turned out to be slow, tedious, and poor quality. So I decided to break out my dusty old Wacom tablet to see what results it could give me. The below grew out of one of my doodles and I'm quite pleased with it. :)

47 Reasons I Didn't Become A Cartoonist: Part 5

Current events

I'm sorry. Today's introduction is not in service. Please check the number and then dial again. But in the meantime, please enjoy these pretty pictures.

Editorial cartoon crutch #1 - the economy! But why is Baja part of the US? Perhaps it's yet another display of my mad divination skillz. After the village idiot declares himself king, he'll want to start expanding his empire...

Sports? Sports? Eww...I feel dirty. But at least I can pretty much guarantee I didn't watch that game.

The world's smallest man meets a very tall basketball player. Poor choice of title...Mishu and Kareem would have matched their locations on the page. That's it. I'm fired.

The name...

Not that you asked, but here's where the blog's name came from. I believe Angie and I were having breakfast at Cyndi's. Before ordering, I had to run to the bathroom. While telling Angie what I wanted, I hadn't fully decided and told her I'd have eggs...in some format. It's one of those phrases I found funny enough to write down. Stuff like "Well buckle my plughole" or "scientorfically proven". Not necessarily my own creations...but stuff worthy of being saved for the ages. If I come across some more, I'll be sure to post them.

47 Reasons I Didn't Become A Cartoonist: Part 4

Because the future is where we'll be spending the rest of our lives

What stirring insights did my 10-year old self have into the future? It seems that many species have died out and we've had to maintain the delicate balance of nature with robotic replacements. I might actually end up being right for once...

This one's already come true...I'm a prophet! Ok, I'll give you that it looks nothing like the Sony Aibo. In fact the shape of head came from the Star Destroyer on my Dynamite magazine poster. But that's not important. Let's focus on my obvious gift of divination.

Oh! And there's another odd thing on this one. I erased my signature in the lower left corner and replaced it with the one in the electricity over the dog's head. This happens on several other cartoons too. For some reason I got into incorporating my signature into the background of the drawing. I'm not sure where I picked this up. I'd love to say it was Al Hirschfeld, but I'd be a bald faced liar... it's probably from someone in Mad Magazine.

Environmentally conscious? Opposites day? Perhaps forseeing it's temporal importance in the Back to the Future Trilogy? How the hell should I know...I've got divination, not memory.

It's a biotech creature used to patrol our waters to protect us from the Atlanteans after their attack on...ooh. Perhaps I've said too much.

It looks like my first attempt had him as a jaunty mechanical man with arms and legs...I guess he didn't look robotic enough. Now he has wheels and tools for hands. That's what he gets for being jaunty!

The original design spec clearly called for 8 legs, but they had to cut back to 6 to keep production costs down.

And another incorporated signature...so subtle you hardly even notice it.

Robot fleas? I give up.

I broke my blog!

In playing around tonight I somehow eliminated my ability to publish my template. This is also keeping my comments from incrementing. It seems to be a problem logging into my FTP site. I may have to call speakeasy customer service tomorrow to see why I can't get on. :P

Oh well...at least I broke my blog instead of Angie's.

UPDATE: 8/20 5:31pm
Yay! Speakeasy reset the password for my shell account and all is right with the world. I'll post a bigger batch of images to make up for not posting last night. :P

47 Reasons I Didn't Become A Cartoonist: Part 3

Politics...why did it have to be politics?

I've got one for each of the major players in the 1980 presidential election.

Jimmy Carter - Make fun of his big teeth and smile...check. Damn! So much other well trodden ground left unvisited. And why oh why didn't I do something with everyone's favorite presidential brother, Billy!

Ronald Reagan - I was only 10, but I was well aware that Reagan was a doddering old fool. I'm curious...does this one actually make sense to anyone?

John Anderson - Ever the iconoclast, I was a John Anderson supporter. I had a button and everything. Unfortunately I'm at a loss for why I liked John Anderson...or what his stance was. Likely it was just the first major election where I was old enough to understand what was going on.

Oh...and more nostril fixation. Noses have 2 holes in them, so OF COURSE I have to draw both of them. It's a law. You can look it up.

Easy Bake Office™

While the air conditioning in my building has done a fine job holding back the recent heat wave...it met it's match today. I had my blinds open a little and that was all the invitation that Heat Miser needed to leave me suffering in a pool of sweat. Fortunately the small difference between mostly closed and totally closed was enough to even the balance. But for a while, I really considered going back on my promise of not installing some elaborate contraption to funnel all the AC from Libby's office into mine while she's on vacation. ;)

After seeing an office prank photo where everything was wrapped in aluminum foil, I had been considering going with mylar wallpaper in the office for The Factory feeling. I now see that would have been a big mistake. Twinkie big.

I'm not going on a picnic with my father.

I was talking to the old man a few weeks ago about his latest obsession, Chicago style hot dogs. So I got to hear in detail about what makes this type of dog special. A natural casing all-beef dog on a poppyseed bun, with mustard, celery salt, neon green relish, onions, tomato wedges, and a pickle spear. I'll spare you the details about the particular companies in Chicago producing these products and Dad's attempts to add them to his stockpile.

Of course he's done a lot of research into hot dogs joints in Western Washington. After ratting off a long list, he paused to note that the Cyberdog in Pioneer Square serves a veggie dog...and that he didn't understand that. I told him they're actually pretty good. He continued that a veggie dog makes as much sense as an all-beef watermelon.

I'm not making this up...I swear. He really is that weird. But damn if that isn't one of the funniest mental pictures I've had in a while. I just see bright red hamburger spilling out of a big green watermelon. I've actually toyed with the idea of doing a photo shoot to preseve that image for posterity. Anyone up for burgers with a hint of watermelon?

UPDATE - 8/18 11:38am
This morning Libby (my fabulous boss who's currently enjoying a week of leisure and Oprah) read this entry and couldn't resist putting this together. Now that I see it, I think its even more disturbing. It's the future of genetically engineered food.

47 Reasons I Didn't Become A Cartoonist: Part 2

World's biggest and best

Ah, the tried and true comedy of saying something is the opposite of what appears. Such a simple premise but I still couldn't find the mark...hence the World's Biggest Nose actually being big.

By looking at this and the deeply unfortunate self portrait one might think I had some sort fascination with nostrils. But you'd be wrong.

 

This is Harold. He shows up in lots of my drawings of this era. Sometimes he's a person, sometimes he's a dinosaur...but mostly he's just a head (something I've long been guilty of). This illustration style stuck with me for quite a long time...though I'm really not sure why. Even more puzzling is why I found this funny. I was a weird kid.

 

I blame Johnny Hart.

 

47 Reasons I Didn't Become A Cartoonist: Part 1

Local humor

Where better for a budding young cartoonist to start, but with what he's exposed to every day in the local media?

Even an innocent lad of 10 couldn't escape the pervasiveness of the Olympia Brewery's artesian ad campaign. Note the very literal thinking...you'll be seeing many more examples of it. I found out that artesian was a type of well water, so the artesian became a walking well. Damn...why didn't I do something for Rainier?

 

Did anyone ever hear about the volcanic eruption in Washington? I know it's kinda local and obscure, but I was obsessed with the Mt. St. Helens eruptions in 1980. I had t-shirts, ash and pumice, photos, and a mountain of newspaper articles. So of course it was perfect fodder for my sparkling wit.

 

Ok...this one isn't as bad as most. And then there's the matter of the signature with the swoopy bits. Hey, if it's good enough for John Hancock...

 

I like the burping St. Helens. And someone really should have washed my mouth out with soap for such harsh language! Gosh!

 

Amid the volcano hoopla the owner of the Spirit Lake Lodge, a stubborn 80-something named Harry S. Truman, became a bit of a celebrity for refusing to leave the mountain. He and his lodge now rest about 150 feet beneath the surface of Spirit Lake.

This drawing is kind of beat up because I was so proud of it that I dragged it all over the place...oh, and it was on that super-cheap grade school newsprint. The stuff that has all the strength of wet TP.

I remember working from a photo of good old Harry S. Truman and trying really hard to get him right...but why didn't I give him an ear?

 

So these silly tourists were walking downtown and mistook a giant alien cyclops for the Space Needle! Bwaaah haa haa!

Where the hell I've been the last 85 days...

So sorry to drop off the face of the earth...but life's been serving up a whole bunch of crazy-making lately. We refinanced the house. Angie's grandpa died. I quit Microsoft to take a job as a contractor with MSN Games. Angie didn't get the job she really wanted at Blue Nile. She also contracted walking pneumonia and is still suffering the effects two months later. It's been sticky nasty hot and the AC and cold drinks irritate Angie's lungs. MSN Games had an FTE spot come open just prior to my arriving as a contractor and 6 weeks later I was hired back as an FTE. All the work changes made for a mountain of paperwork and tons of insurance fun. I'm sure I've forgotten something...but really, isn't that enough?

And I'm making good on my promise of penance. I've scanned all of my editorial/single panel cartoons from age 10. Each and every one will be shared here over the coming weeks regardless of how embarassing, terrible and often boring they are. :)

I've also FINALLY made the switch from HaloScan comments over to Blogger comments (but now I have to go back and put them back in the archives), changed to a different skin, and updated the links in my sidebar. Alright...enough explanations. Everybody get buckled in...it's likely to be a bumpy ride. ;)