On Holidays....

Day 49

 

Merry Everything everyone.

 

 

Day 48

 

It's Christmas Eve and so...

Andrea thinks this one isn't clear because of the movie called Reindeer Games. She thought I was parodying the Hunger Games movie and the Reindeer Games movie and thusly found this stupid. When we discussed that I was in fact making fun of the classic Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer song and the Hunger Games movie it made much more sense to her. What is your experience? Did you have that same thought process?

Day 47

 

This is the cartoon that started them all. Well, relatively speaking. This is the cartoon idea I had that made me think, "Hey maybe I can be a professional cartoonist. I even had the joy of passing a copy of this on to the wonderful magical couple David and Abi Haines. It was really fun to give a cartoon to someone who really enjoyed it and I imagine the joy of syndication would be ten fold. Or at least there would be a lot more money.

Day 46

 

               This is just cute and could very well live on the front of a cheesy greeting card. Oh wait! That's why I drew it! Muah hahaha! Notice the nice clean backround line? Thanks Czar!

Day 45

 

As you might have noticed I am working on an "Optimist" theme here. You may have also noticed that the third panel is slightly larger than the other ones. I need to spend way more time with a ruler. I'd prefer a Czar but this 12 inch straight edge will do...

Day 44

I've been informed that this is not funny. For so many reasons. Three main ones: 1. all I've done is broken up a word. 2. I telegraphed said broken up word by using a hyphen in the text and 3. I didn't do anything witty with said broken up word other than point out the fact that I did indeed break it up. I am willing to bet though, if this panel appeared in a Far Side strip, someone, somewhere would cut it out and put it on their fridge. Probably an eye doctor with no sense or humour or more likely the equally humourless mother of the eye doctor who clips and and sends anything dealing with glasses to her son. 

Day 43

 

Again I felt like I wanted to explore how these letter characters relate with one another and what jobs they might have in their world. "I" had to work in a stereotypical girls diary today and the two "l"s and the "o" are actually "I"s buddys "A",'E", and "U" that were transformed into l.o.l by their shared mirth.
P.S I've been at sea for three days now and I'm starting to smell like it.

Day 42

 

 

I wanted to play with acronyms and their meaning. I spent an awfully long time trying to draw O.B.G.Y.N so it looked like a pregnant woman giving birth. I didn't want to add features or alter the letters, just to rotate and position them. It didn't really work. But it got me thinking about other acronym. This is Y.O.L.O or You Only Live Once. It's become a pretty big meme with today's youth. Also the little squares are the periods from the acronym. 

Day 41

 

This weeks theme is "Keep posting cartoons every day even though your at sea and Internet less". It's a theme I've tackled before and I feel up to the challenge. This time I feel slightly less guilty because the cartoons I am pre-uploading for this week are all cartoons I've drawn since beginning the ABC's project and with the intention of using them as blog filler while I am away at work. I chose this one to start the week because hopefully I am doing something similar right now. As you read this I am hopefully sunning myself somewhere in the Bahamas. Truthfully I am probably in my cabin battling sea sickness and drawing more cartoons. What can I say, I'm a man obsessed. 

Day 40

 

And the end of the week of hack cartoons ends with of course, a visual pun. Probably the thing that cartoons (myself included) do the most. Today I leave for another cruise ship but I leave you in the competent hands of Blogger and her mysterious postings....

Day 39

 

The ultimate of hack cartoon ideas: "The fill-in-your-own caption" cartoon. Probably the bedrock of modern cartooning and a brilliant ploy on the part of professional cartoonists. It's the self serve frozen yogurt stand of art. People are actually happy to come in and do your work for you. They get excited about it. It's really fun and there is a whole culture of cartoon caption submitting. Look how popular the New Yorker's cartoon caption contest is. It's unbelievable. So Day 39 is a caption contest. The winner will receive the original artwork, framed and delivered because I am, obviously, at the same level of the New Yorker and should hold myself to the same standards. Fire away!

Day 38

Today I tackled the deserted desert island. A favourite among cartoonists, especially in the 50's and 60's. I tried to stay true to my theme of letters and am happy with the results. This cartoon has some problems in that it isn't very polished. However, I am fully aware that it is a feat in and of itself to publish a new cartoon everyday and they all can't be winners.

Day 37

 

In the continuation of hack cartoon ideas I have my version of the therapist and client stereotype. I couldn't find any inspiration in the ABC's so I switched to inanimate objects mostly because I am awful at drawing cartoon people. This cartoon was heavily edited in microsoft paint because I had drawn in a worse punchline and then digitally erased it to add this one but then the expression on the chaise lounge didn't fit anymore so I altered that as well. Technology is cool and I can see why most modern panel cartoonists have switched to digital creation.

Day 36

Day 36 includes for the first time....typed text! Thanks microsoft paint for letting me write and re write the line without having to re draw the photo because I made a mistake! Whoopie. What an advance and look how much more professional it looks. I like it. For my Canadian and European readers: "It says pardon out dust, we're expanind. Grand re-opening 13/12/12" 

Day 35

Today's theme and hack cartoon premise was/is Hell. If I were a letter this is what I imagine Hell would be like. The best part of the Heaven and Hell cartoons, Days 34 and 35, has been the back round characters. In the Heaven cartoon there is a third letter angel playing the harp on a cloud. That letter is an "H" for harpist. Today's has little devil "D"s. For some reason both cartoons feature the letter "A". No reason. But perhaps I'd be a better cartoonist if there were...

Day 34

 

This week theme is "Tired, cliched, and hack premises". The world of cartooning, especially single panel "gag" cartoons is full of rich tradition and standards. This includes things like the therapists couch, heaven, hell, and (for a brief period in the 50's) a dog bringing slippers to his "master". These stock images have become standards and are repeated so much there are even jokes about their commonness. The New Yorker, according to cartoonist lore, won't even take submissions of desert island cartoons. I decided to start this weeks challenge with "Heaven" a place I am likely to never see. 

Day 33

 

My last day of Roman Numeral themed jokes. Maybe not ever but for the purpose of this "assignment" if you will. It was a good exercise is forcing creativity and working within parameters. If someone had come to me and said "Hey I need a vaguely Roman Numeral themed cartoon" I feel reasonable confident I would have been able to come up with at least one they would have wanted. In particular I feel pretty strongly about the cartoon of the "V" on the scale. I think that's a solid cartoon and worth doing the exercise for. Comedy Guru Scotty Meltzer (R.I.P) wrote a great article about the process of writing many jokes just to get one that is semi decent. This week has been proof. 7 ideas decent enough for me to consider posting them on the Internet and countless ones too bad to share and of those 1 that has some potential. Or should I say I? I've included a bonus Roman Numeral themed cartoon at the end of this blog post because I don't want to have to publish it tomorrow and go past my week.

 



 

Interlude 2

 

I've been working on a gag very similar to this one for a while now and imagine my surprise when this popped into my inbox courtesy of "My Daily Comic". I really love this strip and "The Argyle Sweater" often produces awesome panels. When I put this picture on the page for the blog I realised how very far I have to go. 

 

 

Day 32

 

My last Roman Numeral themed cartoon was a bit of a dud. This one might be better but honestly I am losing sight of what is or isn't funny when concerning roman numeral themed cartoons. 

Day 31

I have to say that the well of Roman Numeral jokes is running dry. I also came up with a panel that depicted King Henry the VIII trying to convince a mathematician to update numbers so it would be easier to write his name in the snow. I know. It's not very good. I ended up here and I think it's alright. Better than the King Henry idea. Special thanks to Andrea for convincing me that the King Henry idea was a no go.

Day 30

 

This one took me forever to get right. Not only did it take many many re-writes to get the joke to a place where I felt like it made sense but when I was actually drawing the cartoon I kept messing up the text. I started tracing the image on the back of the mistakes so every other page this same drawing kept switching perspective: one facing left, then one facing right, et cetera. This is my favourite so far of the roman numeral series though I think it's funny that it's day number IV instead of day V. Oh vell. 

Day 29

 

Really coming in under the wire here with less than thirty minutes left in the day. But it's better than late. This is day III of the roman numeral challenge to myself and I really like this one except the punchline isn't quite right. It is almost there. I feel confident in the idea and all that's left is to find a better way to execute it. Suggestions? 

Day 28

 

 Due to internet problems this posted 43 minutes after midnight. Shoot.

Day 27

 

This week's theme is Roman Numerals. I decided to pick an idea and see how many I can come up with on that idea. Hopefully by the end of the week I will have created at least one saleable idea. Or at least an idea I can be proud of. It's a fun thing that if you read the sentence: "Or at least an idea I can be proud of" as a Roman Numeral-ed sentence it would read as "Or at least an idea one can be proud of". Still works. 

Day 26

 

Feeling lazy today so....

Day 25

 

I started thinking about more language based gags while accidentally spending a few minutes re-drawing the umlaut joke that I already did. I was disappointed to have wasted so much time drawing a slightly different version of a joke I already did but I was happy to get my brain on the track of different languages and letters. This is one of the results.