Pete, Mike & John Go To The Zoo

Uh-oh! Looks like John gets himself into trouble once again...

Click the image to enlarge.

Pete, Mike, And John In Space!

Mike, John and I go back a long way, and have had a lot of adventures over the years. This is just one of the many pickles we have gotten ourselves into!

As Mike pointed out to me, I can be seen in the cockpit with at least four sandwiches... clearly, more than enough if only I was inclined to share!

Draw Me a Picture and Maybe I'll Pay You Someday

This is a really interesting entry on SR Bissette's blog, consisting of a response to some requests he has received (at least every other month, he says, and I believe him) by people who  casually ask him to draw their graphic novel.


Here's a sample of the early part of the entry- he gets way more detailed:

Long answer: I am literally asked what you’ve asked me WEEKLY, seeking either me to engage or for me to steer some other cartoonist or CCS student (as if they’ve nothing better to do, like, oh, their own work plus the education they’ve paid for) to a similar task, and have been since about 2006.

What nobody (or precious few) seem to realize:

(1) It takes years to do a good graphic novel; Maus took over a decade to complete, as did From Hell; Howard Cruse’s Stuck Rubber Baby was one of the faster ones at 5+ years, and all required multiple funding sources, grants, and/or multiple publishers to complete. It’s a bear.

Yes, many lesser graphic novels are done in months; most of those show it.

(2) Cartoonists have their own projects they’d dearly love to afford to do, many of those lengthy works.

We rarely get to them due to the eternal question: How do I eat/pay rent/mortgage while dedicating my life to this venture?

(3) Now, taking on adapted and/or collaborative graphic novels, sans a publisher footing the financing, complicates it all multifold. I now have to introduce letter sections into the outline answer:

(a) Who owns it? Co-ownership is sticky: if you are the source author (as in this case), you’re not going to want to give up ownership/proprietary rights; but if I’m not in for 50%, why pick up the pencil?

If we co-own, what’s the split of ownership (just ownership, mind you—we’ll get to payment and royalty sharing shortly)?

I've actually seen this sort of thing all over the place, mostly on Craigslist searches for freelance work. It will usually be somehting along the lines of "I am writing a children's book and need illustrations for 10-12 pages. If I sell to a publisher we can work out a payment deal." So, in other words, he wants a bunch of fully rendered, professional drawings to help him sell his crappy book, for free. This is nothing compared to the time and skill required for a complete graphic novel of any quality, but it reflects the same disregard for professionals in our community. As if creating the art is its own reward and we are just waiting around for the opportunity to have something to draw.


Beyond that, he goes into detail about the kinds of issues that need to be considered before entering into a writer-artist partnership: royalties, ownership, page rate, etc. He doesn't take sides, and defends the writer's rights as well, but explains in great detail, that it is just not as simple as saying "I have an idea- draw it for me?"


Very educational for someone in my position who is looking to get more compelling freelance work, but needs to understand the complexities behind it.

Sketchbook to Strip

When I draw or illustrate, it's really difficult to get the finished version to look like the pencil sketch. The rough lines and loose drawing very often feels more lively, with more personality. However, the pencil sketches lack what the finished drawing needs- stronger layout, better-defined lines so the picture reads with more clarity. To look professional and suitable for print you need that extra step.

Below you can see what I mean. This is a comic strip- called A Case Of The Mondays- that I do for our internal company newsletter. This one is based on the premise that we have a lot of potted plants in the office.

I can't really say much for the joke, except that if you worked here you'd probably like it.

Anyway, I feel that the pencil sketches, particularly on the first two panels, have a great quality to them. I could have matched the poses up better if I spent more time on it, but with cartoons a certain amount of spontaneity is really important.

I'll leave you with a panel I cut. This would have been the second panel- but it actually kind of works by itself in a way, doesn't it? In a creepy kind of way. 

Castaway

15 Years? Really?

It's pretty hard to believe- it's been 15 years since Calvin & Hobbes stopped appearing in newspapers, eventually leading to the decline of sales and demise of print media in general. Bill Watterson tends to shun the spotlight and very rarely does interviews, but once every twenty years or so he emerges to address his fanbase. He just did an interview with his hometown paper:

Bill Watterson, creator of beloved 'Calvin and Hobbes' comic strip looks back with no regrets

Who knows why he chose to speak now. Maybe with the passing of JD Salinger he reexamined his status as a famous recluse... Probably not, though.

Bill Watterson

He’s probably right about what people would be saying if he kept doing it. It was the best comic strip ever but, like the Beatles, it now has an untarnished legacy. Until he passes away and Dreamworks produces a big-budget CGI Calvin and Hobbes monstrosity starring Renee Zellwigger as Hobbes.

Read some old Calvin and Hobbes here. It will absolutely brighten your day.

Winter Fun!

Today I thought I'd go through the steps of how I created the illustration for our company Christmas card. My boss has a bit of a twisted sense of humor that he only occasionally makes known. Two years ago, we sent out a card that depicted a dog who had just marked his territory on a snowman. My boss LOVED it. So much that last year, he insisted we continue this theme with a cartoon illustration:

This year, I drew up a few designs for the new card. Since it is a corporate card and we can't make any references to religious holidays, Snowmen make good, reliable secular characters. Here, the snowman is using his carrot nose to get the dog to pull his sled:

Unfortunately, one of our biggest competitors uses the dangling carrot motif in all their marketing. I was asked to change the image:

As you can see, we completely lost the joke here. I decided to add some more flair to the illustration and eventually salvaged it by incorporating the whole scene (detail below):

Notice the mysterious yellow mark behind the snowman. The inside joke continues.

I made a few other images that remained unused, but I still felt had some merit.

Salt melts snow, you know.

I love this one... the look on the guy's face on top of the mountain kills me, I don't know why. He's so oblivious and satisfied with himself.