M & Mmmmmmm

Hello again, and welcome to another weekly cartoon!


Remember a few weeks back when I said that I really enjoy making jokes about Ronald McDonald? Well I discovered that I actually really enjoy making fun of all pop culture characters in general! So as I came to this realisation today I've started compiling a massive list of pop culture characters in my 'Lists Book'. Yes, I have a notebook purely dedicated to lists of stuff, try it, it's fun! So I'm curious where I can go with this, are there any characters you'd like me to try and do a cartoon of? I think some of my favourite cartoons I've done over the years have been when I've poked fun at pop culture icons like Mickey Mouse, Spider-man, Bert and Ernie, The Ham Burgler (and kind of Ronald as well!), Jedi's, Superman, Santa....wow, there's a lot more than I realised! There's still a heap more, how did I not come to this realisation earlier? 


The original idea for this one was going to be something along the lines that the M & M's characters actually shit pure chocolate, but no one ever wants to eat it. So the initial humour idea here was pretty much M & M's and their bodily functions, but the whole eating shit idea didn't seem quite right, perhaps it may be better in a 3 panel comic strip format. I mention that as I've been thinking about expanding "On the Brink" to occasionally being a 3 panel strip format as well as the 'standard' single panels. Sometimes I really enjoy working under strict restrictions and time frames, I don't know why, I think I focus more clearly that way. So I've always enjoyed being forced to restrict my jokes to a single panel, the major problems with that are that there are some joke that can't fit in one panel and it also really restricts dialogue based jokes. So I'm planning on looking back over some old unused ideas and see if any of them can work within a 3 panel format. Who knows I may grow to like doing that more and end up favouring it, we'll wait and see, it's been a very long time since I drawn comic strips so I'm looking forward to it! So anyway, once I realised the eating shit joke wouldn't work I broke down the idea (like shit with a wire coat-hanger) to bodily functions and tried from a different angle, would they piss chocolate milk? Wait what if their semen tasted like chocolate sauce? No hang on, what if they just told women that to get them to swallow? Bang! Idea in the bag!


Last Thursday was my 34th birthday, and one thing I realised this year was just how much social interaction has changed since I was a kid. You see when I was in high school there was no Internet and hardly anyone had a mobile phone, and if they did the damn thing was the size of a brick anyway. So when it was your birthday your friends had to actually see you to wish you a happy birthday, or call on the home phone or send a card. As technology grew and the Internet came about, you'd then get an email wishing you a happy birthday and years later you'd get and SMS on your mobile phone. This year? I got one SMS birthday message and no emails, how did I get the bulk of birthday messages? Yep Facebook. We just seem to be getting lazier in our interactions now don't we? But hey, I'm not complaining and sounding like the old fart I am, if it wasn't for Facebook I wouldn't even know half my friends birthdays, let alone remember when they are. Oh and I am notorious for not keeping in contact with people so Facebook perfectly suits my slack-arse nature perfectly. I just found it interesting is all, and I'm wondering what's next? Send a birthday message directly to your brain?


Holy crap, look at the time! I really had my shit sorted early today, it was nice knowing what cartoon I was doing before today so I didn't get in a mad panic like last week. Also helps that this was a really easy cartoon to draw. So I'm going to finish this and start another cartoon! 


So until next time!




Mike

It's My Birthday Today!

Happy Birthday to me! Happy Birthday to me!

The Steaks are High

Hello again my friends!


Holy crap this was a last minute cartoon idea, that's for sure! I had no idea what I was doing today until about lunchtime, I spent all morning brainstorming ideas and was coming up short. Yes it's true I do have notebooks full of ideas, but nearly all of them are raw and unfinished. As much as I love brainstorming ideas, it can be very frustrating at times when you spend hours pouring over notebooks to end up with nothing. But when you finally get a really awesome idea it's such a good feeling. Like last week, when that idea fully came to me I was so happy, especially as the original idea was so old, never give up that's what I say. It's true that there's no such thing as a bad idea,  it just needs more work. I really need to do more idea work so I have plenty of ideas ready, so I won't get all panicky like today, it's just hard because seriously it can very time consuming with little reward, but I'm damn determined and dedicated! You lot better appreciate what I do for your entertainment. Anyway the original idea for this 'toon was a bunch of anthropomorphic steaks playing poker whilst smoking bongs and joints at a casino and two guys go to join the table and one says "Hold up, the steaks are way too high at this table". Instead of that I thought I'd streamline the gag more, plus anthropomorphic steaks would be harder to pull off than bulls that's for sure. Plus I thought having high bulls was funnier anyway. It's been awhile since I've done a good old weed gag, probably because it's been awhile since I've smoked any. Funny how being high opens your mind....to jokes about being high. 


One of the things I really like about using this Blogger website is the highly detailed stats I can always access about my blog. Such as, I can see exactly how many people have viewed the page and from what country they're from. Like my number 1 country by a mile is obviously Australia, followed by the US, but third is Germany! Hell yeah, here's a shout out to all my German peeps! It's very cool. I can also see how people got to the page, by links for example. It also tells me what search keywords people used to find my page as well, and guess what phrase someone searched for and got to me? "Horse Dildo" HAHAHAHAHAHA! If you may remember awhile ago I did a cartoon set in an animal porn shop (http://brinkscartoons.blogspot.com/2011/05/animal-farm.html) and in the blog text I mentioned the 'horse dildo' pictured. How funny is that? Some weirdo searching for a horse dildo ended up here! Man he (or she, you never know, maybe she wanted a dildo the size of a horse wang) must have been rather disappointed...or maybe not, if your now a fan sir (or madam) I salute you! I'm not one to judge, a fan is a fan in my book, what gets you off is your business. Strangely enough though some other keywords that got me traffic are: "porno animal" and "toon bestiality". Wow, got that market corned..... So just out of interest 
I put the term "horse dildo" in Google and holy shit, I don't recommend it, and I didn't even 
pop up on the first page! I didn't have the stomach to keep looking past page one honestly. 
So here's another shout out to all my fans who dig animals, like more than a friend! Let's 
just hope I get some traffic from "High Bulls" this week! Or perhaps I should just throw in 
some weird words and see what happens.......cat rectum


See you all next time!




Mike

I'd Rather the Burger

Welcome again my friends to another weekly cartoon!
For some reason, I really enjoy making fun of Ronald McDonald...and Col. Sanders as well. Not sure why, it's just fun, and honestly far too easy to draw and make fun of them. If you look through my older cartoons you can see I've done quite a few Ronald McDonald gags (and a few with the Col.) over the years. In fact one of my first ever cartoons was of good old Ronald shooting up some special sauce in the back room of a McDonalds, in fact I was contemplating redoing it recently as it looks pretty bad by my current standards that's for sure. 
So this idea I've had floating around for ages now and it wasn't until I was staring at notebooks last night at about 9:30 (I was really close to giving up coming up with an idea for today actually, man I was happy when I got this one, I was getting desperate) that it finally all came together and went 'click' in my brain (Yes my brain 'clicks', I've sustained many head injuries over the years, it happens when I get good ideas and think about midget porn). The original idea was just two women talking and one just complaining (I know, how rare is that?), saying that her new man is like McDonald's food; doesn't fill her up or satisfy her. But that was kind of boring and I knew it just needed something else, I just wasn't sure what. So I had it written down in my "Almost There, Ideas Book" (That's exactly what's written on the cover, me and my original titles), which as you can guess is a bunch of half finished ideas that I'm positive can be something good, they're just missing something. In fact some of the past cartoons from this blog came from that book like: The Wrong Bank and Do You Want Fries With That?. The exact entry for this cartoon in the book was "Sex Like Macca's", so how did I get the crucial Ronald part of the gag? Well the best way I work is with lots of reference material (more on that later) and lots of lists, I just happen to have one of my lists of 'Pop Culture Characters' open on my desk while I was working on this idea and who's name did I see? Boom! Idea in the bag! So my advice on brainstorming humour ideas is to write down absolutely everything and have lots of reference material, it's amazing what makes good reference. I have a copy of 'Good Sex for Dummies' that I got really cheap from a 2nd hand book sale that I use for cartoon ideas.....no seriously, that's all I need it for.....no really. Another good reference book is a good old Thesaurus, if you have a subject in mind look it up in that. I have this really awesome old Thesaurus that a good mate of mine gave to me years ago that has some awesome words in it, for example: Under Groin/Erection is; Beef Bayonet (bugle), Fat, Hard On, Horn, Phallus, Pork Sword, Rod, Sword, Rod, Shaft, Stiff, Stiffy, The Bishop. How awesome is that? Pork Sword, pure gold! Thanks again to Micky D for the book, best Thesaurus on the planet, bar none, and in my top 10 best gifts. I have a very strange collection of reference material on my bookshelf in my office, I'm quite proud of my collection, I might post a photo later in the week.

Today I think I finally found a good compromise between how much to hand draw and how much to draw on the computer with my tablet. You see when the I scan my inked artwork in, the really fine linework tends to get a bit lost and look like shit, so on this cartoon I did all the major line-work by hand and the really fine work on the PC. It's also really good doing the hatching and cross-hatching on the PC, because I can do the lines really fine, which I like as I hate it when the  hatching lines are too thick and similar to the main outline thickness. So I'm very happy with it, what do you think? This mix seems to work a really good balance between speed and quality that I'm happy with. Also trying square speech bubbles this week, as the circle one's were giving me the shits, they take up too much space, I'll keep trying it and see if I like it or not, yes or no? Why are traditional speech bubbles round anyway, screw it. So, earlier I mentioned that I'm a big fan of reference material (research is probably one of my best skills in fact, I need to find a job doing that!), well the entire background of this cartoon is directly copied from an Ikea catalogue that I happen to accidentally leave the store with awhile ago. Hey screw 'em, they're a multi-gazillion company, I'm sure they won't miss one little catalogue.....please don't tell them, I'm sure they have super mega lawyers. Once again I'm very happy with this background, I think from now on I'll use visual reference for all my backgrounds and not get lazy. Now I just need lots of magazines to butcher for reference. 


Holy crap, is that the time! I better go, see you all again soon!




Mike

The Bat Mandate

Hello again my friends! This weeks cartoon idea came from a personal situation, it's not always easy to get good material from what you do during the week I must say. Especially if you don't want all your jokes to be at the expense of children's TV shows and raising a toddler, which lets face it, cracking dirty jokes about kids shows would get a tad creepy after awhile. Last week I went on a 'man date' with a fellow stay-at-home mate of mine, Ben to go see X-men First Class at the movies. As you'd expect we all made lots of typical 'we're gay' jokes, in fact I posted a Facebook status update that day that got out of control and very 'in the gutter' you might say, by the end. Which is right up my alley, and makes me realise how cool my friends are, we're on the same dirty wavelength! One thing that got mentioned that I hadn't heard of was a 'sex move' (I use that term loosely as it's one of those funny sex things that I'm pretty sure no on ever does, I'm trying to find a good list of them online) called "The Spider-man". Heard of it? I'll let good old Urban Dictionary explain it for you: http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=spiderman It's funny and wrong at the same time, like all of them I guess. A favourite of mine is the Eiffel Tower (http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=eiffel+tower) Don't try these at home kids, it's just wrong....So anyway, Ben and I  made sure we had a beer before the movie just to completely reaffirm out heterosexuality and then went to the 9pm session, I felt like such an adult going the movies so late! It's 9pm, so there's not going to be too many people there right? Well we got there and there was 2 other guys on a man date as well! We sat down and guess what? Yep, 2 more dudes walk in on a man date! At this point we were both getting worried, Ben turns to me and say's "Seriously, if another 2 guys walk in we're out of here". Only one other couple turned up though, and it was a guy and a girl! Phew, now it's no where near as weird, well except for when Ben and I started making out half way through the movie, but that's not gay, come on! As a friend of mine pointed out, it wouldn't be gay if one of us was wearing a Magneto helmet. We now plan on pitching the new "Wang Magneto Helmets" to Marvel any day now, man we're going to get so rich! Why is it when 2 seemingly hetro guys can watch sport together, drink beer together but when they have dinner in a nice restaurant or see a movie together people assume they're gay? I have this argument with my lady all the time, as she believes (like most women) that she has an awesome "gaydar". But I always argue that just because 2 dudes are dressed nice and are eating in a nice restaurant doesn't mean they're gay. At least we saw a rather 'manly' movie, right? Wait a minute! During my 'reasearch' for this cartoon I found this website: http://www.buzzfeed.com/mjs538/stuff-gay-people-like-vs-stuff-straight-people-li Under the list of 'things gay people like' is 'Xmen'! What the hell? Wait, the colour purple as well!! Holy crap, does this mean I'm gay? Maybe they mean, the movie, not the actual colour purple? Next thing they'll be saying that cuddling is......oh son of a bitch!


So anyway, this morning whilst brainstorming some ideas for today's cartoon I thought about my 'man date' and wondered if I could get an idea from it. To be perfectly honest this cartoon is a slight variation of a previous cartoon I've done http://www.brinkscartoons.com/vault/bert_and_the_v.html, hey at least I'm honest! And if you going to rip off someone, it may as well be yourself! There's nothing wrong with variating good ideas though, especially if it's a type of humour you like. But it's rather odd the amount of pop culture 'duo's' that everyone thinks are gay, I mean seriously Bert and Ernie have been copping it for years I mean come on, they bathe and sleep together! I think it would be so awesome if Bert and Ernie 'came out'! Imagine how many people would just lose their shit over that? So I thought about Batman and Robin, who honestly only really use to get the whole 'gay duo' thing from the old TV show (seriously why did Robin always climb up the wall first anyway? But that show was all pretty much as camp as a outdoors shop anyway) and wondered what if they cop shit all the time for people thinking they're gay. And that was pretty much it. So I hope you all like it!


I know I said I was planning on doing some more mid-week updates, but I haven't had as much spare time as I'd like of late. I was thinking about getting a good compact 13in laptop so I can do some more writing, anyone know a good cheap one I can get?


Ok better go, see you again soon!




Mike