Take Two Hours

Ahhh, it's good to be back and healthy again and drawing cartoons! So during my recent illness, let's just say my mood wasn't always the greatest which led to the idea for this cartoon. You see the other week my eldest son Dash discovered the joy that is, funny cat videos on YouTube. So for a brief period he was slightly obsessed with them, the plus side of that is that I think about 50% of YouTube is just cat videos so it wasn't hard to find some. 

So I was feeling crappy one day and Dash wanted to watch cat videos with me and you know what? As much as I make fun of these videos, they damn well do cheer you up that's for sure. So as I found my mood lifting I had the thought of "Man YouTube cat videos must be the worlds most powerful antidepressant". I wrote that down in my notebook and the rest was history.

Oh and just for the record easily my favourite video is this one: http://youtu.be/00KM53yZi2A I've seen that cat attack that printer so many times, yet it still makes me laugh or a least smile, pure gold. And here's another favourite of mine: http://youtu.be/6wA319ZtkTQ The cats in this one remind me of my youngest son Kylar, such a trouble maker!

Anyway, enjoy and I'll see you next time!

Mike

Domination Catalyst

Greetings again my friends, how are we all? I usually like to have a bit of a story behind how I get the idea for each week's cartoon, but not so much this week. Honestly the idea for this one just popped into my head during the week when I was quite sick (yes, I've been sick yet again, the wondrous joys of having young children) and lying on the couch in the morning watching TV. Yep, that was it, I think there was something on TV about cat memes on the internet....I don't even remember honestly. All I remember is that I really liked the idea of a James Bond like cat villain trying to take over the world and that's why there's so damn many cat memes, pictures and videos on the internet. I also liked the idea of a room full of overworked cats tapping away on laptops. So I wasn't too confident that the idea would be that funny to everyone, but I didn't care, I thought it was and I really liked it so there.

If you were wondering why the cat has a baby on his lap, it was because I was thinking of that Bond villian you used to stroke a white cat on his lap and I thought of the opposite, a human. It needed to be small, I was going to do a midgit, but still too big so I just went with a baby...as weird as it may be, I like it damn it!

As you may remember I was uber excited last week about finally getting a whole day to myself as both my boys were going into daycare together for the first time. Well that didn't happen, well my youngest, Kylar, got to have his first day at daycare anyway. But typical, my eldest son Dash was sick and highly contagious and couldn't go. So, hopefully if all goes well this Friday will be my big day, but I'm trying not to get too excited this time in case something else goes wrong.... pessimist that I am.

I've got some sketches to put up again this wednesday for a bonus special feature for this cartoon and I'll talk so more about how I created it as well.

So, until then, later!

Mike

Stop Stalking Me

Another week, another cartoon! This week is pretty much a clean, family friendly cartoon for once!

Seriously though, why is there so many cat videos on YouTube? So the idea for this one originated from that thought, that and I wondered how did cat owners get so much footage? Do they just stalk their cats with a camera all day? Don't get me wrong here, I love a good funny cat video/picture as much as the next guy, but seriously there's so much! At one point I was going to draw the cat exactly like Garfield as an ode to him because you see, Garfield was what got me into cartooning in the first place. I spent a lot of my childhood reading and copying Garfield comics, which is how I learnt how to draw in fact and you can see some of that influence in my style even now. But I thought that putting Garfield in there would confuse the joke and make him the focal point and that would ruin it. So I ended up making him orange at least and did steal Garfield's tail, but that's it (I had to have something there at least). I am seriously out of practice though as the original rough sketch for this 'toon it looks like a dog! I need to practice my animals. 

So last week I finally got around to formatting my PC and installing Windows 7, man it's really sweet. My PC is running better than ever, working on this 'toon ran so smooth compared to what it was like before. Which I have to admit I haven't formatting in years so it was pretty bogged down with shit. So once again I'm doing some very subtle experimentation with how I do my cartoons, today I inked by hand and kept all the lines simple and at a similar width and did all the fine detail, like hatching, on the PC in Photoshop when I coloured it. I also drew the very simple background in Photoshop as well and didn't use any black outlines, just a darker colour of what it was outlining. What do you think? I like experimenting, it's a good way to improve your style and to evolve. Oh and you can tell I've been watching way too much Shaun the Sheep with my son of late (he's seriously obsessed with that show at the moment, I've watched it so many times) as the lawyer guy looks like the farmer from Shaun! Just wait, I'll probably do a sheep joke soon.....don't worry my Kiwi friends I know what you're thinking and no, that's way too easy, it'll be something else. ;-)

Once again thanks for the feedback on last weeks cartoon, I'm really proud of last weeks and I'm really glad you guys liked it as much as I did. Hey, look at that I did the whole blog without a pussy joke of some sort!

Until next time my friends!

Mike