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
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