It's All in the Packaging

Greetings! Welcome again to the Weekly Brinks Cartoon! This week's cartoon is really early for once, as I thought I'd try going back and kick it old school! So as you may or may not know my current process of drawing my cartoons is; first I do a quick mock-up sketch, then I drawn the cartoon in pencil, then I scan the drawing and using my tablet on my PC I trace the line-work and then colour it and finally I add all the text in. This is a relatively new method for me as I only got my tablet for the Christmas just gone. Today I was concerned with time so I went back to doing it the way I use to, which is to use ink pens to ink over the pencil drawing, which is drawn in a special non-photo blue pencil (it's a special colour that doesn't show up when scanned or photocopied) and then scan that in and colour it on the PC. This method is a lot faster (especially as I was colouring on only one layer, rather than multiple layers) than the other but the quality of the final line-work is no where near as good, but as this is not getting printed and only viewed online then it doesn't really matter (If you zoomed in on the original you'd notice, big time but as this is only a low DPI version you won't notice). What do you think? There's way more line-work than normal, as it's easier and quicker to do. The only problem is it's a tad trickier to do my latest background trick where all the line-work outlines are coloured so just I didn't do it this week (I'll work on finding a easier way to do it as I really like it). Over the next few weeks I'll experiment some more with how I do all this now, but I kind of like inking by hand, I forgot how much I enjoyed it actually. Hopefully I'll be able to whip up 2 cartoons on Monday's, or at least 1 and a 1/2! Then I can have some backup's just in case and I won't have to be in a rush and stay up late on Monday nights any more, yay!


This cartoon is an idea I've been throwing around for a few months now, the idea was always the same, just condom packets with pictures of STD's on them just like cigarette packets. Quite possibly this idea came about because of all the recent talk in the media about plain packaging on smoke packets here in Australia. The problem I had was trying to get all the text right on this one, especially as it's pretty heavy on the text more than my usual stuff. So it was important to get it right, in fact as I type this I still haven't finished it completely as I still not sure I have the caption right yet..... Oh and seriously if you think the text should be something better, please tell me, it's not that hard to change really....that is if I agree with you of course. Did you like the background in this one? I know it's not much, but I could have definitely done it way more simpler (as I've recently fallen into the habit of doing) that's for sure.


So next week I'll be out of town for a week to go visit some of my family up north, but will this stop me posting a new cartoon? Hell no! I plan on starting next week's 'toon this afternoon and work on it during the week and have it ready to go and saved so I can just publish it on Monday...that is if my mum's Internet is any good! What can I say, I'm dedicated, no rest for the wicked.... 


Last night I went for a big trip down memory lane by going through all my old inked cartoons to see what ones I want to look at 'rebooting' and it ended up being a lot of fun! I do have a small pile there now of ones I'm keen to redo. It's amazing to see how my artwork and ideas have changed over the years, some of the earlier stuff is pretty bad and there also was a bad phase I had, strangely enough when I was studying Graphic Design  back in 2000/2001 (I think all my artistic effort was going into my study and not my cartoons honestly, as you can really see how lazy I was, especially with backgrounds which I think is where my recent laziness in that area started from) I even pulled out some where I've done some techniques that I wouldn't mind trying and experimenting with again! Also last night I finally after all these years let Penelope read through one of my notebooks, of which she wants to now read through all of them and mark the one's she thinks are good ideas, which actually is a really good idea I think. You see sometimes I won't realise how good an idea is or I think something is no good when it isn't. Sometimes my sense of humor can be a tad strange and all so, we'll give it a go and see what happens! Be warned though, Pen is a big fan of my cruder jokes so be prepared for smut!


So my new plan for when I come back from holidays is to have a regular mid-week, non-cartoon update. I plan on doing some humorous stories/articles of some sort, but the main one I plan on doing is a Top 5 type thing. I know that's not very original and all, but I just love top 5 lists I must say, so I'll give it a try soon. I also plan on promoting this blog some more as well as I need more readers, any ideas people?


Anyway better go do some more work for next week, later!!




Mike

Travelator Fashion Police

Check it out, even travelators try to caution you on the dangers of how bad Crocs look!


I really want to graffiti this sign so it says "caution, Crocs are hideous looking footwear" but this is at the shopping centre I work at and I'm also a pussy, so I probably won't. I could use a sticker though couldn't I? Hmmmmmm.


Hopefully travelators can also start warning people about the horrors of mullet hair styles next. Mind you if they did, there's certain shopping centres in Brisbane that would lose most of their customers if they did that, I'm looking at you Morayfield.


Mike

Near Death

- So this week I'm posting up an old cartoon from my 'vault' and once again sorry to all those that have seen it before (just squint and pretend for now ok?), but I have a good excuse/s. I've had a rather shocking last week or so; first off my 16 month old son, Dash was sick and really difficult to look after. After a week of thinking he was teething I took him to a doctor to find out he has tonsillitis. After putting him on some antibiotics (The genius who invented antibiotics is a freakin' legend, that and kids Nurofen.....my 2 new heroes, who are they? Maybe I should Google that shit) he was all good, but literally the next day I came down with a flu of some sort (of which I'm still sick, I can't get over how much more I get sick now that I have a kid, it's amazing) which kind of prevented me from doing any work, which was a shame as I was planning on starting some mid-week update stuff last week, oh well. Oh and the other reason I can't do a new cartoon, even though I've been working on some stuff today, is that I have to go to my other work tonight to do stocktake (so no usual late night cartooning for me), yay! Normally I would have had the cartoon done already but I was sick and all, so sorry. So anyway, you're getting an old one, but I'm working on the next few weeks cartoons today and I plan on having some backups ready to go for the next time something like this happens again, which I'm sure it will. Plus I'll need one as I'm going away for a weeks holiday very soon.


As I had to look through my old stuff to find a 'toon for this week, I've noticed there's quite a few I really like the idea for but not so much the artwork. Some were rushed and others are very old, back when I wasn't as good at drawing cartoons or using computer software. So I thought maybe I might do some 're-booting' of some old cartoons! Hell, it works for Hollywood why not me hey? What do you think? Some of them I may change a fair bit more in them as well to improve them, which could be fun honestly. Is that cheating? Should the past stay as the past? As I mentioned last week sometimes I get really lazy when it comes to backgrounds, so there are quite a few there that could use some sprucing up in the background department....hmmmm. I'd end up completely redrawing them so it's not all cheating.


Anyway, I ended up picking this one in honor of my wonderful lady, Penelope as this is one of her favourites out of all my cartoons (for years now she's had a printed version stuck up in her office at her work), plus she was the one to convince a sleep deprived sick man to stop working at 9:30 last night and go to bed and post an old cartoon the next day instead. So this one's for you baby! I hope you all like it as much as she does! I love 'death' as a character, he's got so much potential! I also have another idea for a death gag where someone abuses his girlfriend for something and says to her "what are you fucking deaf?!" and Death over hears it as 'death' instead of 'deaf' and gets very cranky. Something like that, not sure how to do it yet, and it still needs some work I think, I'll keep you posted. This one is quite a few years old but still has some of my basic staples in there, you may notice the purple colour in the window in the background and it also has my other thing where I sign my name with a red dot for the 'i'. Why do I do that you ask? Well my 'logo' of sorts is an anti-social clown named Englebert, who I've been drawing for a very long time now, if fact look up...there he is! So as he's a clown he should have a red nose....wait why does he have a black nose anyway? Hmmmm, not sure, maybe I should change it back? So anyway as my logo is a clown I thought I'l sign off with a clown nose....which kind of doesn't make as much sense when he has a black nose does it? Man I really should change that. Anyway, so I've been doing that with my signature for ages now and I like it, even though it makes little sense, probably why I like it honestly.  Another thing of note is that this was drawn during my period of working for a Motorbike magazine, hence why the guy in it is bald with facial hair. You see as I was catering to a specific audience I had all the characters in my 'toons try and look like bikers. Which most of the time was; bald, facial hair, tattoos and vests or jackets. So there's another 'fun' game! Look through my back catalogue and spot the biker! Not fun? Yeah, you're probably right....


Anyway, I'm going to try and knock out some more cartoon ideas for the rest of the afternoon before I have to go pick up my little man from daycare and then off to work scanning shit and hearing 'beep.....beep....beep' about a gazillion times.....ahhh good times. So until next time,




Mike

The Animal Farm

Well I said I'd post a cartoon every Monday and damn it I'm gonna do it! I'm typing this at 11:58pm, so technically it's still Monday! Sure it still won't be when I'm done, but it's the principle damn it! The reason I'm still doing this so late? There's a few actually, one is that this is a more detailed cartoon than normal so it took longer than usual (more on that later) and the other is a TV showed called An Idiot Abroad, that I was watching tonight, holy crap it's one of the funniest TV shows I've ever seen! The problem now is that I'll be posting this up not during 'peak social media' times, so I may not get many visits from Facebook of Twitter....damn. Speaking of which I need more people to read this blog and like the Facebook page, help me spread the word please!

So onto this weeks cartoon; this cartoon has been very experimental for me, although I do have plenty of ideas ready to go (some more disturbing than others) I still try and come up with new one's just before I do them just to see if I can, and to keep pushing and testing myself. This one came from an idea brainstorming session late last night....wait it's past midnight, I meant 2 nights ago.....While going through an old notebook I happen to come across an idea listed as: "Lion Renting a Mating Doco" The original idea was a lion going into a video shop to rent a lion mating documentary like a human male rents porn. But I thought it would be much better if I had an animal porn shop and what would be the most popular doco's for animals to use as porn? Why only the best, David Attenborough doco's! I really like this cartoon idea as it's a lot more subtle than my usual stuff, and I love subtle humour that makes you think. You see for years I worked for the motorcycle magazine Live to Ride (I know absolutely squat about motorbikes, shit I didn't even had a car license back then, but smut is smut), supplying them with single panel smutty cartoons. But one of their prerequisites was that the jokes needed to be simple and pretty much spelt out other wise they wouldn't buy them off me. So over the years I got into the habit of really dumbing down the joke and make it really obvious, usually via the caption text or though speech bubbles, and it's been hard to lose those habits I must say.

So one of my goals in doing this blog is to experiment with jokes and art so I can always improve and get better at what I do. I'm never happy doing the same old style, that's boring, how else do you improve? One thing I've gotten really lazy with over the last few years is my background detail, so over the next few weeks I plan to do some experimenting with backgrounds and not 'zoom' in so much so you can see more. This week I thought I'd have some fun with the background and the overall detail in the scene, so I threw a few visual jokes here and there. At the front the massive horse dildo is called the "Ed 2000" (It's probably hard to read) in honour of good old Mr Ed. Also at the front with the rest of the "Horse Sex Toys" is a rather disturbing inflatable love jockey, what all lonely horses need. If you look on the back wall I made a poster up for a movie called "Debbi Does Lassie" and on the counter there's a sign stating "No Hay", just in case some cheap skate horses try and pay with hay....what would they pay with then? Oh and one last thing of note is the name of the animal sex shop "Animal Farm", like the book? No, you see when I was in high-school back in the 90's there apparently was a notorious porno called "Animal Farm" that was just a full on bestiality, sick thing. Honestly I never did find out if it was real or just some urban myth, and if it is real do I really want to watch it anyway?? So I thought I'd place that nice little homage in there for anyone who gets it. So I had a lot of fun putting all that stuff in there, so I hope to keep it up (if I can, it was very time consuming, especially all those damn doco DVD covers!) and try and experiment some more.

Holy crap, look at the time, I better go to bed....oh damn I didn't get to tell a mildly amusing story, I'll try and put something up during the week ok? Hope you enjoy the 'toon! Oh and please feel free to leave me any feedback, sorry to the guys that have been, I didn't have it set up properly to let me know when I got feedback so I replied a tad late. 

Goodnight!

Mike

Going the Extra Mile

Another week gone by another new cartoon! Once again not without a challenge to test my resolve, no not another public holiday or illness. This time the challenge came from within! Yes my own son challenged how well his dad can function and complete a cartoon with very little sleep! For some unknown reason (unless he's testing me!) he woke up at 2am very upset last night and I finally got back to bed at 4am, only to then get up again at about 6:45. But you'd be surprised the weird and wonderful places your mind can and will go to when it's deprived of sleep, which leads me to this week's cartoon...

Wait, I hear you say, is that a Tiger Woods sex joke? A bit late on that one? Well yes and no. Technically not entirely a Tiger joke, I just threw him in there for effect. This is the combination of 2 old unfinished ideas I've had floating around for some time now, but I'm getting ahead of myself here. One of my many notebooks has a page in it that has brief descriptions of pretty much complete or very near complete cartoon ideas and I was going to use one today, but I thought I'd still work on some new ideas first and see what comes up. After awhile I was coming up dry so I consulted another old notebook that has a list of 'almost there' cartoon ideas (you'd be amazed by the shear quantity of notes I have, quite a few trees have died in honor of my smutty ramblings) and one was "Un-erotic Visual Aids" which got me thinking and I thought of combining this with another old idea about a golf caddy 'assiting' in the bedroom and ta-da! I've always found "Man Mantra's" very funny, which ladies if you don't know what I'm talking about, to 'perform' longer some of us men sometimes employ very un-erotic mental images to help make things last longer and sometimes you need to repeat that thought over and over with a mental 'mantra'. Of which the one I find the funniest is 'Dead puppies, dead puppies, dead puppies....'. A close second is one my brother-in-law Matt told me years ago which is 'Granny on the shitter'. Of course these techniques are sometimes fraught with danger, if you're picturing and old granny talking a big shit and it has the opposite effect then you have more pressing issues to be concerned with rather than sexual performance.

Please feel free to share some other 'Man Mantra's' that you know of.

Here's a new fun game to play! Called "Spot the Purple".....hmmm sounds like Spot from the kids books getting choked doesn't it? As anyone who knows me well will tell you, I have an almost unhealthy obsession with the colour purple....It's funny how it just started as a favourite colour and now it's bordering on obsessive, how does that happen? Is this how crazy cat ladies start, first one cat then next thing you realize you knee deep in kitty litter and cat shit. Anyway, if you look carefully (or not, it's not that hard) you'll notice in all my new cartoons there's always something coloured purple in there somewhere. Go on, have a look, last week it was just a tie, this week it's a golf club cover. Cool hey? Strangely enough my fine lady Penelope (Lady Penelope to you) the other day actually suggested that I should start hiding purple in my cartoons, not realising I've already been doing it! See, we just get each other, awwwwww.... I'd love to say the idea was mine entirely but no, one of my all time favourite single panel cartoons, Bizarro (http://www.bizarro.com/) by Dan Pirao has lots of cool weird things hidden in all his cartoons. Check out his wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bizarro_(comic_strip) page to see what I mean, pure genius! I love that man, he's my idol.

Anyway I can feel all the caffeine in my system disappearing like a Beijing iPad 2 (http://www.news.com.au/business/breaking-news/four-hurt-in-ipad-2-riot-at-beijing-apple-store/story-e6frfkur-1226051999899 Ha! I read the newspaper this morning for ideas and it paid off!) So I need sleep before I collapse....oh and this is also my excuse for any spelling or grammatical errors in this weeks blog, as opposed to me just being kind of shit every other week. Goodnight!

Mike

PS. If this post looks different, like the cartoon looks small (You can still click on it to get the full size) it's because Blogger was playing up tonight and I had to revert to the old text entry system which I'm not use to. I'll fix it when I can.

Do You Want Fries With That?

Hello again, another week another cartoon! Unlike last week this one is brand spanking new! Just finished it a few minutes ago in fact. I'm very proud of myself on this one as, once again, today is a public holiday and my son's daycare is closed. So I didn't have the usual convenience of having a whole day to myself to create a cartoon, so this one was done in my spare time at night over the past week. To be perfectly honest I wasn't sure if I was going to be able to pull it off (I'm not much of a 'night worker' I must say) but I did it! Yay me! That's how dedicated I am to entertaining you lot, I promised a cartoon every Monday and I intend to keep that promise damn-it!  I hope you all like it, it's another one of those old ideas I've had floating around for some time now, which means I have no idea how I thought it up originally. I'm a big fan of play on words jokes, like misheard words, there's so much gold there if you look hard enough. Burglar is an awesome word that sounds and rhymes so much! I've actually got a really old cartoon idea that I've never really been brave enough to do that involves a mix up a kids party where the parents meant to hire the Ham Burglar but they got an adult entertainer called The Ham Gurglar instead....what do you think, too far? Seriously, if enough people like it I'll do it, just dare me.....


Last week I created the Brinks Cartoons Facebook Page! Check it out here: facebook.com/brinkscartoons The idea for this was all my friend Dean's, I was talking to him a few weeks ago about the fact I needed to promote the blog more and he suggested it. I'm kind of surprised I didn't think of it myself actually, anyway cheers Dean! Check it out and 'like' me people! I need your approval, I crave it.....
Next stop, world domination bitches!!


Ok here's a random story: the other day my son and I were at a shopping centre and I went into the movie theatre to but tickets for myself and my lady to go see Thor later on that night. You see we organised a friend to babysit for the night as I needed to see this movie, as I'm a massive comic nerd ("wait, he's a comic nerd and he's reproduced!" I hear you say, well what can I say....I'm a pioneer) So this is during the day, hence was why it was so dead there, which I was disappointed at as I really wanted to freak people out by thinking I was taking a15 month old kid into a movie! Anyway as it so happens when I went to go buy the 2 tickets from the teenage counter monkey I asked for 2 adults for Thor in 3D at 6:50pm session. Then she's gone "So that's one adult, one child", and if she wasn't such a clueless teenager I would have been far more sarcastic, all there was, was a strange awkward silence until she realized that in fact she was an idiot (what can I say, I'm far too nice). But seriously, you think I'm going to come back at 6:50 to take my 15 month old to see a movie in 3D? Idiot, I should have asked her if they have baby sized 3D glasses for him. Good old counter monkeys, god bless 'em.....


Alright, it's getting late and I need my beauty sleep. So everything's back to normal next week no public holiday! (never thought I hear myself say that) Later!




Mike