iSwallow

"Tablets/iPads:- Remember the old days when a tablet could be swallowed", 
was the random note in one of my quick notepads that eventually led to this week's cartoon. I just happen to read this idea the other night and instantly I seemed to focus on the word 'swallow' and I thought about a woman blowing an iPad (the most well known of all tablets)....yep, that's how my mind works. Here's another good tip for brainstorming that helped me heaps with this one, the "think it over" technique. I wasn't entirely sold on the idea about just a woman blowing an iPad, and in fact the very first sketch was pretty much the same dialogue as the final cartoon, but the image was just a normal woman on her knees in front of an iPad standing on a bed. This was fine, but I knew it just needed something more, so I kept thinking it over for the next couple of days and wouldn't you know it today, boom! It hit me, why not have an Apple Store chick in the shop after hours blowing all the iPads! So this morning I wasn't even 100% sure I was going with the iPad idea and by the afternoon I was happy and ready to go tonight! This technique helps me a lot and I have to admit with some of my cartoons in the past I definitely should have waited a bit longer and thought about them some more. But, sometimes you're pressed for time and you just go with what you've got, not often, only sometimes. 

To be perfectly honest, I usually work best when pressed for time and I have a deadline anyway. Like today I had nothing else concrete to go with...actually I tell a lie, I have some more 'complex' ideas up my sleeve that I'm holding off for when I have a whole day to cartoon, not just one night, as they will take longer to draw. Most of the time I can always just tell if an idea needs something else to bring it all together. In those cases I always try and leave them for a bit and think them over some more, like an idea test drive. There's something about a deadline that makes your brain focus squarely on the job at hand though, I think my mind wanders too much when it's free....is that a bird outside? What was I saying again?

Alrighty, better go, see you crazy kids next time!

Mike