The Wanking Dead - Special Features

Hello again, just thought I'd share some with you all how I created this week's cartoon "The Wanking Dead"

Once I got the idea, I did a quick Google search to find an actual Walking Dead comic cover to base the cartoon on and eventually I found issue number 30:

I'd loved to have it pretty much identical to this cover, but I'm not that good so I kind of just used it as a rough basis on the design and still did it in my style.

Here's the first initial sketch I did:

Initially the guy with all the porn looked kind of like me for some reason, I was going with the cliché fat nerd in the sketch. Once that was done I went ahead with the first pencil drawing:

So you can see at this stage I just changed the guy to be less of a cliché and more of a normal guy, which I'm not sure if this works better or not, it just felt like a better decision to me. The X marks were originally going to be the pure black spots, but in the end I ditched that and went for more subtle shades of grey in the background. And finally we have the final inked version:

So there you go, hope you found it interesting.

Mike

Domination Catalyst (Special Features)

Hello again and welcome to another Special Features, first off here's the entire page of the initial sketches I did for this week's cartoon "Domination Catalyst":

I did have some initial problems naming this cartoon as you can see, the first title was "Not So Cute Now Are They?". I did like that title, but I always try and avoid long names where possible, it just complicates things. You can see down the bottom where I've done a few quick cat sketches and decided to keep them simple and basic, which honestly helped a lot as I had to draw so many damn cats in the end. I also had the main villain cat in the background more animated with his arm up and doing a big laugh, but in the end I liked the more creepier, calmer type villain. So once I got the basic layout sorted I moved onto the pencil drawing:

I've been really disappointed with my lettering of late as I've been going for a more casual, cartoony style. But it's been all over the place so this week I went back to using my old tried and true method of ruling lines, but still handwriting the text to help with consistency. Still tossing up whether to just go back to doing it in Illustrator like I used to. Then we move on to the final inked version:

I go through phases with how I do my shading on cartoons, at the moment I'm purely doing it all in Photoshop, by using darker colours as shadows. Other times I use hatching and linework during the inking phase. For some reason I always jump back and forth for periods, so expect the linework to come back again at some point. Over the years I've experimented with lots and lots of different paper to use when inking my cartoons. I know a lot of pros use drawing board, but it tends to be expensive so I've always searched for more cost effective paper. The main issue I always have is bleed, I hate it when my lines bleed and cheap paper bleeds like a bitch. I've tried Bleedproof paper, tracing paper, you name it. The best paper I found for me? Glossy Laser Jet printer paper is awesome, not too expensive and doesn't bleed at all. For years I used to use Matte Printer paper, but it had a kind of coating on it that used to mess up all my felt-tip pens. Plus matte paper isn't very popular anymore and it's hard to find, but it made me find something better anyway. The only real issue I have with it is, that, especially with felt-tip pens, the back isn't very dark or 'black'. But once I scan it into Photoshop I just crank the contrast and fiddle with the brightness and it's all good. Try it, I'm a big fan of the paper and it's probably something most wouldn't think to use honestly.

Hope you enjoyed this behind the scenes look and found it interesting and informative, see you all again on Monday!

Mike

Blown (Special Features)

Welcome! I had an idea a while ago to do some behind the scene's 'special features' posts to show in more detail just how I create my cartoons. Mainly from an art point of view as I tend to talk a lot about the idea process in the original post with the cartoon.

So after the idea is finalized I do a super rough sketch, just to get the layout all sorted. In this case it was a quick sketch just to see if I could pull off a drawing of Bumblebee:

Then I move onto the pencil drawing:

You probably can't see all that clearly, but I'm pretty messy when it comes to drawing. And you can tell where I've had the most difficulty as it's very smudged from rubbing it out and doing it over, which in this case is Bumblebee's hand and arm. Also at this stage I started toying around with the idea of a background which I later abandoned. Notice the date and name at the top? I pretty much date and name everything now, mainly for prosperity reasons and of course and copyright issues, if that every happened. I never used to do this and I wish I had, just so I could have everything catalogued in chronological order just to see how far I've come and all. One of my many talents is research, and I always like to my visual research as much as possible, but sometimes time is a factor and I can't. This one was easy though, I just used my old friend Google Image search! To find the Bumblebee image I needed:

Of course I wasn't going to do an exact copy, would have taken way too long and it doesn't really fit in with my 'style' and all.

So, the next step is I take the pencil sketch and trace it onto some glossy laser jet paper (more on that other week) using my lightbox (a big box with 2 fluoro lights in it, with a piece of glass on the top) using a special 'non-photo blue' pencil (basically it doesn't show up on photocopies and barely at all when you scan it the right way). I then trace the over the blue lines with various ink pens and viola! Notice the Autobot logo missing? I really struggled to draw it freehand, so I printed off the above picture of Bumblebee and traced it, inked it and scanned it in separately to combine when I coloured it. 

Next, I scan that into my PC and use good old Photoshop and my awesome Wacom Tablet to fix up any mistakes and clean up lines, then I colour it in. Finally I export it to Illustrator to add my border and text and it's all good to go! Here's the final product: http://brinkscartoons.blogspot.com.au/2012/10/blown.html

So what do you think? In the next Special Features I'll go into more detail about each stage per week or so, hope you enjoyed it!

Until next time!

Mike

Soft Core

Howdy, how is everyone today? Sorry for not uploading a Friday Night Art post last Friday, I'd had a pretty darn shitty week last week and I really couldn't be bothered so I just watched some Doctor Who and went to bed early. You see my poor lady suffered a really nasty ear infection and was pretty much out of action for a whole week, and my son decided that would be a good time to be a difficult little shit. So I was looking after a difficult 2 year old by myself and looking after a sick adult, it was not fun. I'll do a new post this Friday though, never fear. So onto this week's brand new cartoon! 


This week's is just in time for Valentine's Day tomorrow, yes goddamn Valentine's Day is tomorrow. Now remember ladies, if you expect your man to treat you nice tomorrow then be prepared to return the favour on the male Valentine's Day. "What Male Valentine's Day?" I hear you say? It's called Steak and Blowjob Day and it's on March 14th, oh I'm not making this shit up either, look: http://www.steakandbjday.com/ The name pretty much spells it out, and hey considering all the money and shit you make us guys go through for Valentine's Day a simple steak and a BJ isn't asking all that much really ladies.


This morning I was going through some ideas quickly before I started to draw this week's cartoon, which incidentally has now become next weeks, and I came across one that simply said: "Soft porn: Really hardcore porn, but in a soft case" and it made me think.....what else could be 'soft', then I thought that soft teddy bears going at it would be funny and oh hey what great timing with Valentine's Day tomorrow I could have one holding a love heart, perfect! So there wasn't much brainstorming on this one, it was quite easy, look at one idea get another....just how I like it. Also, I really enjoyed drawing teddy bears humping....I'm weird like that.


Now I don't know if you noticed a difference in the line-work on this cartoon, but I decided to revisit one of my old methods of inking. This one was draw by hand on paper then traced on special laser-jet paper that doesn't bleed and then inked by hand with pens. Now up until now I've been drawing the cartoon and inking it on the same thicker paper, but I found that the ink bled, not much, but enough to bother me. So using the laser-jet paper is what I used to always do, the only reason I stopped was that it took a bit longer (with the tracing and all) and I was experimenting with methods. I do really like this method though, I get a really nice crisp, smooth line that I think suits my style, so I may stick to using this method again. What do you think?


Alrighty, I'm going to go do some more work on next weeks, mobile phone gag. See you soon!


Mike

Neighbourly Love

Greetings my friends! This week's cartoon was the one that I started last week and thankfully I did as I had a pretty busy morning....well 'busy' as in I was at the Lifeline Bookfest all morning buying second-hand books. I so love the bookfest, I get so excited when it comes around as I'm a big fan of kicking it old-school and reading books on paper. Fuck digital.  In my own defence I hardly bought any for myself, I did get a heap for my son Dash though. Speaking of which today is my little man's 2nd birthday! So he's going to get a heap of books for his birthday when he gets home! Oh hey, I'm not a tight-ass or anything, we had a birthday party for him yesterday and he got all his presents then. So anyway, I really only needed to do all the digital elements of this cartoon today as last Monday I drew and inked it, so it all worked out really well. Next week I plan to finish 2 cartoons so hopefully the Monday after I can take a day off and play video games all day or something.....ahhhh that sounds goooood. I remember the good old days.....

This idea sprang from the jerky store that's out the front of where I work. Being me, when I see the word 'jerky' I straight away think of jerking off...wait, that came out wrong, I mean I associate it with....oh, whatever you know what I mean. So after going to work a few times and giggling to myself like a schoolgirl about the word 'jerky', I eventually wrote it down as an idea of sorts, because if it makes me laugh, I must draw it. So the first association I did was to find something that could go with 'jerky', which was a sperm bank naturally (what do you think of when you see 'jerky'?). The first rough idea was having a sperm bank that also sold beef jerky, here's also where I came up with the 'jerky time' name. I was tossing around (you like what I did there?) what would happen when the two got mixed up and got nothing so I moved on. Then I thought it would be much funnier (plus I couldn't think of a good punch-line for the other idea anyway) if a guy had a jerky store next door to a sperm bank and people kept getting them mixed up because he called his shop 'Jerky Time' instead. 

Oh so I know I did ask for idea suggestions and so far 2 people have given me some of which I still haven't done yet, but never fear I working on them both! In fact I have ideas for both, that still need some polishing, plus the last month or so has been crazy so I'll have them done soon. In the meantime, please feel free to throw me some more suggestions! I love a challenge...and a good coffee, but that's beside the point.....

So I plan on doing some more Friday Night Art, this Friday so check back here then (late Friday night I expect), see ya!

Mike

Build It and They Will Come

Welcome to the first new cartoon of the year! If you were reading last week you'd know that I'm attempting some new years resolutions this year in regards to this blog, already failed on the mid-week update thing, sorry I'll try again this week. Hey baby steps! The other is to have some cartoons on standby ready to go so I can have a day off every now and again, that one is going well. I have another sketch done and ready to go and once I finish typing this up I'll do some more work on it so all is good!

Last night I had a really good brainstorming session, I came up with the 2 ideas I've drawn today and a few others that need some polishing. Damn it's a good feeling to work out some awesome ideas, in fact last night I had a really good idea about an art project I'm going to try that involves ideas. I'll keep you posted on that one as I nut out the details and do some test runs. As you may or may not know I have a love/hate relationship with Ikea, I like their products, hell I even like going to the stores (those Swedish meatballs and $1 hot-dogs are the bomb) but I goddamn hate putting the stupid shit together with a passion. Last time I wrestled with an Allen key I Tweeted something along the lines of "Now I know how UFC fighters work themselves up before a fight, they attempt to build Ikea furniture". Which was the first part I used for this idea, the second I found as I was going through my notebooks last night and came across the idea "The real reason why the Angry Birds are so angry". So all I did was combine the two ideas to form this cartoon idea! Combining things is fun, like Scotch and Dry...hmmmm i could go a scotch right about now.... So in the past year I've done 2 Ikea cartoons and 2 Angry Birds cartoon....what does that say? I spend too much time playing Angry Birds and attempting to construct Ikea furniture?  Maybe.

Alrighty, I better do some more work, even though it is stupidly hot here today, hopefully my sweaty hand won't stick to the page....wait, that came out wrong....So I'll once again attempt to upload something of interest during the week, possibly on Friday night, who knows, see you then!

Mike

(I need a cool sign off catch phrase)

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

Chainsawsome!

Hello again! Today was a fun day of experimentation, no I didn't make out with a dude...well not today anyway, cartoon experimentation! For starters I tried a new (for me anyway) type of comic strip format, what do you think? While I was in an experimental mood I also thought I'd kick it old school and do all my lettering by hand (I usually use a vector based software program) , which didn't turn out as bad as I expected! You see I don't have the neatest of hand writing, but after years of writing cartoon ideas all the time and honestly trying to improve as well, it's definitely better than what it used to be. You see my issue is I have far too much swimming around my head and a bad memory, so a lot of the time I need to write fast, hence why my writing gets messy at times. Another thing that's helped my writing skills in a major way is that in all my years working in my current job, I was usually always the 'sign bitch', so I had to learn how to do signs and letters and I've had lots of practice! The other thing I did differently on this cartoon was the size, you see I have this habit of drawing way to big, so this one I had to do a lot smaller as it's a rather large cartoon. I have to say I really enjoyed drawing smaller and doing my lettering by hand, it was fun, I might keep doing it. 

I have to admit I was rather lazy on the background front this week, as I didn't think it was needed and I wanted to get it done quicker as well. I really wish I could have gotten a "Holy Shit!" in the first panel though, then all four would have one! But I couldn't get it to work. The shopping trolley one was the first idea I had actually, once again it came from my "Things that annoy the shit out of me" list, slow walking people in shopping centres! So once I had that idea I made a big list (me and my lists) of potential things that I could put a chainsaw and narrowed it down to just 4. Some of the ideas that got ditched where a chainsaw, a surfboard, a frisbee and a letter opener. I still do like the idea of a chainsaw with another chainsaw attached to it though....I deliberately didn't show the chainsaws on any of the panels as I think it's best to imagine these things yourself, and I thought it was funnier, I think it works well. So where did I get the initial idea for this from? From a video game of course! Yep Gears of War was the inspiration for this cartoon, especially the 3rd one that came out last week....it's awesome! Video games are a waste of time hey? Ha! So anyway the Gears of War games have what is possibly the greatest idea for a weapon ever, the Lancer. Which is an assault rifle with a friggin' chainsaw on the front, it's the most bad-ass thing ever, I love carving up baddies with that bad boy. Also if your familiar with the Warhammer games they have a sweet ass weapon called a Chainsword, which is a sword that's a chainsaw, how awesome is that?  So my love for these weapons got my thinking about what else you could make more bad-ass by adding a chainsaw, and making them Chainsawsome! Man I love that word, feel free to use it. 

I had a lot of fun doing this cartoon, I'm quite proud of it, what do you think?

Ok my friends, time to leave, see you next time!

Mike

Inappropriate Distraction

  Howdy everybody! So after weeks of my threatening to do it, I finally did a comic strip! It is larger to, just click on it, I didn't really design this site with strips in mind (as it is, I had to widen the site a tad, I hope it hasn't messed up you mobile viewers, let me know if it has and I'll try and fix it). I am looking at giving this blog site a visual overhaul and update soon anyway, so I'll make sure strips fit well on it when I do that. So what do you think? Would you like to see more strips? Let me know. I actually had a lot of fun doing this strip, so I may do some more soon, next week? I'll see what ideas I come up with, I think I may just let the ideas dictate what style and format they appear in. This is really a dialogue based gag, which is really difficult to compress to a single panel, plus it's always good to keep text to a minimum with single panels. Originally there was a hell of a lot more text and dialogue in this strip, but I needed to edit it down, there's nothing worse than a comic strip with way too much text, it's very off-putting and people tend to ignore them more. I love dialogue jokes, so I may work on some more of those. Of late I've been going over my old idea books and seeing if I've previously discarded some ideas because the idea wouldn't fit in one panel, and I've already got a few there I want to do and I'm sure there's plenty more to find, so it's always a good backup if I'm hard up for an idea....which to be perfectly honest I kind of was this week, I had nothing single panel wise, and I couldn't be bothered working on ideas the last couple of nights (stupid inFamous 2, being so addictive and sucking up my time!) so last night I just though, "Screw it, I'm gonna do a strip tomorrow, why not".


So at the moment here in Australia it's a really big time of year for all things football (not counting Soccer, the other footballs), across all three codes as well, the AFL and NRL are both at the end of their seasons and are in finals mode and the Rugby World Cup also started last week. So with all this going on I thought I'd do a footy related gag in honor of this momentous time of year! Now I don't mind all three codes honestly, but they're not the primary sports that I regularly watch, that would be Cricket and Basketball in case you were wondering. But I thought I'd at least be patriotic and have the guy wearing a Australian Wallabies Rugby Jersey in the cartoon, that and the fact that my lovely lady Penelope is a New Zealander who supports the All Blacks (Our arch Nemesis), so I couldn't help a subtle dig there! So while the cup is on it's going to be rather competitive in this house that's for sure, luckily the All Blacks are notorious World Cup Chokers so I think we'll be all good. ;-) (There's me making friends again, first I piss off Apple fans, then Nickelback fans, now Kiwi's, no one will be reading this blog soon)


Oh and there's a small story behind the "Vaginal Discharge" punch-line as well. You see years ago in one of my old jobs, me and the guys working there had this running joke that we were going to form a band called "Vaginal Backwash" and our first album was going to be called "Vaginal Discharge". Never mind the fact that none of us could even play an instrument, you can't let little things like details get in the way of you dreams of being a rock-star dammit! I was the bass player, because bass is awesome, pretty sure I can count on one hand the amount of times I even picked up a bass in my life. So when it came to writing this cartoon I had to think of a 'good' mood killing word and I remembered our album name, what do you think ladies, would that kill the mood for you? It's not everyday I get to use the term "Vaginal Discharge" in a comic, I can't wait to see the Google traffic I get from that! The original term I was going to use was "Anal Leakage", because that phrase pretty much gets me out of the mood, but I thought as it was a guy trying to get a lady out of the mood that I use a more feminine phrase. Well on that note....




Ok, until next time, see ya!


Mike

Why Bother?

Greetings again my friends and happy Monday! This week's cartoon is a combination of 2 of my favourite things, zombies and hating on Nickleback. Odds are though that at least one of you actually likes Nickleback, if that's the case than I sincerely apologise....for the fact you have shit taste in music, it can't be helped I'm sorry. The scariest thing about this cartoon is that if it came true then the world would be populated by Nickleback and their fans! Now that is way more scarier than the actual zombie outbreak! Man I love zombie video games, you want to know why they are so popular? Because you can kill hordes of zombies in horrible, gruesome ways and not feel guilty like killing a normal person! They're already dead, you're doing them a favour really. It's mass killing and not feeling weird for liking it! I never understood why they love brains so much though.  


So I got this idea yesterday why I was looking through one of my old idea books, the original entry was this: "Suspecting that your neighbour is a zombie". So how did I get to the whole Nickleback concert thing? Well I kept trying to flesh out the idea of a zombie neighbour and I started focusing on the whole brain eating thing, like would the guy get brains home delivered like Pizza Hut (Brain Hut?). Next thing I thought, what if a zombie horde where looking for brains, what large group of people have the least amount of brains? First off I though of a convention of some sort, a Two and a Half Men convention? No I only did a Two and a Half Men joke a few weeks back, what about a Scientology 'Church'? No, and the last line I wrote was this: "Fans of something? (what?)". Later that day as I was driving around it dawned on me, a music concert! But who would be playing? I consulted my new "Things that Annoy Me" list, and can you guess what one of the entries was? Yep "Nickleback"! Ah ha! God I hate Nickleback and their stupid Paddlepop Lion lead singer.....I tell you what making a "Things that Annoy Me" list was a really good idea generation tool I must say, give it go, it's very therapeutic if anything. 


I spent a fair bit of time drawing the background for this one, honestly it could have more detail, but I didn't think it was that important for the joke really, plus I do have time constraints after all. I did do a Google image search for 'Stadium Entrances' and used one as a rough reference for the background. Thank you Google Images, I use it so much for visual reference, it's awesome. I'm a big fan of silhouettes, hence why the crowd are in the background are done like that. I still need to experiment with silhouettes a bit more though, especially in backgrounds. Anyway, I hope you all like it!


Oh and before I go, I forgot to add 2 new entries into my "The Top Blights of the Modern Automotive Age" from last week:


1) Baby on Board Stickers/Signs:- Oh how did I forget this one! Why oh why do people use these? If I know you have a baby on board am I going to not accidentally hit you? The only practical use I can think of is that when they drive like idiots then you can't yell expletives at them, just in case the baby hears.


2) Dicky Personalised Number Plates:- Oh my god, I swear, where I live in Brisbane Australia, it's the capital for bad personalised plates! I've seen so many bad ones! The worst are the ones where it's really obvious that they couldn't get what they wanted so the had to be 'creative' with using numbers instead of letters!


Ahhh, some more good venting...ahhhhh, I feel better now. Ok I'll see you all again hopefully soon!




Mike

Now That Is Smart

What up my peeps? Welcome to another wonderful Monday cartoon! So as usual, I have a bit of a journey story to explain how I got to the joke for this cartoon. One of these days a full awesome idea will just pop into my head and I'll have nothing to talk about.....or maybe not, it's actually quite hard work to come up with humorous ideas all the time. Well it is for me anyway, but I really love it so it's all worth it in the end. You see it all started with the first cartoon I was going to do for this blog, which originally was a 'smart phone' gag. The joke was pretty much an iPhone App that stopped you from making drunk phone calls to ex's, with the caption " A real 'smart' phone". I had the cartoon all sketched up and ready to go and my lovely lady Penelope looked at it and informed me that there actually is an App for that! So my world suddenly came crashing down with the realisation that 1) I now didn't have an awesome debut cartoon for my new blog and 2) That I'm not as clever and funny as I thought I was (man that was a depressing realization) and 3) Yes there is an App for everything.....stupid Apple. So in the end I book-shelved the whole 'smart phone' idea and eventually did an Apple joke instead, which ended up a way better joke anyway, so once again I'm indebted to my wonderful lady for making me better. 
So, a while ago I resurrected the 'smart phone' idea again (I liked the core joke, which is a 'smart phone' becoming too smart for it's own good), but this time it was something along the idea of a phone so smart that after listening to an annoying teenage girl talking so much it kills itself. But I felt this idea still needed something more, or maybe I could do it as a strip, I wasn't sure, so I left it for awhile. A few nights ago I was brainstorming some ideas and the idea resurfaced again, but this time I thought of a better punch-line, one that involves one of my most hated TV shows, winner! Yes, I can't stand Two and a Half Men, that and Big Bang Theory....but Two and a Half Men is worse, so I used it instead. Seriously why the hell are these shows so damn popular? I know lots of other people hate it as well (for example: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Two-and-a-Half-Men-Everything-I-Hate-In-One-Show/315816774929).....well I hope so otherwise this cartoon may not go down too well! (not that I care really) But for some reason so many people like Big Bang Theory, and people can't seem to understand why I don't, because I'm such a big geek and all. But that show isn't about geek/nerd jokes it's more about making fun of geeks and nerds by having ridiculously over the top caricatures of them, which bugs me. The characters annoy the living shit out of me, all of them! You want a real show about geeks and nerds? Try IT Crowd, that show is awesome! Watch that, and fuck Big Bang off....So the moral of the story is that it's true that there's no such thing as a bad idea, and to never give up on an idea.


I was very tempted to do this gag as a comic strip this morning but I talked myself out of it by the time I went to do it. I'm still very hesitant to start doing strips regularly as I really do like the restrictive nature of a single panel, and I'm worried I'll waffle on in more panels. But I do want to give it a go, just for the challenge really, so soon, my friends, soon.


I thought that because this weeks cartoon was rather easy to draw that I'd try a little experimenting with the art style. I don't know if you noticed at all, but the last few weeks I've really thickened up my initial outlines, do you like it? With the drawing this week I went for a slightly wackier curvy look for the couch rather than very straight and uniform and in contrast, I thought I'd draw the guy with a lot more straight, sharp lines than usual. Lately I've really enjoyed drawing with more straight, sharp lines so it's definitely a style I'm going to explore more. Also thought I'd try something else new this week, plain black dots for eyes, what do you think? Not sure I'll keep doing it, but I like it enough to do it every now and again just to be different and all. So what do you all think, what style do you prefer or not like? Let me know, otherwise I just keep doing what I like and screw you lot!


Ok that's me for another week, until next time my friends!




Mike

Kermit's Angry Junk

Hello again my friends, how are we all? So last night, as usual on a Sunday night, I was brainstorming some ideas for today's cartoon when I decided that I really wanted to do an Angry Birds cartoon. If your not familiar with the Angry Birds, which I'd be amazed if your not as those damn birds are freakin' everywhere (like bird shit on a statue, or seagulls on a hot chip, like birds...anyway you get the idea), then this cartoon will make no sense at all really. So please let me explain, Angry Birds (http://www.rovio.com/index.php?page=angry-birds) is a really addictive game that's pretty much available on nearly anything with a screen (odds are whatever you're reading this one, you can get Angry Birds for it), where you sling birds to try and smash all the pigs on a level. You see, get it? I'm a big Angry Birds fan, I play it on my iPod touch every now and again when I'm waiting for something, I'm kind of shit at it, but I still enjoy it....kind of (I'm exactly the same with golf). If you've never played it, the real reason it's called Angry Birds is that it's such an infuriatingly, annoying game that makes you really angry whilst playing it! But it's still stupidly addictive as well! Stupid game! It's one of those annoying "just one more level" type games that keeps you up too late and leaves you tired as shit the next day. Play it at your own peril and don't blame me.


So anyway, back to last night: I had two rough ideas that I was tossing up between. One involved something about the Angry Birds at anger management class and the other was Big Bird (I've really been watching way too much Sesame Street of late) punching a cop. I still actually like these two ideas, but they still need some work and I intend to do something with them but not today. This morning after I dropped my lady at work I was driving back home and thinking about the ideas, in particular the Big Bird one, trying to 'tweak' it. My thoughts went something like this: "Maybe I should make the cop green like the pigs in the game, no wait, what if he was punching another pig character? Like Miss Piggy! Wait, is that violence against women, isn't that bad? Wait, what if Kermit the Frog was punching her? No, what if he was buying Angry Birds condoms so he could 'smash' her? Sweet! I'll do that!" There you go, a small insight into how my brain works.....I think the word 'wait' a lot so it seems.


Have you seen the stupid amount of Angry Birds merchandise available? Holy crap! I'm actually surprised that there isn't Angry Birds Condoms yet! It may only be a matter of time my friends, only a matter of time....Holy shit, look at this: http://angrybirdsaddiction.com/merchandise/new-angry-birds-merchandise-on-amazon/ This shit is out of control! Wow, how rich are these guys now, why can't I make a fortune off some little iPhone app? Would you buy a Brinks App? It still amazes me just how popular the birds are, hence why I wanted to do a cartoon about them...and I've never done a Kermit the Frog cartoon before either, win! win!


I hope you enjoy the 'toon, see you all again next week!




Mike

Daredevil Dave Returns

Greetings my friends! How are we all? That's good. I'm sure most of you may be thinking "Daredevil Dave Returns? Returns from what?" Well, you see Dave is an old regular of sorts for me. Originally I was going to call this 'toon 'Daredevil Dave 5' as this is the 5th cartoon I've done with him in it, but I thought I'd be clever and do a Batman Returns thing. Now I've been meaning to do a new Dave cartoon in quite some time, but the idea for this cartoon came with the help of my lovely lady Penelope, who just happened to be looking through my list of 'not quite there' ideas one day and saw one that simply said 'Deaf Defying Stunt'. She said that it was a pretty funny idea, so I worked on it some more and it was only a matter of time before I connected the dots on the word 'stunt' and Daredevil Dave. Pretty much the entire development of this gag, revolved around that one joke, it was just a bonus that I managed to get a momma joke in there as well! So once again, thank you to my lovely lady for the assist, she's like my Steve Nash. When I was recently going through my old cartoons looking for ones to redo, I found that the art on some of the old Daredevil Dave's was a bit crap so I may end up redoing some of them soon. Do you like him? I'm a fan, but I'm biased. I'm sure that's it not that last you'll see of Dave....


What I really like about this gag the most is it contains two of my favourite types of humour, word play and momma jokes! I have a few close friends that I often sling momma jokes back and forth with and I often get chastised by my lovely lady for them and she seems to think that one day I'll 'grow up' and 'outgrow' them! Ha! Like that's going to happen! The problem is that it's harder to make momma jokes about someone's mum when you've actually met her! Especially if she's a lovely lady, harder, just because you feel slightly guilty....but that still doesn't stop me of course! Hell no! It's at this point that I must point you all towards a song I'm currently obsessed with, Lonely Island's "Motherlover", click here for the film-clip, it's one of the greatest things ever! It's actually a sequel to the just as awesome "Dick In a Box", man I love those Lonely Island guys. Oh and one more, there's a 3rd one here. It's not often I get to throw a good old momma joke into a cartoon (like I threw one in your momma last night), actually I think it's a first, so enjoy it, I know she did. Ahhh, there's my momma joke quota for the week sorted.


Ok my peeps, see you all again next week!




Mike

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

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