He's In All of Us

Sorry, this is an old cartoon this week. If you've been following me you'll know I've been doing a 100 Days of Drawing Challenge. It has been so awesome and fun, but unfortunately it has been eating up all my spare time and my youngest son was sick last Wednesday, the day him and his brother go to daycare and the day I usually get my work done. So I've had no spare time at all to do a new cartoon sorry, hopefully I can do a new one this Wednesday if everyone is healthy.

Why did I choose this cartoon? Well, I did a Spider-Man cartoon last week so here's another one! Also, for some reason I've always loved the "Wait, what?" line, I always find it funny when used in the right context. Which reminds me, I should use it some more!!

Anyway, enjoy!

Mike

What Did You Expect?

This is the cartoon I had half-done and ready to go last week, but I didn't get enough time to finish it. I developed it in a rather backward way than normal; I started with the picture and than developed the idea around it. For some reason I pictured a woman in bed with a clown after they've just slept with each other, I found it kind of funny so I kept thinking about it until I eventually thought up an idea to go with that image. It's not normally how I do things, as usually I have the idea in my head first and then I take some time to figure out exactly how it will look by the end. So it was kind of nice to try out a new method and I liked it, I may explore this method some more in the future, it would be even nice for other people to give me a weird image to drawn and then try and make it into a joke.

Surely I'm not the only one that finds clowns extremely unfunny and kind of creepy, right? I don't get the appeal and I'm pretty sure kids don't either as most of the time they scare the shit out of them. If not, they should watch Stephen King's IT and that will fix them up or read about John Wayne Gacy. Funny story; I remember awhile back I was reading about a company that made calendars were making one with picture of clowns and the numbnuts who's job it was to find stock photo's for it grabbed on of John Wayne Gacy and used  it, not creepy way to make something already kind of creepy 10X worse. Oh and if you're not familiar with GWG, google his name, he was a horrible child serial killer who often dressed up as a clown to 'help out' at community events...*shiver*. 

Clowns are creepy as hell, but wait you say, then why do I have a clown as my logo? I actually find clowns fascinating as well for the same reason, they're meant to be funny but end up being kind of scary at the same time, it's a juxtaposition that I've always found fascinating. Hence why my clown is usually always kind of angry as he was a character I created that was born looking like a clown but is always angry and is horrible with kids.

Anyway, hope you like it!

Mike

Something Smells Fishy

I'm still kind of on a 'holiday' at the moment so I'm delving deep into the Brinks vault again this week. Next week I should have something new and I'm really keen to start doing some Friday Night Art again, so I'll keep you posted!

This one is actually quite old as you can possibly tell by the art and for some reason the colours are all very dull, oh well that's progress! I do love this joke I must say, nothing like a good tuna joke....hence why this is probably about the 3rd or 4th one I've done!

Alrighty, not much else to report so I'll keep it brief today, see ya!

Mike

Smurf Relief

Smurf Relief, kind of sounds like a benefit concert to save needy Smurfs from getting eaten doesn't it? Well, not quite. Hello again, how are we all? 

At one stage I was going to call this on "Wait, I'm about to Smurf!" or "Oh my god! I'm Smurfing!", my lovely lady even suggested just calling it simply "Smurfing" to hopefully get the meth crowd onto it.....oh in case you didn't know "Smurfing" is when you pay someone to buy you pseudoephedrine to make meth. I didn't know either, don't feel bad, she watched a doco on meth recently. In the end I just stuck to the first name I had for it when I was developing it, "Smurf Relief." 

So how did I develop this idea in the first place? The other night I was going through my really old unfinished ideas and I stumbled upon this one, and I happen to remember how I got to it originally, even though it was a long time ago. The first idea was; that I was wondering about what happens when Smurfs get 'blue balls', are their balls still blue because their skin is already blue? Then I thought; wait a minute, maybe they have blue skin because they all have major blue balls because there's only one chick in the village and she doesn't put out. Then I assumed that if she finally did, and one lucky Smurf popped his 'smurf' then maybe his skin would go 'normal'. It's odd that I've had this idea in my book for ages and never did it, it just goes to show that you should never throw away old ideas, sometimes when you rethink them you realise that they are better than you thought. I also think that when I first had this idea, I was working for a motorbike mag and I doubt they would have gotten it, so that's probably why I shelved it. Kind of good timing on my part to as that new Smurf movie is out and all, it's weird to see Smurf stuff all over the place again, reminds me of when I was a kid. I was at a toy shop yesterday and those little blue bastards where everywhere! I wonder what colour Smurf shit is? A really dark blue? Would they then give someone a blue-eye? Hmmmm, something to think about.....

You know what, I had a lot of fun drawing this one, it was really easy and took hardly any time at all, win, win! The original artwork is actually almost half the size of what I usually do them at, which I think works out better in regards to line-work quality and also it helps with file size on my computer as well. I've mentioned it before, but for some reason I had a habit of drawing way bigger than I need to and then shrinking it down, not sure why, I just do. So I'm going to try and stop it and stick to this size now, that is unless there's a lot of detail needed like last weeks Predator cartoon.

Ok, I'll Smurf 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

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