Come the Revolution

Lining Up the Ideas

OK, we like to steal ideas, borrow themes, or more ethically, be inspired by other peoples work and recently we were discussing line-ups, or identity parades (as we call them in the UK).

Shiela had an idea for the Yvonne the Sheep web cartoon; an identity parade featuring sheep, which are well known for looking identical. The joke pretty much writes itself... but there was a slight issue,.. what was the crime? (what misdemeanour could sheep do?)

We noticed when looking at other artists work that the dialogue appears to tell you very little, but it does serve to confirm who the protagonist is, so in the end we deduced the reason was unimportant. This meant that the focus could be moved onto someone in the line-up that didn't look anything like those around them. It's a well used idea with loads of good examples and sounded like a job for her boisterous crow character.

Take a look at the finished work here:-

Yvonne the Sheep #149: http://handspinner.co.uk/yvonne/149.html

But, it got me thinking and it wasn't long before I came up with my own line-up idea which revolved around different branded smart phones all looking the same - essentially copies of Apples original iPhone. It was to be a slightly surreal line-up featuring just smartphones.

Evolution or Revolution?

The more I thought about my line-up idea, the more things I threw into the pot. The policeman was going to say to Steve Jobs, "Can you tell me which one stole your IP", but that gave me a few problems...

1. How many people understand what IP means,.. and is "Intellectual Property" any less of a problem?
2. Everyone knows that Steve is dead,.. so do I show him as a ghost, or somehow backdate it?

Maybe it could be Tim Cook who's picking out the IP thief, and I could show Steve spinning in his grave. I pictured the late Mr Jobs being so animated about this that having him as some sort of power source popped into my head. This turned out to be a strong idea, but it now didn't fit in with the original line-up plan, so I needed something else that would famously have made him mad. What had Apple released to their consumer base that had given them a bad reputation, something that would have never happened under Steve's control?

The answer was obvious really - Siri

When The Internet Lets You Down

It's at times like this that I hit the internet, I needed a Siri fail that epitomised its shortfalls and wasn't a joke in its own right. But I couldn't find that simple idea, they were all too funny or ironic. Here's what I came up with in the end:-

OK, I gotta say right now, it's not my idea, Julie came up with it. Not sure where she got it from, but it's simple and it's perfect. I knocked up this quick hand and phone sketch and pasted in an image of the wibbly "Siri listening bar" to save time.

The main effort went into the last frame which I drew as a blueprint plan. This is the jokes punch, it had to be obvious what was going on yet carry enough detail to portray the well known idiom.

Starting to Draw The Blueprint

See the completed comic here --> http://funstreak.webcomic.ws/comics/8