Slow food

We've talked about whether you find a good joke by working through a situation and then thinking of the twist, or whether you start with the twist and work backwards.

This is the start of a story that I like. I'm convinced there's a funny and unexpected ending but I don't have it yet.

The squirrel buries a nut, Then comes back in winter but the ground is covered with snow, and our little hoarder looks puzzled. Then it's spring and there's a shoot coming out of the ground. Yvonne has observed all this.

The best end I have so far is that the squirrel comes back and trips over the seedling.

Maybe Yvonne munches the seedling with a comment about slow food, or helluva way to crack a nut. Or something.

[update] this is my favourite ending so far. Yvonne tells him she knew where it was, he only had to ask for help. He says he was fine, as his stomach rumbles.

(silhouette, sunset behind them)

Idioms - Keeping it Simple

Intro

Months and months ago, when I first started using FunStreak for experimenting with ideas, I trawled the web for as many usable idioms and well known sayings as I could find.

I was looking at this list the other day and had been mulling over how to do the next cartoon. I'd chosen "Fighting Fire With Fire" and had always considered it should feature a fireman, maybe on some sort of fireman inititive day failure.

With this in mind I decided to look up similar idioms and maybe have a list:-

• Adding fuel to the fire
• Burn the midnight oil
• Feel the burn
• Keep the home fires burning
• Like a moth to the flame
• Baptism by fire

The list could be, "Sayings that don't help when putting out house fires"

It was OK, but I've created a few list based cartoons recently, so I shelved that idea.

Go For The Simple

In the end simple is king, I'd found a great bit of dialogue and just needed a line to explain what was going on. I could have mentioned the well known saying right then, but I chose not to. I think it's better for it.

You're Fired - Funstreak 28th Sept 2017

Link to the original cartoon: funstreak.webcomic.ws/comics/24

The gravity of the situation

Here's the plan. I know the joke I want to make (they think gravity goes upwards - grass grows upwards, there must be something pulling it in that direction).

I'm not sure whether the apple falling on the ancestor sheep's head adds anything or not. Perhaps it helps with the misdirection - it pre-loads your mind with the fact that Newton saw the apple falling and wondered what made it move in that direction.

Does it work? Posting it here will give you a chance to comment and for me to have another look with fresh eyes tomorrow before I do any work on the drawings.

Funstreak got Featured on Duck Webcomics

I've just had a nice surprise this morning, I was informed my one of my readers, plymayer that I'd been featured on the front page. My first thought was "What?... front page?... why don't I know about this?"

Sure enough, when I went back to the first page, there was my artwork!

Featured on the front page

http://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2017/sep/27/featured-comic-fun-streak/

That's my dog from "You have a Match"

If you've not seen the cartoon yet please check it out.

Cartooning - Rule of Threes Revisited

Intro

I've just realised that the latest FunStreak cartoon (http://funstreak.webcomic.ws/comics/23) follows the Rule of Threes pattern. The first two boxes set the scene and perform the misdirection, and the last one delivers the punchline.

This one came from a conversation I was having on Saturday morning with my 'significant other'. We were reminiscing about the past, how cute our kids used to be, and talking about how prudity replaces the carefree attitude that children have when they're little. Sometimes the truth slips out in a joke; the grass really was long, and my son help out?.. well let's just leave it there!

The Cartoon

I started off drawing the final frame, adding temporary lines to a vanishing point around the middle of the page. It was important that the final reveal should show the long grass, so it made sense to have the couple actually in a garden. Sunloungers were the simplest thing to draw, I drew one and then mirrored it over to give me the second. The grass was added in layers, a little bit like waves on the sea.

A simple garden scene

Finally a couple of figures and a table were added to complete the scene.

The completed scene

Frames one and two are based on zoomed in copies of this image. It's a great way of re-using the artwork, but ensure you alter the figures to provide a bit of variation.

Zoomed in Images for Frames 1 and 2

Simple Really.

Cartooning - Should you use Shading?

Introduction

To shade, or not to shade, that is the question! I recently evolved Area 5.1 into X-Failes so that I could show more detail and produce a more colourful product, but recently I've been feeling that it's been taking too much time. Truth be told, if it had gained me loads more views and likes I wouldn't care, but it hasn't.

I do use the following techniques to speed things up.

• Re-use characters and objects.
• Trace pictures of items I'm unfamiliar with.
• Re-use backgrounds.

But although shading can look really nice, it takes time, even when re-using artwork. Just flipping the image over usually requires extra effort, negating the time saved while you re-work the shading. And I didn't help myself by giving him tattoos.

Cartoon with Shading

Moving to a Flatter Style

Looking at the new style, it looks like I just copied from the cartoon above, removed the shading and tweaked it. But those elements have been re-used a few times and the fact they line up is just by chance.

Cartoon with flatter colouring

The thing I didnt expect was the colours to look bolder. I haven't been 100% consistant with eradicating the shading so there's still a slightly 3D feel about it.

The biggest time saver is probably the background. It's not much more effort than roughing it out with pencil and adding a bit of colour with a large marker pen. I then reduced the saturation by making it slightly opaque. The softer background does provide some degree of separation from the foreground objects, it focuses the reader a little.

Link to latest cartoon : http://area5-1.webcomic.ws/comics/76/

Working On List Ideas - Part 2

Intro

If you remember last time, I had a list based idea that I'd almost finished putting together. The main challenge was to create a cartoon without spending too much time drawing because the comedy is in the list. Anything else should just support that.

(NB. Thanks for the list ideas Shiela, although they came a little late. Go-Ape was a nice idea and I'd have used that one)

The Solution

Okay, here's what I came up with,.. pretty simple, a marketing guy explaining charity suggestions to an unknown client. There are a few similarities with the maths professor cartoon I drew.

Comparison of ideas

I started with another screen grab from my phone's notes application and turned it into a flipchart or whiteboard list. A few scribbles help to differentiate the new ideas from the established charity month ideas.

I drew a marketeer (delivering it as a presentation), and added that little bit of dialogue so the reader understands where the idea came from.

Final cartoon here: http://funstreak.webcomic.ws/comics/22

Part One

Working On List Ideas - Part 1

Intro

Today I'm breaking the mould and writing about a cartoon that I haven't finished, in fact I haven't even started drawing. I didnt want it to go out half baked, but I thought it might be interesting to share what I have already.

Sometimes ideas aren't very visual, the challenge then is how to turn it into a cartoon, and this is definitely the case with lists. When I tackled this problem last time (on Area 5.1 - Imprinted Habits) I created a fake magazine page. In the blog entry for it I described the process, but I remember it being a lot of hard work involving generation of additional ideas to fill the rest of the page.

The challenge will be trying to come up with something simpler. This one's intended for FunStreak, and my rule is no more than two hours drawing, ideally less than an hour.

My List

There's a few charity events coming up that promote certain actions for a whole month. The one that's being promoted quite heavily now is "Go Sober for October", but soon there'll be "Movember" too and Facebook will be awash with facial hair selfies.

It's all good stuff, but it got me thinking about what other things could happen for the other months. I started scribbling ideas down on a pad and then eventually I typed them in to notes on my ipad and tried to assign an emoji.

My Monthly Event Ideas

Some of the ideas need work, or replacing. Other's like "Banuary", if I decide to go with it, need a little explanation.

Part Two

Sketchy Details - Planning your Cartoon

Intro

My usual method of creating a cartoon tends to follow this process:-

1. Have great idea.
2. Write down dialogue and review.
3. Draw pencil sketch or thumbnails.
4. Draw each frame on the tablet.
5. Import into ComicLife and compose.
6. Finalise and resize to 850px wide.

Step 3 often looks like it's been missed, that's because I rough it out on the tablet, or I create empty planning frames (with dilogue) in ComicLife. More often than not, I just plan it in my head, but there's always some sort of plan, there has to be.

The last X-Fails had quite a detailed sketch, so I thought I'd share it with you.

Sketch Plan

You'll notice there's some quite extreme camera angles in this cartoon. We start off with a high level of perspective viewed from below, using the vanishing point method to scale the policeman's body. But you have to be brave and really draw those boots big if you want him to appear close up. The next three shots are simple close-ups showing the dialogue and that pistol action. They were chosen to focus the readers attention to try and increase the level of misdirection. Finally we have a standard frame to fill the page width with the big reveal. (Five's a difficult number to arrange otherwise)

Here's the link to the finished cartoon, often things get changed along the way, but this time it came out quite close:

http://area5-1.webcomic.ws/comics/74/