down the hatch!

Going back to my post of the 22nd, in which I was using my new colourful sheep design and completely ruined a joke which relied on a fairisle jumper being very obvious.

I've tried my new sheep design in black and white, using a little hatching. It's something I want to be better at. I keep revisiting this particular file and having another go at the shading. Here's the current version, it's not looking too bad, and I think it solves the aforementioned problem.

I like the sheep as line drawings, it's something I might do again. Could be useful when it's snowing!

Temperature

A nice wordy one, I do like words but still want to steer clear of the pun route.

Also a chance to see how the new design looks as a flock.

(They're all wrong, by the way, it's actually 'taters' today, which is a step above 'brass monkeys'.)




I've had the idea in my head for a long time, I've been meaning to write out the whole chart (from 'searing' to 'witch's left tit' and obviously all in the correct order) and simply post that as an 'observing from the outside'. But it occurs to me that sheep would be using these colloquial terms because none of them own a thermometer (well one of them did once, but Crow pinched it and we can only speculate about the reasons).

There's probably a name for this type of joke. Ever since someone pointed out to me that the dead parrot sketch is simply the thesaurus entry for 'dead' performed in sketch form I've noticed that finding alternative words for the same thing is funny, and something stand-ups use a lot in a more subtle form.

Feeling animated

Well I've committed to the new design now, there are some on the website and cartoon sites, I've included one in my spinning newsletter and sent out the digest email with some of the new toons.

One odd thing is that some of the old jokes (some of which I really like) don't seem to sit right with the new look - it's as if they've gained different personalities with their makeover.... We'll see what happens, but new jokes seem to be coming to me so I'll just go with the flow...

Another new development is trying animation for the first time. I've had it in mind to try for some time, but never taken the plunge. It definitely seemed right for this one - 'speed lines' to indicate that the turbine is turning wouldn't be half as good as actually having it discreetly turning in the background.

Reboot - days 7 and 9

 I'm kinda liking the legs and hooves here, nice and chunky. The sheep looks a bit like another commercial design I've seen around but the similarity was really subconscious, I didn't really use anything for reference while I was drawing it. The idea of the face in the sun is nicked from one of my favourite comics.

Here is one I really like. Needs some work in certain areas but I love the look of it. Nice and friendly, the drawing is fairly smooth and geometric, which I like, there's plenty of room for expression with the eyes and mouth. Crow finally gets an eye. I wish I had more time tonight, I would have done a bit of work on his beak, made him a bit more cartoon-like to match this sheep.

Reboot - ideas - day 5

I copped out a bit yesterday, it was OK but nothing special.

I like this one quite a lot. Rather annoyingly, the bit I like the best, the body, is pretty much copied from somewhere else. A drawing I happened to see by accident earlier today.

I may develop this one, I do like the body, I'd like to try it with different legs and maybe alter the face a little.

I'm not sure why I put my glasses on her. But it made me laugh. Maybe the hero of anything creative we do is always ourselves.

I'm liking the blob of wool on the head. It does allow for different 'hairstyles' for my different characters.

Day 3 - real pen and paper

I couldn't be bothered to get out the graphics tablet today, and there's something I still really like about sharpening a proper pencil and making marks on paper.

After yesterday's foray into 3 dimensions I thought I'd try the cubist approach (remembering that Olympic mascot Cobi) and do the 'nose to the side, eyes on the front' thing.

After much scribbling and bringing the tracing paper trick back into play, I couldn't really make it work. I think it's at least partly a matter of courage - being bold enough to stick those eyes in the wrong place. Like playing a discord in music, it sounds wrong if you don't do it with enough courage, but great if you go for it.

Anyway, this is the version I like most, inked in. I've added arms this time, with Disney style anthro hands or paws. I can see this one standing up. I might give this some colour at some point.

Yvonne reboot, experimentation, day 1

The current style isn't working for me. Yvonne started as a 'stick sheep', and over the last year or so she's become neater and more detailed (even gaining hooves and a bit of shadow) which now looks at odds with the 'cloud on two sticks' idea that I started with and the bare background. So for each day in January (starting today) I'm going to scribble an idea. This is day one:

(It's amazing how much difference a bit of colour makes.)

Christmas gifts #1

This is the first of my Christmas ideas.

It's riffing on the theme of men thinking it's OK to buy household appliances as Christmas gifts. And lingerie which satisfied his fantasies rather than hers.

It's always difficult to know exactly how far to anthropomorphise these characters (ie the mention of vacuuming and cooking etc is going pretty far) and more importantly being consistent with that. The joke tends to come first and I'm not really thinking about how human they are, what they can do and what they can't. I'm not sure whether all that is important or not.

Also - I'm not sure whether this belongs in the x-rated ones, or the mainstream ones - what do you think?

I'm much happier with my jokes but they're not coming as frequently.

 The challenge here was how to set this out. I like to work in one frame if possible. But there's just too much speech for a single frame.

The dramatic pause added a lot, I felt, so I went for it and made three frames. I've used the pause once before, I like it but don't want to use it very often.

I like the joke (the one in the last frame, not the yo mama joke which is only there to set things up) and it's interesting that this is easy to do with a static cartoon (because of the speech bubbles pointing to the speaker - or at least where the sound is allegedly coming from) but wouldn't be possible any other way, animation with sound for example.

Posting pictures of your dinner

I left Facebook. Maybe I'm a grumpy old stick but I truly believe that no-one really likes to look at pictures of other people's babies, cats and dinners. (Don't get me started on "like and share if..."). Anyway. When I imagined what a sheep's dinner would look like if posted on social media, that made me chuckle because of course it would be just a green square. 

The second panel is obviously a Facebook screenshot with some photoshopping. The first frame is a stock image of two sheep. The speech bubble and frames took no time at all.

The line about something truly remarkable getting 3 likes but a picture of breakfast getting lots isn't original but I saw it done very well recently - can't credit that artist because I don't know who they are, but thank you, mystery cartoonist.

Throwback Thursday - comparison one year on

 This is the second 'throwback Thursday'. I've gone to the very first cartoon, the one that started it all. I was then using pen and paper and scanning that in. They were originally deliberately crude in style (that's my story). They look so different now.

 The style has become more refined. I've experimented with more detail and some colour, but I really like the "cloud on two sticks" style that I started with and don't want to let that go.

 This has a surreal aspect to it (mixing sheepy things and human things for an absurd result) that I really liked, but haven't always kept sight of.

This is the world we live in folks.

I was pleased to get back to a single-framer.

As far as the drawing goes, it's very lazy, I only had to add eyebrows to a 'stock' frame. I decided to write the word 'sarcastic' into the bubble because I wasn't sure that it was clear enough that she isn't being serious about changing her name. Or maybe that's spelling it out a bit too much? (pun intended!)

This one was inspired by a true story (or at least something I read on Wikipedia). I fell off my chair laughing at the tale of guitarist Rik Emmett changing the spelling of his name after it was misspelled on the cover of Triumph's first album. "...rather than have the album recalled or cause confusion with fans..." That's very accommodating of him. When I told my mum this story, she said "it could have been worse" which made me laugh even harder than I did at the original story.

A search of the web for possible misspellings of 'Yvonne' turned up a page of gaffes by Starbucks employees. I wonder how that Yvonne felt about having Evan written on her cup?

As humans, the lazier of us are pretty prone to making compromises or workarounds rather than properly fixing our own mistakes, hence Maureen jumping at the chance to avoid her paperwork.

Throwback Thursday #1

This is the first 'throwback Thursday'. This is a rework of one of my favourite Yvonne cartoons, not the first but very early. The original is #4, here.

I've not changed the text at all, I really like the joke and I still think it's worded well. The surreal element is a style I really wanted to run with, maybe I've lost sight of that a little. It's the drawing style that I wanted to update here. My early drawings look very crude now. It's been a year, I'm looking forward to looking back on this one in a year's time.

I've also changed the layout. For two frames I used to place them horizontally adjacent, but I've since found that the vertical scroll works well.

Reworking some of the older ones also gives some of the older cartoons another airing. I'm planning to revisit one of the early cartoons each thursday.

nosey neighbours

It occurred to me that we haven't seen Gerald for a while.

At the beginning, I liked the idea of having a bunch of named characters with different personalities (even though they'd mostly look the same). But that seemed like a lot of thought and I didn't bother making any notes, but it has naturally happened. When the book gets underway, it'll contain a 'who's who'.

Alpaca are often used as guard animals. For that reason, Gerald is the chairman of the neighbourhood watch committee, and he takes his job very seriously. And looking a little geeky (as they do) seeing him being abandoned by his friends is funny in a slightly sad way.

This little story is based on the idea that some people may enjoy the 'watching' part of neighbourhood watching a little too much. Perfect job for a nosey neighbour maybe.

Falling leaves

While watching leaves falling yesterday it was pretty easy to imagine them piling up, covering the ground, thus making it difficult for our sheepy friends to graze. More difficult was coming up with just the right form of words, but this is what I decided on.

As R1ck knows, I'm pretty keen on using pen & paper. But when I started drawing the leaves, I realised that this would have been impossible without copy and paste! (or at least I wouldn't have had the patience).

looking back, looking forward

Looking back over some previous posts on this blog, things have moved on considerably in a remarkably short time.

A year ago I was only just setting out on my Yvonne journey, and I've just published #108

Sometimes I've set out wanting to express some kind of message (read: have a rant). This one is unusual in that since drawing it I've been struggling to find my position on the matters within. It started out as a skit on the old sexist 'make us a cup of tea, love' and I suppose for comedy value I looked for the unexpected turn.

I'm not saying that being submissive to bad behaviour should be rewarded, and I'm not having a go at the feminist.

If anything, I suppose my position is that it's good to have principles, but sometimes sticking to them can be counter-productive.

It was very quick to produce; largely a 'copy and paste' job, with a bit of rubbing out and an extra few lines (the heart and the tails).