Cartooning - Drawing the Crowds

Intro

A couple of years ago I blogged about drawing a crowd of santas at a party. I'd included a link to Tom Richmond's article about drawing a crowd scene, but the two scenes weren't very alike.

Latest Funstreak showing crowd in the background

My latest Funstreak cartoon uses many of the techniques discussed in Tom's tutorial, but in a simplified way. This doesn't mean you don't need to put much thought into it. It's well worth considering the dynamics of a crowd as you draw.

Stepping Through the Process

A crowd of people might just be a bunch of ovals to represent faces, but there's a number of things to do in order to make it look convincing:-

1. First we need to consider the density within the packing. People stand shoulder to shoulder, or with slight overlap, which leaves some gap between their heads.

Spacing Between Heads

2. The people behind will position themselves between the heads of those in front to get the best view. This gives a loose hexagonal packing pattern when viewed from above, or if the crowd is on a banked surface.

Loose Hexagonal Packing

3. People are also different heights and sizes, and tend to bunch in an irregular way, so we need to randomise the pattern a little. (I've also reduced the overlap heights.)

Randomising Positions

4. Faces at the top of the crowd block will appear smaller than those at the bottom. This establishes distance. Try to keep the size change a linear progression, so work on no more than two rows at a time to help keep consistency.

Using Reduction - Each Row Back is 90% Size

4. The usual distance effects will apply, so details will diminish and colours may darken or desaturate. In my example I didn't add any details because they're too far away, but I did add a little cell shading.

The Example From My Cartoon

 You can also see that I packed the crowd much tighter than in my previous examples. I really wanted a sea-of-faces with bodies only really visible on the front few rows.

Getting To The Point

Introduction

When you start cartooning you soon realise ideas come in all sorts of ways, but this is the first one to come to me in a dream,... I could see one of my son's friends skateboarding past the house holding onto a rocket by way of propulsion. (It's perhaps best not to analyse this dream for any meaning!)

.. anyway, he got a little way past the house and then let go of the thing. It then arced across the sky towards a housing estate. I have no idea what happened after that, but the uncertainty and the jeapardy appeal to me. I really don't need to know!

My main challenge to take this idea and turn it into a comic using the minimum number of frames.

Keeping Frame Count Low

In the past I've wanted to get complex ideas across, or have a wordy dialogue. This has often pushed me to draw way more frames than I'd wanted, or needed to. I just need to get to the point.

So taking a leaf from writers, I've decided to cut the wind-up and get straight to the point. This means distilling the idea and my original humour angle into just what's important.

Consider my first notes:-

Frame 1: Scene starts with alien #1 riding skateboard, holding rocket.
Alien #2: "Hey where did you get that?"
Alien #1: "It's one of the rockets from the ship."
Alien #2: "Let me try."
Frame 2: Alien #2 starts riding skateboard
Alien #1: "Okay, just don't let go of the rocket."
Frame 3: Skateboard hits a stone.
Frame 4: Alien #2 takes a tumble and lets go of the rocket.
Frame 5: Alien #2 gets up thinking everything is OK, while rocket heads towards their ship.

My fix:-

• Drop frame 1,.. we don't need to know both aliens have tried skating, just that one of them triggers the event.
• Keep frame 3, we need to show what causes the problem.
• Then we can jump straight to frame 5, because we don't need to see the tumble.

The Results

The dialogue needed to be changed, and I limited it to just what was important to the idea.

The Completed Comic

The final frame became very important. I added some dialogue to show the panic as alien #1 runs to save the UFO, and to help portray Alien #2's dazed state. I also drew the sci-fi version of birds flying above his head to help reinforce this idea.

Funstreak Cartoon - Misheard Idioms (Malapropisms)

Introduction

I had an idea about basing a cartoon on idioms that people commonly get wrong. I built a list of them, but I couldn't think of an idea that would work. So I created a couple of sentences, not really knowing what else to do with them...

“I hate being treated like an escape goat, it puts me on tender hooks, and for most people it goes down like a damp squid. I decided to nip it in the butt and extract revenge on this person, and it turned out to be a blessing in the skies."

"You'd better tow the line" I told them, "or you'll have another thing coming". Exactly how I do this is a mute point right now, but it'll certainly be no holes barred”

It's too wordy to use in a cartoon, so I decided to change direction and just focus on one.

Choosing An Idiom

Escape goat appealed to me and triggered the most ideas, but before I started work, I did a quick google image search to see if anyone had already drawn my idea.

Some Other Ideas I Found

OK, so I wasn't going to be unique here, but I wondered if I could do better.

My first thought involved using goat as a get-away method for a bank heist, but I thought it might be slightly confusing, so I rejected it in favour of a jail breakout scene. A prisoner would be using a goat's butting ability to burst through the jails boundary wall.

Before and After Adding Foreground Bricks

When I'd nearly finished, I stood back to review the overall composition. I thought I'd made a mistake, the goat was too far over to the left of the picture, leaving it looking imbalanced. But it was rectified once I'd added foreground bricks bursting out of the wall.

Oh,.. and when doing research for images I made a mistake by searching for "goat butt". Who'd have thought there'd be so many close-up pictures of a goat's rear end available!!!

Cartoon available here --> http://funstreak.thecomicseries.com/comics/46

Cartooning - Creating Motion Blurs

Introduction

I know we've all seen the whiz-lines cartoonists use to make things look like they're moving. They're simple but effective.

Motion Lines example taken from wikipedia

The joke in my latest comic relies on a background that looks like it's moving, but while this whiz-line technique is great for objects, it doesn't work so well for the whole background.

What Does a Moving Background Look Like?

It's easy to find photos with motion blur, and these are a great source of inspiration. The image looks like it's been smeared sideways, this tends to destroy detail and soften the focus.

Image from Dan Milnor's Photography Blog

Recreating The Motion Blur Effect

Start off with a relatively simple background, maybe add a few vertical elements so that the blur will be more noticeable.

My Starting Image

Then do the following:-

• Selected a thin blur tool, then using the line drawing constraint, stretch lines across the page from left to right. (ensure all in same direction)
• Add thin grey lines running across the page, but don't be too perfect here.

Motion Blue and Whiz Lines Added

It really captures the sideways smearing caused by movement, with the grey lines borrowing from the whiz-line technique in a subtle way.

Now, when I add a cowboy riding a rodeo bull, it gives the feel of movement and speed.

The Completed Image

The completed cartoon can be found here --> http://area5-1.thecomicseries.com/comics/81/

Area 5.1 - Mos Eisley (A False Hope)

Introduction

I was watching a Youtube video the other day about the changes Lucas made to the original Starwars film. As they were showing the Mos Eisley scenes, it struck me how empty the streets were for a busy space port town. I'm guessing George was going for a western sort of feel, but in our modern world of traffic filled roads and congested cities it looked very alien. It's the same when you look back at the intro sequence to The Prisoner which was set in 60's London. (see for yourself)



It got me thinking, what would Mos Eisley look like today?.. and sometimes that's all the inspiration you need!

Then And Now

I started out with the video frame below, and borrowed one of the land speeder images I'd created for my Starwars themed Area 5.1 cartoon - Trooper Trouble.

A Mos Eisley scene from Starwars

The challenge was to take this simple scene and make it look overpopulated and tainted by modern life. To me this meant:-

• HGV / Trucks and delivery vehicles.
• Cars (or equivalent) and I mean big ones like SUV's.
• Removal of pedestrians.
• More buildings, and bigger buildings.
• More aircraft / spaceships - (it was a spaceport after-all)

What didn't make it into the mix was pollution and graffiti.

Adding the Congestion Layers

Finally after adding those elements I needed to add the text, and my immediate thoughts were to use the Starwars font, but in the end I settled for a NASA style font. I must have used that before because it was already installed on my computer.

Here's the final cartoon,.. nobody has mentioned the two objects I'd added that don't belong here, perhaps not as obvious due to the size reduction required.

Cartooning - Return of the Little Green Men

Introduction

At this time of the year there are a lot of coughs and sneezes about, and this idea is based on how annoying these involuntary things can be. Normally all miscellaneous ideas go into Funstreak, but due to the slight violence I decided it might be more acceptable to use my aliens.

It's also perhaps a good time to resurrect the cartoon, which hadn't had an update since September last year.

So what Went Wrong with Area 5.1?

I introduced X-Failes as a new stream to Area 5.1 last year so I could try a story based cartoon. But it was more work than I was able to cope with, mostly because it semi-detailed artwork and I was still trying to incorporate a joke into each submission. If I hadn't started experimenting with Funstreak then I suppose I'd have slugged on with it, but Funstreak was faster, gave me loads more freedom and opporunity to try different ideas.

I'd also become very uncertain about my use of shading, what level of detail to use and whether the new direction was the correct one. Self doubt had set in and although some said they liked the new stuff, I'd yet to convince myself.

In the end I cut the shading in the last cartoon "Run Like The Wind". I softened and slightly simplified the background to try and reduce time spent on the artwork, but I couldn't quite shake-off the idea that I was never happy with how the new characters were drawn. I was finding that the only way I could keep them consistent was by copy-and-pasting from earlier cartoons, but that just ate time.

I really loved the way my characters looked in the 'Investigators in the Field' promo, but I struggled to create alternative profiles. Here's a great example of what I mean..

Style Issues

You can see here in the front profile that I can't quite decide what's going on with those uni-body styles. I've used shoulders that are too realistic in the later drawing (on the right) and it's given him a thick neck (like he's been eating all the pies). I think it's fair to say that I wasn't comfortable with the body design, or happy about being able to draw it.

I think I went for the best option, I stopped work while I re-considered it.

Return Of the LGM's

So now I've gone back to the Little Green Men, and drawn this...

Returning To What I Know

It might not look it, but it's heavily influenced by my work on Funstreak. It loosely follows the 'Rule of Three' with the final two frames being treated as one, and the style seems a little more relaxed. I'm still finding I'm not consistently happy with all of the frames. (One and three I like,.. two and four not so much!), but it's a starting point for improvements.

In summary, after all this time you'd think we'd settle on how something should look. There must be something built into our psyche that stops us from being happy and pushes us to look for improvements. Perhaps it just shows that I still have a long way to go and shouldn't give up my day job.

Cartooning - Keeping Consistency

Introduction

My recent "Bird Brained" cartoon was based on a conversation with a good friend about a real job interview that turned sour over just this question...

"If you were a bird, what bird would you be, and why?"

He was completely stunned by the question and failed to see that it was a psychological test designed to identify his character and strengths. But in his defence, it was asked by the Finance Director, out of the blue, with no real introduction. Like many people would, he saw it as "BS" and failed to give a good answer.

My cartoon explores the missed opportunities by both parties.

My Idea

I started off with the notion that the robin was in fact a good bird to select, and brain stormed a few ideas to help build the jokes misdirection:-

• Tenacious.
• Often seen on Christmas cards.
• Gardeners friend.
• Batman's sidekick.

So I googled around for image ideas and came up with a Christmas Card and a Robin sat on a spade handle. I'd also drawn a robin wearing boxing gloves but none of the styles matched. As a result the comic didnt gel together.

The first version didn't work so well

Fixing the Inconsistencies

Taking the fighting robin (being the most cartoon-like), I transfered the image across onto the other two frames. This gave me the opportunity to add a scalf to the winter scene.

Altering the Winter Scene Robin

And the gardener's friend received gum-boots, hat, flower and a trowel.

Altering the Gardener's Friend Robin

I tried to alter the look as much as I could to hide the fact it was a copy-and-paste job. I do miss the realistic look of that last robin, but the cartoon one is silly and so works better for the idea.

Link to the resulting cartoon here: http://funstreak.thecomicseries.com/comics/42

Cartooning - Removing Confusion

Introduction

Have you ever read a comic and thought, "I don't get it"?

Me too, it happens, even with the pro's, and while it can make things funnier if you have to put some work in, not everyone will persevere. There's a risk your reader will go away unfulfilled and never come back.

That's not a position you want to get into!

An Example

I had this idea about the lights around our building being tested during the daytime. It uses some degree of observational humour so the drawing is important.

Look at the first example:

First example can confuse

The man on the right is pointing towards a light that's not working, but it looks more like he's pointing at the one in the centre of the frame. So when he says, "They've missed that little one" it might not make much sense to you.

(You have to look more closely to see the broken one on the far left.)

The solution is simple, I took out the middle light:

Revised drawing

With only one light, the potential muddle has gone.

It might be better to have the broken light in the middle of the picture, but the joke relied on the pickup truck being ahead of it. This would then need the truck to be facing the other way, but they don't look as good when drawn from the rear.

Link to comic: http://funstreak.webcomic.ws/comics/39/

Mirror, Mirror - Drawing From The Other Side

Introduction

Sometimes I like to work back from the last frame because it's often the most important one. I can then take elements I've already drawn and use them in frames that come before it.

Drawing the Reverse

The animation doesn't look quite how I wanted it, but it shows that the drawing won't work quite right without altering the silouhette a little. The heads needed to be turned in slightly or looked wrong.

I did similar for the desk (notice the angles match), then the computer monitor, and finally swapped the order of the layers to give me the new scene.

The Completed Scenes

Using this technique saves a lot of time and provides a consistent look. But, just make sure your characters are different enough from each other or you will confuse the reader. You have swapped their positions in the frame so use as many tricks as you can to differentiate them.

Link to cartoon >>> http://funstreak.webcomic.ws/comics/33

Posting Your Comics on Reddit (Part 2)

Introduction

In my last blog I talked about the pros and cons (mostly the cons) when using Reddit to promote your comics. But I also wanted to pass on some of my musings about the reason that one of my comics performed so well.

Let’s start off by looking at my submissions:-

Date	Comic	Score	Views	Comments
16th Oct 2017	Mr Tea	2 (75% upvoted)	66	0
16th Oct 2017	Turning in your Grave	2 (100% upvoted)	89	0
16th Oct 2017	Young Love	4 (75% upvoted)	200	0
16th Oct 2017	Cooking the Books	3 (81% upvoted)	125	0
16th Oct 2017	Science Aphorism	2 (63% upvoted)	74	0
17th Oct 2017	Classic Jokes Revisited	3 (100% upvoted)	210	0
18th Oct 2017	The Gas is Greener	167 (90% upvoted)	3400	2
19th Oct 2017	Iwo Jima	98 (81% upvoted)	2700	4
20th Oct 2017	Halloween - Squash Mosh	20 (75% upvoted)	301	0
22nd Oct 2017	Sauce of Genius	6113 (85% upvoted)	57.2k	290

What does this tell me?

• If you look at the score, it shows that you nearly always get down-votes. The percentages look small, but when you start looking at Sauce of Genius, that’s a thousand people expressing their dislike. It reduced my score by a thousand, which impacts how easily it goes into (and stays on) the ‘hot’ page.
• Comments tend to track Score, it’s not until you get a cartoon on the ‘Rising’ or ‘Hot’ page that you attract the attention of those that feel the need to tell you something.

So, why did “Sauce of Genius” do so well?

The Sauce of Genius

That’s a great question, because I didn’t think it was better than say “The Gas is Greener”. It’s not a bad comic idea, it's drawn quite well and has the following attributes:-

• It’s relatable, everyone likes sauce.

This generated most of the positive comments, people talking about their favourites and what foods it's good for. Some even talked about alternatives they didn't like.

• I had altered the label of HP Sauce to read “Brown”. 

Loads of people needed to tell me it was actually called HP, completely missing the point of the joke. In the UK it's all known as brown sauce, I just chose that one because it was so recognisable. This also generates conversations about the UK and how HP was no longer available in the USA.

• Some of the statements are not true.

OK, here's where people started to really take issues. I took a lot of flak for Buffalo really being named after the place, and even my statement about Tabasco (which was true) was generally rubbished. Way to ruin a joke guys!!
Some asked if my intention was to be as inaccurate as possible, while others were amused that so many were getting hung-up on these details. (It certainly made me laugh)
Others started to get creative and came up with their own fake-sauce-facts. (very funny)
But generally I'm a bad person for doing zero research!

• One of the pictures appears to portray Thousand Island as a tropical island.

This one probably caused the most friction. Yes, it’s really up by New York, but I never said it wasn't. People seemed to be genuinely insulted by this one. It also generated a lot of discussion about New York and what Thousand Islands is really like.

Lessons Learnt

Although unintended, this comic was a little controversial. At first I was a bit embarrassed that people were finding obvious holes, but it soon started to feel like a joke on the readers when so many were taking it so seriously. It's one way to generate interest, but I imagine it could easily backfire if enough people down-vote it as soon as you post it. You also need thick skin and should resist the temptation to defend yourself.

That aside, I think mainly people could easily relate to it and understood the joke.

Something I'm still uncertain of is whether post images directly into Reddit is better than linking to a comic site.

Mixed Blessings - Promoting Your Comics on Reddit

Moving to A Bigger Audience

Trying to grow your comic audience is a big challenge to most cartoonists, you can create the greatest material in the world, but if nobody sees it then you might as well not bother. Most artists find one or two comic hosting sites to post to, and find they can easily get some followers and readers from amongst their peers. But you always want more, which generally means promoting your work elsewhere.

I’ve experimented with a few such as Ello and Tumblr, but by far the biggest impact I’ve had so far is with Reddit. The first day I posted five old comics and pushed my site page hits to just short of a thousand, but it’s not without its problems.

Posting Cartoons To Reddit

My teenage son was surprised when I told him I’d started posting cartoons to Reddit, like he knew something that I didn’t. I could tell something wasn’t quite right because of all the Reddit user advisory notes down the right hand panel on the /r/comics sub-reddit page.

There's stuff about General Conduct, What's OK to Post, What's NOT OK to Post, and some tips for artists. There's similar in most of the other sub-reddits, so you get the impression there's been abuse of the system in the past.

The Bad

It's best to think of /r/comics like a toxic tank full of piranhas, but if you decide to risk it you can get incredible levels of page views. In my experience they’ll either swarm all over you or ignore you completely. (mostly the latter) This week however, I did have a cartoon that went surprisingly well. It was a bitter-sweet moment, and probably something I'll cover in another blog.

Let's just say I learnt a few things.

Comments

Let's for a moment consider reader's comments on Reddit,...

• Don’t feed the trolls, try to take a back seat and don't get drawn in.
• Some may be pedantic or picky about certain details in your work.
• Some have a Asperger's level compulsion to correct anything they consider incorrect.
• Any sort of self promotion, including posting a link to your site may be voted down, possibly with a few snotty comments.

Down Voting

If you've not seen Reddit before, you should be aware that user posts are up or down voted by the readers. Up-voting makes your cartoon more visible and down-voting has the opposite effect. So you may find that a perfectly good cartoon (one that’s been received OK elsewhere) immediately gets a few "down-votes" and ultimately bombs. This can be highly frustrating and may be an indication that your cartoon isn’t so well suited to this audience.

It’s well worth taking a look at the more successful cartoons, the crowd is “laddish” or in the US you’d call them “Bros”, so you might want to consider whether your cartoon is suitable.

Coping With The Swarm

Getting onto the ‘Hot’ page is not a simple matter and in my experience it involved a fair bit of luck. I found it helpful to consider every new submission to be an experiment and not get too attached to the process or the outcome. Your work is likely to fail here, but that doesn't mean it’s a bad comic. (keep that in mind at all times!)

Use the "[OC]" tag in the title and request “Artistic Flair” from the moderator. This generally involves putting a link back to your Reddit user page from your cartoon site (you can always remove it again afterwards). This highlights your posts with the name of your comic, but don’t expect this to grant you better treatment.

Most people don’t want to leave a comment, it’s just a fact of life, but some will be compelled to type these sorts of things:-

• Witty comments (some are quite funny).
• Corrections to your work that they feel would improve it.
• How your work relates to them directly.
• Reactions to other people’s idiot comments.
• Thoughtful side discussion topics.
• General scorn.

(It's a real mixed bag with a fair amount of negative stuff there.)

My son advised me to never reply or react to any comments. This seems very alien when elsewhere it’s encouraged, but based on my own interactions on Reddit I’m inclined to agree with him. Some comments may question you directly, but it’s best to sit back and see if somebody will answer on your behalf.

Here’s one of the comments I received when I tried to defend my posting of the comic site url..

OnlySaysHaas “You make some whiney-arse comment in every one of your comic submissions about people not having a sense of humour, or being downvoted. Grow up and take your criticism.“

Okay, you can block users who give you a hard time, but it’s best to stay out of it and let the chimps play.

(Go to part 2)

Webcomics - This isn't Catch-Phrase

Say What You See

My rampant abuse of idioms continued this week with the saying "Cooking The Books", and while it would be obvious to draw a book (or two) boiling away in a big cooking pot, it was starting to feel like I was just churning out ideas that would be better suited to the old TV show 'Catchphrase'

Catchphrase - yes they normally are this simple!!

Those not familiar with the show should know it was all about recognising well known sayings and titles based on cartoon-like drawings. I used to watch this show a lot, probably because I was quite good at it.

The original host was Roy Walker and he would say stuff like..

Quote	What he meant
Say what you see.	You're on TV, just take a guess would ya!
It's good, but it's not right.	No, that's not even close!
Keep pressing and guessing.	We get the funniest answers when you guess.
Riiigghhhttt.	Thank god for that, it was like drawing teeth that one!

**BUT**, this isn't what I want out of FunStreak.

Puntastic, Another List

Yes, I know,.. it's another list (laffs nervously), I guess that's just the way my brain works. I come up with ONE funny pun and then the challenge is on to see how many others I can find to join it. This time I decided to use them in a menu, then it's almost superfluous, but at that stage I still had no idea what my punchline was going to be.

This sounds a lot like the Micawber Principle, which is named after the character from the book David Copperfield who, whilst struggling at near poverty, hangs onto the notion that, "something will turn up". Many comedians build their humour backwards, working retrospectively from the punchline and then adding things they need to set up the joke. It doesn't feel like a very spontaneous way of doing it, but it does work quite well. I find my ideas come frontways, backwards, sideways, all sorts of methods,... no particular pattern or method is ignored. (so I'm not sure what that says about me!!)

I resorted to listing as many types of book I could think of, many of which I couldn't think up puns for. I also decided to steer clear of religious books, such as my personal favourite, "Quran t'bun", because some people waste their lives looking for insults. Hopefully those I did include made up for this serious omission.

Say what you see!!

Funstreak on the Quackcast

The good thing about being featured on the Duck Webcomics, is you also make it into their weekly podcast.


http://www.theduckwebcomics.com/quackcast/episode-342-seen-unseen

MAD?.. No, But it Helps!

Introducing Alfred

Last year Alfred E Neuman, the MAD magazine mascot turned 60, having been featured on the cover of almost every magazine since 1956. Originally created by Norman Mingo to be a "What me, worry?" face, copied from postcards and adverts popular in the first part of that century. It has since become a famous image, even for those unfamiliar with the magazine. But due to the picture's origins, a court in 1965 found the image to be effectively in the public domain.

So my worries about basing my work on him where unfounded.

Back to the Idioms

The next item on my list was the phrase "better to give that receive". A phrase often used at Christmas to signify to children the importance of giving. What better than to draw something that most kids wouldn't want to receive.

My black-eyed kid based on MAD's mascot.

He's quite a lop-sided little fella isn't he?!

I started out with a rough copy of Alfred, but after I'd blacked his eye out it didn't seem right to keep that cheeky smile. So I changed the mouth and dropped the left eyebrow. This gives quite a non-destinct look, completely changing the character of the drawing.

The comic can be found at: http://funstreak.webcomic.ws/comics/25

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

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/