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

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!

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, day 2

I didn't really want to go down the 3D / three-quarter road, but I'm going to try everything I can think of during this experiment.

There's something I still really love about sharpening a real pencil and taking it to a fresh sheet of paper.

I'm using a few ideas suggested by a Craftsy tutor (and her method of drawing 'picturebook' style animals). One is covering a big sheet with lots of variations on an idea (even if you try and make them the same, you still end up with a wide variation). You can also try various expressions, types of eyes etc. (a sheet of tracing paper over the top helps you to try various mouths, eyebrows etc on the same face.)

This is the one I ended up with. I love the floppy ears (I wouldn't have thought of it but saw them on a reference photo). She looks a bit younger and prettier than I've always envisioned Yvonne but hey.

You're right, I've totally copped out of thinking about the legs and feet today.

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.

Rainbow poop

The lastest Yvonne was inspired by seeing some messy berry-coloured bird-poop splattered around the place. The thought of it coming out of our birds like stripey toothpaste amused me!

My initial sketch had a single square frame divided diagonally. (I still feel an urge to fit each into a single square frame if I can because that was my original vision for this cartoon) But there's something to be gained from seeing the first frame and taking that in, before scrolling down and seeing the 'reveal'.

Drawing trees / hedges bearing fruit using the very simple style I've established was the hard part and It certainly could be better.

Gone but not forgotten

I've been struggling with this one for a while. I've had the joke written down, but it requires a farmer. (The cartoons have referred to the farmer before, but never human figures). I've been drawing humans for 'Observing' for a while, and getting more confident with all that. But given that my sheep are extremely minimalist (a cloud on two sticks, with a U for a face and dots for eyes) then the farmer had to be almost as basic. After some abandoned attempts, and some Googling for reference pictures I think I've got there. Either way I'm really happy with him.

I'd love to have coloured his wellies green. That looked good, but it also looked odd because his hat, face, bucket weren't coloured. Plus, the joke revolves around his sweater. To have that alone in colour  worked better than anything (a genuine bit of fair-isle pasted in - that looked much better than my attempts to colour the jumper myself).

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.

Stuck between two variations

This is the old excuse, "no thanks, I'm washing my hair" when you want the other person to know that you'd rather poke your own eyes out.

In the first, the sheep has just been shorn. An old joke ("I'm washing my hair", when the speaker doesn't have any).

In the second, the sheep obviously has a lot of hair, so probably will be genuinely spending a long time washing and drying it. (those of us who wash sheep's fleece know that it takes days to dry.)

Which is funniest??


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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).

A greetings card

I decided to make a 'well done' card for a couple of people and came up with this drawing

I'm really pleased with the drawing, it was under pressure and done in a few minutes; it's better than what I was doing even a few months ago.

It works very well for the card (and I may publish it as it is on the Cafepress site as a greetings card), but I'm not sure whether I can publish it as it is on Yvonne's page.

The style is exactly as I was drawing in the very early days - some incongruous objects and a short caption. But I do feel I've moved on from that now, I nearly always use speech balloons and a verbal exchange between characters.

The caption was originally 'Overachiever' which was perhaps funnier, but not suitable for the card as that word has negative connotations. I changed it to Above and Beyond which means the same thing but in a much more positive way. Maybe 'Overachiever' works better as a cartoon for the site? Or maybe a funny comment or better caption will occur to me. Feel free to make suggestions.

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).