On Further Thought

Ok, the 'volcano' thing was a start. I was driving somewhere today thinking about it and visualizing one of the cats in a box being the volcano, but boxes don't narrow at the top. That got me thinking that perhaps a paper bag mostly crimped at the top would be a good volcano.  Something that two of the cats could do as a setup to startle the other cats.

 

But then........getting the visual of one jumping out automatically brought to mind The Alien, which would make a paper bag be the 'egg', and who better to get facehugged than Marcus by the Siamese.  Hmm.  That seems a funnier strip than just working with boxes.

 

Anyway, that's how my mind works.

Boxes = Volcanos

Damn it's hard coming up with something new.  Been toying with another couple of strips dealing with claw clipping (only did two on that subject in the past) and/or having the black and white large cat come back as a temporary hold while his owner is on vacation (the diabetic kitty).  

 

Then saw mention on Girl Genius about seeding volcanos to destroy a sentient train that eats metal (don't ask, it's a long complicated plot line in that comic - go over to the website and read all about it) and I think THAT idea would work into something given the Walter Mitty tendencies of three of the cats in the strip.  Though I do have to finish the 'origami cat' folding himself into a black hole - where Marcus gets himself stuck in a vertical box too small for him. 

 

Gotta go. Stuff to draw, things to write!

Working On A Potential New Strip

Know how cats wobble their heads back and forth to triangulate?  Our Molly does it about five times more than any of the other cats (makes her look like a bobble head) and I was trying to come up with a way to work that in as an idea.

Possibly that by doing it they not only see something in 3D, but also across the other 15 dimensions as well?

What Happens If The Siamese Swallowed The Time Transporter?

Well she did eat the fish, and he wasn't carrying his transporter so I suspect it was an internal implant.  Hmm. 

Had to get up at 3am with the idea and spent 20 minutes sketching out her trip to the far future and what she did/saw there.  Let's just say she comes back 'fatter'.

That Futuristic Cockroach

Hmm, I've been thinking about the time traveling cockroach from the future (that met a rather unfortunate end) and his time traveling equipment the small cats now have.  Since we now know that the future is populated by bugs and air flying fish with spiky bits on them, possibly the device is pre set with the future coordinates and one of them can go FORWARD instead of to the past like they did last time. 

I mean yeah, it's all fine and good to bring back a mammoth hair or some Carolina parakeets (delicious!) but now they know there's FISH in the future.  The Siamese definitely thought that the one she ate was pretty tasty.

So I'm planning on doing a bit more with this adventure line.  Not sure yet where it's going to finish up as, but like they say, it's the journey not the destination.

I'm Bringing The Time Traveling Cockroach Back

The Fleas have made 5 or 6 appearances in the strip, but the time traveling Cockroach from the future only made it here once.  Of course having him eaten by the cats would seen to put an end to any future appearance, however I suspect something like cloning would be involved, so what we saw may or may not have been his first/only trip, but it certainly doesn't count him down and out for the future.

He's back.  I've got to figure how to relieve him of his backpack unit so the cats can have fun with it again (possibly going back in time for more than those Carolina Parakeets).  The hardest part of doing the strips is those $50 words he mangles/uses to talk with the primitive mammals he finds here.  5,000 years from now it's just bugs and, um, how can I say this........ little bitty flying fish on this planet.

I Must Be Doing Something Right

The SMITH cat comic strip goes up weekly, and I posted a comment asking about how he did the strips (details, etc.).  He was nice enough to repost a previous detailed post about the whole process.

He uses computer paper, so do I.

He does quick notes, so do I (but mine have eyeballs floating in the frame).

He puts 2 strips per page of paper, so do I.

He cut a template out of cardboard so he didn't have to use rulers to draw the strip frames. I use rulers yet.

He letters by hand as he draws, not afterward in post production. So do I.

And hey, I figured this out all on my own, too!

Check it out ---
http://smithcomic.blogspot.co.uk/2014/07/tools-of-trade.html

Why Don't Cartoonist Blogs Talk About Their Process?

 

I see cartoonist blogs online, and many discuss the publishing aspect of the work, but they DON'T talk about the everyday stuff very much.  Oh I'm not talking about where they get their ideas from, I mean what pens do they use, and why or why not.  Do they do half by hand and then scan it in and work in Photoshop?  Is it all done by hand? Do they use Bristol board or are they working on art paper or even computer printer paper?  Things like that.

 

While there's no 'wrong' way to do cartooning, some more basic info would help just to see what's been tried, why it's been tried, why NOT continue to do something, etc.  Knowing what erasers to stay away from (crumbless is good, smearing is not) and how hard the pencil lead should be is important information.  What works with certain inks and what won't. 

 

Which pens are TRULY waterproof so they don't smear when erased over can be a lifesaver.  Prices too, who uses Rapidographs or disposeable clones - that's a $14 difference per pen and if both give the same quality of work it's a great thing to know.  I discovered that it's not good to use Micron pens because even though they give a nice thin line, the ink capacity is about half that of a regular pen (they run out SO  quick), the ink also is not a true black, it's a grayed out shade of black.  Put another pen line next to it and the difference is significant.

 

What size do cartoonists work in? How far do they shrink their work down?  Do you really need to draw on a slanted surface?  What about eye strain?

 

Do cartoonists save their not so good ideas or drawings and go back later to revamp them?  Do they toss stuff even when half finished and how often do they do that?  Do they pin things up on a board to jimmy ideas later down the line?  HOW DO THEY STORE THEIR WORK?

 

It might be just me, but hey, I'd like to hear about these kinds of things.

Some Korean Letters Look Like Pictures

I saw some Asian (Japanese? Korean?) writing on a sushi ad in the paper today, and was struck by how much the main symbol looked like a spider. 

  

It was fun playing around with the idea that my Siamese ‘says’ the character and Marcus can’t understand what she’s saying (or why she’s constantly pointing).  He starts complaining that she needs to learn to speak English at some point. 

  

By the last panel she’s still faithfully pointing, saying the same symbol again as a big spider descends on Marcus from above (hissing too, it’s a mean spider). 

  

Not a super hilarious strip, but something sort of different.  I like how calm the Siamese stays through all this.

Blast From The Past

I shuffled things around on the bookshelves the other day and found some of my old comics from when I used to do science fiction conventions.  Self published work like Barr Wars, and graphic novels from back when THOSE were brand new on the market, such as Duncan and Mallory, Omaha The Cat Dancer, the old Phil Foglio work and a bunch of other things like the Centaur's Gatherum.

Wow, most are dated from the 1987 to 1992 years. There was a huge surge of good work being published back then in those years, before the economy tanked in the early 1990's.  It brought back such memories.......  Half those artists I never heard from again, they just disappeared into the woodwork. Names I was very familiar with, they just stopped drawing/producing.  That's so sad. 

Some of it shaped what I do now, and all of it was entertaining to me, though the Duncan and Mallory graphic novels are rather simplistic to me at this point.  All the characters smile too much.

Not sure if I should sell them now, or keep them, or what.  My interests have changed enough that some aren't what I want to hold onto.  But it's all original work, printed by small publishers (most of whom have bitten the dust decades ago). 

It's A Banana Tattooing Kind Of Day

I had time to wait while someone was at the doctor so I went to Cermak and got myself a giant burrito (made fresh) and sat in the patio section with scratch paper and a pen and my food.  It was actually productive.  

I did sketches for a strip about two of the little cats listening to rain coming down hitting the roof (we've had rain ALL day yesterday, with no thunder) and speculating on the sounds.  

I did up a meh strip (probably won't use it) where three are grooming and Marcus thinks he missed out on some chicken.... not all that inspired actually.

And the third was Marcus talking to the owner asking why she's tattooing a banana with a ball point pen (look it up online, there's some GREAT images of what you can draw on a banana skin). 

Of the three I like the rain strip the best.

Time To Make A New Post

Hello again, things really slowed down.  I'm looking at the large box of accumulated sketches and finished artwork and have been trying to locate several half done strips that got placed around the house where I'd 'remember' to get back to them later.  Ha!  Good ones too, one is about doing magic with a fly swatter a-la Hairy Pawter.  No, I won't use that spelling in the strip.  Have to find the two mini-comic sketches too. One's called Turf Wars, about raising catnip with grow lights down in the basement, the other is about winning the lottery or publisher's clearinghouse (maybe). 

Organization! It's all about organization!  Much of which I have been dropping the ball on lately.  Sorry.

Alternate Dimensions And The Cat's Perception

Molly was staring off into nothing, just sitting there Zen grooving on the corner of the kitchen table this morning.  Eyes were open and unfocused. It was a little odd seeing her like that but then she had a busy day the other day with company constantly petting her.

 

I know recent news stories have said cats and dogs see further into the infra red and ultra violet than we can, and that came to mind as I was looking at her.  Steve thought she was just doing Zen waiting for breakfast to be finished cooking so she could get her token milk treat once we all sat down (he's probably right) but I came up with a new strip idea about maybe cats seeing in this dimension plus 15 others and she was watching birds in one of those.  Hmm.......

Crime Noir

I'm thinking I should be doing the Marcus, F.P.I. (Feline Private Investigator) story up as a sort of separate section in the cartoon books.  I've looked at film noir art styles and came up with an image for the front of the story that looks suitably black/white noir-ish. 

It might be fun having this as a 'special insert' or such.

Ha! So Much For "Tradition"

I was at the Half Price Bookstore the other day, went to their graphic novel/comics section and made a point of checking about that letter "I" needing serifs when used as a pronoun.

While all of Marvel and DC used it with serifs, half the other published works, including Persepolis and Maus, did not use serifs so even though it's touted as an 'amateur' mistake, I believe it's not as rigidly held a rule as has been implied. 

So There, grammar Nazis (or serif Nazis, or whatever). I will continue to use san serif I's for my pronouns.

(Rant over.  There, I feel better now).

Argh! Beginner Mistake

Well now, I've just discovered that I'm making a beginner mistake in NOT making the word "I" with serifs, while the letter I in a word is done san serif, when it stands as a pronoun it always gets the serif on the ends.

Who knew?

Supposedly it's a major beginner mistake. However NONE of the books on cartooning and graphic novel art have ever mentioned it.

Nice going guys.  What are we supposed to do, take a class in this to learn the tiny details? Then why isn't it in any of the many books out there on the subject of cartooning?

Got Another Mini-Comic Designed

All the previous ones have been about the little cats. This one is featuring Marcus as a private investigator in a cliché version of a hard boiled 1920's PI.  I got the idea thinking about 'It Was A Dark And Stormy Night' while sitting at a traffic light, got maybe 4 panels into a strip on it and then pulled paper out when I got home and kept going.

It came to an 8 page booklet/mini-comic size and I still have to finish the last two panels so they have the same strength as the rest, but it's all sketched in on paper now.  Just the redrawing and inking left on it.

Do I Need To Add More?

I've been looking at the setup for the booklets. I HATE to leave space wasted, but am not sure if doing something on the back of the cover or inside back cover is too much.  They've been left blank so far. 

Do I add a picture to the back? An advertisement?  An extra mini-comic? A maze or mini-game?

The inside of the front cover will have a sort of intro on it, at least the first two issues did.  Since they're already being printed double sided on the paper I think I need to do something with it and not leave it blank anymore.

Bonanza - 10 Strips Off One Idea

The 'owner leaves for a convention' idea did end up being a good continual story after all.  I had a cat sitter show up, take digital pics of the guys, clean the box, put down food, do all the standard things and showed how the guys all dealt with it.  Then the owner comes back home and gets the familiar snub like some cats offer when their human returns days later.

I think I nailed it pretty good.

Form Follows Function

I was at a Steampunk event (with my catnip toys and stuffed toy squids & Steampunk owls for sale) and it got pretty boring at the end of the day.  Dealers room was open till 7pm which is sort of late given the fact a lot of people left around 5pm and the programming was pretty much over with. 

Good thing I had a notebook with me. I started doing a strip with Marcus watching his owner going off to a science fiction convention to sell at a dealers table.  It morphed into 8 strips and I still have to finish the timeline on it (maybe another strip yet, not sure).  The group has to deal with the cat sitter that comes in to feed them.  Food trumps all, except in Marcus's case.  He's the only hold out.

Playing With 'Extras'

Crafty, crafty, crafty!  Those clear flattened glass marbles you can get from the Dollar Store, Michaels or JoAnn Fabrics are very handy for making giveaways. 

I did up some sketches, photocopied them, cut them out, used Elmer's Glue on the back of the marble, attached the picture, put more glue on the back of the picture and then let them dry. It works just like Modge Podge - which is basically Elmer's Glue with a little water. 

Once they were dry I gave them two coats of clear fingernail polish on the backs, making sure to get it covering all the glue on the edges of the glass, and they're ready to go.  Cost - $1 for a bag of the flattened marbles, 79 cents for a whole bottle of glue, $1 at the Dollar Store for clear fingernail polish.

Only hazard to the project was the fumes from the fingernail polish. Do it with an OPEN window! Man! I don't need to be killing brain cells!

One of the things I want to do is transfer small drawings of the characters to them like this at a future date.  Sure they're time intensive but I think it'd be fun if done in small batches.

Today Is National Spay Day

You know, that’s one topic I’ve never really touched on in the comic strip yet.  I’ve covered FIV, ferals, diabetic cats and a ton of other things but never the neuter/spay issue.  I’ll have to put that on the list for future work.

The Fleas Are Back

Well, one of them is anyway.  I’ve had a bit of a writers/drawers block trying to figure out new things for the strip and decided to go back and re-introduce fleas again.  They've only shown up twice in all this time…no, wait. I think they’ve showed up four times.  Heck.  Well, that’s still not enough, so they’re coming back again doing weird flea stuff. Then they go away, they're not regular characters.

The first time the owner saw crop circles in Marcus’s fur – signs that the tiny spaceships needed to come get their fellow fleas to return to the mother planet.  The second was the ‘Girls Gone Wild’ flea video. The third was the grandson of the flea tagged as ‘male’ in the female Gone Wild video.  And the fourth was the Crime Noir going on in Marcus’s head/neck fur that ended up as a murder suicide. 

Don’t expect anything normal in my comics.  I’m not regurgitating anything that’s been published a thousand times before by other cartoonists.  This is MY comic strip and it’s not going to be duplicating anything done by anyone else.

Technical Help For A Freebie Project

There was a Pet Expo in our city this past weekend. One thing I did notice was that a lot of the different breed rescue tables there were selling home made coloring books. 

 

Most of them were pretty awful pictures, I suspect they went online to find copyright free line drawings – nearly all were from the 1950’s – and they were roughly 10-15 pages each, with a word puzzle and a maze at the end. 

 

It appears to be a new fad.  But I was left with the impression that anything that looked that awful could be done far better and sell at the same price.  Or be used as a giveaway item in a Kickstarter funding project.

While researching how to make coloring books (it was all basically a no brainer, no real need to google it) I ran across a neat website that automatically makes word search puzzles out of the list of words a person can come up with. It’s a really neat site and worth passing on.  http://www.puzzle-maker.com/WS/index.htm

Still Working Diligently - Freebies/Paper Doll Characters

Not only with inking in the art, I'm also trying to come up with 'freebies' for any Kickstarter project that I might get up and running for publishing the work. 

Ever since I found those brass brad fasteners with the short shanks I've been working on how to use them with small paper dolls of the characters.  Moving arms, waving toilet brushes, moving tails, I've got a dozen small sketches that can be worked out into some nice looking stand-up type of paper art.  And they'd be mailable as a flat item too.

I get monthly ad mailings from Office Depot that has coupons for 20% off any printing costs so that helps defray the $$$ for printing anything up.  They have card stock in two thicknesses too, and those feed through their machines just fine.  I can't even get the thin card stock to go through my printer here.  They can also do COLOR printing on card stock.  At $1.25 a sheet, but if I can get four paper dolls per sheet, that makes things a lot more affordable. 

The only issue becomes how to hole punch the right areas.  My hole punch can only go in so far, the layout of the characters has to be done in such a way that I can reach each hole without bending the paper.  That's why I thought organizing each paper doll into one quarter of a page would work better, I can have more side surface available that way, it'd still fit into a zip lock baggie and it'd still be able to be mailed flat.

E-publishing update

Well, no real information came back on my questions from the two cartoonist sites I'm on over with YahooGroups.  Argh!  That sure doesn't help.   I think my best bet will be to ask other cartoonists via their websites about it.  Go directly to the source. 

On another note I did find another cat cartoonist over on gocomics.com  that does a really nice job.  The strip is called SMITH, it's apparently a spinoff from an older strip that closed down a few years back and the artist continued with just the cats.  They are either long haired Siamese (Balinese) or some sort of Himalayan cats (my bet is on the Himmies).  I like it better than The Mows or any of the others I've been looking at.  The artist is Andrew Pilcher.  He does his in color, with one cat being a lighter color. I thought they were both males, but one apparently is female.   They meet up with another brother/sister pair outdoors, my fav is the tabby who keeps protecting 'his wall'.

Cats Rule.

Progression Of An Idea

I wanted to bring in a few strips with the Siamese featured again since she's been in the background for an awful long time now.  Whiffling through ideas...nothing was really getting my creative juices going till I came up with 'magic paws'.

If she has 'magic paws' would it be an idea I could work for more than one strip?  I wanted the smaller cats to get Marcus interested in checking her out in regards to her being 'magic' now, and of course that would not go well (paw of death being one way to end it).  He can't get the better of her because she's the better fighter even if she is smaller than he is.

But what would magic paws actually be?  Static electricity, yeah!  Maybe she's never experienced it before in a dry house.  A built up charge clawing the cat tree carpeting could fluff the fur out, do a bit of ZAPPING on the other cats, and culminate in her fur fluffed all out on end and an extended paw of reconciliation distracting from the sly toothy smile of anticipation.....  Hmm....... Yup.  Good way to end that one!  Ha! 

E-Book Publishing & Getting Up Online

Well, I'm just starting to look into how to publish up online with Kindle e-books, using Amazon's CreateSpace, checking the Barnes & Noble self publishing section, and such.  One thing I found out is that with CreateSpace the extra bandwidth needed for illustrations and pictures ends up costing the author money because they take an extra $$$ out of your cut for this.  That bites.  Not only does CreateSpace take their cut (plus extra for the drawings) but any advertisement mention done automatically over on Amazon ends up taking a cut too, bringing the author's portion way down.

Since this is all new to me, I posted questions asking for input and feedback from professional cartoonists (and semi-professional ones) over on the two main cartooning boards on YahooGroups. We'll see what they say about it.  I haven't found much on individual blogs with this topic. 

I'll keep you updated as to what I find out. If I do find out anything.

Ahhhh, Procrastination.....

ARGH! I'd hoped to focus exclusively on drawing the backlog of sketched out strips and still haven't got the Wacom up and running for that.  I feel so guilty going back to pen and printer paper to do it. 

Yes, I'm a dinosaur. Actually drawing on PAPER... how horrible!  But I do need to get these done and if that's the way it has to be, that's how they'll be drawn.  Pen and paper. 

The goal is to still get a majority of the strips finished so I can assemble the next few booklets.  80 strips per booklet.  15 to 20 minutes per strip.  One month of focus.  Cross your fingers....

Apparently I'm Doing It Wrong! LOL

I got the book Drawing Words & Writing Pictures by Jessica Abel and Matt Madden .  It's all about doing cartooning, single panel types, strips, graphic novels, etc.  They also put out a book called Mastering Comics which I'm only partway through.

But from what they said in the first book I'm making all sorts of 'beginner mistakes' with my cartooning. 

1. Limit the use of exclamation points. NEVER use more than one.
2. Word balloons sticking over the framing lines (ok, I stopped doing that)
3. Panels need to be separated with a gutter (space) between them. I don't do that, the lines are drawn and no space put between them, though I can see that the space IS good for putting your name and the publishing date in there with very very tiny font.

I also messed up on hand writing the dialog.  Yet they say it's 'not done' using a standard font style, and recommend making your own font to upload to your system..... Dude..... do you know the spacing issues with that stuff?

Well.  

OK.

I guess I did do some of it wrong, but I did a LOT of it right, so I'm not that upset.  I'm not going back to fix strips that were drawn three years ago.  And I like my exclamation marks.  They stay in.

I'll just make sure I print a little neater on the dialog.