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Yesterday on CBC’s “Q” Jian Ghomeshi interviewed both Terry Mosher and Matt Bors regarding the state of editorial cartooning. Trying to embed the CBC’s audio player is like trying to nail Jell-O to a tree, so rather than embedding only that segment, I was only able to add the entire 75-minute show. Just forward to the 4:00 mark and you can listen the 20-minute segment on cartooning. 

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Ex-Weta Workshop designer Tim Gibson offers up this useful video tutorial on character design tips, as part of the process for his upcoming Moth City graphic novel.

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Item 1: Steve Wolfhard is on Tumblr! Item 2: he’s been designing these crazy steins, like this one based on Settlers of Catan.

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Here’s Chris Ware being interviewed on a short arts program called Fear No Art. There are a few moments of awkwardness between the chipper host and the slightly less chipper cartoonist, but we get some great shots of Chris Ware’s studio and get to watch him ink a drawing.

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Marmaduke, like a lot of classic comic strips, gets a bad rap these days as an all-too-easy punchline (and sure, the recent movie didn’t help) for unfunny comics, which always strikes me as a bit unfair. Because isn’t it great that today’s world of comics has enough material to cater to such a variety of tastes? Marmaduke-lovers included. 

Regardless, I  don’t think I had ever seen the strip’s earlier incarnations. Its bold clean lines barely resemble the loose scribbly Great Dane we know today.

cartoonretro:

Very appealing simplicity in Brad Anderson’s early Marmaduke strips.

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I love doing spreads like this for my clients! It’s like a puzzle within a puzzle for me, to work out the fun activities for the kiddos to interact with! I took a photo this time, but have the art specs from the AD, my rough, and some pull-outs from the final to show you. The designer made a good call to drop the color background on the pavement in the end. It really made the game pop out!

Below: specs from designer.

Below: my rough.

Below: my final.

Below: some pull-outs.

(c) Owlkids

Thank you, Chirp!

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On the heels of recent bear baiting charges and the ongoing drama of wolf recovery (both at home and beyond), Melanie's inner Picasso takes a stand. Click to enlarge as usual!

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Publisher’s synopsis: This hilarious and inventive drawing book by animator Chris McDonnell features page after page of off-the-wall gags and fillin doodle prompts. McDonnell’s infectious humor recalls MAD magazine at its finest. Ideal for an instant laugh or for anyone looking to spark their creative side, this interactive volume is the ultimate resource for fun with pen and paper.

Add this book to your collection: Sasquatch’s Big, Hairy Drawing Book

Have you read this book? Rate it:
Note: There is a rating embedded within this post, please visit this post to rate it.

©2011 The Childrens Book Review. All Rights Reserved.

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I loved these expressive cartoon faces by Yann Le Bec even before I realized it was a hidden alphabet.

(via Yann Le Bec, illustrator)

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austinkleon:

Roz Chast on William Steig

Steig’s drawings seem to flow effortlessly from his mind to his pen and onto the paper. I doubt he ever looked at a blank sheet and thought, “I have nothing worthwhile to say today,” or “I can’t draw a car as well as Joe Shmoe, so why don’t I crawl back into bed and wait for the day to be over.” Steig gave himself permission to be playful and experimental. One of the many wonderful things about looking at his drawings is their message, especially to his fellow artists: Draw what you love and what interests you. Draw it how you want to draw it. When we are children we do this instinctively. But somewhere in our passage from childhood to adulthood, the ability to be truly and fearlessly creative is often lost. To quote Pablo Picasso, Steig’s favorite artist, “All children are artists. The problem is how to remain an artist once we grow up.”

Steig is one of my favorites—Chast’s essay is from a new book on his work, Cats, Dogs, Men, Women, Ninnies & Clowns: The Lost Art of William Steig

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(via How Hard Is It To Get a Cartoon Into The New Yorker? - By James Sturm - Slate Magazine)

James Sturm writes about his experiences drawing and submitting cartoons to the New Yorker.

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I love love love Graham Annable’s subtleties and quiet sense of humor. Check out the other Grickle Mythology cartoons on his Flickr.

Morning coffee (by Grickle)

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austinkleon:

Art Spiegelman on Picasso, cave paintings and comics:

I was very suspicious of high culture, not of low, and it took a long time for me to crack the code and say, ‘You know what, Picasso’s a pretty good cartoonist.’

This bit on style reminds me of Milton Glaser (“I don’t trust style.” and “The model for personal development is antithetical to the model for professional success.”):

Style is a capitalist invention. It’s a trademark. It’s very useful in the world of commerce to have a good trademark, but it wasn’t my first concern. I got restless…

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johnmartz:

For the second year in a row, I had the honour of creating the poster for the Jay Kennedy Memorial Scholarship.

Awarded by the National Cartoonists Society Foundation, the scholarship gives $5000 to a promising student cartoonist every year. The scholarship is open to any student in the US, Canada and Mexico, and you do not need to be an art student.

More information is available at the NCSF website, and I encourage all students with cartooning in their blood to apply.

You can see the poster I did for last year’s scholarship.

EDIT: Here’s a high-res printable PDF of this year’s poster if you want to print it out for your school or comic shop.

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Adventures in Cartooning was published in 2009, but was recently brought to my attention by Diamond Comic Distributor's, Diamond Bookshelf e-newsletter. The latest edition featured a news article entitled, "Learn the Language of Cartooning: Resources for Non-Artists and Nervous Beginners."  I love comics; and I don't do it often, but I do love to draw (though "non-artist and nervous beginner" both describe me quite well).

In any case, Adventures in Cartooning: How to turn your doodles into comics, is a unique resource for young artists who have great ideas but lack great artistic skills.  A comic book itself, Adventures shows the budding cartoon artist how to use basic cartooning principles to overcome any lack or imagined lack of drawing skills when creating a comic.  Can't draw someone running?  No problem.  Draw the same figure in four different panels and change the scenery.
Running uphill?  Align the panels diagonally rather than horizontally. 

What makes this book so unique is that it's actually a story featuring an elf, a knight and a horse.  The elf points out the artistic principles inherent in the story. At one point in his quest to fight a dragon, the knight and his trusty horse are dropped from the sky.  As they fall upside down through the clouds, the helpful elf points out, "Long panels are good for going down, too!"

Following the story are "The Magical Elf's Cartooning Basics," instructions (à la Ed Emberly) for drawing the story's characters, a sample story done by a young artist, and a short strip "About the Authors," in which the authors appear as a three-headed monster.

A winner for budding cartoonists or graphic novelists.

Read pages 5-22 on :01's site.
An interview with the authors appears here.

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Around 2002, I compiled a list whose title was the same as this post’s. At times, I would e-mail that list to select businesses with the hope of convincing them to do something they almost certainly had not considered before. Without further achoo…

Here are 10 reasons. Each will take you 3 seconds to read—same as a cartoon.

1. Cartoons are effective: "The magazine cartoon is probably the most popular of the graphic arts; media surveys invariably place cartoons among readers' first preferences." – Graphic Artists Guild Handbook: Pricing & Ethical Guidelines, 10th Ed., p. 308
2. Cartoons are versatile: Business magazines around the world (including Wall Street Journal, Barron's, and Forbes), PowerPoint presenters, newsletter editors, web content builders, print advertisers, custom publishers, and direct mailers regularly use them to reinforce serious points.
3. Cartoons are fresh: True, companies including Barnes & Noble, Canon, Absolut, DuPont, L.L.Bean, Palm, Altoids, Cinemax, MINI, and hundreds of others have used them in training or mainstream advertising. But too many more haven't.
4. Cartoons are inexpensive: Wish they weren't.
5. Cartoons are easy: No committees, R & D, warehousing, technical support, or previous experience needed. Just talk to a guy with a pencil and a pad.
6. Cartoons are unifying: Can you think of any cubicles that don't have at least one cartoon taped up? Laughter is a universal language. People bond over what they mutually enjoy. That improves the mood. If you smile at any of the cartoons here, wouldn't your employees and/or clients?
7. Cartoons are sneaky: You can't poke fun of your bosses, colleagues, or customers to their faces. You can get away with it in cartoons.
8. Cartoons are word of mouth: "It has been such a pleasure working with you. Our team really got a kick out of all your wonderful cartoons. [The calendars featuring them] are a huge hit. We [printed] 500 for [one department]. Suddenly, we have reps from all over the company wanting them for their departments. Your cartoons are creating quite a stir here in Kohler.”
9. Cartoons are healthy: "Laughter can boost the immune system, reduce stress, and lift energy" (Real Simple 4/02). Who wouldn't want employees and/or clients with less stress and more energy?
10. Cartoons are profitable: When my cartoons began appearing on BizTravel.com, site producer Ronnie Smith said, “’We got so many click-throughs that my CEO totally loved it!’ In fact, the first month's cartoon pulled the second highest click-through rate of all of that week's articles. Then, the following month's cartoon shot to the number one spot. Smith [added] a link next to other articles: ‘If you need a good laugh, click here.’ And as it turns out, that's exactly what many businesspeople do need these days.” – B2B Marketing Biz

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austinkleon:

Cartoonist Ivan Brunetti in his studio

Kidd, who says Brunetti’s relative obscurity is due mainly to the fact that he’s not much of a self-promoter, has been badgering the cartoonist to submit a book proposal for more than a decade. “He doesn’t have a defining book. That’s a big moment for a cartoonist,” Kidd said. “And Ivan has a masterpiece in him; it’s just getting him to do it.”

Yep.

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The second Chicken Soup book to feature my cartoons is newly out, and like the first, it’s about cuddly and devoted creatures.

Last time was grandmothers. This time, dogs.

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In the name of giving credit where it’s due, I’d like to do something a little different today and highlight some quality content on other university press blogs. Long live academic publishing!

From Columbia University Press: Judith Butler – Implicated and Enraged

From Harvard University Press: Killing for Coal, in Prime-Time

From MIT Press: And it’s root, root, root for the vector!

From New York University Press: Finding Faith on the Internet

From Princeton University Press: Birding in the City

From University of North Carolina Press: Hummus and Bugles

From Yale University Press: Cartooning is an Art

From University of California Press: How Climate Change Damages Our Health

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Releasing today, Chicken Soup for the Soul: Grandmothers contains 13 cartoons.

All of the cartoons have three things in common:

1. They star grandmas.
2. I wrote/drew them.
3. They are not based on true stories (that I know of).

Here's one of my favorites:

Here are two versions of one that didn't make the book:

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Ivan Brunetti’s little classroom-in-a-book Cartooning: Philosophy and Practice is probably my favourite book about drawing comics.

Brunetti gets to the heart of what makes a comic a comic. It’s not a book that tries to teach you the right way to draw, or the proper tools to use. Rather it focuses on the philosophy of comics-making and the distillation of both art and story into simple pictograms and beats.

Previously only available for sale with Comic Art Annual #9 from the now-defunct Buenaventura Press, I’m glad to see that this little handbook has found a new home with Yale University Press.

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I didn’t plan to be a professional cartoonist.

In 1998, I started my campaign to cross a particular item off my life list: license a cartoon to The New Yorker magazine. I figured I’d draw 10 or 20, they’d pick one, and I’d move on to trying to host Saturday Night Live. (I’ve become more realistic in the years since and have therefore removed this goal from the list.)

However, I could be realistic then, too. Before my first submission, I reassessed the probability of making a sale quickly and decided I’d better prepare for some rejection. To better weather that, I made myself draw 100 cartoons before sending out the first batch of ten. That way, when that inevitable “no thank you” came, I would not let my disappointment impede my momentum. I’d have the next batch (and eight more after that) ready to go.

Thousands of cartoons later, still no New Yorker. (As a partial defense, I did stop submitting in 2002 to focus on my writing and have yet to get back to it. I will.)

But somewhere before that first 100 went out, I realized I was creating too much work for a single gamble. So I began to submit the cartoons The New Yorker rejected to other publications.

And four months after I drew the first one, I licensed my first one (which was not the first one I drew). And that began this unexpected side career that I sustain to this day, though it still takes a back seat to the time I spend on writing.

One of my earliest cartoon clients was one of relative few the average person has heard of: Barron's. (There’s a whole world that cartoonists license to that is largely hidden from the general public—non-newsstand specialty magazines, corporate newsletters, custom publications, company holiday cards, etc.)

Between 2005 and 2009, I did not regularly submit cartoons anywhere, but now that many publications finally accept submissions by e-mail (yes, for some it took a while), I’ve gotten back to it with select clients.

Here are my two most recent from Barron's:


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