Reader's Digest cartoon: Jedi nights

I make no apologies for the pun in this cartoon. None whatsoever.

OK, sorry.

Click here to buy Royston's cartoon book

Question time ...

"But what are you running from?"

Here's an interview I did for the April issue of The Jester, newsletter of the Cartoonists' Club. Ian Ellery, the editor, puts the same questions to a club member each month, some on cartooning, some not:

How did you first get in to cartooning?
I think I have always been into it. I started submitting gag cartoons and getting them published in 1997, but I've drawn them since I was a kid and often had them in school and college magazines. I won a prize in a drawing competition when I was nine for a cartoon called "Colburn 1999", Colburn being the village in Catterick, North Yorkshire, where I grew up. It was a humorous 1970s-perspective view of the future (now the past) with jet-packs and the like. I still have the book I won, but sadly I don't have the drawing itself. (Wistful sigh at lost youth ...)

What was your first commission?
When I was a local-paper reporter I used to draw the occasional cartoon for the paper (for no extra money, of course!) and that led to the local NHS Trust commissioning me to draw a picture of a hospital ward with lots of typical hazards around the place -- i.e. used syringes, tangled electrical cables etc -- for use in nurse training. I got £50 for it, which seemed pretty good to a part-time cartoonist in the mid 1990s.

Later when I got a website I stuck it on there and labelled it "healthcare cartoon". In 2004 somebody Googled that term and I ended up with a regular well-paying gig for a healthcare business magazine that I still have seven years later. So that first commission worked out pretty well.

What's the stupidest question/request you have ever been asked?
Someone did actually ask me if I "also write the funny bit that goes underneath the cartoon". I'd heard of people asking this kind of question but thought there might be some exaggeration. But no, those were his exact words and I was stunned into silence for a couple of seconds while I took it in.

Where do you get your ideas from?
Ah, that old chestnut. Reading the paper, watching the telly, staring out of the window, eavesdropping and mentally noting things people say, watching out for trends, observing the stupid things people do. That kind of stuff.

Did you ever go to college or university?
I went to Sunderland Poly and graduated from "the University of Sunderland". Good timing. I did "Communication Studies", one of those courses where the tabloids complained about "taxpayers money spent on kids studying Coronation Street" etc. It was all true. And James Bond films. I had a great three years. I certainly paid the tax back when I had a well-paid job though (journalism, silly, not cartooning!)

What is the most rewarding job you ever did?
Grateful though I am for commissioned work, for me no cartoonist-for-hire job is as rewarding as selling my own gags. Frustrating though it can be, with all the inevitable rejection, when you hit the mark and come up with a great gag, and it sells to a top magazine, there's nothing more rewarding. And sometimes it's just as rewarding when it sells to a small magazine, if it was a gag that you really liked and it has been snubbed by all the biggies. Truman Capote said "Failure is the condiment that gives success its flavour". I have that pinned to my notice board. I'm pretentious like that.

Do you work with pen and ink or are you purely digital?
I find Photoshop great for roughing out cartoons as you can move characters around, make them smaller and larger etc without constantly redrawing. But I like the line I get with my brush pen so I print out these roughs and draw them on paper with the aid of a lightbox. Then it's back to the computer as they get scanned and colour added in Photoshop when required. It's a topsy-turvy way of doing things but works for me.

What is your favourite movie?
I like films I can watch again and again because they are so original and have so many quirky, memorable bits ... stuff like Withnail and I, An American Werewolf in London, Gregory's Girl, Reservoir Dogs, you get the idea. I'm also a bit of a Star Wars nut, but strictly original trilogy only, please.

What book are you reading at the moment?
"A Little History of the World" by E.H. Gombrich. Just finished it, in fact. It was originally written for kids, in Germany in the 1930s, but it's a great read for adults too -- particularly those like me who could have paid more attention to history at school and have quite a few gaps. It takes in the entire span of world history from the Ancient Egyptians up until the 1930s in just a few hundred pages. Recommended for your revision, readers!

What are you working on at the moment?
Is this my chance to mention that I've got a book of cartoons out? OK I'm not actually working on it now but I'm working on selling it, that's the hard part. Other than that, I've got a cartoon to do for a monthly legal magazine and one of my weekly local paper cartoons. Plus there are always gags to be drawn up and sent out on spec. Keep on keeping on, and all that.

Click here to buy Royston's cartoon book

Star Wars cartoons: May the gags be with you

You can't fail to have noticed that this month it's 30 years since the first Star Wars film came out. Star Wars is a significant part of the culture, no matter what you think of it. I'm in the "original trilogy good, new trilogy bad camp", as you can tell from this cartoon ...


It was in Private Eye in 2005 when the film came out. Cheekily, I drew it before I saw the film! This next one was one of my first published cartoons, it appeared in Maxim ten years ago.


And this is probably my favourite of my Star Wars cartoons. It was sold to The Publican magazine.


Then there's this one, the only topical one of the lot. This was in Private Eye in 1999 and was about the Millennium Bug, and the fact that we were apparently ill-prepared for the inevitable disaster. Oddly, that now seems like a science-fiction story far more dated than Star Wars.

Star Wars cartoon: A correction of sorts

OK, I just looked at my files after my earlier post (maybe I should've done it before ...) and found that I actually sold another gag to Maxim from that same batch, ten years ago. I can't believe I forgot that with my first-ever magazine cartoon sale they took TWO gags ... I still get overjoyed when that happens! Anyway, this was the other one and of the two cartoons it appeared first, in the May 1997 issue of Maxim.

Actually, this is a re-draw. I gave the original away to one of my Star Wars fan friends. I've done a number of Star Wars gags over the years, look.

Back then Maxim paid £60 per gag, by the way. Believe it or not, there are some magazines publishing cartoons in 2007 that don't pay that much.