A glimpse into the cartoonist's inbox

Cartoonists often get asked to do bizarre things for no money. Thanks to the marvel that is the internet, these requests now come thick and fast by email. Here's one I got the other day: "Hi there, any chance you could do me a picture of Plug from The Beano? Can't find one on the net ..." I politely replied that the sender had perhaps not looked hard enough. I found that a Google image search turns up several pics of Plug:

Another common type of email is the type that potentially offers work to the cartoonist while giving away as little information as possible about the potential project. These are genuine and unedited, only the names have been cut:

"am looking for a catoonist for my book. think we can find out if you fit? Regards …"

"Hello, Could you please contact me regarding our need for an illustration/cartoon characters. Thank you …"

"i found your name looking for an illustrator for a childrens book I have written can you tell me what sort of costings it would be for around 10 picturesor how you work out you costings. thanks looking forward to hearing from you"

I'll cover the people that demand all the secrets to becoming a top cartoonist (like I'd know!), usually in an email dashed off in 30 seconds, some other time ...

I am the Law (Society cartoonist)

I regularly draw humorous illustrations for the Law Society Gazette, to illustrate features. Often they're about legal matters that mean little to the man in the street. But this week's is quite topical ...

Blast from the past

While sorting through a box of old cassette tapes I came across the song Cheesecake Truck by the American band King Missile, which I've not heard for years. It's from the early 1990s and is a spoken-word track, over a quirky musical backing. And it occured to me: this is a comic strip on record! Maybe I'll draw it up some day. The song always appealed to me because, well, I love cheesecake. Here are the lyrics (which I've just cut and paste from another website, but they seem accurate!):

So then I got this idea about driving a cheesecake truck,
cuz I figured at the end of the day,
I could take some of the leftover cheesecakes home.
And I love cheesecake.

So I went to the cheesecake company
and they asked me if I could drive a truck and I said yes,
and they said 'You're hired!'

So the next day I got in the truck with all the cheesecakes
and I drove about a block and I just had to have a cheesecake
so I pulled over and opened the truck
and I got a cheesecake, and I also took one for later,
and I took one for my friend Farmboy,
and I took one to bring home,
and by that time I had eaten one of the cheesecakes
so I took another one.

Then I figured I might as well stop at my house
to drop off all the cheesecakes,
so I take five cakes to eat on the way,
and I drive another block and a half to my house.

Now it's lunch time so I eat ten cheesecakes,
and a cheesecake for dessert.
I should point out, by the way,
that all of these cheesecakes were very delicious.

Anyway, I decided that the only thing to do
would be to eat all the rest of the cheesecakes
and hide the truck somewhere
and leave town.

And I miss everybody a lot
but I'm not really sorry
because they were very delicious cheesecakes.

Ancient arguments settled

I thought I might try to settle some of those niggling, on-going arguments, so we call all move on. First up: which are best, cats or dogs? Answer: cats. This picture, which has gone all over the world in recent days, is the proof. That's a bear in the tree by the way. Next week: baths vs. showers. I thank you.

My official England World Cup Cartoon

I do a regular cartoon for a local paper here in Kent. Inevitably they wanted a football one this week ...

This is funny: Mark Anderson on Hollywood's version of the typical cartoonist's day.

CGI hell

Why is it that Pixar, pioneer of the full-length computer-animated film, seems to be the only studio that can successfully pull it off? Today I took my three-year-old son to see Disney's The Wild, the story of a bunch of zoo animals forced to live in, er, the wild (this will sound familiar to anyone who saw last year's Madagascar.) It was truly, truly dire. The script was awful. It featured the voice of comedian Eddie Izzard but they forgot to give him any funny lines. The fact that he was a Koala bear "from London" called Nigel was presumably meant to be amusing enough.

Other recent atrocities I've had to suffer include Chicken Little and Ice Age 2. Of course, my son thought they were all great, though he seemed less enthusiastic about The Wild. When we got home we watched a couple of online trailers for Pixar's next one and we laughed ten times as much as we had just done at the cinema.

Those cat cartoons keep on coming

This one can be seen in the current edition of Prospect magazine.

A knights tale

Here's a bizarre thing: a thoughtful, in-depth piece on Holy Grail myths, by Associated Press Religion Writer Brian Murphy, written to coincide with the current Da Vinci Code hype, ends with a reference to a gag cartoon I drew a couple of years ago which he stumbled across on the web. Here's the article at Yahoo, the gag is below. The cartoon did the rounds of the usual magazines but remains unpublished, a fact that I've long thought was part of some global conspiracy ;-)

Hey look, that nice Mr Cartoon Fiend has posted an interview with me.

A toys story

I promised myself I wasn't going to do too many posts about kids and parenting on this blog, but, well here goes. Any parent of young children knows about picking your way across the living room avoiding toys (treading on a Lego brick with bare feet is widely recognised as one of the worst types of pain there is). Well, sometimes there are casualties. Last night, luckily while the kids were in bed, I was walking across the living room when I felt a heart-stopping crunch under foot. I looked down and, frankly, it was too tragic to be believed. I decapitated Buzz Lightyear. He looks beyond repair too. He's finally gone to infinity and, indeed, beyond. So far the loss has not been noticed, but I'm already scanning eBay for a replacement.

Going Live

Recently attended the Shrewsbury Cartoon Festival, which was quite a laugh. It was my first cartoon festival and I did some live gag cartoon drawing in front of the Great British Public for the first time. Very scary. You can't draw the cartoon as you would in a room on your own, you have to reveal information in such a way as to build up to a punchline, because there are people behind you waiting for one! It's like a mix of cartoonist and stand-up comedian. Luckily I got enough laughs to soothe my fragile ego. The festival was actually over a week ago but I'm only just getting around to writing about it because as well as picking up the cartoon festival bug I also picked up a rather virulent flu bug, as did several other sickly scribblers, and have been out of action for a week.

Football cartoon: Game for a laugh

I know nothing about football, but I still managed to get a cartoon on the subject published. Probably because I'm the person who always has to have this infamous rule explained to them.

Walking the walk

An art critic puts his money where his mouth is and learns how to draw.

Warning: pen talk ...

I've been experimenting with brush pens for the first time. A few years back I used to draw very precisely, over pencil lines that were later rubbed out. But in recent years I've drawn more loosely, on a piece of paper over a rough placed on a lightbox, but I carried on using the same technical drawing pens (Rotring or similar). They're good for precise work but the results are not always great with looser stuff. Anyway, brush pens were recommended to me by a couple of fellow cartoonists and I'm very happy with the results so far. They're more fun to use, though you do have to get used to drawing quite a lot bigger.

Thanks to Darren at the always excellent linkmachinego.com, for a very nice link today.

Days and confused

Cartoons changed my perception of self the other day. No, really. I was looking through a compilation of Oor Wullie and The Broons strips from the 1960s (despite the name, and my middle name Alexander, I'm not Scottish, but I was raised in the North East of England and the two Sunday Post strips were popular at the time) when I found a strip for the Sunday following the day I was born. Trouble was, the date listed would mean I was born on a Wednesday and not, as I had always been told, a Thursday. Further checks on the net proved that my birthday was, indeed, a Wednesday. So my Mum always told me “Thursday’s child has far to go”, but it turns out that I’m Wednesday’s child ... “full of woe”! Still, it’s probably the natural state of mind for us struggling cartoonists.

Cartoon Museum update

Well, after a visit to the Cartoon Museum, my earlier doubts have been dispelled. It’s very well done, and it's great seeing so many varied examples of cartooning on display. And there certainly seems to be plenty of people interested. Apparently they’ve been getting 450 people through the door on Saturdays – quite impressive, particularly for such a small venue. I think also that an important aspect of the museum is that it raises the profile of cartooning in this country and provides a focal point for the public and the media. So get along, support the gallery, and let’s hope its great start continues.

Here's the website again

The most pretentious album sleeve-notes ever written?

From Worlds of Possibility, a Domino Records compilation. I’m still trying to work out if it’s a joke.

“Perhaps this is a return to just saying things. That sounds like it’s in the area of right. Good songs build rooms in time. Think of “Tacoma Rain” or “Woodchilde Masquerade” and no one’s even written them yet, for goodness sake! Yes there are second aspects to all this. Good times will turn lies into truth, and the advantage still pours haltlessly into the hands of the untrue, boring and useless but we’ll keep at this basically moral work, until those garnet palisades are flush with exits and our eyebrows have become like snowy ledges because there is nothing like your love in all this world.”

An over-reliance on italics to really stress things is never a good sign.

Carry On Parenting

While reading a Postman Pat book to my young son, I came across the words "the vicar is excited". So, more to amuse myself than anything, I found myself emitting a Kenneth Williams-style "ooooh!" after I read that line. Unfortunately, my son, who is three, thought this was possibly the funniest thing he's heard in his life and has been coming out with "oooohs" at every available opportunity ever since. This was some weeks ago now. Apparently he's even been teaching his pals at nursery to do it. I am a bad parent.

Museum piece

I'm going to be in London next week and will take the opportunity to visit the Cartoon Art Trust's new Cartoon Museum, the opening of which you may have seen covered in the national media (I think it's undeniable that it got far more publicity than is usually afforded to cartoons as a result of the Muhammad controversy).

I have mixed feelings about it because I find that when you view a lot of cartoons in one go they stop being funny. That's often my experience at exhibitions I've been to in the past. Also, I'm not sure about the use of the word "museum". I think "gallery" may have been better. They could have stuck "national" on the front to give it gravitas! Anyway, I'll reserve judgement until I've been.

What's in a name?

I'm collecting dreadful names of local bands. These are the best ones I've heard so far.

Jamnesia
Browser
Publicity
Mental Floss
Seventh Hell

How bad must the rejects have been when the best name you can come up with for your band is Publicity?

Give 'em a cat cartoon

People love cat cartoons. And I find I do more gags about them than any other animal. Maybe it's because cats are a lot like humans: i.e. lazy, selfish and devious. And I say that as a cat person. These were recently in Reader's Digest.