Thursday, August 11, 2005

Change of direction - creative process

From now on I hope to post more often, in smaller posts, about our funny cartoons. I think I will probably have little bits and pieces to post on many of the cartoons we produce. Even if it's just to let you know which ones I am happy with, which ones were tricky to do and which ones just fell into place.

Every week I draw the imagery for one of Bif's cartoons. It always amazes me the different experience each one can be. You would think at this stage, after a year, that the process would be constant, but - no.

Sure, I have the actual technicalities all worked out, I put up an article before about how I actually draw them - but still I feel the process differs each time, some are a dream to draw and some are a nightmare.

And it's not necessarily the one's you'd expect - sometimes Bif will send me a cartoon I think will be an absolute nightmare to draw, but it's like the challenge draws out my best work. Other times it doesn't ;).

At times a funny cartoon Bif sends me that I really like and think will be a cinch to draw just doesn't turn out as I had hoped. There are two that spring to mind that I really liked and had a pretty clear idea in my head of how I wanted them that didn't turn out quite right, and funnily enough they are quite similar in theme: one is the recent sea legs cartoon and the other is the bad start cartoon.

Now, they're not awful, and usually even when I'm not happy Bif thinks I'm being too harsh on myself - but I had originally thought they would be very strong cartoons and they ended up only alright. From an illustrative perspective that is.

Then on the other hand, I thought the apocalypse now cartoon would be impossible, but it turned out quite nicely I think. When I got the text for the malpractice and eggs cartoon I thought Bif was a complete bastard for coming up with it. But I was quite happy with the way it turned out, even if I haven't met anyone who really got it so far!

And then there was the best man cartoon. These ones are the ones I love. I said to Bif I didn't know if I'd be able to do the joke justice, but it just fell into place for me. It practically drew itself. Same with the close to you cartoon, don't get me wrong, there was a lot of work in researching those birds and everything, but still everything just fell nicely into position. The composition just kind of fell onto the page (or wacom tablet as it happens).

Anyway these little comments and observations are the kind of thing I'm going to try to post more often about, as well as any other interesting things that occur to me about our little venture. Hopefully the odd post will actually be of interest to someone!