Friday, January 28, 2005
are they funny?
You
know, it's hard to get perspective on your own work. Can't see the wood
for the trees and all that. So sometimes I wonder about what we're doing
here on BifSniff.com. Are we creating
funny
cartoons? Or are we just indulging ourselves?
To give you a little background, we approach things a little differently
than most cartoonists, as far as I know. Bif writes the cartoons and I draw
them. Most cartoons are a one-man operation I think. But I don't come up
with ideas and Bif doesn't draw much. Mind you, he can draw and if he practiced
a bit he could probably draw the cartoons himself in no time. Which would
put me out of the picture, if you'll excuse the pun.
It's a tricky enough operation - Bif has to get good ideas and then I have
to follow through and draw them in such a way that they retain that humour
and become funny
cartoons.
Bif has some pretty off-the wall ideas, and I would say he is responsible
for the humour. Obviously the artwork has to gel with the words to truly
create something funny - but I often feel he could create funny
cartoons on his own (albeit with a different visual style), but I couldn't.
I sometimes think I have screwed up Bif's idea on him - but he, and others,
usually come back with positive feedback, proving how little I know really
about creating funny
cartoons.
Mostly Bif will send me a cartoon idea and I'll laugh out loud, I genuinely
think it's a great idea for a
funny cartoon. But every now and then I just don't see it. But if Bif
is convinced it's a good one, I'll draw it anyway. Unless I really screw
up Bif lets me deal with the artwork in whatever way I see fit and I extend
him the same courtesy when it comes to the ideas and the captions.
Why would I draw cartoons that I don't necessarily find funny? Because,
several times, cartoons I didn't see the humour in turned out to be other
people's favourites. One time, I really wasn't crazy about a cartoon I had
done when I got a call from a friend saying "that
was the best cartoon yet - I laughed out loud every time I thought of
it for days."
It's not often that Bif sends me an idea that I really just don't see the
potential of, but when it happens I double check with Bif, and if he's sure
- I draw it. I don't want to be responsible for ditching what may have turned
out to be somebody's favourite cartoon!
Which is the real point here. What is a funny cartoon? Well, I guess it's
a cartoon that someone finds funny, because even if just one person finds
a cartoon funny how can you tell that person 'That is not a funny cartoon?'
- you can't. Humour is in the eye of the beholder it would seem. And this
has really been proved to me by my experience with BifSniff.com. So, if
you don't find our cartoons funny, well, I'll just have to deal with that
in the knowledge that others still laugh at them.
