There's a widely held view that the writing in comics takes precedence over drawing. While I don't deny this, the notion that drawing skills are unimportant, or even irrelevant, is a big mistake. It seems to me that the sonnets of Shakespeare himself would be diminished if delivered by a second rate actor.
I look upon the characters in my strip and single panel cartoons as a dictatorial director might look upon actors in a film or play. The little, self-contained stories I relate can only be enhanced by drawing the characters in a way which convey the emotions I want them to convey, whether it be with a tilt of the head or a wave of the hand.
I get many of my ideas before dropping off to sleep, so I keep pens and paper beside my bed. As the characters develop and grow it becomes easier to know what they would say, and would not say to one another. No doubt there are aspects of me in each of the characters and it can be a cathartic experience to speak my mind through nominees. If I wake during the night with an idea, a regular occurrence, I write it down and do a rough drawing, without switching the light on. If I can decipher this germ of an idea in the cold light of day, it may be worth developing. After coming up with an idea, the first thing I do is decide how many panels I need to tell the story. Two, three or four and occasionally, if it's a Sunday strip, six or eight panels. I write the dialogue in balloons, decide on line breaks and make rough drawings. These initial drawings are done with black Razor Point pens. At no stage do I use pencils or erasers. Any alterations to these drawings I make with a red Razor Point pen. I can go through half a dozen sheets of layout paper this way, but find I can maintain spontaneity. When I'm happy with what I have, I produce rough strips on A4 paper. I fax these ideas (14 dailies, 3 Sunday strips) to Brendan for editorial approval every fortnight.
The finished version is on A3 layout paper using Rotring Art Pens. A fine nib for the panels, lettering and balloons and an extra fine nib for the drawings. Any mistakes at this stage I white out with Tipp-Ex. If I need to work on top of the Tipp-Ex I use a black Staedtler Lumocolor 313 pen. I take 85% photocopies of the finished strips and scan these onto my computer. I convert the black and white tiffs into cmyk files and colour up the strips before e-mailing all the files to Reed Brennan Media Associates in Florida, for copy-checking and distribution.
If 'Pros & Cons' doesn't appear in your local newspaper, Daily Ink enables you to read the strip everyday online.
I don't sell original cartoons because I make so many changes from drawing, to scanning, to publication, but King Features are implementing a prints-on-demand service from the King Features Print Shop. This service offers the opportunity to buy prints, matted or framed, of any of my archived strips posted on the website.
The finished version is on A3 layout paper using Rotring Art Pens. A fine nib for the panels, lettering and balloons and an extra fine nib for the drawings. Any mistakes at this stage I white out with Tipp-Ex. If I need to work on top of the Tipp-Ex I use a black Staedtler Lumocolor 313 pen. I take 85% photocopies of the finished strips and scan these onto my computer. I convert the black and white tiffs into cmyk files and colour up the strips before e-mailing all the files to Reed Brennan Media Associates in Florida, for copy-checking and distribution.
If 'Pros & Cons' doesn't appear in your local newspaper, Daily Ink enables you to read the strip everyday online.
I don't sell original cartoons because I make so many changes from drawing, to scanning, to publication, but King Features are implementing a prints-on-demand service from the King Features Print Shop. This service offers the opportunity to buy prints, matted or framed, of any of my archived strips posted on the website.
The process for the single panel cartoon is similar to the comic strip. Where it differs is, the single panel cartoon allows me to draw characters and go to places that the strip, with regular characters and scenarios, does not. Cavemen, pirates, devils, executioners, knights, cowboys, astronauts and footballers have all made appearances, as has the average man and woman at home, on the street or in the pub. The main difference and only limit to the single panel cartoon is the practical one of space. The maximum number of words I can use is about 25, and that's pushing it.