Did some updating over on my cartoon site, including this piece which I've submitted to the 2008 ComicCon Souvenir Book.



They're looking for editorial cartoons in an election year, as well as celebrating a host of anniversaries including the 50th of the Legion of Super-Heroes (referenced in the drawing, Golden Age geeks) and the 75th of the comicbook itself; more on that tomorrow!

Several weeks ago, the Toon Weekly site transformed into a members-only forum, meaning the various character design challenges are now held on private threads rather than in public galleries. A shame, in my view, since having passers-by looking at the work kind of forces you to raise your game. Having said that, most participants post their entries on their own sites and blogs and I've been doing the same. This blog has been reserved for writing since I set up t'other shop, but I'm so pleased with what I did for this week's assignment (redesign a classic live-action sitcom cast for animation) that I decided to post it here too:



Yes, before you say it, I know Vyvyan had four stars; the point of the exercise is not a facsimile of the costumes, nor a caricature of the actors for that matter, but an an adaptation of the characters. It's interesting to see what you can eliminate, what you have to keep and what you can tweak whilst still evoking the spirit of the thing. I couldn't decide which member of the Balowski family to include, regrettable since our Alexei was arguably the funniest bloke in the group.

Kids, if- like me- you have to be stopped and searched under Section 44 of the Terrorism Act 2000, try not to have a portfolio of cartoons on you. And if you must, try not to open said portfolio to a page containing something like, oh I don't know, this:



Saves a lot of embarrassment.

The incident happened in Gilmour Street train station in Paisley this afternoon, now red hot with poh-lees since the discovery that "The Doctors of Death!!!" work(ed) at the the RAH. Give the cop his due, he took it in good humour saying "We live in interesting times, don't we, sir?" My name, d.o.b., address and occupation ('cartoonist' rather than 'seditionist') where taken. I was also give a leaflet explaining why such a thing should happen, as is my entitlement, apparently.

Still not sure why I was stopped. He (the cop who looked at my stuff) told me it was random and I wasn't being singled out, yet an item on Reporting Scotland with a senior officer this evening made specific mention of the fact that 'random' doesn't come into their thinking on these- there's always a reason, albeit often no more than an issued profile.

The whole thing was cordial enough, and nothing like the genuine police harrassment I encountered (briefly, before running away like a girl) during the infamous "Show Us Your Tits, Mrs Chief-of-Police!!!" Carriage House Raid of 1996. But that's another story.

NB- This cartoon was done back in 2003, in response to events other than those of the past few days.

mirpuri's extended stay in Derry should have seen a flurry of activity on the blog, but the month has been dominated by a character design and storyboarding assignment worth several k from ERM, a global environmental management agency that's launching a new intranet portal in the Spring. Oh yeah, as much fun cartooniness as it sounds. And all-nighters aplenty. Four so far, with maybe another before I'm done.

And it needs to be done this week, as I've been drawn for jury duty. Selection takes place on Monday, so theoretically I could be out of the loop until me holidays in mid-March. In an unlikely turn of events, my wife has been drawn for the same date in the same court, albeit in different rooms/cases.

Of course, next week is also when A&J from Barcelona are staying with us, so on top of cranking out strips about "proactive users seeking consultant profiles" I've to get the bathroom finished. I also had to squeeze in yet another parliamentary consultative debate on the Draft Culture (Scotland) Bill- long story short, I'm not popular in the Meenister's office- and also a cartoon for Scottish CND, regardez vous:

The coallition wanted a cartoon highlighting either their point that our never-used and never-to-be-used (the UK is moving to disarm other nations of nuclear weapons, and also developing non-nuclear missiles that can destroy them in the event of their use) "nuclear deterrent" has cost us £100,000,000,000.00 to maintain, or that the supposedly independent British Trident defense system cannot actually launch nuclear weapons without permisssion from the United States of America. I did, believe me, submit more original and visually complex rough drawings but the most obvious, stark image was chosen. The cartoon got an airing as several dozen placards at a march and rally in Glasgow at the weekend:


The usual depressingly shambolic hangers-on where present and correct in George Square , ready as ever to raise the Red Flag and turn it a grubby shade of grey. Say what you like about the far-right, but they tend to dress better, and aren't as prone to pointless in-fighting at the drop of a hat (the recent Scottish Socialist Party/Solidarity schism looks awfully like the efforts of The Peoples' Front of Judea to distance themselves from The Judean Peoples' Front). The good work done by organisations like the SCND, Scotland for Peace, the Green Party, the STUC, et al (and even earnest but charmingly hopeless causes like the Communist Party) was being undermined by the very presence of lentil-loving crusties, anarchist clowns, "anti-everything" tosspots and their loony conspiracy theory dvds ("9/11 and 7/7 were lies!"- £10). This last category in particular grinds my gears.
Just two of their many insanities I could pick out:
- Until such time as a relevant comparison can be made with the collapse of the World Trade Center (in other words, until someone is willing to pilot two passenger aircraft into structures of similar design, mass and age) there's no way anyone can argue it was "not what you'd expect to see happening" or "more like a controlled demolition". More like a controlled demolition than what? Show me any other equally well-documented collapse of skyscrapers caused by unexpected, deliberate collision with planes, or shut the hell up. No amount of engineering theory and computer models can predict precisely the pattern of chaotic destruction caused by unforseeable events, any more than a controlled demolition can be 100% guaranteed. It's like astronomy. All our assumptions about space and the bodies within it are based on observations of those bodies closest to us and extrapolations drawn therefrom, until such time as something is observed that contradicts those assumptions and then the rules are redrafted. Physics says the farther a planet is away from its sun, the less energy it will have and the more inert its atmosphere will be as a result. Yet probes passing Neptune and Uranus have recorded wind speeds massively in excess of anything possible on Earth. Did astronomers claim the planets fakes because they weren't what they expected to see?
- "The planes that struck the towers where actually missiles, sheathed in holograms." I'm sorry, but this is Star Trek quality bollocks. Do the military, and the US military in particular, have access to technology far beyond that which is publicly known or commercially available? Of course, self-evidently. The trillions of dollars they swallow up annually must yield some level of scientific innovation, otherwise the whole mess is even more massively mismanaged than we ever believed. But have they developed a hologram (by definition, a source of projected or reflected light) that can also cast a shadow, as it did on to the streets, witnesses and, crucially, camermen over which it passed that morning in Manhattan? Can a hologram be a hologram and not only not glow, but actually show up black against the sun? Back to school, silly facially-pierced brain-fart men!

Anyway, onward!