Updated Every Monday.
Above is an episode of one of my all-time favorite cartoon series. Offhand, it’s the only CG cartoon I can think of that I really enjoy. It’s like a cross between the slapstick of Looney Tunes and the surrealism of Jim Woodring’s work.
It ran on a Japanese cable channel called the “Kids Network”, but honestly I don’t really think it’s appropriate for kids. Watch a few and you’ll see what I mean.
Pictured: Some preliminary attempts at a quicker drawing style
When I play pool, my “strategy” basically amounts to trying to shoot in whichever of my assigned balls is closest to a pocket. I suck, so managing even that is rare.
Professional pool players, on the other hand, take a lot more into consideration. They don’t consider each shot separately, but think in terms of the whole game. They might start off with a more difficult shot if it will put up in a better position for the shots that follow. At the highest levels of play, there’s a whole other layer of strategy.
It’s similar with comics. An amateur cartoonist might only concern themselves with making a comic that’s interesting and looks good. The professional cartoonist has the added challenge of needing to do all that in a timely manner. The greatest cartoonist in the world wouldn’t be able to make a living at it if their life’s work amounted to one book that was 10% done. If you want to make earn any sort of living as a cartoonist, you need to have books available for sale, which means you need to finish them at a steady pace.
I suspect that if I could manage to put out a book like Tonoharu: Part One at least once a year, and devoted time to marketing them, that I could somehow eke out a living. Right now I’m nowhere near that pace. I spent all of last week drawing a single panel. Granted it was probably the most complicated thing I’ve ever drawn in my life and I think it turned out pretty cool, but still. It might be reasonable to spend a week on the cover, but a single panel in the middle of the book? That’s harder to justify. I literally can’t afford to work as slowly as I have been if I want to make a living as a cartoonist.
It’d be too jarring if I just switched styles in the middle of a story, so even though it’ll take me years of tedious work to finish Tonoharu, I’m going to continue along in the same way. But I’m already thinking about the books that will follow, and how I might adapt my style to allow me to finish pages more quickly. My study of East Asian calligraphy has been helpful towards this goal (for reasons I’ll describe in another blog entry sometime).
This week I was working on the most complicated drawing I’ve ever done in my life; look out for it on page 93 of Tonoharu: Part Two when it comes out in 2050.
So this week’s entry is another of the “half-assed/eleventh-hour” variety; a youtube clip originally uploaded by someone else. But it’s a good one; like a combination between outsider art and an old Betty Boop cartoon. Enjoy!
The quarter pounder with cheese recently made its debut at McDonald’s in Japan, and the campaign they’re using to promote it baffles me. Purchasing a quarter pounder value meal nets you this little package:
It contains a scratch off ticket, both sides of which are shown below:
Front: Big Mouth! Quarter Pounder: Japan’s Rose-Colored Plan
Back: Scratch off the panel with all your might! If it says “winner”, you’ll receive a rose-colored t-shirt.
Am I missing something here? Is the quarter pounder eating demographic clamoring for pink clothing?
But that’s nothing compared with the button that was also enclosed:
Whaaa? I don’t get it.
Packaging/Concept: This product hits most of the EXTREME foodstuff packaging clichés nicely: extreme is misspelled beginning with an uppercase “x”, it has a grunge aesthetic, there’s faux stenciling in the background, all that stuff.
But two things about it struck me as not being particularly EXTREME. First is the flavor itself, pepper. When I think extreme flavors, kiwi or jalapeño or whatever come to mind, but pepper? That’s a stretch.
But if they’re going to go with pepper, couldn’t they come up with a more extreme name than “Extra Pepper”? Something like “Pepper OVERLOAD!” or “PeppORGASM!” (Y’know, like a pepper orgasm. Tell me that’s not gold.) In the very least, they could have spelled it “Xtra Pepper”, am I right?
But I have to give credit where credit is due: they have created the most EXTREME PEPPER GRINDER I HAVE EVER SEEN IN MY LIFE. Just look at it–it’s literally blasting out peppercorns like a goddamn shotgun!
Granted it doesn’t seem to be doing any actual grinding, as the peppercorns seem to be coming out whole… but maybe they shatter on impact when they smash into something at a hundred miles an hour.
Your dinner will never know what hit it. SUCK ON IT, food.
Taste: Very peppery.
Ack! I completely forgot to prepare a blog entry this week, and I’ve run out of “funny” photos, so this week’s eleventh hour entry is an episode of Oden-kun, an excellent Japanese kids cartoon. It tells the story of anthropomorphized pieces of oden, a Japanese dish often served in winter. [Wikipedia link about oden]
This is one of my favorite episodes, featuring a rap battle. How interesting it is if you can’t understand Japanese I can’t say but… er… enjoy!