Roland's Second Attempt At Cartooning...

Oh my God! It's the same joke!

For the benefit of my European friends, the white bunny is the Trix cereal rabbit... Since his invention in 1969, he's been desperately trying to grab himself a bowl of delicious Trix cereal, only to be thwarted at each attempt by annoying kids who mock him with the catchphrase: "Silly rabbit! Trix are for kids!"

Roland's Comic - First Attempt!

Here is my first attempt at drawing a comic strip, inspired by my antics here...

Apologies to Jim Davies.

Emulating Talented People #2

So yesterday, I spent the evening in Barnes and Noble. Fortunately Tina works there, so I didn't get kicked out.

In the end, I picked out Action! Cartooning by Ben Caldwell to be my guide to drawing something more sophisticated than 'man in beer t-shirt.'

Action! Cartooning is a brilliant book. Ben lays out the guidelines very simply and soon gets you drawing convincingly. I'm a LONG way from the talented style of Erica Henderson or Randy Millholland - but if you look at their stuff, I can see that Ben Caldwell's style of cartooning is pretty reminiscent of the style they use.

If I can just develop some natural aptitude and spend years developing my art, I'm sure I could approach their level of artistic awesomness.

Ben Caldwell's website is certainly worth checking out too. It's great.

This sly looking chick is Space Girl, for a music video Erica Henderson is doing for intergalatic pschobilly sci-fi band The Phenomenauts.

Study the way the head's designed, the face is built and all that funky stuff and then peer at some of the hamfisted sketches I did last night. You can see we're not dealing with the same sort of animal here - but my attempts are at least the same species.

If I can achieve that in one night - well, there's hope for me yet!

Action! Cartooning by Ben Caldwell is available from most good bookstores for $9.95. Space Girl kidnapped gratuitously from the blog of Erica Henderson and shall be returned unharmed once the briefcase full of unmarked tens and twenties is delivered.