Introducing a new comic book adventure...

I have been working very hard on my latest project, which is a comic book project about a worm called Woody, or as most people who have now read this will no him as, Woody Worm. In this adventure, which is illustrated in a unique style that has never been done before (all completed by using hands for instance) he has a very strange case of a missing bird table thief to find out about and see where he might be hiding so he can then reveal where he has been hiding and report to the appropriate authorities. BUT! The story has a unique twist which has never been done before on the pages of the web, the thief is in fact - a WOMAN!

This hilarious comic strip was design for a paying customer, who has had numerous problems with his mobile phone ever since I sent him the rough version of this exclusive story. He is unable to answer his phone from anyone who uses the same network that I use. Most frustrating!

I sent him an email demanding payment, or I would publish the cartoon on my website instead, and he did not respond. So here's it is. The woman with pink hair is his mother, BTW. Now she won't get her hilarious and unique birthday gift, and there loss is you're gain, dear readership of this thus blog/website.

If you'd like your family immorallised in a cartoon form, then please get in touch.

I can also draw snails quite well.

How to drawer a cartoon filing cabinet. Part 1.

As promised, here is the lesson on how to draw a cartoon filing cabinet. Thanks to Pin Ups Office supplys (Dunstable) for the loan of the filing cabinet and preferential rates on post it notes.

Drawing small cartoons is no fun at all.

I've decided that it was time that I decided to launch a highly successful strip cartoon series that will get published in many newspapers all over the world. I expect it will pay very well. At least £20 per day, per newspaper. Which could soon add up to a great deal of money.

The problem I have with drawing a newspaper strip every day for vast amounts of money, is that the size of the strips in newspapers, means it's quite difficult to draw at such a small size for newspapers comic strips.

It's not the humour or the drawing skills that is the problem. Just drawing something very small, with a very big brush pen. If I didn't know better, I'd say it was some sort of conspiracy to prevent people with large brush pens from selling cartoon comic strips for newspapers, and denying them a vast income of many £20 notes from each newspaper that would take the comic strip, if only they were drawn at a bigger size.

It's quite clearly madness. But I shall continue to spend most of my time drawing at least 4,000 strips, and then I'll send them out to see what the market thinks.

Giving the client what they want.

I have often been asked how I negotiate with clients when I'm selling my services of providing cartoons to clients, and I know that this process is very interesting to many of you reading this website.

Here's a recent example of an email discussion I had with a very difficult client (names changed to protect the innocent)

Client:

Dear Susan Ledrow,

I am the managing director of an ice cream administration company, and I would like a new logo for my company vehicle. I'd like something that looks friendly, and attractive to my clientele who are usually of a young age.

Are you able to provide graphics for a vehicle? Please let me know the cost, before I decide to go ahead with this project. I have a very limited budget.

Mr W. Hippie.

Now this was an interesting project, but after doing some research on the various print on demand website sites I was obliged to reply thus such:

Dear Mrs Thurrock,

Thank you very much for your interesting email about me desiging some cartoons for your ice cream van. While I would be delighted to provide you with the service that you have requested, I am not sure how to get the cartoon designs printed directly onto your vehicle. While I now have a colour printer, sadly it is only an A4 model, and will not accomodate a vehicle of your size.

If you'd still like me to provide the designs, maybe you could find a van printer yourself? Please let me know if you'd like me to work on some rough ideas for your vehicle. Have you got a website? I could easily design something for that.

Miss Clair Moumatch.

I forgot to mention how much I was going to charge, and thought nothing more of it. Probably wouldn't hear from this client again, but 3 weeks later:

Dear Leo Gussett,

Thank you for your reply to my email. I only require the design to be produced by you. I already have a printer that will reproduce the design for me on vynal sheets which can easily be affixed to my vehicle.

If you can produce some rough designs for me, and let me know how much you would charge me, I would be most greatful. If this is not possible, then I shall just use the design I used last time, before the respray.

Sincerly,

Mrs Chris Ledyard.

I was relieved that the client had his own printing company to repro (reproduce) the design and set to work straight away on some rough ideas for the design:

Dear mr Biles,

Here is a rough ideas for the logo for your ice cream van vehicle. I forgot to mention there's no charge for rough ideas, and if you like the design, my charge will be just £20 (design will be emailled to you free of charge), or if you want it printed and posted to you I will have to charge postage and packaging charge of £2.88 + £20 design fee. This is a license to use the artwork outright with no further charges.

Please let me know how you would like to proceed.

Leonard Gubbins.

Unfortunately that was the last I heard from this client. I'd done some speclative work, in the hope of making some money with this client, but they never got back to me. Frustrating, yes, but as most professional cartoonists and illustrators will tell you, it's all part of the course. Hopefully one day I'll be able to use these designs for another client that approaches me for some work.

UPDATE: A few days later I successfully sold a missing cat poster to Mrs Stocker down the road. The cat was never found.

But I digress.

Over at the cartoonist forum they have a contest every week that sets a caption and all the cartoonists (the ones that charge way more than £20 per cartoon, btw) and they all post a cartoon and then they vote for the one that they like the best.

I tried to do something similar on here once, but only 1 person replied and it didn't really work out as I hoped it would. That's the trouble with original ideas that I have. Someone else has always done it better and bigger than me. The cartoonist cartel over at the cartoonist forum don't take favourably to unique talent such as mine. They call it horrible things, like "it's rubbish", or that I have no "talent". Clearly they feel threatened, otherwise they wouldn't have any need to write such hurtful things. They can see my uniqueness could ruin their business.

And it's that which inspires me to continue with my one woman campaign against anything that isn't talented and free. and unique. Google is my friend. Google loves me and my many links.

This week I've drawn a cartoon based on the idea over at the cartoonist forum, but with a twist. Not for me, something "oh so clever" and smart. Oh no. I've gone for something crude and uniuqe. I was told it was too late to enter the contest, but I know the real reason is that it's simply so good, it puts all their efforts to shame.

So here is my hand shaded goodness for your enjoyment:

but I digress.

It's health & safety gone mad.

The other day I was walking down the street when I noticed that there was some signs that I should cross the road and start walking on the other side of the road, pavement. The sign was an effing great big hole in the road that some jobs worth had dug up apparently. But this wasn't enough. Alongside this natural 'sign' was a red & white barrier a flashing light or two and some traffic cones. How insulted I felt. The local council or whoever it was who dug the hole had decided for me that I wasn't intelligent enough to avoid a huge hole in the ground, and decided to make it bloody obvious that there was a great hole in the footpath.

Clearly all this health and safety nonesense had also prevented the workmen from gaining access to the hole, as no work was taking place that Sunday afternoon. Anything could have happened to that hole the whole time it was just left there, inviting vandals to perhaps fill it in, or throw some elderly people into it that they had just mugged, and because of all the warning signs and health and safety  - everyone would have been walking on the other side of the street and wouldn't have noticed the mountain of dead pensioners inside the hole.

I take great pride in my civic pride, so I was compelled to make a small physical protest to all this crazy health and safety nonsense. I removed one of the flashing amber lights, and I now use it in my back garden to warn the postman not to stand on the gravel where the dog likes to do his business. If I have prevented just one pensioner from being left in a hole for a whole weekend then my effort will have been worth it.

Stress Avoidance. Part 1

Stress is a modern disease. In the olden days, people didn't get stressed. They had very easy lives, and nothing ever went wrong for them. The most they had to worry about was finding enough food to eat, or how to wash their clothes without a washing machine.


The modern world is a stressful place, and many people suffer from stress and can get quite shouty with other people because they are stressed. Just about everything these days can be a great source of stress. How to make enough money to buy chocolate biscuits for when you have important guests visiting your home, which might have an impossibly sized mortgage on it, which is yet another source of stress.


Fortunately I have some experience of stress counselling, and in this series of articles I will be covering some of the most common sources of stress, to help you and your people cope and manage the stresses that we all have to deal with on a day to day basis.


So don't worry about not being able to pay your mortgage and being made homeless during the worst recession that this country has ever seen, while your children are forced from your grasp and placed in a grim orphanage for the Government to perform medical experiments on them until you clear all your debts and pay back the loan sharks. There is no need to stress!


Next time: How to avoid getting stressed while reading internet blogs.

It's going to be massive.

This is just one of the many of cartoons that I've recently drawn to send off to some magazines and internet message boards. I think it's much better than many of the cartoons we often see in print these days. I'll let you know what Woman's Own say when they get it.

How much do you charge for your cartoons?

Anyone who knows me or this website knows that my standard fee for cartoons and illustrations is £20 per cartoon (hourly rate, if my sister phones and interrupts me then it could be quite a bit more), but I've noticed that many cartoonists are very secretive about what they charge for their cartoons.

I think this is the wrong way to conduct business. You wouldn't go to buy a fridge in a shop that didn't display the prices, would you, and therefore why should it be any different for cartoons? Cartoons are to business what fridges are to kitchens full of cheese that needs to be stopped from going smelly, unless it's a type of cheese that is supposed to be smelly, is the way I think of it. Sometimes I think of everything in terms of preserving cheese.

Beware of women on the blob.

I was holding out for Cathy to write this article, but it looks like she is more concerned with Kitchen utensils and such like things like her garden furniture!

Women are extremely amusing when they have their periods, as anyone who owns one will know. They are snappy and unreasonable at the best of times, but they are even worst when they have the painters in so to speak, and this always makes a great subject for a greetings card, or Valentines card (too late for that). There's great humour in mild aliments like periods or the monthlies. Everyone loves to laugh at the angry lady, as it such where was thus.

This cartoon (like nearly all of them) is for sale for business use. Perhaps you have a lipstick discount store, or you sell books to feminists? Then this cartoon could be the ideal image for your poster campaign advert, just in time for the summer!

How to avoid being shafted.

These days it's very difficult to know who you can trust and who is likely to shaft you at the first opportunity. Take a simple action of a transaction in a shop. How do you know that the shop assistant isn't going to short change you when you are buying something with a £20 note that costs, say, £1.43?

Many shop assistants are very low paid. They often hardly get enough money to provide their 15 children with sufficient space hoppers or socks, so the incentive for them to make a little money on the side from unsuspecting customers is quite strong.


If the shop assistant gives you two crisp £5 notes as your change, then you have definitely been shafted. Yes, two £5 notes, especially new ones that are crisp is quite a good feeling, but THIS ISN'T ENOUGH! The best way to avoid this happening is:

• Don't go shopping at all.
• Work out what your change should be BEFORE you approach the till.
• Only pay the exact amount of money each time.

Well I hope that has helped you to avoid being shafted in shop. Next week: How to avoid being shafted in a brothel.