Thursday, August 21, 2008

Mike Lynch Cartoon in August 2008 CHRONICLE OF HIGHER EDUCATION


Above: no, not the cartoon. It's a rough sketch for the cartoon from my sketchbook. Looks like I was calling Guy Gilchrist that day. Yeah, I tend to make notes on my cartoons and sketchbooks. Digression & Plug: I'm giving a talk all about cartooning at Guy's Cartoonists School next month! It's in Connecticut, on a Saturday. More details at the link.

OK, back on topic:

The sweat shouldn't show in a good cartoon. A good cartoon should just be funny and look effortless. This cartoon of mine, in this week's CHRONICLE OF HIGHER EDUCATION, was full of effort and grunt. I knew what I wanted to do, but it just wasn't funny at all in the early drafts.

This is the kind of gag where you apply a formula and then see how funny it is. This is just off the top of my head, but I could have drawn the seven dwarfs of politics (Photo-Oppy, Reactionary, Progressivey, Whacky, Waffley, Stay-the-Coursey, Changey) or the seven dwarfs of cartoonists (Webby, New Yorkery, Syndicatey, Graphic-Novelly, animationy, caricaturisty, Gaggy) ... well, the list goes on.

It was a challenge to come up with these names, and, especially, the last two, which give a final bit of a gag to end it. Click to super-size.

I wanted to draw the dwarfs in a non-cuddly manner, and I think I succeeded. They still have big noses and cute beards, but they all look real world kinda tired. Not the sort of cutesy-poo figures anyone would license as a toy.

I don't always know when my cartoons are printed. My thanks to Brian at DePaul for the heads up!

4 comments:

Tom R said...

Great cartoon and it's fun to see your process. However the best part of the post for me is that I now have Guy Gilchrist's personal phone number, and can crank call him at my leisure!

Mike Lynch said...

Oh man oh man ... shades of Schulz accidentally putting his home phone number in one of his strips ....

I panicked for a minute thinking I had given out a secret, private phone number -- but --

Sorry my friend Tom -- the number is for the Academy, available on the Academy's Web site.

Kevin Spear said...

Thanks, Mike. It's always interesting to see an ideal from the rough to final.

richardcthompson said...

Great one, Mike, especially Perishy!