Thanks for those kind comments, Roger, I’m certainly enjoying my cartooning more now than ever, still developing my style.
I perhaps spent a little too long in the animation biz, especially after I came to Queensland, which for cartoonists/animators is the equivalent of Siberia.
Once I decided I was just too small a fish to get decent funding for animation projects, I started sending cartoon samples to ad agencies and gag cartoons to mags, and reacquainted myself with actually earning a living.
I’ve sort of been playing catch-up ever since. I’m fifty, but my style is at the stage it should have been when I was thirty-five or forty.
My learning curve is pretty steep, however, and I’m going like the clappers.
To answer your question, the cartoon image you see is almost exactly as I visualized it, though it was one of three or four competing scenarios.
The downshot is a legacy from animation, I do like that angle because it enables one to establish the characters and the whole atmosphere/world they’re in.
I find I can set the scene in my mind from the first moment, almost as soon as the gag occurs to me. I found out after many years of dissatisfaction and frustration that to cut corners or chicken out on that first impression leads to a watered down and second rate version of what I wanted. Even after I’ve sold a cartoon, I feel annoyed that I could have done it better, but that’s life.
I’ll upload a Frankenstein cartoon to illustrate what I mean by “almost as I visualized it”. In my mind, I saw this as gothic in incredible detail, grain in the stonework, cobwebs, thousands of peasants, massive, dark, cold interior, etc, then I realized I was imagining a scene from a film, not a cartoon. I basically kept with the spirit of the original scene, keeping in what was needed for atmosphere, and cartoonified the rest, going for laughs rather than gothic realism.
EDITED BY MINCE:
http://www.thewisenheimer.com/wisenheimer/w/im/114796.gif
