Hamster Tales of Terror

How the Thing Stole Christmas

From the mind of John Carpenter -- just in time for Christmas!

Ass, elbow

Dolphin Rejection

Here's another cartoon I did at the beach and colorized. (Obviously, I'm cheating. The dolphin is a latter addition. My first dolphin sucked -- and basically looked like a brain-damaged shark who'd been in a car accident.)

I started with the Mean Old Man character. He had to be rejecting somebody. A dolphin struck me as funny. Dolphins are cute. Everybody loves dolphins.

I realize how ridiculously improbable his !@#$ house looking right out on the beach is.

Su on the Beach

Here's a sketch of Su on the beach at Anna Maria Island. Bean Point, to be specific.

I did this New Yorker style -- which means I took the raw sketch and colorized it. Working without a net. This takes a certain teeth-gritting determination on my part. I'm a perfectionist, OK? My allegiance is to old school cartooning. Basically, you start with a pencil sketch (based on solid notions of shape and modelling) then do a clean-up of the sketch. From there, you do a final pen-and-ink. This is how my heroes -- Gahan Wilson, Charles Addams, Arnold Roth, et al -- did it. (The living ones still do it, natch.) But there are exceptions. Jules Ffeiffer evidently doesn't work from pencils. The raw energy of his line is what he really sets down FOR THE FIRST TIME. Good for him. But Jules Ffeiffer is a genius.

I imagine if I do lots of sketches (without second guessing) I'll get better at it. But I have to fight my perfectionism ...