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Showing posts from October, 2016

The Statue of Libertys' More Attractive Cousin, [2]

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HERE, I have reprised one of my earlier ideas ---a black and white inking of this idea appeared on this site in the early days,----and  I love the idea of souping up older gag ideas, and rearranging the same elements around on a whim. Another 'personality' job. The first inking [seperate drawing/similar idea]  done in the early 2010s have unaccountably shrunk right down when viewed on here today , and I still need to seek out my original larger artwork files---or even the  original artwork-------and re-instate the original larger scale images. ENJOI!       RAB L, ROUSER

Eggs in Hell [3]

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MORE Stream-of-Conciousness absurdity courtesy of Monsiuer Smith. Also: below illustration: HOW I put these suckers together using just bog-standard, recycled paper. ROBBO

Eggs in Hell [2]

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YET ANOTHER EXAMPLE of how a simple, basic theme can throw up lots of possibilities for gags, often just using a variation of what has gone before:  this one [minus the eggs]  might make a cute li'l ole logo, for instance. HAVE A KULE WEEKEND  RAB L ROUSER 

Satire-Toon Shenanigans

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SOMETIMES I GET CARTOON JOB REQUESTS totally out of the blue, and that was the story behind this cartoon below. In January 2016, a young German chap with his own ideas but in need of cartoon skills got in touch with me and offered me a job drawing up some of his ideas: he intended trying out the USA satire Magazines like NEW YORKER. I informed him this was an extremely difficult market to crack [although they pay pretty well if you are good enough/lucky enough to get your material accepted]. I dabbled a wee bit in satirical cartooning in the very early 2000s but to be honest I find the British satire mag situation to be snobby and reserved [unlike, say, the unbridled exuberance often seen in the USA equivalent MAD MAGAZINE]. So in all liklihood, these newly-released cartoons were my first real 'proper' excursion into this field. Here I was trying to approximate the look of the older NEW YORKER ambience and atmosphere. More of these coming up sometime. DRAWING IDEA IN THIS INSTA

Hellish Elements

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THE VARIOUS COMPONENTS required for the previous cartoon: only one sheet of paper was needed for this one, along with the basic flame-line backdrop, which was expanded and stretched from a small thumbnail. The proportions on the catebabe Veronica sometimes have to be altered slightly [very delicate work, drawing women like this: not a great deal of room for error ] however this one turned out fine at first attempt. The egg characters are often drawn larger than the finished version so I have enough room to work in for a nicer job---whatever the  visually aesthetic shortcomings of the personalities depicted as eggs. RAB      L.  ROUSER

Eggs in Hell

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ANOTHER GOOD EXAMPLE of how my approach to cartooning can yield results fairly easily in the long run: -----most cartoonists [though by no means all of them] go the 'strong idea' route meaning the artist constantly has to think up good ideas almost every day-----however I am sticking to [mostly] the same characters and concepts: this way, after thinking up personality-based beings like seen here, I  can just use the characters' personalities in a mix-n-match capacity which becomes very easy indeed after a while. Here we see a fairly effective image culled from my small stable of stock characters. Have a kule weekend RAB L. ROUSER

P.R.A.T.S.: Medievel Punishment Special

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A SOMEWHAT GRISLY TABLEAUX can be seen in todays' visual serving, readers: ---this sort of thing is quite unusual for me, and in fact this drawing sees me finally breaking one of my few remaining subject-matter  TABOOS: that is, I have  previously declared elsewhere that  I will avoid the depiction of BLOOD anywhere in my cartoons...so, what has brought about this abrupt sea-change as displayed in this somewhat morbid cartoon offering? --Basically, I am quite a big fan of the USA import MAD MAGAZINE, the location where I first saw blood on full view in a cartoon panel---I didn't like it at all back then, but as I have 'matured' I have altered my views on this somewhat---and here a few pints of the stuff can be seen, at the base of the chopping-block that is holding three artless dodgers.......every character seen in this image is of a wholly fantasy nature....this is a cartoon drawing and NOT  a photograph ENJOI!   ROBBO

Travelogue Stopgap

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I AM STILL WORKING ON untypically  commerial artwork just now and so regretfully I have no time to color in some of my usual quirky sketches.... Instead, here is an 'eleventh hour' decision by me to add in a sort-of-related-to-my-cartoons photo image of my trip to New York in winter 2014. THE STATUE OF LIBERTY is one of my favorite drawing subjects, and a regular supporting character in one of my strip concepts....when I finally was able to visit that part of the World, I made sure a 'proper' visit was in order. So, here is your humble narrator in frame at the statue site----I discovered the statue is actually GREEN  and not BLUE as I wrongly summized before getting to see it, on account of it being constructed out of COPPER dontcha know...... Great subject for drawing of course [if a bit daunting at first--or 'foist' as they say in Noo Yoik.] BACK TO CARTOONING NEXT TRANSMISSION RAB L. ROUSER

Odds and Sod All-Ogy.

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AS I AM BUSY working on paid cartoonery---the fruits of which will be exhibited on here at some point, after the goods are made public------I will have to cannibalize existing artwork in order to keep the site ongoing. Believe me, I have stacks of unseen material in a pile right here in front of me. INSPIRATIONS:  here, the stance of cool cat Jet Blanc is surely derived from the cocky Bugs Bunny characteristic often seen in the vintage Warner Bros shorts. Overall, too, the aim of these works is to approximate the look of these older animations, and indeed , with todays' Digital Technology, the act of 'dropping in' a wholly seperately-prepared background plate harks back to the approach taken by the cartoon studios during the cel animation boom years. That grossly overdone salvatating  probablty derives from the Bob McGrath Three Bears [mid-60s period] and there is most definitely an older-era D C Thomson influence infused in many of these facial close-ups. The skyscaper bac

Back-to-Basics

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MY APPROACH TO CARTOONING is not so much gag and joke-orientated as many other cartoonists: instead, I approach POLARIZED OPINIONS more like dipping into my pool of home-grown characters and situations, and spewing forth whatever visual fantasy image tickles my whims and fancies. I feel like I am gradually building up a supply of stock characters and recognizable quirks that are most definitely my own and not culled from existing properties: the way I do cartooning is much more fun and inventive than having to 'shoehorn' my natural style into something where the blueprints have already been struck by other artists.

Competition Winner

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THIS SITE exhibits the whole gamut between my more elaborate efforts to the more deliberately, simplified examples like this one here: this one was a runner-up in one of the many online cartoon character creations competitions  I enter. A lot of these characters lead to paid, one-off jobs so many times I am unable to show this material on POLARIZED OPINIONS simply because the buyers of the images own the copyright when they pay me*, but this one is fine as the character will not develop any further than the rough incarnation seen here. Now and again, I win competitions with very rough, unfinished cartoons like this one----some of the other [non-winning] entrants must spend several hours on some of their creations, and looking at my material compared to other artists, I think my stuff just looks different because I am not trying to be overtly commercial---I am just drawing the way I want to, which usually shines through. That's my theory, anyway. *   to be on the safe side, I show t