polarized double

After a long hiatus from the strip, in which I have been working as a paid cartune-ist of blobbular inksmanship, it's time to delve into the BABY BOOMER archives once again, and I am pleased to report that this site/blog has been garnering prrrettty good audience scores, even when I left the blog for several weeks------I thank you for your encouraging response, me hearties. In way of compensation, some of the older but gooder strips have been hand-picked by the author, and---in a trice-------are in the process of attaining a TECHNICOLOR sheen: the first fruits of revamped-but-colorized labors can be seen below, readers: more full-spectrum offerings are in 'da woix', all you happy taxpayers!

Sadly, this drawing should have went in as supplementary material with the previous posting----as per usual, these computres are sometimes so %&$#*****!!!@ tempramental...it has to go in as a brand-new posting, me hearties. original inking in this case donated to a female gal of feminine gender

The third in my series of self-portraits, depicting me as a young man: oh, too long ago, really---------perhaps not the greatest likeness thus far, as a few onlookers never recognized me. This is how I picture myself though, and as usual no photoreferences were used------it's such a drag. The graffitti in the background---and outdoor boozing-----are pretty accurate, though......

This entry is made up of material I done for advertising purposes late last year: A range of ladies' underwear, called POP & GO knickers. I was given the assignment of visualising two female chracters, 'Pop' and Go' [dontcha know!!] The finished strips have been languishing on my hard-drive for months, and before I convert them to shiney disc, I will add them on here for posterity [ or at least, until WW3 'pulls the plug' on the internet] : first up we see the finished strips in published format---this was among my first pro stuff done using digital color, and it was a real 'chucked-in-at-the-deep-end' job, although I learned how to add scanned-in composites here, etc. 'Festival'  [above] was the first completed strip in the series. Second image:   an unused early pencil rough. Third image----another early pencil concept. Image four: another isolated frame, in loving close-up.

OVER at the good ole CCGB, there is a cartoonist quite new to the game called IVOR, who is trying to market his cartoons effectively......some of the older hands on the site discussed the effectiveness of a noticable signature, and this inspired me to create a logo for Ivor....dunno if he really wants it, but I enjoyed making this up, it's very different to my usual stuff. I done a 5-second sketch first, then just put the digital bits directly overlaid on top.

MY QUEST to get to grips with Digital coloring Techniques takes a new turn, with my first 'successful' attempt at effective cartoon flames------- this result is pretty much the sort of thing I was aiming for, it took a bit of perseverence, but I basically got there in the end. This image is composited using two seperate pieces of paper-------here's the original black-and-white inking, which I thought had decent vitality, but the composition could be greatly improved-----this is where the 'digital benefits' come in. Central cat JET BLANC had a wonky leg [on the left, our side]----this is easily moved, and again, the now-standard 'head-shrinking' option came into play. The foreground characters of BABY BOOMER and VERONICA were less than satisfactory in the original draft, and I opted to edit these out. New improved versions were drawn up and scanned in, and the overall character elements were scaled down and rearranged for a more pleasing composition. Once the...

PHASE II of my 'and now a word from our sponsors' occassional series, this entry sees another of my recent T-Shirt designs, tailored using my own cartoon style----a nice simple job after the complexities of highly-rendered BABY BOOMER. Once again, the 'all-new Head Shrinker' technique has come into play [ very handy, this application]. I have a tendency to draw heads [often the most interesting part in cartoonery] a bit on the large side, and I often have to erase 'em [ often very painful to remove vital-looking stuff] , but now I can simply shrink down the best bits, and retain the spontanaeity....... EXAMPLE HERE: Below, we see the original pen-and-ink drawing, before the 'headshrinker' tool came into action: The customer also required the ape's leg to be rotated a bit, [the leg on our left] and it's pretty straightforwards using modern manipulation.