polarized double

THE DYING EMBERS OF 2016:  dubbed by some as 'the Worst Year Ever'....h'mmm......I reckon the year 1916 was a FAR more pressing problem for Mllions at the time----or how about the time of the Bubonic Plague? ON HERE, this has been my most prolific year of adding material ever, although there has been a tendency to steer away from fully-polished cartoons towards mostly spontaneous sketches---lots of drawings by me this year, and the bulk of which have still  never been shown publicly. I have stockpiled them, though! A' DOWNER': ---- NO Brand New characters from me in 2016---I usually try and create at least one freshly-minted new creation per year, but nothing on that score: the BADD EGGS do not really count, they are strictly second-or-third-string contenders; throwaway fodder-gags in every sense of the term. Great Fun, though! Anyway I will bow out of this annum with some more finished polished work I sold a wee while back, and unusually here I include a photograph...

A BIT OF A LOW-KEY ENTRY today my lovelies, ---but to be honest it's 'behind-the scenes' imagery like this that probably reveals how us silly artists put these silly doodles together---or at any rate, I know that I myself always appreciates this sort of thing when it is done by other artists. There is a lot of utter tosh written about 'how the cartoonist needs to buy expensive gear in the Modern Age'---often by artists who lack any real talent, as they feebly attempt to blind the impressionable onlooker with science-------- although, some really good artists spread this s*** around deliberately, also........presumably to [pathetically]  'mystify' what they are doing and to deter competition from other artists. Yep, some cartoonists CAN be quite shellfish----but to me, there is room for ALL good cartoonists everywhere---just steer clear of some of the more  disreputable sites who tend to be made up of frightful snobs, and humorless misery-guts, despite their ...

IN THIS OUTING we see the final design 'approval' for the character poses of my central BOOMER strip character: the main cool cat-character JET BLANC. JET is a sort of hybrid of Felix, Korky the Cat and especially PUSS out of Puss and Boots, a top-notch strip by comics legend John Geering, in the days before the not-in-the-same-League BANANAMAN--by the exact same artist-------   which contributed towards the decline in the once-mighty UK comics scene [in my view]. This character here is my 'sort of' equivalent of what Mickey Mouse means to the Disney Corporation, or what Bugs Bunny represents to the Warner Bros Animation unit: a MASCOT for all my cartoon endeavors---unlike Disney or WB, it's just ME doing absolutely everything creatively, and not a whole team of people. Say what you like about Jet, he is instantly-recognizable, and that is exactly what I set out to achieve on this one. ABOUT THIS ARTWORK: -------- THE USE OF digital color as illustrated here is the ...

I AM PUTTING TOGETHER  some 'proper' strips done the 'proper' way, which means that for these no more  mere sketching roughly in biro and back to more lavish Production Values!  I like to think I am not hard up for ideas, however I have decided to reprise some of my earlier strip ideas to see how much they have improved with the experience I have picked up doing the Digital side of things..........some of you may just about recognize the idea re-done here below, and if not it will all become apparant  to a few readers later on. Normally I add in an 'airbrushed' look with plenty of  colored dots, but as these elements are to be shrunken down its' probably best to leave the color-scheme quite plain. Enjoi! RAB L, Rauser

I AM ADDING IN  a lot of previously-unseen [on here at least] imagery from my archives, and this   is  another gag idea not actually written by me, but an unusual collaboration between me drawing this up after someone else thought up the idea. We both agreed I could perhaps try altering my style a bit: more deliberately simplified, like what you sometimes used to see in the USA satire Magazine THE NEW YORKER. As I have made crystal-clear on here before, this is a target for cartoons I would not normally pursue left to my own devices, but every year I get a few requests, totally out of the blue, from customers/ buyers seeking drawings from me [often as a result of finding this blog]. If someone shows real enthusiasm for a new cartoon project, I will usually go ahead with their desires. Anyway! I was very happy to try out a 'new' style although I think my own natural style shows through in this particular example. Two versions of this one, with digitally altered detail in t...

SOMETHING VERY DIFFERENT from me today, readers: ---here we see one of my most commercial outings of recent times: this was advertising material for Japanese toy-novelties, from a Company that wanted illustrations that look like 'older, proper drawings', and this is where I come in. Work like this is fine now again, it is of course very different to my usual BOOMER/ FLY/ EGGS stuff which is just me doodling to my heart's content [ Dammit, it's much more fun, though! ] ---what you usually find here is a fair bit of nit-picking getting specific details just right, which the artist just has to go along with, if you want paid at the end of the day. In this respect, cartooning like the example here is much more closer to being a COMMERCIAL ARTIST, a catch-all term that does not appeal to me all that much really but others are fine pursuing this. I just delve into this sort of thing now and again. This was my first cartooning ever for the Japanese Market [it's a Logo to b...

AGAIN, dated from January 2016, a cartoon I done for a customer hoping to crack the gag-market. He wouldn't allow me to sign this so that is how this baby is anonymous! I never wrote this idea and here we see a rare example of me interpreting the idea of another gagster. I was aiming for a New Yorker ambience in this sucker-------

ONCE AGAIN, I AM REPRISING some of my older ideas and re-interpreting with a Digital Color Upgrade in an attempt to strike new material. This 'Superhero' idea for the BOOMER characters  was done by me yonks ago, in the early days of this site, when all the imagery was simple pencil and ink upon paper: so, here we see what I can come up with along these lines today..... SUPERHEROES:                            --------I tend to deliberately avoid this sort of thing---lots of Superhero Comics feature stunning modern graphics, but for me the basic idea of 'super-powers' is just so over-familiar and comminplace it just doesn't really mean anything any more, and so--outside of a dream sequence---the BOOMER crowd most resolutely possess NO special powers of any kind, which is why you see B.B. himself here, with flying-ability possible only through his home-made rotor-device he has strapped to himself, ensuring more char...

AN EXPANDED VERSION of the previously added cartoon artwork. TOP HALF of main cartoon :   my main 'star' characters BOTTOM HALF of main cartoon :    my second [or third] -string stooges ALL Character Creations seen here spring soley from my imagination: any resemblance to actual extant people means you need a check-up from the neck up. RAB L. RAUSER

ANOTHER FAIRLY MACABRE Fantasy-Offering, in which my 'signature-moniker' takes center stage, and gets used in an elaborate prop featuring those naughty old BADD EGGS. About this cartoon: ---This is the first time I ever remember drawing funeral-like WREATHS so there you have it---this cartune lark is always all about learning new stuff. The sombre-looking Eggs [perhaps, though not neccessarilly------- based on the sub-characters Tory Crimes and Mister Paranoid(who sometimes feature as stooges within this site]--------are directly inspired from scenes seen near the end of Disneys' SNOW WHITE and the SEVEN DWARFS, in which the Dwarf characters are seen mourning Snow White, who they believe has died. My version here is a lot less considered than the meticulously-planned Disney approach, obviously---this is in many respects still a basic sketch. The  lying-down Egg variant is seen  as  not exactly dead, but perhaps not all that far off it, however: an 'upgraded' version...