Archive for January, 2008
Prehistoric Fish
Tuesday, January 29th, 2008
A while ago a friend of mine stumbled upon the carcass of this prehistoric-looking fish on a beach in Cape Cod and snapped this picture. Some online research revealed it to be a threatened/endangered Atlantic Sturgeon. He reported it to the Woods Hole Oceanagraphic Institute and ended up getting calls from NOAA and the Geological Survey in Virginia. It caused quite a stir. I saw a more interesting use for the dead fish and had Poncho and Boomer stumble across it during a recent beach storyline. The biological implications were lost on them and they made quick work of it, necessitating frequent stops on the car ride home.
Look, Up In The Sky!
Sunday, January 27th, 2008
Besides Pooch Café I also makes my livin’s doing freelance illustration for magazines, advertisements, etc. Years ago I met Sean Wise when I lived in Ottawa and we worked on a superhero comic together. Sean has now written a book marrying his knowledge of business with his love of superheroes. It’s not on the shelves yet, but it’s titled “Batman In The Boardroom,” and Penguin kindly hired me to do the cover (above). It’s good to have pals in high places.
More samples of my various illustration styles can be viewed here.
Ringtales
Friday, January 25th, 2008
Ringtales has been creating awesome little 15-second animated shorts from 2D cartoons for downloading onto cell phones and Ipods . So far they’ve been basing the shorts on New Yorker cartoons, and they’re sweet! Some of the download numbers have approached the million mark. Ringtales approached us about a year ago about creating some animated shorts from Pooch Café comics, and I jumped at the chance. Unfortunately I wasn’t able to complete the jump and was left hanging in the air for ten more months while the negotiation of the Sony contract lagged on (there was some perceived overlap of rights). The Sony option at last squared away, we are now free to move forward with Ringtales. Whoop!
So now the fun starts.
Step 1: We have to pick a cartoon to use for testing voice/design/animation, etc. Ringtales has suggested we select one with all the major characters so that we can try out how they all look and sound.
Step 2: they’ve asked for my ideas for voice actors, keeping in mind that they “can’t afford George Clooney or Julia Roberts, but they can find actors who sound like them.” Some of you have made some interesting suggestions already, and if anyone else has more now’s the time to chime in.
Step 3: Direction, things like blocking, timing, camera moves, etc, have to be worked out.
Step 4: Creating an animatic, which is a story reel with static images cut to the recorded sounds and voices using drawings from the original strip.
Step 5: One of the production houses or animators that Ringtales works with will animate the short using both hand-drawn and Flash animation, both of which are used in the animated New Yorker cartoons as well. Post production of this step includes the adding of any sound effects or music.
Hopefully if all goes well we will then move into regular production and we’ll all get to see Poncho come to life. Stay ‘tooned.
New Doggie Look-Alikes
Friday, January 25th, 2008
Check it.
Friday, January 25th, 2008
Milo submitted by Karen Cox
Our first Hudson! This is Milo of St. Charles, Missouri. Not quite the same color, but he does have a certain Hudson quality, although Karen notes that unlike Hudson he is totally capable of resisting any commands given to him.
Friday, January 25th, 2008
Frank and Lizzie submitted by Shannon Lindell
These are Shannon’s Boston Terriers from Illinois, both with distinctive Poncho qualities. Shannon likes to think that Lizzie (on the right) could give Poncho a run for his romantic money.
Bloody
Tuesday, January 22nd, 2008
Some readers were a trifle surprised Poncho was able to say the word “bloody” on the comics page, and in hindsight I now am as well, not that the curse seems strong particularly, but just that it seems no matter how mild the language used there’s always someone out there who can’t pass up the chance to be offended.
Alex Hallatt, creator of the strip “Arctic Circle”, notes that the Aussies are using “So where the bloody hell are you?” as their new tourism slogan. The Brits took exception to the word “bloody”. The Canadians took exception to the word “hell”.
Anyone who has spent even a small amount of time with the strip will have noticed Poncho’s penchant for spouting off. The family-friendly vibe of the comics page necessitates keeping Poncho’s expletives G-rated, which presents a challenge: people in the midst of an eye-popping conniption don’t usually choose words like “gosh” and “golly”. So I began using the word “friggin’”. Well, I was informed quite heatedly by a few elderly folks of the British persuasion that “friggin’” actually had a meaning sexual in nature which for the sake of any gentler readers of this blog I will avoid defining here. So then I tried using the word “freakin’” in Poncho’s outbursts. This caused some complaints from people who felt “freakin’” was a too thinly veiled substitute for a certain other word that starts with “f”. One paper even took it upon themselves to change the “freakin’” to “friggin’” , which provoked another letter from one of the earlier British complainants in which he now vowed to never allow his grandchildren to read my “smut” again.
I guess all the citizens of the comics page should just chill out like Ziggy and get along.
Peanuts Tribute
Friday, January 18th, 2008
Pooch Café was first syndicated back in 2000 by Copley News, a syndicate specializing more in columns and political cartoons than in comic strips. Still, I was grateful for the start, and in May of ’00, five months after launch, I attended my first Reuben Awards weekend in Manhattan. Charles Shultz would be celebrating the 50th anniversary of Peanuts that year, and every syndicated cartoonist had been asked to pay tribute to the master by doing a Peanuts-themed strip to run on the Saturday of that weekend, the idea being that Charles, or Sparky as I heard he was called, would awake in his hotel room that morning to find every strip on the page paying personal respect to the king. There was to be a banquet in his honor at the top of the World Trade Center, and I was quite pumped about getting to meet the greatest living legend of the comic strip craft.
Before the weekend arrived, however, Charles Shultz announced that he would be retiring to combat illness. The tribute turned into a retirement present. Very quickly on the heels of that news came the news that he had passed away, the way I heard it was that it was during the night of the day in which he had finished drawing his final strip. Not sure if that’s true, but it adds to the legend. So the retirement present became a memorial. I will always remain regretful that I never got to meet the man and perhaps get to call him Sparky.
Poncho Pumpkin
Wednesday, January 16th, 2008
A little out of season, but Becky Flarity of Tacoma said her when it came time for her family to decide what to carve in the pumpkin last year, “Poncho won paws down.” Halloween is my b-day (yeah, I’m a goblin child) so this little tribute to my personal pagan god is extra soothing.
In other news, the site will now be displaying the strip of the day. The previous weeks will still be available at the GoComics page.
Poochbook
Tuesday, January 15th, 2008
This is a little shout out to the two Pooch Café fan clubs I found on Facebook, “POOCH CAFÉ LOVERS!!!!!!!”, (which seems to have a basis in the United Arab Emirates – how cool!), and “Pooch Café, the BEST comic strip, EVER!” I appreciate the applause y’all. Maybe I should get Poncho his own Face-page?
Spaghetti Braces
Tuesday, January 15th, 2008
Here’s a cartoon I did for Mad Kids a few months ago. The print job in the magazine didn’t come out too hot, we were all trying to figure out a new coloring method, but here it is in all it’s gory glory.
Ham
Sunday, January 13th, 2008Dear Poncho;
Do you like ham?
- David
Poncho:
Ham isn’t so much a meat as it is a magical gateway to a celestial plane. Like cats’ catnip, like Gollum’s ring, but multiplied by Fermat’s final theorem, magnified through a prism, and chorused over by an assembly of angels. Ham is a transcendental experience, a Rosetta Stone, a very reason for life itself. And so are hamburgers, pork chop, chicken, bacon and hotdogs. And zebra (I assume). Tofu, on the other hand, is one of the sixth signs of the devil.
“Do You Like Ham?”
Sunday, January 13th, 2008
Poncho responds on “The Straight Poop” page.
Animation Cells
Friday, January 11th, 2008
The licensing cooordinator at Universal Press recently struck a deal for Pooch Café with Lasermach, a company that specializes in animated cells printed on industrial grade Mylar. Although I’ve not experienced it first hand yet, apparently stuff that’s printed this way looks massively better hanging on a wall than regular prints. So far they seem to have focused on cells of Marvel superheroes and the like, but say they like Pooch’s “contemporary, bold drawing style,” (aw, shucks), and have chosen the above strip 1-23-05 “Men’s Room” for their first print. Make way, Wolverine.
Pooch Cafe Movie
Thursday, January 10th, 2008
After 18 months (!) of negotiations the contract with Sony has been signed to potentially turn Pooch Café into a computer-animated feature film. Sony’s first two cgi films were Open Season and the awesome Surf’s Up, brilliant examples of the craft, so I’m extremely excited to be shacking up with them. Over the next 12-18 months some preliminary work will commence, things like story and character designs, before a decision is made about proceeding into full production. From what I’ve figured out so far this process can be quite glacial, but I’ll post regular updates as we go along so we can all experience the mechanics of developing a comic strip for the big screen (or however far we get). Sweet biscuits! This could be fun.
Striking Pose
Tuesday, January 8th, 2008
Here is the cover drawing for the latest Pooch collection, Bark To Work Legislation, broken into three stages. The textured paint in the background was scanned from an oil painting I did a few years earlier (tough holding the big canvas steady on the scanner).
Copies of the latest book can be purchased from the online publishing site Lulu.com. I just received my copies, the print job is supoib!
Poncho Buttons
Monday, January 7th, 2008
I actually didn’t know about the Cafe Press buttons for sale until Buckaroo pointed them out. They are legit, just new. Cafe Press used to have aprons and clocks and other stuff but looks like they’ve scaled back their merchandise options at the moment. But there’s buttons!
Lucky Cow
Sunday, January 6th, 2008
Pooch Café began syndication with Universal Press in 2003, and the following spring I attended the Reuben Awards (the Oscars of comic strips, without all that pain in the butt glitter, majesty, beautiful people, or public interest), held that year in Kansas City. I met many cartoonists, but a handful of us bonded more as “piers”, having all signed on with Universal around the same time and being of similar age and drinking disposition. These cartoonists were Rob Harrell (Big Top), Lalo Alcaraz (La Cucaracha), and Mark Pett (Lucky Cow).
Rob’s hilarious strip came to an end last year, sadly, and now a second member of that little posse has decided to pull up stakes. Lucky Cow will be churning out its final happy meal at the beginning of next month. Shame to see him go, he’s a very talented cartoonist and a helluva guy. Above is a strip I did a while back where our universes crossed paths.
The Omen
Friday, January 4th, 2008
Christian and Jana from Germany recently bought a new fridge, and look what they found inside. They politely requested I not give any further details as to their whereabouts for fear of pilgrimages, etc.
Funny Girl
Thursday, January 3rd, 2008
The first comic strip of this year comes to you courtesy of my wickedly funny and totally smokin’ gf Meredith (otherwise known as Mer Mer, Cha Cha, and Why-Is-Every-Cupboard-Door-Open-Do-You-Think-This-Pot-Is-Going-To-Magically-Put-Itself-Away?). Despite hours spent laughing with funny friends I find jokes cracked in the “real world” don’t usually translate well into strips, but this one, said as the coffee pot boiled at 2:30 pm recently, was a homer. And she can cook!
Decking The Halls
Wednesday, January 2nd, 2008
Current Poncho host Lulu is all but snowed under in Chicago. They’re staying in and keeping warm till the weather becomes hospitable enough for some city shots. In the meantime she put Poncho to work decorating the tree. That’s the first time I’ve seen Poncho do anything resembling “work”, so she must be using trickery or bribery.
Poncho Trims the Tree
Wednesday, January 2nd, 2008
Current Poncho host Lulu is all but snowed under in Chicago. They’re staying in and keeping warm till the weather becomes hospitable enough for some city shots. In the meantime she put Poncho to work decorating the tree. That’s the first time I’ve seen Poncho do anything resembling “work”, so she must be using trickery or bribery.