Rip-Off Artists: Hack-Job Fail VII

One of my pet peeves is seeing the work of cartoonists hacked and shared with such painfully obvious and crappy cut + pasting. It’s disrespectful to the artist and indicative of a lazy mentality, not to mention theft of intellectual property and violation of copyright. This was a particularly egregious example of how adulterated agenda can cripple & corrupt a cartoon. Shame.

On a related note, never trust or submit work to any publication that strips off the original creator's credit line (in this instance, Gemma Correll's), pastes on their own (that's theft) and substitutes their own lame-ass caption. Shame.

Rip-Off Artist (Hack Job Fail VI)

On the left: the work of a pathetic hack... On the right: the work of a consummate craftsman.

     Dovetailing off of the recent post about another schmuck who stole from a friend and fellow cartoonist: this one merits resurrection of the occasional series spotlighting really bad examples of folks ripping off artist's work. In this exceptionally sad case, it isn’t even “appropriation” by any stretch… it’s a cheap, crappy hack that thoroughly pollutes the original piece by literally adding insult (thinking your impoverished imagination is an improvement on the creator’s) to injury (ripping shit off).
     Clever to crop off the copyright …but still too stupid to remove the artist’s name. And that name would be one of the great talents in single-panel comics from the 90's: Sidewalk Bubblegum by Clay Butler. The feature's been retired for a while, but check out the on-line archives here, and on a related cartooning side-topic, check out Butler’s insightful tutorial on inking here.
     And speaking of naming names, that's a Facebook screen-grab from the anonymous "Samuel Greenberg" which/who cross-posts from a New-Age feelgood "Sun Gazing"collective - think patchouli + tie-dyed Borg (and no I won't link to them). People whose stock in trade is misleading herds of delusional followers - over 200k - with an effervescent effluent of woo wouldn't think for a minute about the ethics of polluting something like the work of an artist. The irony being that this is the same crowd who of all folks should know that karma's (gonna be) a bitch.

Exhibit B posted here is a sample from another of these endlessly proliferating humor aggregate sites whose operators lack any originality or personal talent and function instead as amoral, ignorant parasites. Compared to Exhibit A, this tick had the foresight and ability to completely remove the artist's name and copyright, but it's still an exceptionally and immediately recognizable style. This particular one had 328,338 "likes" which the deliberately uncredited creator (Dan Piraro's "Bizarro" - who has a special post up on his blog here dedicated to just this issue) no doubt would have appreciated a fraction of the redirected traffic and potential income. Schmucks.

Last but not least in the triumvirate of toonists would be another recent example made from modifying a Clay Bennett panel, whose legions of followers descended upon the perpetrator in an attempt to shame an avowed Libertarian into respecting his intellectual property rights (oh the irony).

"Intellectual property theft is rampant on the internet. And although I've come to terms with the unauthorized use of my work, my patience ends when someone alters one of my cartoons to reflect their own political perspective. That's usually the only instance in which I'll enforce my authority as the copyright holder."

Ooopsie

Rip-off Artist: Hack Job FAIL

There’s a frequent poster from North Pole on the comment threads at the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner by the user ID name of "Tea Party Patriot" (aka "The Sourdough Thug") who frequently uploads Photoshop hacks: here's a few screen-grabs of the more egregious examples of their blatant thievery for public display.
I remember working for years at a local Xerox copy center, and once rang up a customer that had photocopied one of my weekly panels in the newspaper to mail out (remember mail?) to family members. I stayed anonymous, being somewhat flattered at the time at what I saw as promotion of my work at the grassroots level: however, there would have been a big difference had they brought in one of my books and began methodically reproducing the entire thing. That’s theft, and ripping me off directly, even if it’s one of my self-published titles, or a collection put out by another publisher.

What’s arguably even worse, adding insult to injury, is when someone’s artwork is clumsily butchered by some fool, well-intentioned or otherwise, and they try to feebly cover it up. Too bad that doesn’t work when it’s a readily identifiable style, such as the case with Clay Bennett of the Chattanooga Times Free Press (shown above - the original is viewable here.) Schmuck didn't even change anything on this particular one, just digitally removed the copyright notice, credit line for the paper and the artist's name. What the hell was that suppose to do, somehow assuage your total lack of a guilty conscience? Alleviate your complete absence of ethics?

It especially fails when the original work was done by an immediately recognizable local Alaskan cartoonist, as in this pathetic example of mutilating one of Peter Dunlop-Shohl’s pieces (original here). Repeatedly.

The schmuck's images are posted here on this page, which'll  hopefully be taken down soon, since it's assumable this person isn't abiding by any usual user agreement not to infringe upon the rights of creators and violate content ownership. Clearly it's not within the parameters of fair-use nor does it alter the original image anywhere remotely enough to constitute appropriation. And hopefully it'll get it got his dumb ass banned from posting such aesthetic barbarism on the News-Miner site. Much as I might personally agree with the sentiment (trying to be) expressed, talentless hacks who commit such fraudulent plagiarism run the risk of really pissing off artists. If you haven't noticed.

Knock it off, and learn how to draw yourself if you really feel that strongly about it.
Or, as succinctly put by Peter himself: "I have to feel sorry for someone who has to use someone else's art to express himself."

Rip-Off Artist (Hack Job V)

Haven't posted one of these in a while - came across a particularly egregious example on Facebook, one that rips off an immediately recognizable creator. The signature style of Clay Bennett is so easy to pick out, it's doubly stupid to A) clumsily crop off the name, and B) add insult to injury by adding someone else's name to the piece. Idiots.

Shame on Super Hero Stuff, and especially Meme Center, who went even further by poorly substituting different captions, in addition to crediting themselves (syndicates just love that sort of infringement). Talentless hacks, you really can't get any shittier than that when stealing someone's work - but maybe they'll win a Pulitzer from this putz.

Rip-Off Hack Job FAIL (IV)

Here's a hint

A while back I'd noticed that in a recent issue of one of my longest-running favorite websites, BartCop, that a local cartoonist's work who has a readily identifiable style appeared, sans caption and credit line. Regular readers know this is an recurring topic and one of my pet peeves. Cue hilarity: supposedly I'm now publicly shamed (see grab above) for calling him out on ripping off another Alaskan cartoonist, again. 

(more below the fold) 

iFunny: Not Laughing

On the left: creative genius. On the right: the work of a thief.

Basically as far as I can tell they (iFunny) have created an app to easier facilitate ripping people off, so "create your own fun" means in other words "if you have no talent whatsoever hack other people's skill and imagination instead." Once again the work of Mighty Wombat is so good that these talentless tapeworms feel the need to not only strip off his name and copyright but have no shame about pasting in their own instead. Truly a shitty thing to do, but also works as a way to identify these cheap hacks. If these folks had anything in their own pathetic lives that they valued or had any creative worth at all then perhaps they'd empathize, but that also assumes cognitive awareness.
Also George Takei should maybe not try so hard to be funny all the time as maybe then he'd be able to expend a minimum amount of effort in better researching who he's helping to rip off.

At least ticks give something back

Your Cheatin' Art (Now Updated With Bonus Strike-Throughs)

 “I would prefer even to fail with honor than to win by cheating” - Sophocles

Been reading about the comparative explosion in cheating in schools, especially at the college level, utilizing the resources of professionals no less. Fortunately I’ve never only once had that happen to me, nor do I think it’s ever very likely in an art class - although here's an excellent essay by an art teacher that it did happen to. Every assignment and critique is so unique and individually tailored to each student’s respective interest and ability, plus given the hands-on/over the shoulder approach of monitoring work-in-progress via thumbnails and sketches: it makes for a virtual impossibility to “cheat.”  It’d stick out like a sore thumb should anyone ever exhibit the artistic version of doping and turn in a piece that was obviously out of their league of capability.

More below the jump...

Rip-Off Artists III

Since I have a perverse, sometimes morbid attraction to strange art by strange people, I just had to click through the eBay auction of prison art to benefit the legal defense of Scott Roeder, pro-life assassin. He commissioned fellow inmate Jason Dubrowski ("...one of the best artists I’ve seen in here") to do a few drawings which Roeder personally signed. The auction has now been suspended, but there's still some examples floating around the intertubes.

While I'm not personally too worried about the charges of glorifying violence with these illustrations, but one of them did trip a red flag - reminded me of an oh, slightly similar composition drawn by syndicated cartoonist Gary McCoy...


Damned if that don't look familiar. At least the clouds have moved. Given the proclivities of the original artist I'll guess there won't be much if any protest over the, eh, homage.
Plus I'm guessing folks who support gunning people down they disagree with probably wouldn't have much of an ethical dilemma over ripping off other folks artwork.
Or with really bad satire.

"When people are laughing, they're generally not killing each other." - Alan Alda

Imitation Flattery

One of my favorite cartoonists, Tony Piro (creator of Calamities of Nature) recently posted a heads-up on the viral spread of a hacked version of one of his strips, which is in turn a remix of a classic sequence from Charles Schulz:

"My use of the Peanuts characters, in a comic that I drew and wrote myself, is allowed as a parody. But when people grab my art, change a few words, and label it as their own, it amounts to theft. Of course people are free to make their own parodies, but they should use their own art and writing."

This once again brings up the topic of basic copyright, which does not cover ideas, only the execution of said ideas, ie only the drawings themselves are protected. But this is in turn preempted by usage of an image for purposes of parody versus derivative work (an example of this is in my recent conflation of Winslow/Simpson Homer in this panel). It's a tangled web of confusing legal and ethical interpretations, which has no easy or immediate answers. All this being said and done, I underwent major cognitive dissonance over the Piro piece, which I dug, in light of another recent parody of Peanuts, which I most decidedly did not. Heralded by many as somehow being creative geniuses for what I saw as a really really sad degradation of Schulz's work, "Peanutweeter" juxtaposed random tweets with selected panels:

No, nothing is sacred, nor should be, but pushing shock value for it's own sake doesn't counts for much these days, especially when the idea is incredibly lame and completely unoriginal. Gee, what's next, a mashup with Peanuts and porn? Wow, wouldn't that be funny (No, and yes, it's also unfortunately already been done). Point being mooted now by the inevitable legal takedown that ensued, which in itself prompted some enthusiastic debate on related comment threads. Under the guise of supposedly being "edgy" and "hilarious" this was created along the same continuum as Piro's piece, but it didn't even bother to redraw the art, just rip off and re-contextualize the original drawings, which was the underlying premise of what for many made it funny to begin with ("benign violation theory"). 

*Update: aaaand now here's Peanuts by Charles Bukowski...

**Update #2: Via a Facebook friend (h/t Anita) and Popped Culture blog comes R. Sikoryak's existential take on "Good Ol' Gregor Brown" from Masterpiece Comics:

Regardless of what one's personal opinion might be on the relative merits of either extreme, only one of these there are many examples that literally illustrate both the power of Peanuts and the First Amendment. 

Rip-off Artist Redux

"The basic story line is about art leaving the realm of the artist, when the artist loses control of the work." - Jeff Koons

Noli Novak, the creator of painstakingly detailed stipple drawings that have run in the Wall Street Journal for over twenty years, is charging artist Jose Maria Cano with shamelessly ripping off her images for use in his critically acclaimed wax on canvas works. She's not seeking monetary compensation, just all credit where credit's due. Novak is part of an official group that produces the stippled drawings know collectively as Hedcuts:

"Kevin Sprouls, the first artist at The Journal, introduced these distinctive illustrations to The Wall Street Journal in 1979. Today, there are 5 full time artist and a number of free-lance illustrators." - WSJ

Came across this story posted on the Daily Cartoonist blog, and on TechDirt as well, and it seems to inflame opinion to both extremes. It's a very interesting collision between many confusing issues in copyright and the artsy-fartsy world: "Fair use" versus derivative versus transformative versus appropriation versus plagiarism.
The legality is a separate issue from the ethics; as a work-for-hire employee of the Wall Street Journal, Novak assumably doesn't have any control or claim to her work. Additionally, it seems from perusing the comment thread on the "original" artist's blog, the outrage petered out after many repeated queries as to where the source material that she uses to in turn create her drawings came from, as in based on a photograph.
Regardless of the laborious craftsmanship that goes into the creation of Cano's pieces, it's been done before, and better, and it's still conceptually unimaginative and aesthetically tired. In my opinion, as far as unique and creative images go, I would actually rate both about the same.
It's a constant puzzle to me, this overlap between ideas of originality and the gray area where inspiration crosses the line and becomes imitative or at the worst, moral theft. This is a quandary I explore in my own classes with the themes of transformative appropriation, which gives us a chance to debate what's "right" as opposed to what's technically legal. And as I've mentioned before here, there's always the humbling admission that influences and the occasional unconscious homage will sneak into one's works.
Good fodder for discussion in the classroom and in the studio, although it's more likely the final say will be had in the courtroom by lawyers instead of artists.

"Most art is just surface noise." - Darby Bannard

Taking a Swipe/Now That’s a Switch

“Immature artists imitate, mature artists steal.” - Lionel Trilling

I’m going to expand a bit more on an earlier post about getting ideas. Rather than sitting around staring at the blank sheet of Bristol and sweating blood, there are time-honored methods at generating material. At times my brain is like an empty bird-feeder; ideas flutter around aimlessly, nothing really seems to get a grip and start digging in. Usually that’s a problem that lies within my thinking process – it’s not that there’s an absence of stuff out there, I just need to free things up and get into the groove. Techniques I've previously covered include experimenting with wordplay and free-association exercises, and also the potentially thornier topics of appropriation and the related concept of "floating lyrics," what I think accounts for the analogy of recurrent motifs popping up in both music (lyrics and notes) and art.

There's an awfully fine line between inspiration and emulation, homage and cop-out, derivative of and plagiarized from, and influenced by and ripping off.

For example, one of the few cartoons to actually make me, grim, jaded bastard that I am, laugh out loud in recent years is the webcomic created by Dan Walsh "Garfield Minus Garfield," encapsulates the difficulty in categorizing such overlaps and making judgements (a side-note in that Garfield creator Jim Davis was gracious enough to give his blessing on this series).

Personally I try and avoid reading most other cartoons, particularly contemporary ones; not just because I don’t really enjoy them (I do) or have the time (I don't), but because I don't want to muddy the water from the well that I draw from. In other words, I get paranoid that looking at someone else’s idea will plant a seed deep down in my subconscious where it will germinate, and many years later long after I’ve forgotten the original I’ll erroneously claim it as my own. Lost count of how often I cringe at seeing a panel by a more famous cartoonist that is either the same exact joke as one that I’ve drawn or close enough to draw obvious comparison to. I get stressed out just thinking about the potential accusations of plagiarism even though I’ve never before even seen the other guy’s, or had drawn mine long before theirs.

I’ll never forget an instance while I was working at a copy shop and this old-timer dude who was a fan of my work brought in an old pornographic magazine, one of the really sleazy ones like Cherry or Hustler, and gleefully displayed a cartoon of a seal clubbing a baby. Well, that happened to be one of my trademark pieces at that time, one that had achieved a small amount of notoriety for me, and needless to say I was righteously indignant at the implied assumption. Besides which, I only read Playboy, and yes, just for the cartoons.

I recall years ago having folks occasionally come up to me and say I was ripped off by someone else; “hey man, he totally copied you dude” – you’d think that living in the biggest state there’d be more than enough room for everyone at the cartoon table. But when you are dealing with a certain demographic (Alaska) and your material covers the same territory (ex: bears, moose, other animals, nature themes and the outdoors etc.) there’s bound to be some inevitable overlap. You learn to laugh it off, like much of life - it's an occupational instinct. There's only so many “blown a seal” mechanic gags to go around the North I suppose, just like endless variations on desert island/psychiatrist couch/etc, gags. Plus there’s (fortunately) only one Sarah Palin, but she seems to be a remarkably inexhaustible and dependable source of inspiration. At any rate, I've caught a couple outstanding rip-offs of my own stuff from some local amateurs, and if I wasn't such a hardass teacher I'd be more flattered, as I usually wind up critiquing their awful technique instead.

Aside from delving into the collective unconscious, when as an artist you deal with universal themes, play with stereotypes, use clichéd situations and topics that are the basis for proverbs and metaphors around the world throughout time, the chance that you are treading a well-worn path exponentially increases. There’s a good argument that there’s nothing truly original, and there isn’t any new ideas left anymore – it’s all been done/said/drawn before. And in many cases I think that’s true to an extent; but one can almost always improve on it though, and there are ways to make it your own. Make it funnier, draw it better, use it as a jumping-off point and add your own unique spin. Just such a technique is commonly referred to amongst gag writers as "swipes" or "switches". Hopefully divulging this won't get me in trouble for exposing the guild's secrets, maybe I'll get visited by the cartoon mafia who'll break all my pen nibs. Here's couple of my panels that illustrate those concepts: the first one is off a little doodle that was in a copy of an old New Yorker magazine in my outhouse, and on this scan you can even see the marker scrawl of my switch idea ("mummy in outhouse frankenstein using as t.p."), then the ballpoint pen rough from my sketchbook, and finally the published version.


Next is one that I just did recently, and while mulling over this blog post it just kept nagging at me how familiar it had looked, reminding me of something seen somewhere ... and after flipping through my collection of books - a-ha, found the inspiration in B. Kliban's 1976 "Never Eat Anything Bigger Than Your Head and Other Drawings." Now it's debatable whether or not I "stole" anything, as definitely wasn't conscious, but ignorance is no excuse. but the composition and content sure is similar - too close for comfort. Offered up here as Exhibit A of sincerely unintentional derivations, but it enough of a spin on the concept to avoid charges of outright plagiarism? Is the original reference obscure enough to not bother worrying? Does anyone really care? Yes: you can bet that there are aficionados, fans and fellow cartoonists out there keeping score who would eventually connect the dots. I did and I drew the damn thing to begin with.

Now here's another sample of a piece from when I just so happened to be in a copy-shop next to a woman who was making xeroxes of an obviously butchered plagiarism of a panel, and next to it the variation I spun using our own local species of rodent. Again, this would be what I'd call a decent example of switching, ie far enough removed from the original that there's no possible connection.

Many if not most of the full-time big-league cartoonists employ writers; the pressure to consistently perform is intense, and syndicates are probably like television studio executives flogging a cash cow - you can bet that folks of the caliber like Leno and Letterman etc. don't ad-lib their routine, and it's been meticulously groomed by a team of professional writers beforehand. I personally make it a point of pride to generate my own material, which is probably one reason why I’m so sensitive about originality; it’s something like the Barry Bonds authenticity issues with regards to setting records when one is tainted by the controversy of steroids. All it takes is one incidence and one could be branded forever in the public arena.

For me, there has always been something so deeply satisfying and creatively gratifying at the accomplishment of bagging a really good bad gag, one that is your and yours alone – laying claim to being the first one to come up with a joke so bad that nobody else could have possibly gone there, is for me the ultimate reward of a job well done.

Though I do often wonder what would happen if I ever found myself in the position of having to come up with seven times the amount of material I do for Nuggets, plus knocking a home-run with every single one; probably have to take everything a lot more seriously than I already do. I shudder to think of the absolute bombs regular long-time followers of my feature have had to slog through over the past twenty + years in this paper - having to do only a weekly panel you'd think it'd be at least seven times funnier. Posted here is another good example culled from my archive of what I'd term an homage, since the source material is so well known it's an obvious parody, with apologies to Gustave Doré:

Now there’s always going to be someone who will criticize an overlap in content, overt or otherwise, or stylistic similarities between your work and someone else's. Hell, even the fact that I do a single panel cartoon is more than enough to damn me as a Far Side copy in some people’s eyes. I suppose that Gary Larson's work might have been an influence, as his cartoon started around 1982, and I had begun experimenting with the single-panel format for a student newspaper at the community college I attended a couple years later. But right when I was beginning to draw comics seriously in high-school the big thing for me was the underground comix scene and MAD magazine. Canny observers can easily spot the tracks left all over my work from those pivotal influences. But again, comparisons are inevitable, I try and have the good graces to let occasional comments from either direction (whose work looks like whose) roll off my back; it's as inevitable as getting mixed up with "the other guy" which just goes with the territory. And besides, in a moment I'll point out an obvious example with regards to my own influence.

Sure enough, at anyone’s success the vultures will begin to circle, as evidenced by a comment thread that, like a sweaty pimple on the ass of a cartoonist working at the drawing table, erupted after The Daily Cartoonist posted a news item a while back on Scott Hilburn’s Argyle Sweater’s syndication. Several shmucks piled on with some petty sniping over sour grapes, including a link to the one oopsie in question. Never mind the obvious fact that the vast, overwhelming number of Argyle Sweaters, the 365 panels a year, year after year stuff, is clearly original material. Even so, Hilburn courageously went out of his way to preempt criticism on his own blog:

Friday, April 27, 2007 - Larson (excerpt)
"I received an e-mail the other day regarding my April 13th comic. The e-mail informed me that the day's panel was overly-similar to a comic already done by Gary Larson. I get a lot of Far Side comparisons so, at first, I thought nothing of it. However, because it mentioned a specific date, I later became bothered by it. I did a little research only to find that he was right - they were more than similar. I e-mailed my editor explaining the situation and asked him what he suggested I do. He replied that this happens quite often. He went on to say that artists often internalize other artists work. I suppose an idea or concept can somehow get lost in one’s subconscious and resurface weeks, months or in this case, years later without realizing that you’ve seen the idea before."

Well now that sounds familiar. Shit happens. And to illustrate that in the spirit of self-confessional full-disclosure, I've been guilty of the same:

So with the benefit of belated hindsight, there's no way I'd even try foisting this off as original; part of the learning curve in making such amateur mistakes, and it's the job of a professional to recognize and rectify such beginner blunders as best you can. And so apologies to my personal hero that influenced me long before I ever seriously started my own career - B. Kliban (from his classic 1977 book "Whack Your Porcupine"). Over twenty years had passed from when my parents first exposed me to his work and when I stumbled across a mint set of his books at a used bookstore while hiking in Arizona. Imagine my chagrin at flipping through them and discover my own undiscovered dirty laundry. Not the first time the joke's on me...

“There is nothing new in art except talent.” - Anton Chekhov

Results Are In: Google Image/Solipsist Searching

Dovetailing with an earlier essay on online art thievery, I remember working for years at a local copy shop and covertly on occasion seeing random folks making photocopies of my cartoons, presumably to mail to friends & family, stick up on doors, cubicles, outhouses etc. I always thought that was the coolest, and exactly akin to sharing images on-line via re-posting on Facebook etc.

WallPart Poster Shop Scam

A lot of folks and artist friends are getting rightfully upset over what at first appears to be a blatant rip-off of their images & artwork by an online company calling itself "WallPart." I was alerted by another artist in town yesterday that they were using some of my own work, as you can see from the screen-grab posted above. But with some judicious poking around it became fairly clear that this effort is in fact just a false front, in effect a massive trolling that is set up to scam people. The images shown are the result of a Google search after you enter in the artist's name, and it is a ruse intended to elicit a response. They don't physically exist anywhere, and they also aren't actually selling anything either. Via An Italian Brony comes a breakdown of some of the warning signs:

The counter is just an image, as it is permanently stuck at 3.614 buyers.
There’s a system that mimics a Google App to do images search over the web, that thus doesn’t use an inner database where the images are stored, but rather launches a search on Google Images depending on what words you put in the search box (meaning that the site is actually not hosting the images or have them saved in an inner database, but that they do a Google search of the wrods you search and shows the results).
If you try to buy some of these photos (as they tried to do, as they registered on the site and tried to buy something), once you’ve loaded your cart, they do not request your credit card to finalize the buy. (You just can’t simply buy anything from there, because it doesn’t give you the option to put your credit card number and finalize the purchase.)

Besides the laughably broken English and text riddled with typos being a red flag, Peter & Company has more dire warnings:

- Their “Report Violation” link is actually a 100% phishing form. If you fill it out, no matter what you put there, you will be sending them a LOT more than you anticipated. This is actually the main purpose for the site’s existence – they completely anticipate artists being upset about their work supposedly being sold, so they developed a system to exploit those who complain. 

So stay well away, don't visit the website, don't even link to it, and make sure all your artist friends don't fall for the scam.

UPDATE: Since posting this warning, visits to the blog quadrupled with - no coincidence - the overwhelming new traffic coming from our Russian neighbors. Добро пожаловать!

Official Ink & Snow Voter's Guide

Feel free to rip off & repost - in fact, given the recent Murkowski pamphleteering shenanigans maybe I can get the Alaska Division of Elections to hand this handy guide out at all the polling sites across the state. Plus I was thinking it'd double as a new field-sobriety test where they'd make you have to correctly spell "Murkowski" and then walk a really, really fine line.

Runner-ups: "Tastes Sedate - Less Thrilling," the classic Guinness tag "Out of the Darkness Comes Light" and "Democrat's Duff" (I learned that "duff" is  Gaelic for "dark"). 
Rumor has it there'll be election-night victory/consolations at the Golden Eagle Tuesday, November 2nd. Speaking of cases: best. graphic. ever. 
*hat-tip Packy89 via A Bodenstown Perspective...

"Stinkeye"

Here's an example of the process behind making my weekly full-color feature panel, one specifically rendering a new-to-me, never-before drawn creature. the Alaskan version of a stinkbug. I have come to deeply despise these, moreso than even mosquitoes.

Whenever I sit down to create another Nugget, and the subject matter is of something that I've never drawn before, I have to do some visual research. Typically, depending on the complexity of the object, that may involve a cursory Google Image Search (in itself problematic now), and then I select swatches to use as reference, and prop up a sketchbook under the monitor so as to toggle back & forth, visually sampling for my remix in meatspace.. Sometimes this mosaic of different takes and perspectives can easily be remade in an amalgamation that resembles none of the examples but assimilates aspects of each into my drawing. Ironically this is the exact same process being utilized by Artificial Intelligence when "scraping" the web for images to unethically rip off. The distinction is in the intent and intelligence of the puppetmaster, and is Exhibit A in why humanity is the final, redeeming mark of distinction, the crucial component of creativity. This will tie in with the next post, one that deals directly with AI.

"Long Way North" + RIP's

Gotta give a little writeup on this movie: "Long Way North” directed by Rémi Chayé (one of the animators behind "The Secret of Kells," among others)... “In the 19th century, a young Russian girl embarks on an adventure-filled quest to find her grandfather at the North Pole.” Here's the official trailer that will give just a slight taste of the films incredible flavor. "... but it's so beautiful"

Personally haven’t enjoyed an animated film this much since 2007's "Persepolis" – an absolute delight in every way. Like the current overdosing on Marvel/DC superhero movies in a world where the feature animation menu seems like it’s always either a choice between Studio Ghibli or Pixar, this unique French/Danish film is a rare gem. Even though it came out several years ago, it just got recently released on DVD. As mentioned in every review of the film, and as easily seen from the couple screen grabs I made of stills from the film, the style + palette is a pure joy to watch, and is testament to the adage “less is more.”

“Right off the bat, it's hard not to mention the film's stunning designs and animation. Foregoing contour lines, the images here are almost completely made up of vibrant color fills, which give the picture a distinct, painterly look. Between the production's masterful coloring and sublime sense of scale, nearly every single frame of the movie looks like it could be an art print ready for hanging. In a world overrun with CGI and photorealistic texturing, Long Way North's abstract style is a breath of fresh air.” - IGN

Bonus in that I didn’t recognize any of the voice actors doing the dubbing – a pet peeve of mine in how 90% of animation films use famous American actors who couldn’t emote if they were shoved off a cliff (which becomes painfully obvious when you work with movies playing in the background).

“In this case, Chayé collaborated with screenwriter Claire Paoletti on an idea inspired by Ernest Shackleton’s exploits, and specifically diary accounts of how his ship Endurance was trapped in pack ice during one of his attempts to set Antarctic records.” - Variety

Also want to note the passing of "Mirthful" Marie Severin, who left an indelible mark upon the comic book industry after an under-utilized stint at EC:
In the ’80s, Severin worked on Marvel’s toys and books, and stayed at the company well into the 2000s. She was inducted into the Will Eisner Comics Hall of Fame in 2001 and named a Comic-Con International Icon in 2017, in recognition of her groundbreaking contributions at a time when the comic-book industry was dominated by men. - Atlantic

Some of her hand-coloring on cover art by Jack Davis (left) & Wally Wood (right)

And lastly, here's to one of the titans:

Lee as creator of the Marvel Universe was a myth. Kirby and Ditko were the main creators of the characters and they plotted out most of the stories they worked on. Lee added the dialogue in after the fact. And the dialogue was always the weakest part of any comic he worked on. Lee’s true genius was not as a writer or creator but as an editor, who brought the best talent to Marvel and pushed writers in the right direction, helping them flourish. - The New Republic 

By far and away his unique, distinctive style of parsing phrases added herculean weight to the lexicon of comics, the "natural rhythm and relentless percussive cadence of Lee’s dialogue and narration" best described as "half Lovecraft, half Dr. Seuss." Upon the news only one relatively obscure image immediately came to mind, ironically enough not from one of the landmark comic titles that he co-created, but a Hollywood adaptation (one of the better ones, and one of the few he didn't have a cameo in). X-celsior if you will.

"Find Your Own Voice"

Way back in June of last year I participated in both the annual Wild Arts Walk and the Quick Draw challenge as a fundraiser for Friends of Creamer's Field, one of the non-profits I wholeheartedly support and love to help out when an opportunity like this presents itself. Here's a bit of the process behind the panel that I did + donated as a demo piece.
More below the fold... 

Recap: 24 Hour Comics Day 2016

Special thanks to the Comic Shop for hosting this insanity for a decade (hat-tip Naomi + crew too) and everyone who dropped by w/libations + victuals for sustenance & creative juices, and most of all all the participants for the energy + inspiration... once again proving that Fairbanks comic artists and our creative community are the BEST!

Something Smells Fishy: "Roe-bots," "Pink Slips," "Natal Returns," "That One Salmon" and "Eggs Is Eggs"

There was a teaser shot of this panel as it appeared in this year's annual art faculty exhibition. Not that it was very visible, so I wanted to do a dedicated post of it separate from that event, as it merits distinction as the absolute worst - and by that I mean best of the baddest of the year... perhaps even years if not top three of all-time dumbest idea yet. 

In the above-posted image taken from an off-to-the-side doodle that shows the list of topics that this spawned from, then a counter-clockwise cycle of possible compositions, starting with a Robbie reference.

And yes, I still most Sunday early mornings run down to the corner store and grab a copy of the Sunday paper, and like a little kid on Christmas, eagerly rip through the wrapping to see which Nuggets cartoon ran. Never gets old, just like a cartoonist never really grows up (hey - a healthy sense of humor supposedly keeps you younger looking and maybe just a wee bit more saner too). So anyways, back to standing at the counter on Sunday mornings: I still love the look of the Ben-Day dots, seen here on a detailed close-up.

There are times when I wish I could be more serious. But that's just not who I am. Oh and the reason you'll start to see more and more of these multi-panel postings is, yes, I'm starting to try and run out the clock on posting here at Ink & Snow, which I'll announcing at the 18th-year anniversary postings. More to follow, but that's why I'm kinda pulling a clearance sale on cartoons, and doing these data-dumps whilst flushing out the backlog before taking a bit of a hiatus.

 

Now as to the reason this specific image is posted here, is just to simply and honestly illustrate how and why we should experiment, play with new toys, see what happens. Even if it leads to an abomination, or a complete visual train-wreck. For instance striking out on a series done as demos for a summer Intermediate Drawing course, where we work our way through different mediums. In this instance I was experimenting with various markers, some of which adversely affected the India ink, but I still went with the texture effect and used it as an excuse to continue ruining it, since it had already been scanned for the digital color/print version.

 

 As to that part of the process, I've still been making steady progress in deconstructing my over-Photoshopped effect and limiting the palette.

Not that anyone could easily ascertain the origins of this doodle, but it was observing a really, really long line while down at the local bagel shop for my habitual sketchbook sessions.

Seems like as of late there's been a lot of this corporation being used as cartoon content, and by "a lot" I mean three times in as many years (here and here). I often joke about this to other shoppers while doing the same dam thing in real life. I don't recommend anyone actually trying it, as all those expressions were based on memory. Just kidding.

This was also one of those panels that halfway into it I seriously started to wonder about my commitment, as in this quickly turned into a pain in the ass to render. There was a big breakthrough when figuring out how to draw those shopping carts - which were on the same level as the bait bags covered later at the end of this post. Turned out the trick was just super-simplifying it.

I'm gonna close out this epic 5-part post with one that there is no doodle or preparatory sketch for, which is comparatively rare. On top of that, was the fact that I sat and stared at this particular panel almost every dam day for months, trying to shoehorn another, different caption into it. In other words come up with a better gag, because bait bags aren't really part of any conversation outside of the mainstream (see what I did there). Turns out after endless idle flips of the mental Jacob's Ladder, I went full circle back to the starting point and let it go, like a cartooning catch-and-release. Though I polled some folks at the newspaper office, and a couple classes, and, yep, approximately 98% of folks have never heard of the obscure idiom "eggs is eggs," and 1% have, but don't know what it means.