So behind the scenes I spent an inordinate amount of time on this one, by both reworking the initial lost cause (after botching up the inking), and then additionally by applying color. Not to mention the equally dubious investment of time + energy on a panel that would ultimately face the fate of such a risqué - if not painfully immature - pun.
I posted here for comparative purposed the raw scan of the original line art so you can see just how messed up it was - and that's why for pretty much every step along the way I lambasted myself for wasting hours tweaking it afterwards to see if it could possibly be salvaged. In a perverted sort of way it became its own "fun" challenge unto itself. It's not like there was like a battle with my wounded pride, 'cause I regularly abandon ideas - they get scattered everywhere whenever I sit down at the drawing table just like a feral chickadee at a full feeder.
But it actually turned out okay - and as a reward it even got accepted by my editor, which totally caught me by surprise. Bonus trivia: a total swipe of actual imagery on the Alaska centennial plate design: the line of people technically leaving Alaska to find work in another country.
Maybe it'll elicit some complaints, even though it's pretty benign as far as the vulgarity of contemporary culture. Which in a lot of ways the demographics of the print market are definitely not. Most likely nobody will care. I mean, there's an awful lot of stuff that's starting to slide in society, and there are far worse fates for teachers peddling in the devil's arts and corrupting youth with evil cartoons.
Still, just like a kid waking up on Xmas I'll run down to see which cartoon ran in the newspaper, and just like a little juvenile I'll feel all warm & silly inside whenever one runs that's right on over the edge of good taste like you secretly managed to get one over on The Man... some things never change.
“Behold, as a wild ass in the desert go I forth to my work” - Gurney Halleck
When I was a copy editor on the local (award-winning) weekly newspaper, articles were put into the system with suggested headlines, which were almost always discarded when the pages were made up for the actual paste-up. This is so long ago that it actually WAS a paste-up. Because I dealt mostly with submitted copy: press releases, obituaries, weddings, town columns, graduation announcements and such, I had a lot of inspiration. The Baptists were getting a presentation from someone about their recent trip to minister to the heathen. Suggested hed was "Baptists to get missionary position." And anyone completing the course of study at the prestigious Governor Dummer Academy would get "(insert name here) graduates Dummer." Personally I detest the phrase "graduated high school" or "graduated college," as opposed to "graduated FROM..." but for the joke I was all in. I also did the police blotter, and I was quite disappointed when the editor chose not to use my hed highlighting pot busts at a convenience store called Puffin Stop, and another one on High Street. Hey, legalize it! But since it isn't legal yet, isn't this a funny coincidence? Puffin Stop? You can't make that shit up! To assuage my boredom, I filled the pipeline week after week with stuff like that. The editor and I had an agreement. She thought it was funny, but if any of them made it to print I would just automatically clean out my desk. I survived four years, only to fall to budget cuts in the early contractions of dying small-town and rural print media.
ReplyDeleteBoy that brings back memories of rub-on typography, rubylith and stat cameras. Good times.
ReplyDeleteRaven hair, and ruby lith
ReplyDeleteInk stains on her fingertips
Lots of stories to get right
It's the paste-up room on deadline night