Comic

By James Buckmaster

Research

AO1

General Information

• A cartoon is a form of two dimensional illustrated visual art.

• Modern use of the word ‘cartoon’ refers to a typically non or semi realistic drawing made for humour purposes.

• Cartoons can be used in all types of contexts such as journalism, humour, fine art and politics.

• The cartoon industry is very well known for their strips inside newspapers and magazines, these days they have moved online as well.

Fine Arts

• Cartoons are usually full sized pieces of work which are made in fresco, oil, mosaic, stained glass or tapestry.

• Italian Renaissance painters made very complete cartoons, for example Raphael’s cartoons for the Sistine Chapel are considered masterpieces.

• They are what you would expect from an older age of cartoons, very subtle jokes but the artist is more concentrated on the image.

• No two, three or four panel works are done here - only one panel pieces of art.

Journalism/Print Media

• These types of cartoon started in 1843 when Punch magazine added historical frescoes to their magazines.

• Modern panel style gag cartoons generally consist of a single drawing with a typeset caption - many people consider cartoonist Peter Arno the father of modern cartoons.

• Editorial cartoons often include speech balloons and sometimes multiple panels, they usually appear on news publications and websites - they usually convey humour in a ironic way. The art usually acts as a visual metaphor to illustrate a point of view or social topic.

• Comic strips are found daily in newspapers worldwide, usually found in a short series. Humour is the most prevalent subject matt, adventure and drama are also represented in these types of cartoon.

Political Cartoons

• By the mid 19th century newspapers in many countries featured cartoons commenting on the day to day politics.

• Thomas Nast brought realistic German drawing techniques to boost American cartooning - he did over 160 cartoons around this period.

• Political cartoons can be humorous or satirical although the target may complain he does have the right to fight back but lawsuits have been rare.

• A lot of political cartoons appeared between WW1, WW2 & the Cold War.

Animation

• Due to the similarities between cartoons and animation in drawings the world ‘cartoon’ started to represent the word ‘animation’.

• ‘Animation’ designs are just a style of illustrated images seen in rapid succession to give the impression of movement.

• Animation is made by images being played straight each other really quickly, those images are slightly different from one another so it creates the illusion that it’s moving.

Charles Schulz

• Charles Schulz, nicknamed Sparky was an American cartoonist who was best known for the comic strip Peanuts - he is widely regarded as one of the most influential cartoonists of all time.

• Schulz learned his trade by doing serval on and off jobs such as doing lettering for a Roman Catholic magazine, he then moved to a school where he developed his career as a comic creator until he had enough money to do it full time.

• Schulz was a keen drawer as a child and after the war he began to have regular one panel cartoons printed of by the St Paul Pioneer Press - it was here where he used the name Charlie Brown for the first time - these cartoons were dropped in 1950.

Peanuts

• Peanuts came about after his series ‘Lil’Folks’ was cancelled by the St Paul Pioneer Press, he approached the United Feature Syndicate with idea and they became interested.

• Peanuts made it’s first appearance on October 2nd 1950 in seven newspapers - after this slow beginning Peanuts started making the weekly Sunday page debuted on January 6th 1952.

• Peanuts eventually became one of the most popular comic strips of all time, as well as one of the most influential.

• Peanut was published daily in 2,600 newspapers in 75 countries and in 21 languages - over nearly 50 years that Peanuts was published Schulz drew nearly 18,000 strips.

• The strips themselves, plus mercy and product endorsements; produced revenues of more than $1 billion annually.

Charlie Brown

• Charlie Brown is linked to Schulz as they both have fathers which are barbers but where as Schulz’s story is full of success, Charlie’s is full of failure.

• He first appeared in 1947, three years before Peanuts started in a comic strip called ‘Li’l Folks’ - he is considers the main character in the strip.

• Charlie is always referred to as ‘Charlie Brown’, his usual catchphrase is “good grief” and started off at age four in the first few comics, he then aged to six a year after and he was eight and a half years old by 1979.

Snoopy

• Snoopy is the cartoon dog in Peanuts who is Charlie Browns pet - Snoopy began as a fairly conventional pet but then evolved into one of the strips most dynamic characters.

• Snoopy is recognised all over the world, the original drawings were inspired by Schulz’s childhood dog ‘Spike’.

• Snoopy made his appearance in the strip on October 4 1950 - his name was originally meant to be ‘Sniffy’ but that name was taken in another comic strip.

• Snoopy started off as a silent character for the first two years but later on Schulz made him into a normal dog and would often give him one word phrases like ‘FOOD’.

• Snoopy also became ‘Joe Cool’ when he put on sunglasses and leaned against the wall doing nothing.

Spin Off’s• Peanuts had a few films whilst the famous comic strips were on; films

such as “A Boy Named Charlie Brown” which was aired in 1969 and “Race For Your Life, Charlie Brown” which was aired in 1997 were big hits at the time.

• ‘Peanuts’ is a movie coming out in late 2015.

• Television specials have been licensed by many different companies through the years such as Paramount, Karate, Warner Bros and 20th Century Fox.

• Specials were christmas shows, halloween shows, summer shows but they didn’t come weekly - once a year or two years they appeared.

• A mini series called “This Is America, Charlie Brown” aired through 88 to 89.

• It doesn’t stop there - musical shows, video games, commercials and musical influences has come out of the Peanuts series.

Producing

• Schulz decided to produce all aspects of the strip himself from the script to the finish art and lettering.

• The strip was able to be presented with minimal tone, this was Schulz’s style - to have minimal tone.

• Backgrounds weren’t common within Peanuts, Schulz preferred to put frazzled lines round them so his readers could focus on subtle changes rather than sharp transitions.

• Schulz had a routine in making Peanuts, he would read through the days mail with secretary before sitting down to write and draw the days strip in his studio.

• After coming with up an idea which could take any time between a few minutes or hours - Schulz didn’t use an inker or letterer for his work as he said “it would be equivalent to a golfer hiring a man to make his putts for him”.

Influences

• Schulz’s work was influenced by Milton Caniff (Terry and the Pirates) and Bill Mauldin as key influences on Schulz’s work.

• Schulz included his influences into his own strip where he regularly described Snoopy’s annual veterans day visits with Mauldin.

• Schulz said “It would be impossible to narrow down three or two or even one direct influence on my personal drawing style. The uniqueness of Peanuts has set it apart for years.. that one of a kind quality permeates every aspect of the strip and very clearly extends to the drawing”.

• Schulz watched the movie ‘Citizen Kane’ forty times, the character Lucy Van Pelt also expresses a fondness for the film, and in one strip cruelly spoils the ending for her younger brother.

Production Plan

AO2

Planning & Initial Ideas

• The plan is to create a 3 to 4 panel comic strip to go in either a newspaper/magazine or online.

• Like Schulz, I like simple and basic strips which are funny in a way.

• Political or celebrity based strips aren’t my thing, i’m not that interested in what their doing in their lives - plus the comic strip only appeals to a certain market who know the public figure.

• The main subject will be a boy named ‘Harlie’ who is skinny, wears glasses and has a sense of humour.

Structure: 3 Act Story Structure

• A basic lesson in cartoon studies consists of the three act story structure.

• It works in three to four comic panels and helps tell a story - if theres a conflict and a character reacting to that conflict then you've got a story and can easily fit it within three or four comic panels.

• ACT 1 is the beginning, where information is setup to provide context for the story.

• ACT 2 is the middle, where characters attempt to achieve goals and encounter conflict.

• ACT 3 is the end, where there is a resolution to the conflict and there character’s character is revealed.

Structure: 5 W’s

• Where are we? A white space. It may be outside or inside, it doesn’t matter - the rest of the strip should make sense without that information.

• When are we? Day or night would not specified, so it shouldn’t matter for the rest of the strip to make sense.

• Who is involved? All we need to know is the main character, Harlie and that everything will be in context from the first box.

• What are they doing? (their goal) - I’m not sure on the goal that Harlie’s trying to achieve yet but more thought and i’ll have an idea.

• Why are they doing that? Still, need a ‘what’ in order to find the why.

Inspiration

• Schulz’s inspiration for ‘Snoopy’ came from his dog ‘Spike’ which he had when he was a child.

• The character idea ‘Harlie’ came from my best friend who is called Harlie - Harlie is very witty and his appearance complements it, the glasses, spots and being skinny.

• Harlie is linked with the old singer Buddy Holly a lot, appearance wise they are similar - it could lead to a scene idea.

• I would like to show glimmers of Harlie’s personality in my own character version of Harlie - this would lift the age group past children and on to more adult humour.

Script For ‘Harlie’

Strip Name - Buddy Holly

1. EXT. STREET - AFTERNOON

Harlie goes for a walk down the street minding his own business around 2:45; he finds a sign to the Buddy Holly museum and decides to have a look.

2. INT. MUSEUM - AFTERNOON

Harlie makes his way through the museum, briefly looking at displays as he has no real interest in Buddy Holly. He stops in a amazement when he comes across a huge statue of Buddy, he stops are stares for a while.

3. INT. MUSEUM - AFTERNOON

Harlie is still standing next to the statue in confusion, no one is around and he has a moment of self reflection.

4. INT. MUSEUM - AFTERNOON

Still standing in the same position, Harlie breaks from silence and confusion and makes the remark ‘father?’ due to the resemblance between the two characters.

Character Design

AO3

Client

• My client is ‘Go Comics’ which is an online comic strip website.

• The website stores thousands of comic strips from new to old strips.

• They have Peanuts, Calvin & Hobbies, Garfield, Doonesbury, Poptropica and etc.

• As well as uploading these comics onto ‘Go Comics’, the Harlie series would try and reach editorial products such as magazines, newspapers and flyers.

Target Audience Profile

This slide is about the target audience the comic strip ‘Harlie’ is going to be aimed at. The profile is

a boy aged 16 - 19 who enjoys artwork and comedy, someone

who can draw and likes illustration themselves. A regular social

networker, a comic & animation lover (marvel) - someone who knows strips such as Peanuts.

Character Ideas

• All I really did is put my idea’s on to paper - these were rough ideas.

• The rough ideas covered a few things I wanted to try out like hair, body shape, head shape, glasses and etc.

• I think they all look too emotion like and I want to get away from that look.

• The next step is to try a different type of drawing and see if it fits Harlie’s persona.

Harlie - Defined Sketches • After the story board was

defined, I thought I should define Harlie as a character straight after.

• The glasses, hair and head shape have all had a completely different approach than before.

• Harlie actually looks like a cartoon rather than an emoticon now.

• The body isn’t great but I hope to tidy that up when I go into designing him further in the commuter programs.

Prep

AO4

Story Board

• This is the story board for the comic strip ‘Harlie: Buddy Holly’ - it’s a visual drawing of what the script was in the last slide.

• The characters shown are not the final drawings, this is only a visual mock up of the story - character design will be more detailed, both Harlie and Buddy will look different.

Cartoon Strip

AO5

Cartoon Strip: My Buddy Harlie

• The comic strip is an exact representation of the rough copy, which is displayed in AO4.

• Colourful, vector art and mild humour strip acts well as a first piece!

• Feedback - “Colourful artwork works well, but the third slide isn’t really needed, comic would be more funnier with only three slides”.

• “Backgrounds are a little plain, colours make up for them but if it was a detailed cartoon it would fit - it’s the surreal theme and the involvement of Buddy Holly which makes you get away with the colours”.

Final Cartoon Strip: My Buddy Harlie

• This version offer’s a more to the point look, three slides instead of 4 and the strip still has the same joke.

Evaluation

AO6

Technical Quality

• The drawing is a vector so it would never be a detailed drawing - only an image made up of little separate images.

• There are better vector images out there but as a first try for a comic strip using the program iDraw instead of Illustrator I think I did alright.

• The main character ‘Harlie’ was used twice, both for him and for Buddy - this was because I wanted to create the idea for the audience to link up that the two look alike. Having a different person there, the audience may have not of got the joke.

• The colours used was to try and bring it out and make it eye catching, when choosing the original colours I wanted to make them complementary like blue and orange so it would catch peoples eye - you have to at least have some colours that work well together.

Creative Quality

• The idea of matching up Harlie and Buddy was pretty creative in my opinion - using both figures to bounce of each other in order to make some humour.

• The older generation and any one who knows Buddy will get the joke the best, the older lot normally compare Harlie to Buddy in person these days.

• I wasn't going for a massive laugh out loud moment when thinking of the strip, only a little chuckle from the way Harlie announced to himself ‘Father?’.

• The name ‘My Buddy Harlie’ is also a nice play on words, as Buddy’s last name begins with a ‘H’ and so does Harlie’s so why not incorporate both names together.

Professional Comparison: Jim Meddick• Jim uses basic colours, and

lines when making his strip, you can see the similarities in the background as well.

• The comic is obviously aimed at an older age like mine is, you can tell this by the joke or funny scene in the comic.

• Jim uses a lot more dialogue than me, his strip rely’s on this to create his humour where as mine is mostly visual images toped off with one word to create the gag.

• Jim’s strip isn’t as detailed as some others out there, he’s kept it simple and used effects like removing the background on the second slide like i’ve got rid of the mouth on the third.

Target Audience

• The target audience has a broad knowledge of creative subjects, they are ‘lefties’ so they should know who Buddy Holly is - if not they can see what he sort of looks like in the strip.

• Background knowledge of the artist Buddy Holly is sort of key in this strip - relating a person to another with only instant first hand knowledge isn’t fun and the gag is ruined for that person.

• I think if the audience doesn’t understand it, they will try to understand it and stay around for the other ‘Harlie’ strips to see if they are all this type of humour - not all strips will involve Buddy.

• Even past the audience, I think the older ages will like the strip as they can relate to it with the Buddy character - maybe the Buddy Harlie strip should have been released a few stripe in so people understand the Harlie character more and it will make the gag more funnier.

Resources

• With all my sketches, I start off with hand drawing my images as I am a lot more confident with a pencil and rubber other than a graphics tablet and Photoshop.

• Once I had the character design down on paper, I would scan it onto the computer and work on it from there.

• Normally I would use Photoshop and freehand draw the image but I chose to use vector art this time - vectors aren’t realistic but neither are cartoons so I thought it would be a nice change.

• I used the program iDraw instead of Illustrator, iDraw is my personal home version of Illustrator and works the same - anchor points were the main tool I used to make my characters.