Jeff Hawley and Logjam

Jeff Hawley is a fine cartoonist and author of the uniquely NW comic “Logjam”
He has wowed his fellow cartoonists in the Seattle area for years. I am pretty sure that I have seen about a dozen of these ideas in-work in his sketchbook before most everybody else - One of the many benefits of showing up at a cartoonist NW meeting.

These are some of my favorites: tree humor
And my favorite trick is when main tree plays himself like a banjo
And he magically lifts himself (and others) off of the roots

NOTE:
Readers can now get Logjam comic strips delivered to their email. Go to the Logjam website to sign up!

Jeff Hawley is Jeff Hamil

This week only.
Jeff Hawley is Jeff Hamill. Jeff Hamill is the correct name for the Jeff who wrote the gag for "Wasp Bait", the single-panel-adventure-winner of the Cartoonist-of-the-Month recognition for the Cartoonists Northwest cartoon club. Congratulations Jeff, and condolences to the other Jeff for not being Jeff Hamill. I may post a version of the cartoon with the correct name at some later date.

I will say more nice things about Jeff Hawley next week. Things that will swing the pendulum back into the "true" direction.

Wasp Bait

I have had this idea from Jeff H for months. It took a while (and several versions over a long period of time) to get it almost right (or at least in a form that I could bring with me to the cartoonist meeting). The thumbnail that Jeff sent looked pretty good, and shows how Jeff was extending the gag to wasp puns and a wasp crowd and a lot more verbiage. I want to be true to the original so I kicked around several variations.
I finally decided that any version that I liked with a crowd would end up being a large detailed drawing. That is a good sign that, as a cartoonist, I am trying to do too much. Trying to do too much bogged the image down, became busier, and the puzzle was put on the back burner for a while.
Besides the crowd not working for me, the swarm was difficult as well. I went so far as to make a photoshop brush of a wasp. In my mind, I could shrink this to various sized, set brush controls, and have a swarm of wasps in no time. This is wrong. I really did not want to draw by hand more than 30 wasps, but the number came up to around 50 in the final image.
Even after I decided to simplify the joke verbiage, eliminated the "crowd of science" and made a swarm of 30 wasps (by hand) the gag was still over-detailed for a very small reproduction. I made one or two "close up" wasps to show my work in developing a stylized wasp. That did not work either. Big wasps look like monster wasps much more than they look like close-to-the-camera wasps.

Interesting challenge. I might come back later and try a version with the crowd. or not

The Cartoonist Northwest meeting will get to judge the simple version.

Saturday, January 16th, 2010 - 4 PM to 6 PM
Daniel Smith Art Supply
4150 First Avenue South in Seattle
Free to people reading this blog and their friends.

(and thanks Jeff, you write well)

My Cat

Per J. Scalzi, a science person:
The vast majority of blogs, in fact, have nothing but the following three posts:

Post One: “Here’s my blog! This is where I’m going to share all my thoughts about life, the universe and everything! It’s going to be great and I can’t wait to tell you all what I’m thinking about everything!”

Post Two: “Hey, sorry I haven’t updated in a while — life’s been crazy. But I’ll be back soon.”

Post Three: “Here’s a picture of my cat.”

And then it’s done.

Graduate meet Real World

Just Kidding - I wish 2009 graduates well.
Hiker link: here " recognize the difference between black bear and grizzly bear scat."

Star Trek

So good.

Now, I have to watch "Wrath of Kahn" again to make sure that it is still my favorite Trek movie.

Fan Rejected Movies

I was shocked at the level of dislike the fan base poured out on their movies this year. Listing from most deserving of dislike to Least deserving: "Watchmen" (there where whole blogs devoted to hating some of the scenes), "Wolverine", and last, "Dragonball Evolution". Sure, they were all bad. But, the only reason that "Dragonball" failed is that it replaced the fan-loved story with another not-as-good story. "Wolverine" was just slightly worse. Apparently super-strong adamantium is no match for super-weak-scriptium.

When a hero movie is made, there is a large group who want to see the hero. But, the movie has immature-adult-elements which remove the larger chunk of the built in audience from participating. For the remaining small group, the story is re-written in a way to directly annoy the fans. Many drop away. Finally, for the remaining small group, the story is re-worked so that it is odd enough and long enough and scattered enough to be practically unwatchable. The movie fails in many ways.

Oddly this does not matter to "Wolverine" which people rate, "pretty good" and pour millions of ticket sales into.

On the good side, "Star Trek" is up this Friday. Also on the good side: the Atomic Robo free comic was Tesla humor at it's best.