Having Fun in a Changing World
You are currently browsing the monthly archive for September 2010.
Oscar gets his likeness sculpted (or not) by Jonathan Mahood
I’ve never met him, but Jonathan Mahood is good online buddy of mine and I hoped he wouldn’t mind if he appeared in an Arctic Circle strip. Jonathan is the creator of Bleeker the Rechargeable Dog, but also carves sculptures in his spare time. So this strip was a bit of cartoonist licence, making him a bit of a duffer!
wood carving by Jonathan Mahood
Ollie and Quentin
I read this strip just after I had inked the following. Piers‘ take is a nice approach to the same pun.
Howard counsels Oscar on getting a bust sculpted
Tags: bird, cartoon, comic, comical, get ahead, illustration, ollie and quentin, penguin, seagull
Today's Arctic Circle Cartoon Strip
I love tuna and I’ve eaten a fair bit in my time, but I can’t bring myself to eat bluefin tuna anymore. As the WWF puts it:
The Atlantic bluefin tuna is a large migratory fish found in the western and eastern Atlantic and the Mediterranean Sea. This species is at serious risk of extinction if unsustainable fishing practices in the Mediterranean are not stopped.
Tags: bluefin tuna, endangered
Friday was PARKing Day. As Grist puts it:
On PARK(ing) Day — which this year is today, Sept. 17 — that changes, if only for a few hours. In some 140 cities around the planet, humans take back some of the parking spaces and use them to create mini parks, where they play games, do art projects, or just sit and chat.
PARK(ing) Day began in 2005, when a group called Rebar set down some sod, a bench, and a tree in one space in San Francisco for two hours, as long as the meter would allow. Their mission: “To call attention to the need for more urban open space, to generate critical debate around how public space is created and allocated, and to improve the quality of urban human habitat … at least until the meter runs out!”
Billie and I joined my friend, Alicia (left) for a chilly morning in South Melbourne
Tags: PARK(ing) Day
Arctic Circle starts today in Queensland’s Sunday Mail and we are very excited to be in this great Australian paper!
My buddy, Dale’s birthday is today, but the posted card won’t get there in time – sorry, buddy!
I was talking to my sister about what she wanted for her birthday and she asked for something for herself. Of course! But then she said how she hadn’t bought anything for herself in 3 months… Which made me think back to when we were kids and our parents didn’t have a lot of money and we only really got new stuff for Christmas and birthdays (annoying when you have birthdays near Christmas). Most clothes were hand-me-downs, unless we were going to a wedding, or having our photo taken (see appalling pic below, but I LOVED this green suit to death!).
I guess we earn more now and stuff is cheaper, so it has become normal to buy new things more than once every three months. I know I used to when I had a job that paid more than cartooning. The other thing that really changed my view of things was watching Annie Leonard’s Story of Stuff. Nothing about that animation was truly new to me, but the cartoon clarified what stuff and the acquisition and disposal of stuff means to the environment.
Click to see The Story of Stuff (and then click on "Stuff").
Tags: consumerism, environment, shopping, The story of stuff
The antidepressants have unexpected effects on marine life
The little shrimp take on Gordo the penguin
The shrimp get madder still
The shrimp attack
the penguins take on the shrimp gang
Although this series is daft, it was inspired by an article I read that said shrimp larvae become more aggressive when exposed to anti-depressants in water.
Tags: shrimp
I’ve been working on an illustration for a teaching magazine and after 4 roughs, I finally had the go ahead for an idea (the editor has to deal with a tough editorial committee and one previous illustration was ditched because it happened to feature a person who ended up being interviewed by the magazine in that very issue…)
The following image is a small part of the cartoon. Strangely, another nice new client of mine came back with the topic for the upcoming magazine and it is… chemistry. So, something I haven’t really thought about in a couple of decades and now my brainstorming is swamped with it.
Detail from an illustration for ACER's Inside Teaching magazine
Tags: chemistry
Oscar goes farmers market mad
The boyf and I love farmers markets. We braved the rain this morning to go to the one in St Kilda and have stocked up for the week. When we lived in New Zealand, I helped him and Project Lyttelton set up the Lyttelton Farmers Market. The boyf was a big fan of the one in San Francisco, so I used their logo as a basis for the one for LFM – and that is the inspiration for the bag that you see in the cartoon.
Lyttelton Farmers Market bag
What I hadn’t realised when I wrote this cartoon, was that it would appear exactly 5 years after we started the LFM. It was the first Saturday in September and it was raining just as it is raining today in Melbourne. To our delight, the market was an instant success and has gone from strength to strength, becoming a vital part of the Lyttelton community.
