Arctic Circle Cartoons » cartoon

Ocean Robot Cartoons

admin — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 03:21:00 +0000

This series was based on a few articles I had read about robots being used to study all kinds of things in our oceans.

I only got away with this because my editor assumed Oscar had burped...

There is a lot of plastic in the ocean

Artificial intelligence

I don't think anyone in Texas reads Arctic Circle...

One Fine Sunday Cartoon Exhibition

admin — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 00:19:13 +0000

My good friend, Jason Chatfield, reminded me of an exhibition we have contributed to (he does the legendary comic strip, Ginger Meggs). It kicks off this week and you can read more about it in this Australian Cartoonists Association blog post.

Gwen Joins the Arctic Circle Cast

admin — Fri, 23 Jul 2010 22:24:37 +0000

I’ve been writing this incarnation of Arctic Circle for over three years and despite being a female cartoonist, the main cast of seven are all male (it’s sort of a default setting for animal characters without eyelashes). When I wrote the Antarctica series, I had great fun with the introduction of a female character, Gwen. So I’ve brought her back. I’m not sure if she’ll stay – I’ve been writing more strips with her in this week – we’ll see how things work out.

My editor thought some of these strips a little sexist, but there are differences between men and women (in general) and the amount of luggage they take is definitely one of them.

I have a whole lot of facebook friends I don't even know and I'm petrified of deleting them

So this is my approach for a lot of my Facebook "friends" whose witterings mean nothing to me

Gwen moves out of the bachelor igloo

My mum actually did this to Dad's shirts once.

Inspired by the Gondola in Christchurch. A pointless apparatus, if ever there was one - you can walk or drive to the top of the hill it goes up!

Junk Mail Cartoons

admin — Mon, 19 Jul 2010 22:23:50 +0000

I loathe junk mail. It is responsible for so much wasted paper and energy. All the mailboxes in our block have “no junk mail” notices and yet we still get leafleted (though not as badly as without the notices). I’ve got fed up of emailing and calling the perpetrators, as they seem to have the same attitude as spammers – as long as they get a couple of customers out of it, it’s worth alienating a whole lot more.

Howard tries a bad approach for stopping junk mail

Howard becomes uncharacteristically violent

Howard is arrested for going postal

TV arbitration

How I'd like to deal with junk mail.

Midge Bristol #1 in Scientriffic Magazine

admin — Thu, 15 Jul 2010 14:32:28 +0000

Being syndicated doesn’t cover all my bills (eg. traveling to the Reubens), so I do a fair bit of freelance work on the side. One of my favourite new clients is Scientriffic magazine, who gave me a whole page to have fun with. The result is “Midge Bristol Investigates” and the first episode is in the Jul-Aug issue. I can’t put the full thing up here yet, but you can see the black and white version (and colour it in!) on the CSIRO website.

Part of the first Midge Bristol cartoon

Reuben Photos

admin — Thu, 10 Jun 2010 08:10:09 +0000

Had a great time at the National Cartoonists Society annual shindig in Jersey City. Here are a few pictures.

Jersey City is handy for the PATH train to Manhattan and is host to the most gruesome war memorial I have come across

Brendan and Rina give Duncan, Tea, Terri and I a tour of The Village

Dave Blazek, Stu Rees, me and Scott Hilburn

Paul Gilligan, my editor Brendan Burford and Norm Feuti

With Paul G and Tom Richmond

Paul explains to Wiley Miller that "douchebag" is a term of endearment

Tom Gammill mc-d the Reuben Awards

Enjoying a cocktail with Terri Libenson and Norm & Jen Feuti

The only photo I took at the President's Party - it was late and those tiles were so pretty, so shiny...

Marine Park Sunday

admin — Sun, 06 Jun 2010 01:52:10 +0000

This was the Sunday I had fun drawing.

Oscar's Arctic Marine Park

Asian Carp Series

admin — Sat, 29 May 2010 04:01:33 +0000

This is a bit of an homage to the great Faceache cartoonist, Ken Reid

The carp and Ed discuss before and after weight loss photos

Another diet

How to lose weight

The Asian carp puts on weight despite himself

I got to finish the series with a terrible pun

Rina Piccolo

admin — Sun, 23 May 2010 14:59:29 +0000

My cartoonist friend, Rina Piccolo has revamped her web site and launched a new web comic, Velia Dear. It’s nice to see her flexing her narrative muscles in a format that is more liberating than the newspaper strip (she does Tina’s Groove and is the funniest Six Chix cartoonist)

Fantastic! You couldn't get away with this in the newspapers

The cartoonist nerd in me also enjoys her blog posts about the cartooning process itself. This piece on ink washes (too scary for me, as yet!):

For those of you who may not know what an ink wash is — it’s just water
with a teeny bit of ink in it. When applied with a brush on paper, it appears grey. The more ink in the water, the darker the grey. You can play around with it to give all kinds of nice tones to a line drawing. This is how my webcomic “Velia, Dear” gets it’s tones, which are called “half-tones”.
If you can master the wash –I’m still learning, but I’m a lot more confident with it than I was a year ago — you can use it to create mood in a cartoon or illustration (some cartoonists prefer to use cross-hatching instead) — it’s a preference. However, I should add that newspaper comics rarely have a wash because of how they’re printed. Am I going off on a tangent here?
Anyway, the ink wash is a ton of fun when you get confident with it.

I look forward to her answer on where she gets her ideas from. It’s got to be good, ‘cos she’s sure got a lot of them.

Free Wifi and Good Coffee Make a Perfect Cafe

admin — Tue, 11 May 2010 02:16:06 +0000

I doubt Hector’s is a good place for coffee, but I imagine free wi-fi is scarce in the Arctic.

Hector puts in free wi-fi

Hector turns off free wi-fi

I wrote this after noticing the number of laptop users in my local cafe, Presse. They sure know how to eek out a cappuccino.