Happiness :: Melbourne Cup

Happiness is getting a Bart Cummings Horse in the Melbourne Cup Sweep

IF :: Scary

For Illustration Fridays topic scary
 

Well this looks different

Alvin has been a little bored, make that a lot bored, by the the same old format for this blog. Maybe that's why he hasn't appeared much lately. Anyway he has asked to change over to the dynamic template. This should give you, the reader, the opportunity to select the format that you like reading or browsing the best. The different format options are up on the orange bar just below the header. I have selected the magazine format as the default but you are free to choose your own preferred view. Give then a good work out and I'd love to get your opinion, so please leave comments.
By the way, the view from mobile phones is not dynamic but has been simplified to save bandwidth.

New methods on a rainy afternoon

It has been a while since I have posted a cartoon, primarily because I’m travelling. So I don,t have my scanner or access to the myriad things in my normal software in my corel draw and paint tool kit. It was rainy today so I decided to investigate if I could achieve the typical “alvin look” (hand draw, but computer inked) cartoon with a simpler kit. Turns out I could, and it was easy once I assemble the right tools.

I started as usual with a pencil sketch in my sketch book. Then did some basic inking of the main linework. Now the tricky bit, how to scan it and clean it up. Using a camera gives a grey image with poor line definition and uneven illumination. Not the greatest starting point for cartoon. Then I remember a utility that I had reviewed years ago that lets a cameraphone function like a scanner. That system is still around but a quick look on the android app market revealed CamScanner. It worked like a charm, not only doing the basic scanner stuff, you can adjust for perspective, cropping and stretching the image and it will also write to nice compact PDF files.

Then I just used paint.net, a much under-rated general graphics program, to do the colour fill, and linework tidy up. I then did a bit of magic wand selection to cut and paste my characters onto at photo I had taken. Ok it took a lot longer than the 30 minutes I had set myself in the quick pic days, However developing the new technique was fun on a rainy afternoon.


See the final cartoon below

There are a couple of earlier post about my original technique and then the Big Step Forward.

Alvin at the Noorderzon Festival

Alvin enjoy’s trying out a dutch version of the port-a-loo just for blokes

The Noorderzon festival is current on in Groningen, the Netherlands.

IF:: Asleep

Alvin has learned to feign sleep whenever it is time to mow the lawn.

for IllustrationFriday 's topic asleep.

IF :: Bicycle

Lila finally decides pearls over lycra are ok for a quick trip to the shops (after 10am and before 5)

For Illustration Fridays topic Bicycle

IF :: Cultivated

Lila is an equal opportunity gardener. She heaps love on every new sprout, well at least until she recognises the weeds.

For Illustration Friday's topic Cultivate

IF :: Dusting

Lila discovers she has left her spring cleaning a little late this year.

For Illustration Friday's topic dusty
 

IF :: we seem to have been here below

Alvin senses he's had this idea for a self referencing cartoon before.

For Illustration Friday's Topic deja-vu

IF :: careful what we resolve

Lila decides not to go with her standard New Year's Resolutions this year

For Illustration Friday's topic resolutions

On unwanted notoriety

Alvin hadn't planned to be the first casualty of the decade at the new district hospital.

Happy New Year to all