On Extreme Energy Saving

Alvin starts to believe every hour should be earth hour

In memory of the innocents

It is not the time yet to open the book of blame and recrimination,

it is still a time of grief and mourning and practical help for the victims,

those who lost loved ones and houses in the bushfire tragedies in Victoria's Blackest Saturday.

For illustration friday's topic instinct

IF counting the heat

The heatwave conditions in Southern Australia

are turning Alvin into a thermopile

For Illustration Friday's topic counting

IF :: Pale

For Illustration Friday's topic Pale

2009 already

Alvin & Lila wish all their friends a most happy and prosperous New Year.

IF :: the word were candle-stine

For Illustration Friday's topic clandestine

On post-christmas sales

IF :: you hear voices

For illustration Friday's topic voices

Lila and Alvin have decided to be responsible, in the light of the world finacial crisis and global warming and stay home, not holiday in Europe, (ok that's how Alvin described it to Lila), so they are getting a lesson in the little known stress of babysitting other people's pets.

The making of packed properly

My technique to make these cartoon has changed enough, since I last let you into my secrets, that I should just review the changes. First and most importantly I tend to created the specific figures, and other objects, as hand drawn sketches to suit each cartoon. (Rather than trying to use a library of shapes). I still might drawn different figures and things seperately. I then "ink in" with any felt pen I can find, colour doesn't really matter as i just digitise this in black and white. Next I use Corel Trace to convert the shapes into vector drawn shapes and then corel draw to manipulate those shapes... for example, colouring rescalling rotationg and adding the "standard layout". Generally I can get from pencil concept to final drawing on the blog in half an hour or less. Just a longish coffee break!

If you haven't noticed I am also doing some "quickie" cartoons in a simple layout for twitter pics (look down on the left hand column). These cartoons are meant to be mostly for my twitter friends, supposed to be highly relevant and I keep them very simple so the time from concept to upload is 15 minutes or less (ie a true coffee break creation) and explainable in 140 charcaters of text (or less)

IF :: packed properly

For Illustration Friday 's topic packed

IF clique-y

for Illustration friday's topic clique

IF we all had island dreams

For Illustration Friday's topic island

With a little bit of inspiration from Paul Gaugain

IF living in clutter

For illustration friday 's topic clutter

IF memories

for illustration friday topic memories

IF under false pretenses

 For Illustration Friday's topic sail

IF poofed!

For Illustration Friday topic poof!

IF Out of the Can

Who let the spam out?

For IllustrationFriday's topic canned

On looking deeper at TiVO

Alvin decides to look at the features and fine print before he orders his next tech toy, this time.

No ripped music library, no picture library, no ability to swap content with your PC or iPod etc. only 160Gb of HDD space which will allow you only 20-30 hours of HD content and apparently they will be releasing it without any capability to transfer to external hard drive short of a PAID firmware update. To add insult to injury, can you believe they will actually display advertisements while you fast forward? ...see MyEPG for more details

But the real bitter pill to swallow is the Channel Seven TiVO cartel's attempt to make it illegal to use a published TV guide to information to record Free to Air television shows (other than using their device); and yes, the current copyright conditions are easily interpreted to include using the newspaper for the purpose of programming your VCR! Hang on aren't the rights to broadcasts licensed from us, the public (ok its through government licences, no TV stations or hardware manufacturers owns the broadcast space, it is not their property, and stange how there is no mention of legality of recording free to air broadcast, just that you are infrigining copyright if use a guide to know when to do the recording)

So if you want to do something about it now before it too late write to your local politician, write to the newspapers, discuss it with your friends, or get involved

IF one slice of cake was enough

 One slice of chocolate cake is never enough.

For Illustration Friday's topic enough.

On Life, without Email, IPhones & 9 o'clock meetings

On Alvin's Organizer

IF in a fog

For illustration friday's topic foggy

Alvin gets his IPhone

Alvin contemplates his new 3G toy ... and joins all the hype.

But the cost of actually using it as a web phone hasn't dawned on him yet.

going mobile

Since Alvin loves technology, why shouldn't this blog/cartoon go mobile friendly, staring with a QR code to say hello and get you directly here with only a click or two.

If you have a mobile phone with a camera and web access you can find out how to scan the code with your mobile here.

Thanks to MOJI-Q for the nice QR code

as IF ...

The Victorian government is playing hardball threatening to make protestor group "your water your say" pay court costs, but what about the current residents?

For illustration friday's topic fierce

If only i had a parachute

for Illustration Fridays topic Momentum

This is the rework of a very early sketch of alvin, using photo of clouds to enhance the idea of falling. It is also my first blog post using window's live writer

IF I were captain

Alvin over estimating his ability to swash the buckle.

for illustration friday, topic captain

only IF it suits

for illustration friday's topic suit.

As I was planning this cartoon, I realised there was an opportunity to exploit the collage part of my technique and use a photo of actual cards to help out in the development of this joke, but I also wanted to add "meet the people" style arms and legs to keep the cartoon feel. So these were sketched up seperately, scanned in and it was all pasted together in corel draw.

IF he has purchased a lemon

Alvin comtemplates his new hybrid car.

For llustration friday topic citrus

This cartoon marks a slight change of software (paint.net & corel draw) and a new format that will fit perfectly onto your PSP (play station portable)

The making of "Remember"

Its been a while since I wrote up how alvin & lila are created, its quiet unique so I thought I might re-tell the story as a kind of graphic "HOW TO"

1) I think the the hardest part of cartooning is getting the motivation and ideas. I don't sell any meet the people cartoon so this is a private whim and I can afford to only sketch them when I have time. I find illustration friday is a great way to motivate yourself and get a basic theme, this weeks was remembering . Next I like to listen to music while seeking inspiration, so I type the theme into search box in tunes (or whatever your media manager is) then listen to those tunes. I also like using last.fm.

The idea about men never remembering to put the toilet seat down is not mentioned in anything I listen too by the way!


2) Next I get out my meet the people folder, which is one of those commercial spiral bound folders with lots of clear plastic sleeves, into which I have, over time, inserted lots of cut outs of alvin & lila's body shapes and other common things I might use in a cartoon illustration. Often I have to draw a new item specific to the cartoon, like the toilet, in this case



3) Next I assemble the cartoon. Using cut outs means I can play around with position and adjust gestures and postures of the main characters. This can make all the of difference between boring (the way you first assemble or draw things) and something interesting and dynamic, which may be only the slightest elongation of stretching of change of angle, that gets the composition to gel. I them place this on my scanner bed [The photo shows things face up when of course they will be face down, but that would be boring to photograph].




4. I use corel trace and import the image directly from my scanner using the acquire settings. I convert the bitmap to Black & White and then do Perform Trace By Outline, which generated the shapes as line work for corel draw










5) In corel draw I add colour and text. I also now have a small library of template for such things as standard layout and speech bubbles and also text annotation already in the colours and fonts I want to use. These helps me maintain a stylistic commonality without having to worry about it and save time.




6) Finally when I am happy with the layout I export the image to a jpeg file, and upload it to this blog and that's it!

IF :: He will ever remember

For Illustration friday, topic remember

Also why not check out the making of remember post, its a graphic how of my technique.

IF everyone worried about polar warming

for illustration friday, topic polar

IF it was the 80s

for illustration friday, topic 80's

IF :: Buzz Me

For illustraion friday :: Buzz

on the true meaning of allen keys

Alvin discovers the secret "s" shaped shaped hexagonal length on silver metal intended to warn all blokes never to try to assemble the contents of this flat-pack yourself, but alas it is to late!

IF :: it might!

Alvin knows there are some questions that must never be answered

for illustration friday :: it might

On home repairs

Lila knows that the appearance of the phillips head screwdriver marks the imminent death of another electrical appliance

IF :: the invention the world didn't really need

For Illustration Friday : Invention

On scrobbling

Scrobbling is the name for the collection and uploading to last.fm of the music you listen to. If you are intreseted in music you can watch what Alvin is listen to over on the right handside.

On suitable gifts

On being clear

For Illustration Friday's topic of the week : Clear

On Carparks

alvin strikes it lucky

delta blue, a stallion from japan wins the meblourne cup

sorry for the hiatus

Sorry about the lack of cartoons, a lot has happened, including the death of my notebook. One of the consequences of that is I lost all my templates and sepcifically a font called gigi (well I think what it was called) which I used for the header line title for this strip. Does anyone know who produces it? Or where I could get a replacement? \--