Joel Duggan

Oh the silliness.

Yes ladies and gentlemen, the onslaught of dry comic humor continues!

This weeks comic is on time! Woot!

Things have been crazy once again this week. I’m trying to make more time for myself lately to draw and toss some fun things up here. This comic is from a series of six running gags about Ringo and his pet rock. The series was actually the first set of strips to run in The Argosy at Mount Allison. These aren’t the originals. After I graduated I sent Jungle Jazz to several syndicates to try and get published and the artwork from the original pet rock series was really dated, so I redrew the comics to better match the bulk of work I had done by the time I graduated. I’d have to ask her again to make sure, but I think the pet rock jokes are my sister’s favorites.

I haven’t been that up to date with my blogging. I keep trying to post at least once a week, but even since the New Year I haven’t been able to keep even that up. Here is this past weeks Jungle Jazz comic. The first of the longer series of gags is coming next post. Enjoy!

I’ve mentioned before that one of my favorite comic strips is Zits by Jerry Scott and Jim Borgman. Jim Borgman is also a political cartoonist in Cincinnaty. He has a great blog with sketches, notes, thoughts, and finished cartoons. I’ve been a bit behind in keeping up with some of my favorite blogs, what with the holidays and a busy start to the new year, so I took some time today to browse around. When I reached Borgman’s blog I found an interesting string of statements concerning minorities in cartoons. It’s not overly long, but a good read. I reccomend it for any walk of cartoonist.

I’m still working out how to post this properly with the New Blogger. The straight link to the post made on Friday, January 12 is below.

http://frontier.cincinnati.com/blogs/borgman/

Most of the early Jungle Jazz comics are just “one off” gags. Looking back I think I was still exploring the characters personalities and how they relate. Later when I got more comfortable with the characters, I started working small story runs of six comics. These next couple of gags were inspired by Mark O’Hare’s Dog’s Best Friend. O’Hare did some great gags that had distinct timing using multiple panels of just silhouettes.

Here’s this week’s comic… I’m a day late! Crud!

I remember this strip getting a lot of fun feedback from friends and other students when it ran in the paper. Never underestimate the power of a Cartoonist and his puns.

I’ve been taking it easy the past few weeks so I really don’t have anything new to post. I’ve mainly been working on updating Animafax.com. I’ll be sure to put a post here when it’s done. I’ve had some time off lately and I’ve been sorting through some of my old crap and realized that I had digital copies of all of my old comic srips from my university days. They’re the low-res versions, but at least I have them. I drew this comic called Jungle Jazz for The Argosy, the student news paper at Mount Allison, every week for about two years if I remember right. The strip is pretty simple and just plays off the personalities of Ringo a screwball monkey and Sam a “straight-man” snake. There are some other characters that come in, but I don’t want to ruin the surprises. In an effort to keep up my blogging I’m going to post one strip here every Wednesday. I don’t think I’ll be drawing any new ones but I have quite a few to post.

It’s funny to look at your old stuff. At the time, I was reading a lot of FoxTrot by Bill Amend and Sherman’s Lagoon by Jim Toomey. You can totally see it in the posing, layout, and even some of the pacing of the Jungle Jazz strips. Like a lot of cartoonists I have to say that Calvin and Hobbes by bill Wattersonis by far my all time favorite strip. Lately, meaning over the past two or three years, my favorite strip is easily Zits by Jerry Scott and Jim Borgman. Jim Borgman has a blog where he chronicles his work as a political cartoonist. Busy man.

That’s enough yammering out of me. Here is the first strip!

I was having trouble sleeping this morning and I don’t know about you, but when I’m having trouble sleeping I find the best thing to do is to post drawings of cute (but apparently angry) little aliens. It soothes the body and brings peace to the troubled mind.

Something I’ve been focusing on with this character is to keep strong silhouettes as well as an appealing overal flow to the pose. It’s a little more “swooshy” than I usually draw, and it’s super fun. This is my third time posting a sketch page of the beaver and I just realized that all of the poses are versions of a three-quarter view! I was just visiting Jessica Borutski’s blog and her post on October 24 has a great little model sheet of The Good Little Bunny (among other fantastic stuff) which brought the lack of other views in my sketches to my attention. Time for more views!

I’m being a good little blogger and trying to post more often. I think I should get a cookie.

Paton and I were hanging out and sketching on Sunday and I came up with this little guy. I’m sure there will be more. Hide your trees.

A few years ago I started working on a fun little idea called Ghoul School. It’s pretty simple. The whole thing revolves around the fact that all the characters are classic monsters. Vampire, warewolf, zombie and the like. I find I spend more time on it in the Fall… especially in October… go figure. You can see some more Ghoul School stuff at http://www.animafax.com/.

Wow, I knew it had been a while since I posted but I didn’t realize it had been over two months! Bad blogger, Joel. Bad blogger. I’ve been doing a lot of drawing, but not a lot of scanning. I also picked up an couple new sketchbooks. I really like the 11×17, but it’s a pain in the ass to scan! So, please forgive the grey-ish, peiced together images.

This is another older design that I really like and thought I’d try messing around with. She, yes SHE, works well in the old design and I’ve found tweaking her to be challenging. I wanted to give her more mobility through the neck so she can look side to side more without twisting her body. I also wanted to give her more structure, with shoulders and more form to her arms. I like the way things are going so far. It’s getting there. I don’t like the tail. I thought I would, thinking about her lumbering by with a thick tail balancing behind her like a dinosaur. Instead I think it takes away from the appeal of a tower of pink fur and teeth. I was hanging out with Adam earlier this evening and he suggested seeing what she looks with eyes. I think that’s next just to see what may come out of it.

I was hoping to have something more finished to post this time but all I seem to have time for these days is sketching. Not that I’m complaining! I’m still working on Kraken, but I’ve also been having some fun messing with some old designs. This is just one of a cast of five sci-fi characters I started developing a couple years ago. The painted pics are the old design. You can see the other characters on Animafax.com.

Kraken is supposed to be a part of the same cast, the villain, but at the moment he’s drawn in a slightly more complicated style. At this point I’m not sure if the end result will be to dumb down Kraken or to rework the other designs. For the time being I’m having fun re-working and messing with my old characters. Working new thoughts and more experience into the designs… You never know where they’re going to end up!

I’m still messing with Kraken. He’s a little longer and leaner through the body here and his arms are a bigger. I like the way the hands turned out in this one. Although I drew it on at the last minute, the more I draw him without the mask, the more I like him without it. I find he looks more menacing. I’m still debating over what he should be wearing. He has the feel of a character that would have a cape, despite how unoriginal they are.

I’m itching to draw larger. I’m sketching in a black DeSerres, hard cover, 8.5×11 book right now. I had been using 9×12 pads for a while but I don’t find they’re hit or miss with regards to standing up to the torture I put them through. The last one I bought was a cheap piece of monkey crap! It had an orange cover with “Biggie” scrawled across it in black. It’s now abandoned, with a bull clip holding the loose pages held together. I have the same problem with books that have perforated pages. They don’t take my abuse very well. Does any one have a particular kind of sketchbook they like? Know of a book that stands up to the wrath of an animator? … While I’m at it, what about pens, pencils and markers? Favorites? I’m curious now! I went to Loomis the other day and picked up a couple of blue Promarkers. They’re not bad. They bled a lot in this sketchbook, but the paper isn’t really meant for markers.

I finally found some time over the holiday weekend to work on this character a bit more. The more I draw him the more complex he seems to get. I’m still messing with proportions. The development is kind of taking it’s own course right now. I may have to dumb him down a bit in the end. I think I’ve stumbled upon a name I like… Kraken. It came up on Dictionary.com when I was looking up words like octopus and squid to see if there was anything that jumped out at me. Kraken refers to a giant, many-armed sea monster “more horrifying than any other sea creature”. Jake posted a comment suggesting the name “The Leviathan” which is essentially the same thing only historically, it has more dragon like qualities. Leviathan was also used relatively recently in Disney’s Atlantis. I had completely forgotten about Kraken until tonight. The first time I heard the word was when I was a kid and I rented Clash of the Titans. I usually have no trouble naming my characters. The names always seem to jump out at me. If they don’t at first and I have to dig a little for inspiration, when I do finally come accross a name I like, it sticks. Thanks for pointing me in the right direction Jake!

He’s obviously got a bit of an aquatic feel to him but I’m trying to mix it with some serpent qualities as well. I have another sketch I hope to be posting soon… I’m still messing around with the details.

This is my very first blog. Great Caesar’s Ghost! I just lost my blog-virginity! (Yeah, I saw Superman Returns last night!)

This is a character I’ve been toying around with in my “spare time” for about two weeks. The design is part of a series of sci-fi characters called Warped I’ve been developing slowly over the past few years. I’m sure I’ll be posting more pics of them as time goes on. They’re really fun to draw. This guy is the villain… I don’t have a name yet, though my buddy Paton, Animator & Doodler Extraordinaire, suggested Squidward. Hmm… pretty sure that’s taken good buddy.

That’s it for now. Blog-virgin no longer. Who wants to give me a high-five?