The states of California is offering Snoopy license plates. The extra money raised goes to California museums.
“This street-legal, DMV- and PEANUTS-approved license plate features Snoopy doing his signature happy dance. Plates for cars, trucks, vans, commercial vehicles, and motorcycles start at just $50 ($103 for personalized plates).”
There are over 1400 museums in California.
I want one. Only I don’t live in California. 😦
I had flooding here. Yup, another thing gone wrong in 2020. Anyway, two insurance adjusters came over and they were looking all over the place.
One asked me, “Are you a cartoonist?” I smile and said proudly, “Yes I am!” and I gave him my card.
Isn’t that cool? I guess he saw things around my office which made him guess right.
When his partner’s phone rang, it played The Jetsons theme. The Universe sent me two perfect insurance adjusters.
So Fall is here! I’m going to miss the cold weather this year. I am usually in NY in October and November. In October, I go for Comic Con, which is postponed this year. Picture it – Comic Con and the fall leaves and cool crisp weather. Although I can remember a year or two ago when it hit 80 degrees in NYC in October.
But New York is full of Batman and Superman and all sorts of Cosplay people. It’s like a precursor to Halloween earlier in the month. Mix that with the cool air and turning leaves and it’s the perfect time of year. And then a month later I head back for Thanksgiving with my family. This year I was going to do one of my usual things – spend a few days in Boston and then take the train down to NY later in the week.
That fall trip by train through New England is pure pleasure. I wrote about one trip one time, which was more about inside the train than the actual views outside. I overheard two older ladies talking behind me the whole way and it was pure delight, you can read it here: “A delightful train ride.”
Last October my cousins and I went to the Hudson Valley and we picked pumpkins and apples. One of my all time favorite days. You know when certain things in life stick in your mind forever? Well that day is one of them.
There’s always next year.
On Saturday I watched the NCSFest all day. It was a a cartooning festival put on by the National Cartoonists Society Foundation. It was storming outside, so it was a perfect day to stay inside. You can see over nine hours of the fest here on YouTube, watch the whole thing or pick and choose by scrolling through. The schedule is here so you can see what comes on when.
The main seminar/talk I was interested in was The Superstars of Instagram, I wanted to see how they work and mainly how they get so many followers. The Awkward Yeti, for instance has 1.8 million followers! I interviewed Nick Seluk, The Awkward Yeti cartoonist once, you can see that here.
I also liked the talk on Creating a Successful Online Cartooning Business.
There was a lot of good stuff. Jim Davis, the Garfield cartoonist spoke from his studio and so did cartoonists explaining their process from doing comic strips and panels to creating books.
In between, the yearly Reuben Awards, which are the Oscars for cartoons/cartooning, were announced. The ceremony and events were canceled this year due to the pandemic. Awards are given or best newspaper comic strip of the year, best comic panel, best greeting card comic, best online comic strip, etc. The Daily Cartoonist has a list of winners here. There is then the Reuben Award for Cartoonist of the Year, which went to Lynda Barry.
I love this photo of Lynda, a real artist. The desk looks so comfortable, like you can just sit down and create. I am messy, but since I do all my work digitally on a Surface Pro, it isn’t strewn with all these wonderful tools and inks and pens and such. I literally have to turn on the computer and wait for it to set up. I can’t just get comfy and into it like Lynda here.
Garry Trudeau says that cartooning is like a public utility – you just expect it to be there when you want it.
I watched a documentary over the weekend called, “Hand Drawn Life,” it’s available on Vimeo and right here of course, and if you have a smart tv, you can watch it on large screen using their app. It’s listed as, “HDL_FINAL_FULL_Texted_1205” on Vimeo.
Hand Drawn Life just won a Los Angeles Area Emmy Award for best Independent Programming for its airing on KCET-PBS. It’s about the history of cartooning and interviews a number of cartoonists who talk about the craft, their work and the work of many others.
The past few years I’ve watched quite a few cartooning interviews and documentaries. Two great documentaries are, “Dear Mr. Watterson,” which is about Bill Watterson and Calvin and Hobbes. You can watch it on Amazon Prime and “Stripped,” which I got through a kickstarter a few years back, but I see you can purchase it here for just $4.99. Stripped interviews 70 cartoonists about the craft. They are both very enjoyable.
I also found a list of cartoonist interviews on Google here. I’ve watched some of these over the years, too.
This I Love Lucy comic was published today. It’s one of my favorites. I changed it a lot throughout yesterday, adding something, removing something, changing an arm, etc. It’s a classic episode that I think everyone knows.
I like taking something from the past, like a tv show, and putting it in the present to see how things would change. I did it with the Columbo comic in May and people liked it.
I have other ideas in mind for future comics and if you have any, feel free to email me with an idea of your own.
This is a little snippet about the Hy Eisman “A Life in Comics” documentary. There is a GoFundMe page to help raise money for the completion of the film. I donated the other day.
Cartoonist Hy Eisman, is a cartoonist of over 70 years. You’ve seen his work. He produced The Katzenjammer Kids and Popeye, doing both Sunday strips at the same time – the writing and drawing. And each had their own feel.
Mr. Eisman continues to cartoon today.
I’ve been watching a lot of tv while in self quarantine among other things – cleaning out the closets, working out (love the new bands I got), cartooning of course, and even cooking, which I don’t normally do, but I have been watching more tv than usual.
I love Breaking Bad and never get tired of it, I’ve mentioned that before in another post. I have those DVR’d but oddly enough, I can only make myself watch it on Sundays – night or day, doesn’t matter, but it must be Sunday. I watched a couple of episodes yesterday. But alas, the freaking DVR didn’t tape all the episodes, right in the middle I see that 20 episodes are missing!
When I first started watching all the episodes for the first time, I did that On Demand. And even on demand some episodes were missing – one important one and one of my favorite episodes, was missing. I didn’t know it was one of my favorites at the time because I had never seen it before, but as I watched the episodes in order, I noticed something was missing, it seemed to jump from one episode to another, skipping a big part of the story line.
So I went online and lo and behold, there was one of the most important and best episodes on the AMC website, so I watched it there. The episode is “Face Off” (spoiler alert if you click that link) and my other favorite episode is “Dead Freight,” the train one. These are my two favorite episodes and I think “Face Off” is a very important episode which moves the story along.
I’m not sure what I love about the show – the acting? the characters? the location? I guess the whole story is amazing and riveting. I love Albuquerque and the locations and scenery and I love the family scenes in and at the houses.
I see Breaking Bad is on Netflix, so I guess I’ll just catch up an continue watching there.
I had been awaiting the announcement that NY Comic Con would be canceled this year. The physical event which was to be in October, at the Javits Center in NYC will not happen, but there will be events online, which of course is not the same. I had been waiting and waiting for the announcement but I guess they were trying to put it off as long as they could.
I’ve had so many fun times over the years at this event. Every October it was something special – first off, it’s October in NY, a beautiful time to be there and then the city is full of cosplaying people from one end to the other.
Here are some photos that I took from the event from the past few years.
I like these superhero face masks, but I don’t know if I would wear them. The logo is too big.
I’ve seen some fun ones with Charlie Brown and Snoopy, I Love Lucy and others.
Right now I wear a solid black one, which I like, it’s a bit heavy though and I’m thinking of changing it. But I’ve ordered so many and unless you buy them and then try them, there is no way of knowing if they fit right or if you can breathe through them and things like that. I must have 12 of them about now, and only like one or two.
I do like this Batman one with the logo small to the side. What do you think? Too geeky?
People are going crazy with the masks now. I notice on tv, the news reporters are matching their ties now. If they have on a red tie, they wear a red mask, and so on.
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