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The Round-up

April 28, 2013 in Events, General, Links, News

North Stand © Huw Aaron @Procartoonists.org

Kudos to Procartoonists.org member Huw Aaron, who was recently highly commended in the Cartoonist of the Year category of the 2013 Sports Journalism Awards for his rugby-themed strip, North Stand (the prize was eventually won by The Telegraph’s Matt Pritchett for his coverage of the London Olympics). Huw has also been busy with other projects, including producing stop-motion animations for S4C science programme Corff Cymru.

Following the recent publication of his Gin Lane Gazette, PCO member Adrian Teal has been leading guided tours of London.

Harry Venning, the cartoonist and comedy writer behind Clare in the Community, is opening up his Brighton studio for four weekends during May as part of the Brighton Festival. See the brochure to find out more about the Artists Open Houses event. Harry’s studio is at 93 Islingword Road.

Amazon has launched a new tool enabling cartoonists and comic creators to produce digital versions of their work for Kindle. Read more here.

Graphic journalist Dan Archer tells the BBC about how he uses comic strips to report on major political and social issues. Elsewhere, New Yorker cartoonist Liza Donnelly writes for Forbes about the importance of cartoons by women around the world.

Cartoonists and illustrators including Simon Tofield, Sir Quentin Blake and Peter Brookes are among the artists taking part in Gromit Unleashed, painting statues of the beloved Aardman dog for charity.

And finally, any cartoonist will appreciate the humour in this series of letters about rejection from Mad magazine.

If you come across a piece of cartooning news we might not have spotted, please let us know.

Tags: Adrian Teal, Clare in the Community, Dan Archer, gin lane gazette, Gromit, Harry Venning, Huw Aaron, Liza Donelly, Matt Pritchett, North Stand, Peter Brookes, Quentin Blake, Simon Tofield No Comments »

by Rob Murray

The Round-up

April 7, 2013 in General, Links, News

Above: The Gin Lane Gazette, produced by Procartoonists.org member Adrian Teal, has now hit the shops. The book receives an enthusiastic academic review here, showing that it’s not only a lot of fun, but also bang on target. Elsewhere, Ade explains how he went about crowd-funding the project.

Mike Barfield, the man behind Apparently in Private Eye, has also been working on a new book. Swat! A Fly’s Guide to Staying Alive is published on 16 April. In the meantime, you can read an interview with Mike here.

Cartoonist Simon Chadwick will be abseiling down the Spinnaker Tower in Portsmouth on 27 May to raise money for the Myositis Support Group. Simon has previously written and illustrated a children’s book, Teddy-Bo’s Feeling Tired, a copy of which is given to every child diagnosed with the condition. To sponsor Simon and support his abseil attempt, click here.

Rachel Cooke of The Observer describes a favourite cartoon by Tom Gauld, in a comment piece about the need to separate art from artist.

And finally, the comics artist Lew Stringer has launched a new blog. It focuses solely on his own work, old and new – unlike his previous venture, Blimey!, which became a Herculean task as he looked at the entire history of British comics. We say fair play to Lew (and, after all, Blimey! can still be seen here) and it’s always nice to see works in progress. Check it out.

Tags: Adrian Teal, Apparently, Blimey!, gin lane gazette, Lew Stringer, Mike Barfield, PCO, Private Eye, Procartoonists.org, Simon Chadwick, Swat!, Teddy-Bo, Tom Gauld 2 Comments »

by Rob Murray

The Round-up

November 17, 2012 in General, Links, News

Self-portrait © Quentin Blake @Procartoonists.org

BBC Radio 4′s arts programme Front Row spoke to Quentin Blake ahead of the publication of his second volume of illustrated memoirs this week. Listen to the interview here.

Alex Scarfe, the son of the renowned satirical cartoonist Gerald, is one of the three minds behind Full English, the new animated sitcom currently running on Channel 4. The Guardian ran this interview ahead of the show’s debut.

A selection of redesigned film posters by illustrator Olly Moss are being exhibited at the White Cloth Gallery in Leeds. You can see a selection on the BBC website, and The Yorkshire Post interviews Moss here.

Following last year’s 50th birthday celebrations at Private Eye, a selection of cartoons from the exhibition have made their way north of the border to Scotland. Read about the gallery show at Kirremuir with the Courier.co.uk.

Finally, Procartoonists.org member Adrian Teal has launched The Gin Lane Gazette, which has been published by Unbound and is crowd-funded. Adrian describes the book as “a compendium of true stories, scandal and oddities from the 18th century; a kind of Georgian Heat magazine, if you like.” See more, and buy the book, here.

Tags: Adrian Teal, Alex Scarfe, Full English, gin lane gazette, Olly Moss, Procartoonists.org, Quentin Blake, UK Professional Cartoonists’ Organisation, Unbound No Comments »

by Alex Hughes

After Gin Lane: Giving it all away

September 6, 2012 in Comment, General

Following From Gin Lane to the Information Superhighway we see that there are cartoonists who are positively embracing this new era of social media and sharing.

Hairy Steve © Steve Bright @ Procartoonists.org

Webcomics and viral cartoons are a couple of the ways that you can effectively give your work away to the web but get paid back by other means. Successful webcomics work on a business model based on the idea that you give away a regularly updated cartoon on your website and build a following of readers who come back day after day. British examples include John Allison‘s Bad Machinery or Jamie Smart‘s Corporate Skull.

The profit comes from selling merchandise to the more loyal fans – bound compilations, prints, sketches, T-shirts, toys and so forth. Similarly, viral cartoons can drive lots of new readers to your website. How much money can be directly attributed to virals is arguable, although, for example, the well-known New Yorker cartoon “On the Internet, nobody knows you’re a dog” is said to have earned its creator, Peter Steiner, more than $50,000.

The website Kickstarter has recently become one of the biggest publishers of comic books in the USA, from independent cartoonists using the crowd-funding model to raise money directly from their fan-base. Here in the UK, Procartoonists.org‘s very own Adrian Teal (The Gin Lane Gazette) and Steve Bright (Hairy Steve – in collaboration with Jamie Smart) have developed their own crowd-funded projects.

We’ll be considering another aspect of the communication change – After Gin Lane – and what it means for cartoonists next week

Tags: Adrian Teal, Bad Machinery, Corporate Skull, crowd-funding, dog, Gin Lane, Hairy Steve, Jamie Smart, John Allison, Kickstarter, Peter Steiner, social media, Steve Bright, The Gin Lane Gazette, The New Yorker, viral, webcomics No Comments »

by Rob Murray

The Round-up

May 6, 2012 in General

If you are a fan of funding crowd-sourced books we commend the following projects from two Procartoonists.org members: Stevyn Colgan‘s Connectoscope and the caricaturist Adrian Teal, who is still raising funds for his Gin Lane Gazette. You can contribute to funding these projects at the Unbound site.

Terry Mosher, a Canadian political cartoonist best known by his pen name of Aislin, has been inducted into the country’s Cartoonist Hall of Fame this weekend. In an interview with the Daily Brew blog, he discusses his work and explains that conservatives are easier to satirise than liberals because “the fatter the cat, the more fun you have”. Read the Q&A here.

Daniel Clowes, the creator of Ghost World and Eightball, is the subject of a new gallery exhibition in his hometown of Oakland, California. If you can’t make it over there, read this instead.

With Garfield making the move into full-length comic books, the cartoon cat’s creator, Jim Davis, speaks to Comic Book Resources about adapting his character to different formats – and about what the decline of newspapers and rise of the internet can mean for up-and-coming cartoonists. Read more here.

Tags: Adrian Teal, Aislin, Daniel Clowes, Garfield, Procartoonists.org, Stevyn Colgan, Terry Mosher No Comments »

by Blog Team

Gin and opinions

December 14, 2011 in Comment

Gin Lane Gazette

Cartoonists have long adopted the technique of writing about the future or the past as a good way of talking about the present day.

But PCO member Adrian Teal is adapting this artifice with a crowd-funded project on the history of 18th century Britain, which he explains in a short video pitch.

Adrian is working with the Unbound book site which provides a platform for authors to pitch their products to would-be book buyers for self-funding.

His Gin Lane Gazette – an 18th century version of Heat magazine – follows a similar path to The Opinions of Tobias Grubbe, the news cartoon that appears weekly in the digital Telegraph.

Tobias Grubbe animated cartoon © Michael Cross and Matthew Buck hack Cartoons

Tags: Adrian Teal, gin lane gazette, history, Matthew Buck Hack Cartoons, Procartoonists.org, satire, The Opinions of Tobias Grubbe No Comments »

by Alex Hughes

Quite Interesting Cartoonists

August 25, 2010 in News

PCO member Stevyn Colgan writes:

This year, members of the PCO have once again contributed to the BBC TV series QI and its spin-off book titles. It’s a relationship that has existed ever since the first QI Annual was published in 2008.

The TV show – in which each season follows a letter of the alphabet – was already in its fifth ‘E’ season when it was decided that some sort of annual was in order. True to form, QI inventor John Lloyd (also the man who created The News Quiz, The News Huddlines, Not the Nine O’Clock News, Spitting Image, produced all four series of Blackadder, and co-wrote two episodes of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy with his friend Douglas Adams) sought out the funniest contributors he could find, roping in the likes of Rowan Atkinson, Bill Bailey, Jo Brand, Alan Davies and, of course, Stephen Fry. He also needed illustrations and lots of them. And that’s where the relationship with members of the PCO started.

The annuals have featured work by Jonathan Cusick (cover of the ‘G’ Annual), Adrian Teal (who also painted the cover of the ‘F’ annual), and Stevyn Colgan. This Christmas, the brand new ‘H’ Annual will feature more submissions from Adrian and Stevyn. Also, the first three E, F and G Annuals are being bundled into a softback compilation edition in November with a brand new cover by Stevyn. And, for the first time, artwork by Adrian and Stevyn will be seen on the TV show itself gracing the big screens behind the panellists in the episode on ‘Horses’ and ‘Humans’.

The EFG Bumper Book of QI Annuals and the QI ‘H’ Annual are both published by Faber and Faber on November 4th.

Tags: Adrian Teal, annual, BBC, book, Christmas, Faber and Faber, John Lloyd, Jonathan Cusick, QI, Stevyn Colgan 2 Comments »

by Matt Buck

The self-analysed cartoonist

March 12, 2009 in Comment

Caricaturist Adrian Teal writes about the paralysis of analysis:

A PhD student phoned me yesterday, wanting to pick my brains. She’s doing research into politicians and how political cartoons are perceived, and emailed me a list of searching questions which she’ll be putting to me in a telephone interview in a day or so.

I’m happy to help, though she tells me she has already spoken to Steve Bell and Martin Rowson, so I’m not sure I’ll have anything more insightful and enlightening to offer than these two giants of the Comment page.

And so to confession time …

The problem is that I tend not to think too deeply about what I do – at least, not that often. Analysing the cartoonist is like taking a butterfly apart to see how it works. I don’t draw because I think I can change the world, or to destabilize governments, though it is highly rewarding to have a pop at a venal politico now and again. I draw because I have to. At 34, I can’t see myself doing anything else. It is as much a part of my life as shaving, or yawning. The actual process can be agonising, although the labour pains are usually forgotten when the artwork turns out well. Sure, I like to be praised when I do a good job, but if I’m honest, I don’t even enjoy cartooning 100 per cent of the time. I suspect most cartoonists are the same.

Correct me if I’m wrong.

Tags: Adrian Teal, best British cartoonists, caricature, the self-analysed cartoonist 3 Comments »

by Matt Buck

Heart-warming Christmas tale

December 8, 2008 in General

PCOer Adrian Teal writes:

I had a phone call from the news desk of my local paper recently asking if I’d mind doing a last-minute cartoon about our gaffe-prone town council.

The council had ditched the idea of suspending Christmas decorations across the town’s main shopping street, because Health and Safety were worried about them plummeting onto the heads of innocent shoppers. As an alternative, they decided to import some hollow, cone-shaped, fake trees which cost £33,000.

When the lorry carrying the new trees arrived at the council depot, two Iraqi, and two Iranian illegal immigrants jumped out of the back. They were rounded up by the cops, and handed over to the UK Border Agency.

Adrian reports the trees themselves were “rubbish”. Bloghorn thinks none of us are six anymore.

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Tags: Adrian Teal, Christmas No Comments »

by Alex Hughes

Adrian Teal's Highlight of 2008

November 10, 2008 in News

Cartoonist and PCO member Adrian PCOer Adrian Teal shares one of his highlights of 2008;

As the shadows lengthen, the nights draw in, and Cumbrian fell-walkers are forced to use sheep as rudimentary buoyancy aids, I find myself looking back over the dog-days of 2008 with a sentimental eye, and specifically at the highlight of my year.

I send a lot of sample stuff in the post, on spec, to various people outside the world of newspapers and mags, and more often than not, it ends up in the secretarial bin. However, once in a while, it generates some interest. Back in April, I got a call from the producer of the BBC’s QI, who also produced Not the Nine O’Clock News, Blackadder, and Spitting Image, where I had met him a few times when I was an irritating ten year-old.

He asked me to produce the front/back cover for the new QI Annual (available from all good bookshops, 6th November), and would I mind awfully doing a couple of double-page-spreads for the inside too?

This was a moment of pure, unbridled, cynicism-free joy for me, since the comedy stable from which he and his contemporaries come helped to shape the sense of humour of my generation. They are also very nice people, which makes a huge difference in this trade, believe me, and I was given pretty much a free rein to do what I thought would suit. I couldn’t believe my luck.

And they paid my invoice inside two days. Pinch me, someone.

The QI Annual 2009 by John Lloyd and John Mitchinson is published by Faber and Faber, priced £12.99

The PCO: Great British cartoon talent

Tags: Adrian Teal, books, QI 1 Comment »