Coloring in the Lines >>

It has been about a year now since I had established an online cartoon website, www.TheDrakingPoint.com, and it has been a trip to say the least. And since the launch of this wonderful gem “Parcbench” (which is destined for the stars), Kellen, my friend, Parcbench co-founder and longtime fan of my work, asked me to write an article on the “craft” of cartooning…a request which I had not really entertained so soon into the foray. Not enough time to reflect, but I will try.

After growing up in near Cincinnati, I became a recent graduate from UGA, with a dual degree in Microeconomics and Spanish, brushing out of the ivory halls into the rough world with the blithe sense of entitlement that deserves scholarly aplomb from every employer, commanded by important people to hire me on their devalued dollar. But au contraire to the seas parting, I ended up getting a hard-knock sales job in IT, and learned something that academia could never teach: putting a foot in people’s door—in e-mails, in person, and on my cell. In spite of the odd landing I have remained pretty pure to the faith; throughout my life, I had always remained interested in policy, Western History, war, faith, and technology…so politics were only a natural extension thereto. Oddly, I am illiterate and apathetic when it comes to sports, and that says a lot coming from Bulldog territory. I cannot tell you what a Hail Mary is, but my current employer is undertaking efforts to change this. I just never cared.

Throughout college, I was disenchanted with the notion that so many creative movements in the world were harmful, leftist agitprop. Hollywood, Comedy Central, and comics all seemed to pile on the collective unconscious anthill that Republicans are Lord Vader. We had no crass or snarky illustrations of our beliefs in the MSM stream of consciousness. And this despite the fact that there is so much to mock about Liberals! Through grueling months of answering phones and eating microwave meals, I scraped up $1,300 and bought a high-end laptop + Adobe CS3 for yet another cool grand.  I then partially built a site, co-designed it with my brother, and had the more complex features coded by Boxkite Media in Athens. Shortly after that, I purchased a 200 dollar 3 in 1 HP unit. All things considered, one should be willing to throw down about $3,000 in dough to see through the foundation and maintenance of a visual website…and not to mention untold hours of otherwise lucrative ventures. I give alms to the Revolution. I haven’t collected any yet, though.

My influences are many, but I was spellbound by the comic book art of Frank Frazetta in his Conan the Barbarian depiction, which reinvigorated the character inside and out. My youngest fascination was Gary Larson’s “The Far Side,” a whimsical and absurdist depiction of life with hokey Canuck humor. In 9th grade, I had a day-long career shadowing of the AJC’s own Mike Luckovich, Editorial Cartoonist. Glancing in the rear view mirror, I think he would be appalled at the fact that he unknowingly empowered someone to the right of Reagan and to the left of God, But George Lucas will be the first to note that all heroes are created by their nemesis. Now being a computer geek, which pretty much amounts to living my own life vicariously through…well… myself, my first semester of college got me hooked on PennyArcade, a vulgar online techie strip, whose styles I sometimes mimic with sequential frames and smooth Photoshop veneer. So in homage to the ecclesiastical truism of there being nothing new under the sun, I amalgamated many influences, combining Frazetta’s endless controversy plus his anatomical appreciation for the female form with the titular similarity of The Draking Point>>  to The Far Side, both of which indicate a form of extremity (a side that is far, a breaking point). In fact, my mom actually came up with the title, and while I know she is very hokey in what she believes to be funny, I figured it was like Disney Land…so lame for the young crowds that it’s actually cool. The sequential framing and layout with plush objects and backgrounds betrays my penchant for the smooth-lined sarcasm of other online strips.

Note if you will that stories, anecdotes, and debate cannot always be contained in a subject matter so back-and-forth in nature by simply boxing it all into one frame. Some folks disagree, and I disagree with them in turn. They ask “Gee, Drake…why not fit it all into one cube?” I kindly reply about the differences in style, animation, and a more youthful audience, and sometimes I yearn to tell them to stack their own 3k and start a competing web presence, or just hang out at The People’s Cube, where everything fits in the box. Now and again, they ask me to draw something they want, like an elephant kicking a donkey or Pelosi setting the Statue of Liberty on fire…whatever. Some people have a prosaic sense of humor. But that notwithstanding, some viewers and fans assume you don’t already have an endless queue of pre-made concepts; some furnished concepts by followers seeking no credit at all. And I did not mention the full-time job. But don’t get me wrong. I love my readers dearly, even that contrarian Matthew Cole on Facebook. I even had a younger kid humble me by sending an e-mail describing me as his hero, which melted my heart at the idea, and it spurred me to reply posthaste (I like the word posthaste).

Lastly, I get dozens of requests to reveal my likeness aside from the tired icon to the left.  All you really need to know about me is in my profile on Facebook and my website about page, but I suspect that there is an instinctual drive to put a name to a face. I cannot fault you there. Drawing my PR inspiration from an online flash cartoon called OddTodd, it was such that Kyle, Cooper, and I came to the agreement on concealing my identity to amplify my masculine mystique, and I must attest to its effectiveness as most of the overtures are conservative women telling me they are singles living in the Metro Atlanta area. The remaining overtures, you ask? Oh, they were all log-cabin Republicans who prefer free markets for the sake of shopping.  Whenever a woman online is asking for my mugshot, for some reason, I think of Delilah interrogating Samson and I refrain, gladder still that all my escaped photos were interdicted. Twin pillars don’t fall on a shaved head. On a side note, I am way too broke to afford a girlfriend, and have the emotional IQ of a 9-year old Cub Scout, rendering my understanding of females darned near ineffable beyond the classic “1 Million BC” poster of Raquel Welch in tight mammoth hide. Sigh. My paradigms have been set. But if it is that important to you, yes, I do resemble the icon that I have never bothered to change. So there. I’m boring.

My artistic process is as follows:

1.    Come up with a weekly issue. That isn’t hard.
2.    Brew a pot of coffee.
3.    Storyboard your cartoon, either one frame or many. Plan in advance the text and the amount of space it takes up. Create text blurbs in illustrator and save them for later. Repeat the quips to yourself and make sure they sound witty. Draw basic outlines of object/character placement.
4.    Draw people and objects in pen/ink on the light table. Then scan them into Photoshop to clean up. Be extra careful when drawing minorities (I am not kidding). Create background and smooth objects, sun, clouds, buildings in Illustrator.
5.    Integrate all separate pieces into one huge PS frame.
6.    Partition each square off by drawing white lines. Flatten, save, and upload.

See? Cartooning is fun and easy! I generally leave them up for a week so everyone can see them. The rest of it comes down to being well read in World History, US history, current events, and literary classics. The Holy Bible, Plato, Dante, Miguel de Cervantes, Locke, Sun Tzu, Machiavelli, Livy, Tacitus, Josephus, Marcus Aurelius, Frank Herbert, Orson Scott Card, Tolkien, Shakespeare…they all adorn my bookshelf. One needs to know the music and trends of earlier decades, referring back to things that were once funny, and other rare obscurities of the American experience. I take what I believe seriously, not myself. And I would probably be the type to crack jokes on my honeymoon night. You have to be self-deprecating in this business, and for those who would make fun of you, you have to beat them to the punch by doing it yourself.
       
My future plans entail becoming an online resource for other bloggers and sites. I have built-in coding to embed an image on your site, and you can set it to refresh whenever I post something new. Given that I am bilingual, I thought about capturing the Latino demographic by launching a version of my site in Spanish. That said, I can’t say how existing users would react to that expansion, in light of the nationalist sitespeak indigenous to The Draking Point >>.

I don’t know where this whole thing will lead. I hope to become widely syndicated, but I fear being tamed by editors, with my ideas delineated into the corners of a paycheck...or worse yet, just remaining obscure. The best things in life are free, and whacking the opposition with my pen is such an urgent and real crusade that I will never stop, assuming I don’t die or get sent to prison.

All and all, it beats a third job. >>