Ahoy maties!

[omer_oly_olson]

I have been drawing since I was knee-high to a grasshopper and I am currently 67 years old. I didn't find out until I was a 17 year old US Navy apprentice that I was color-blind. I drew gag cartoons for my friends for attention because I am sort of an introvert. I do enjoy making people laugh but I can't tell a joke without forgetting the punch line. In 1971 during summer break between college quarters, my wife let me be the house husband and care for our 3 kids and I drew ink and water color 11" X 14" cartoons in spare time?!! I submitted them to Playboy and got a rejection slip. I was told they weren't in the right format but that didn't deter me. I just got too busy as a father, homeowner, and mechanical drafter-designer, losing the desire to draw creatively for a while. The creative urge came back to me about a year ago and I have been busy drawing for my own and grandkid's amusement since. It helped to discover I didn't want to do gag cartoons except on my own terms and style. I like to draw funny situations with lots of detail, where 2 or 3 incidents are happening at once. I attempt to draw well enough that there is no need of a caption to explain what is going on. I also enjoy to insert small things the viewer may see after looking at the cartoon 2 or 3 times and be surprised he missed it earlier. I screw up at least 1 or 2 things in every one of my cartoons so far, but I can see slight improvement with each new one I do. I plan to retire at around 70 and by that time I hope to be good enough to put cartoons on a web site and sell prints of them instead of giving them away. I saved in mutual funds and saving plans, but spent the funds trying to survive every time I got laid off from an engineering project do to lack of work or funds dried up. My cartoons will be a supplement to social security and small pensions my wife and I will have. During my working life I have held over 35 jobs lasting longer than 6 months, so I should have plenty of material to draw upon for subject matter due to all the dopes I have met and worked with. I have a recent cartoon that I converted from a PDF scanned image to a jpeg. I don't want to download it unless I know it won't crash the web site. It is a 11" X 14" ink and water color cartoon with 7059 X 5258 pixels and 9.48 Mbytes. I am happy to be aboard this fine vessel. No I am not a mariner, just a fan of the Seattle Mariners professional baseball team. I live in a high desert (elev 500') in eastern Washington in a town named Eltopia, originally called Hell-to-pay by the railroad.

[Simon Lake]

Hello omer, and a very warm welcome to you! I also used to love drawing in the style you describe and as a kid was a huge fan of Giles http://www.giles-cartoons.co.uk/ A lot of this spontaneous creativity has gone out the window in my pursuit of establishing a Client base that I basically have to answer to and complete briefs in the manner they dictate. It's a shame that the fun element has really suffered as a result of this but I've basically made my bed so. I've also had endless rejections but keep plodding on and have to date had a very modest success rate. Playboy is a particularly elitist and difficult publication to infiltrate. I'm not saying I don't actually enjoy it anymore, but it's just become more of a chore at times. Having said this, you can't beat getting your teeth into a good project and putting your own personal touch to it. AND GETTING PAID FOR IT!

I am registered as Self- Employed and trade under the name of Funny Business (trying to) but it's tough. Somehow though, I always remain positive as I'm still convinced this is my niche and I'm gonna die trying. I'm concentrating mainly on the Freelance sites to get a fair amount of feedback and build a reputation that will carry me over to my old age and then I can relax and maybe devise a strip and do things the way I want. But Rome wasn't built in a day and all that.

There shouldn't be any problem at all with that cartoon you have to download. If you experience any difficulty, you may want to just make the resolution 72 dpi. We'd love to see it! It sounds to me like you have a very fair game- plan.

[epmonroe]

So...you're a house-husband doing porn cartoons, eh? LMAO!

"I have held over 35 jobs lasting longer than 6 months,"
My soul mate!!! :-)

I really enjoyed your post, omer. Look forward to seeing your work.

PS: I spent 3+ hours last night just trying to put a Facebook "Like'' button on my site. Thought I was going to shoot myself!

[DaD O Matic]

Welcome Omer! I also just started drawing again myself. Got myself a little webcomic blog, nothing fancy but it lets me post all over the world. Folks here are real nice and can help answer any questions you might have. Holla! DaD o Matic!

[omer_oly_olson]

Thanks for the posts, Simon, e p monroe, and DaD o Matic. I looked at your web sites and you guys can draw, I'll say that! I started a 11" X 14" cartoon for a old high school buddy that just loves skeet shooting. I draw in that area format and I am trying to make the main characters look like my buddy and former Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin. She hunts in Alaska and I saw her show on Discovery channel doing some Trap Shooting. I have never done any caricature cartooning and at that format size, a few lines really make a difference in how the face looks, especially a celebrity. Have any of you run across that problem? Do you just do the best you can. She was the subject of the Doonesbury comic in the Sunday paper and Gary Trudeau did not do her justice. I know he is very liberal and she conservative, but she resembled a witch with glasses in his strip. She is a very attractive woman, so I says, draw em like you see em!.

[Leah-Admin]

Hi again Omer

This site
http://www.shrinkpictures.com/

is brilliant for resizing pictures. I use it all the time now for mine. I find it the simplest route!! I have lots of oversized images on this forum but not hence forth...

So, show us what you've got!

Leah