Andertoons Cartoon Blog

Look Who's Talking

I like to track Andertoons on Technorati to see who's talking about me. Some recent finds:

Confident Writing - A writing coach blogs about adding my widget. I like this idea for writers:

If you had to boil your writing down to the length of a cartoon caption - what would you still want to say?

I can't help but think of big important books boiled down to a funny caption. Anyone want to start?

Bibsonomy bookmark by avivamagnolia - Far as I can tell a sort of del.icio.us type of social bookmarking thing. Anyway, the blurb about my blog is funny:

Odd little blog; noodlish, pasty man of the office plays a starring roll. Yes, he's bald. With a combover. And no, he doesn't have a lot of melanin. His shirts are white. His ties are thin and dark. He's perpetually puzzled, in a pale sort of way.

Um... OK.

The Cartoon Blog - Dave Walker's great blog links to my gag writing post:

People always ask ‘Where do you get your ideas from?’ Cartoonist Mark Anderson guides us through his thought processes.

When I wrote that blog I had no idea it would be so well received.

BTW, speaking of, well, speaking, I've recently purchased a camera mount to clamp onto my drawing table. Stay tuned for more voiced-over video of me sketching, inking, etc...

Technorati Tags: andertoons, blogging, blogs, web2.0

Must... Write... Blog! (Gasp!)

One of the things my wife and I agreed on when I became a stay-at-home dad/cartoonist was that, obviously, the kids are job one. Cartooning is important, but the kids come first.

And sometimes they come first for a good long stretch.

My son, having been bribed by Legos, and the promise of Legos to come, seems to finally have had his potty epiphany. (Hooray!!!)

And my daughter, curiously strong tempered for not being the redhead of the two, is in the throes of a changing nap schedule, being weaned off the bottle, and moving into table foods.

Of course cartooning soldiers on; I sold to Forbes, tended to website commerce, and finished a custom cartoon under a tight deadline.

All of which left no time for blogging.

Normally I'm able to juggle everything and still have time for at least a daily communiqué, but this week... Whew!

Anyway, long story short, next week should allow for more chatter from yours truly. See you on Monday.

Technorati Tags: andertoons, blogging, blogs, cartooning, cartoonists, cartoons, family

Chicagoland Cartoonists Cabal - May 2nd 7:00

Just a heads up, the ever-growing CCC is meeting again May 2nd! Be there, or have four equal sides set at right angles!

Technorati Tags: andertoons, cabal, cartooning, cartoonists, cartoons, Chicago

ClimberBot2

Another attempt at a robot that can crawl over one of my Calvin & Hobbes books.

It didn't go well.

Technorati Tags: andertoons, lego, robots

Andertoons Speaks!

Here's a little vid I put together this weekend of me coloring a cartoon for a greeting card.

As an added bonus, I've added an audio track of me blathering on about what I'm doing.

Enjoy my nasal ramblings!

Technorati Tags: andertoons, cartooning, cartoonists, cartoons, greeting cards, video

When I Grow Up...

...I want to be like J.D. King.

Were I better educated I'd be to describe it better than classic Fisher-Price little people meets Cartoon Modern meets Staake.

You should go look and come up with something better.

Technorati Tags: illustration

It's All Just A Popularity Comic

There's an interesting look at webcomics and popularity over at Talk About Comics.

There's mention of a Columbia University study that just fascinates me. Apparently there's this experiment...

...using different groups of students who were asked to rate pop and rock music by unknown bands.

Some groups of students were unable to see the popularity (among other participants in the study) of the songs they were being asked to rate.

Other groups of students were able to see the popularity and rankings that the other students within their own groups had given each song — though each group was in a hermetically sealed “world,” with no information about the rankings in the other groups.

If all things were equal, if popularity was solely a function of the quality and likeability of the songs themselves, then the results in each group would have looked similar — maybe not exactly the same, but very similar.

But they weren’t. Not even close.

Go. Read. Now.

Technorati Tags: andertoons, cartooning, cartoonists, cartoons, comics

ClimberBot1

I've been working with my Lego robotics stuff to build a climbing robot.

I picked up some crawler tracks from another Lego set, and after a bit of design and effort, here's the results (set to music no less):

OK, some success on smaller items, but you get over an inch or so and it has some difficulties.

I tried having it back up and approach the obstacle at an angle, which sort of worked, but the rear tire is a problem, and the width of the bot means it can sort of beach itself easily.

I'm thinking of changing the track/wheel configuration, moving the weight of the brain thingy up front to allow for more traction, and maybe even a little arm underneath to give it a boost when needed.

I'll post another vid when the next one's finished.

Technorati Tags: andertoons, lego, robots

Spider-Bun (Yeah... That'd Be Greeaat...)

You gotta love Angry Alien's bunny-pics.

Don't miss the latest – Spider-Man 1 & 2, just in time for 3's release!

Also, check out the Office Space one.

Enjoy!

Technorati Tags: animation, cartooning, cartoonists, cartoons, Flash, movies

Del.icio.us Andertoons

OK, I've been sort of in an out of this Web 2.0 thing; there's some stuff that makes sense, and then there's a lot that seems cool but mostly useless.

Del.icio.us until recently sort of fell in the middle for me. OK, it's nice to have all my bookmarks on the web all tagged up and such, but the whole social aspect of it? Meh...

Long story short, I've recently ditched Safari for Firefox, found Google's bookmark syncing wanting, and ran across a new plug-in for Firefox that makes del.icio.us a breeze.

So what, you say? Well, now that I've got all of my bookmarks tagged and sorted (hooray for meaningless organization!), I've added my del.icio.us tag cloud to the left sidebar (toward the bottom).

I have no idea if anyone will find this useful or interesting, but the posts further down were getting lonely.

So, enjoy. Or not. I dunno... Whatever.

Technorati Tags: andertoons, blogging, del.icio.us, web2.0