As all y'all probably are well aware, I am a hilarious genius. All cartoonists are hilarious geniuses; we have to be! Well, half the time anyway- the other half we spend hating ourselves and overcompensating for our inadequacies. It's a storied and well-documented tradition dating back to the ...

Hello again!

I'm gonna continue for the next two or three weeks about “The Comedy Toolbox” approach to comedy structure.

There is quite a bit of crossover between this method and other methods you've heard of. But that's probably a good thing; there should be some similarity ...

Howdy!

I was going to go over the structure of a comedy story, based on the fine book “The Comic Toolbox” by Jason Voorhees.

If you have the interest, I can go into the structure outlined by Jason; he lays out a few different options that you may find useful ...

Welcome back, friends! Today we're gonna talk about deadlines!

When I took over this here Friday blog from my (much more capable) predecessor, I asked Oz, I says, “Oz- I can write whatever I want to, huh?” And he may or may not have actually greenlighted that but if ...

Last week I looked at a theory of the “comedy premise” that has to do with crossing the mundane with the unusual.

Here's that post:

http://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2017/apr/12/comedy-part-one-the-premise/

This week: Creating Comedic Characters!

Using the same principle as the “premise” creation, we can ...

From the Best of Banes Collection…

CHARACTER SHAPES

I've never consciously designed characters this way, but I recently remembered hearing about this notion some time ago, on the dvd special features for an animated movie or show. I don't remember which one.
Characters derived from basic shapes can ...

But and Therefore

I'm a fan of user-friendly, practical advice on things, especially writing. It's why I dig the Banes Method (it's not my method; it's just named after me).

Anyway, I came upon some dandy advice from Trey Parker and Matt Stone of South Park ...

A Meme is a comic, really. Pictures and words put together to get some kind of point across.

It's a fascinating phenomenon. I'm tempted to try to explain what they are, but the meme up top has reminded me not to attempt that.

Seeing them, whether I understand ...

Image by Gunwallace, from Utterly Rucked, found here on the Utterly Drunk Duck!

Photocomics

My somewhat undisciplined, regularly wandering mind went, awhile back, to the possibility of doing photocomics instead of drawn ones.

Of course, my fanciful thoughts hit a wall after realizing the amount of WORK that goes into ...

LISTEN!

Myths and legends are often recycled and reused, but why would you adapt them to the modern day? This idea came to us from Tantz Aerine and her great news posts on the last two Saturdays. Read those if you want a good perspective on the idea! Ptface, Tantz ...