Filed under: How to be an Editorial Cartoonist | Tags: How to be an Editorial Cartoonist, Stahler
Todays lesson is a follow-up on yesterdays lesson on how you too can be a cartoonist with out really trying. Today we’re going to learn from one well-paid, syndicate, award-winning cartoonist; Jeff Stahler.
Yesterday we learned how you can rip off Hollywood or Cnn when realise you don’t have a creative bone in your body. For those of you who are so insipid that you can’t even make a cartoon out of a movie poster we have the following technique. We’re going to call it the ‘Stahler’ because he does it more than anybody else but, keep in mind, every cartoonist on the planet does this, repeatedly. And they all hate it with a passion.
The idea is simple. If you can’t come up with an idea about a news story, just draw a cartoon of people reacting to the news. Most often this cartoon will be of two people, husband and wife, sipping coffee at the breakfast table reacting the newspaper in their hands. The cartoonist must draw the newspaper. No one knows for sure why, but it is a rule that is followed religiously. Subtle variations include: two people at a cafe; two people in front of the TV (in this instance the cartoonist must draw the remote control. Don’t ask why, just do it. It’s a rule.); two people reading a sign and so forth.
This approach forgoes any deep thinking that one would have to do to come up with something creative like, oh I don’t know, an actual metaphor. All one has to do is recreate his breakfast and call it a day!
All of these cartoons were done by Jeff Stahler within the past month. Our first cartoon is a perfect example of the ‘Stahler’. Take note of the easy to read headline for the reader who is, presumably, totally ignorant of recent news. Also note the coffee mug and the striking resemblance that the male figure bears to the cartoonist. He was so lazy that day he didn’t even bother to make up a stranger; he just drew himself.
Subtle variations on the ‘Stahler’ are below. There’s little thinking going on, just two people making a funny. There is no remote control in this cartoon but the man is holding a bowl of popcorn which is a substitution that is allowed as long as it is not a repeat offender.
There he is again! That’s the cartoonist in his own cartoon reacting to the show he watched with his wife the night before. Something tells me that SHE is the one who came up with the idea.
He’s really mixing it up in this one. We have both a TV and a newspaper. This newspaper serves the purpose of telling the reader what the joke is about because the cartoonist hasn’t thought of another way to do it. Soon cartoonist will resort to small captions that explain the purpose and punchline of a joke so that no thought is required on the part of the reader. Oh, wait.
Bigger TV, same cartoon.
This last one is a doozy. If you think this is a familiar cartoon, intrepid reader, you just might be right. It bears a striking resemblance to the first cartoon in this post. That’s right if you get desperate enough, you can do a ‘Stahler’ and plagiarise yourself.
I’ve overlaid the two cartoons so we can have a comparison (the red lines are the first cartoon, blue lines are the second). It appears that most of the cartoon was simply redrawn, so at least he didn’t trace himself, but the lines on his wife look suspicious. In either case, he was so short on ideas he took a cartoon that he did LESS THAN A MONTH AGO, changed the text and clocked in for a full days work. What? Has drawing yourself become too time consuming that you have to borrow a cartoon from yourself? Most cartoonists wait at least a quarter before they start to rehash their old ideas, but one month is pushing it. At least he remembered the mug
Well, dear reader, I hope this has been informative. For those of you who can’t draw, just focus on practicing a few things. Draw yourself, a mug, a newspaper, a TV and your significant other and you too can be a successful cartoonist!
Filed under: How to be an Editorial Cartoonist | Tags: Benson, darcy, hobert, horsey, huffaker, matson, ramirez, trever
Today is your lucky day. I am going to teach you the secrets that have kept political cartoonists in their high and loft positions for decades while you, with infinitely more wisdom and political insight, are doomed to life your life without the prestige, wealth and hot trophy wives that we cartoonists have.
Lesson one: The scrambled egg.
Not a creative person? Can’t think up any new ideas? Don’t worry that never held Jeff Koterba back! Here’s how you too can make a cartoon out of nothing.
Step one: Go to Cnn.com and see what the biggest story of the day is- but it can’t have anything to do with politics.
Take that story and mix it up, don’t hold back now. You can add a politician or even a country. You don’t need an opinion just use this tired formula like these cartoonists:
Funny, Aislin but not too original. This one was used by several other cartoonists but I’m too lazy to find them now.
John Trever might have been the only cartoonist to do a satellite cartoon that didn’t have anything to do with John McCain. It still doesn’t count as being creative though.
Steve Benson, on the other hand, is the only person in the country who thinks that there was any meat behind the New York Times story.
If you’re so ignorant of the news that you can’t come up with something from Cnn you can always rely on Hollywood to do the creative work for you. Just take any movie poster and put a politician in it. See, now you’re a cartoonist!
R.J. Matson has this down pat. He usually beats everybody to the punch. Get it? John McCain- old men? Just wait till May. Every stinkin’ cartoonist in the country will be doing Ironman cartoons. But R.J. will probably be the first.
Jeff Darcy used this trick too. But his old men were Cuban. Very original. And the ‘passing the cigar’ is such a brilliant idea I think only half of the cartoonists in the country did that 5 days ago. See, he took a bunch of other peoples ideas, jumbled them together, and WHAM! We call it exercising our first amendment rights.
If you live in Boston you can’t make fun of socialists so Hobert when for McCain. Oh yea, he’s old.
David Horsey thinks John McCain is old too. Very original.
Poor, old Sandy. He is so out of touch with what’s on the zeitgest that he had to use a movie that was made TWO YEARS AGO. If you are going to use a tired formula you should at least try to keep it current. And what’s with the thought bubbles trailing off the left…. is this a dream? Did Ralph Nader dream hiself a snake winning an Oscar for an outdated reference to pop-culture? That’s deep, Sandy, really deep.
Sigh. It must have been a very bleak day for Mike Ramirez to have to reach all the way back to Titanic to come up with this cartoon. Just so you know, nobody cares about Dicaprio anymore. I know you would like to focus on a time when you were actually relevant in the cartooning world but but it’s time to let to turn off Celine Dion and try something new.
