Memories of Black and White days.

The two cartoons below were 'spot' illos which appeared in TravelWeek during 1993.

The first ran with an article presaging appointment of Bronwyn Bishop as Minister for Tourism and Aviation should John Hewson succeed in leading a Coalition government after the federal election of that year. As I recall, the tourism industry absorbed the news fairly calmly, but the prospect spooked the flying folk a bit. Got to hand it to the lady though. The Hewson ascendancy never happened ... but, dear Bronwyn remains an elected member of parliament as I write this! Minister for longevity in the next Coalition government?

The second 'toon illustrated a story about a bitter stoush going on between Qantas and the then Northwest Airlines (a U.S. flag-carrier) over trans-pacific traffic marketing. It couldn't have been all that 'hot' though. That year I was able to safely travel to/from San Francisco on a 2 or 3 week holiday.

Symbols as caricature substitutes

Earlier today on another blogsite, I answered a question about what cartoonists do when required to caricature a newly emerging public figure who is attractively good looking with no large nose, ears, or other visible appendages to exaggerate ala Julia Gillard  and/or Tony Abbott et.al.

In passing, I mentioned that some 'toonists who cannot immediately depict innate blandness or other lack of unique identifiable features in a person, sometimes employ symbols to lampoon the celebrity until some more tangible aspect of their make-up materializes. Now and again those symbols 'stick' and are adopted by the editorial cartooning community at large.

Today's 'toon is an attempt to illustrate the above point. Hopefully, quickly identifiable by Queenslanders, if not viewers in other Australian states?

Kerry dancing?

As far as I'm concerned ... the way in which political, business and religious leaders are besotted with keeping secrets from either the people they are supposed to be serving, their market at large or doctrinal adherents, is largely not only stupid ... but in many cases, simply driven by self-interest.
The fact that much of the material they gather and protect is unconscionable, unconstitutional and/or, out-right criminal, is perhaps the reason so many whistle-blowers are attracted to ferreting-out the explosive stuff to let the public know what the scoundrels are up to.

For instance ... give me one good reason why 'cabinet papers' are constrained from publication for something like 30 years after the decisions therein have been taken. If it was good news, or something to be proud of ... politicians would be shouting it from the roof tops.

Soooo ....?

Changing horses ... again!

I guess poor Julia now knows how Kev. felt when he was the sacrificial lamb three years ago. First mistake was going into federal politics in the first place. Surely, in her union work, she must've had some inkling of the snake-pit she was entering? Whatever, second error was becoming putty in the hands of the so-called 'face-less' people dictating party affairs (quite badly IMO). Lastly, the lady seemed to change her personality once enshrouded in the august cloak of PM. In her earlier front bench guise, she impressed me with her fiery pursuit of debate without losing a sense of logic or knowledge of what she was talking about. All that was lost in a stilted manner of speech which was mostly neither forceful nor convincing. Strangely, there was a flash of the old Julia in her concession speech last night.Too late babe!

Otherwise, I think JG was quite effective in what she was able to achieve in a terrifyingly difficult time of 'hung' parliament. And, of course, nobody else can ever be the 'first female Prime Minister of Australia' which is one element of fame that she can be very proud and deserving of.

Not 'Kevin from heaven' or the 'mad Monk' leading(?) the other mob can assume that mantle.  

A stitch in time?

Tiresome, but slightly amusing to cartoonists. Now the federal opposition aparently have nothing better on their mind but to pour more derisive scorn on the PM because her leisure-time hobby of knitting has been exposed by the Women's Weekly!

Do these fools think I and/or the rest of the electorate take knitting into account when voting in federal elections?! If they want me to think of them as mindless power-hungry morons ... well, Hey! Good work chaps.

The 'Light on the Sill'?

Why not open the window ... the heat of infighting would soon dissipate in the zero temperatures we've been experiencing in southern OZ recently.

Super moon setting?

I missed viewing the 'super moon' rising last night because I'm a squib (the sky was perfectly clear and ideal for viewing astronomical phenomena ... but it was bone-chillingly cold at ground level). Getting up at dawn this morning to see it set would've been futile as well. Greater Melbourne was shrouded in a pea-souper fog until nearly mid-day!

Sooo ... for those who saw the unusual event, lucky you.

Meanwhile, I couldn't miss the parallel between the super moon and current political games in Canberra.

Copyright

Copyright law in Australia is pretty straight forward. If you produce an original piece of artwork, basically all rights remain with the artist unless surrendered in writing to another owner. You don't even have to attach the usual © symbol to establish ownership. Generally, freelance cartoonists never relinquish their rights to anyone without contractural benefit ... and, wont deal with publishers who demand ownership of copyright as part of 'payment for use'.

However, it is a fact of life that people consider cartoons as trivialities which are worthless except for (hopefully) an instant, but fleeting, laughter hit. They feel free to lift anything that takes their fancy for inclusion in secondary publications (newsletters etc.) with nary a thought for the welfare of the (perhaps) struggling artist ... a condition in which sadly, most wannabe cartoonists find themselves.
Remarkably, outright theft for gain only touched me once (that I know of) in a career spanning amost 30 years.

In 1989, with the prospect of soon going 'full-time' as a cartoonist, I responded to a well known NSW publisher's advert seeking submission of cartoons to illustrate a humorous book written by a former marriage celebrant and tentatively titled 'Wedding Daze'. I sent off an A4 page of rough samples together with a letter outlining fees I would require if selected for the job. No reply. Follow-up enquiries ... same result. I forgot about the project and moved on.

A year or so later I was in Sydney with my son. Whilst browsing through the shelves of a shop specialising in comic publications, I came across ... you guessed it ... a remaindered copy of 'Wedding Daze'! Not only was it replete with cartoons ripped off from many other cartoonists, my roughs were ON THE BACK cover! I took it up with the ACA (cartoonist's association) only to learn that they had much earlier pursued the publishing editor over a problem with their magazine production only to find that he had apparently done a bolt just ahead of angry creditors (perhaps including the author(?) whose name escapes me) and perhaps, the cops ... and, un-heard of since.

I've been very wary of publishers I don't know ever after! Whatever, I thought that, as I still own the copyright over those ancient cartoons, I might start a series of showing them in the blog from time to time. They are exactly as originally submitted, except that I have added background colour to obviate the otherwise boring black and white.

Enjoy.

Boy driver

In Queensland, police have pulled over a car because it was travelling at night without lights. No wonder. It was being driven by a 7 year old boy! Allegedly, a middle-aged male was also in the car occupying a passenger seat for reasons which are to be examined by the courts ... so, enough said.

Unless the child is extraordinarily large for his age, I can't imagine how he could see the road ahead above the dash-board ... let alone wonder whether his legs were long enough to enable his feet to reach the pedal controls.

The mind boggles!

The A 'n' Z of down-sizing by off-shoring

Having just finished gloating about their record half-year profits, ANZ nabobs are now reading memos about what a great idea it might be to send 590 local jobs off-shore.

That's capitalism for you folks!

Is Holden about to be 'Olden'?

Earlier this week the management of GMH suggested that workers could help save the industry by considering voluntary wage cuts. Today, in the Age 'letters to the editor' column one writer asks if Holden management mentioned setting an example by cutting their own salaries.

Good question.

Footy louts

It seems that almost every time I pick-up a newspaper these days, I don't have to start at the back-end to learn what is currently news-worthy in the Oz realm of football codes. Drink-driven escapades, alleged illicit drug use, assaults (and potentially worse) etc. etc.

It's not football as I knew it Jim.

ALP 'rock' in ages past?

According to SkyNews, ALP heavy-weight Peter Beattie has suggested that Bob Hawke be approached to use his influence in 'short-circuiting' the internecine Labor leadership tussle between Julia Gillard and Kevin Rudd.

No doubt 'RJ' used to be good at that sort of thing ... but, there was the Hawke-Keating controversy playing in the back-ground for a good portion of his own term as Prime Minister ... so, who knows?

One thing is certain. The clock will not stop while this crazy situation is allowed to continue bubbling along on the back-burner.

They're nuts, the lot of 'em.

Polie polling.

Apparently, politicians of all shades eat and drink polling results as though they live or die (figuratively), on whether the results at any particular time are considered 'good' or 'bad'. Personally, I couldn't care less about them ... other than to muse about their veracity, since I have never been asked to participate in any of the political variety during my 78+ years of life to date.

How does one qualify for selection as a participant, I wonder?

More early '90s stuff

Self-evidently, this appeared in Travel Week's first issue of 1994. Hand-drawn and lettered on art board using a Rotring Art Pen,  loaded with FW india ink. The colouring was accomplished with a combo of brushes and saturated cotton balls charged with waterproof coloured inks.

In more trouble than the early Sattlers

Serves the idiot right! I hope smart mouthed Howard Sattler has learned a valuable lesson ... though, I doubt it. Most of these super-ego 'Shock-Jocks' have the hide of a Rhinoceros, and a pea-brain to go with it.

And, the crumbs who employ them are not far behind IMO.

New ADF storm.

There's something inadequately systemic about the management of Australia's armed forces. The current furore over unacceptable behaviour among male members of the forces is just another of many over the past few years. In the aftermath of each event we hear the military and political nabobs vowing to stamp out the low-life activities perpetrated by mainly blokes in uniform ... but, it just keeps happening.

Back in the 1950s, I was obliged by the then government to spend a considerable amount of my time over 3 or 4 years training to do soldierly things should it ever become necessary to help defend the country in a state of war during my life-time. At the time, I considered the experience very worth-while and, I remember practically everything I was taught during the full-time and part-time stints under the control of the military. The discipline inherent in the training was of particular value in later life and high-lighted what a slob I had been before being drafted. The salient down-side of the experience was to learn how excrutiatingly boring regimented lifestyle can be when there's nothing happening to utilize the skills and attitudes inculcated by stern teaching. After my initial 98 days of full-time induction training, I was approached by senior army staff offering me the opportunity to undertake officer training at one of the well-known military colleges. I refused, because I had already formed an opinion that the management style of armed services officials was too firmly based on the narrow arbitrary dictum "yes sir, no sir, three bags full sir!" for me to ever fit in to the 'permanent' military culture.

I reckon that probably remains the case in today's military force structures and, the current disciplinary problems stem from miltary minds which cannot think 'out-side of the box' to engineer a lasting solution to their current woes.

Targetting TARGET?

Of course, the knee-jerk reaction of big business management in Australia seems always to slash away at staff numbers immediately a company hits hard times. Well, not always. TARGET has apparently been in some bother for quite a while. The owners previously appointed a 'new-broom' management to stem the rate of decline in the enterprise compared with other horses in the same stable (eg, Coles, K-mart). Apparently, their remedy was to hire MORE staff in marketing and other support roles, thus making the situation worse!

Since that effort failed miserably, I wonder if the brainstorms who engineered the first abortive attempt to steady the ship, are among the 260 set adrift by the parent company a day or so ago?

The little shop that died.

Earlier this year our little local shop closed. It has been on the market since January ... obviously no punters around, so it's now available for lease or rental 'very cheap'. Don't think there's going to be a stampede to take up the new offer(?)

Strangely, though the mixed business and I have shared this urban enclave for 40 years ... I don't think I've ever really noticed the entire name of the shop, which has adorned  the building since day one. As you will see from today's cartoon representation, the shop is actually attached to the street frontage end of an 'L' shaped house. The base of the 'L' runs parallel to the road, but on the down-side of a concreted customer car-park with access to the shop through a side door. The name of the establishment is painted on a cantilevered awning around the side and facia of the shop thus ... ONE STOP - SHOP in large white letters on a pale blue background (very poor graphic design awareness there if I may say so). I always thought the name was just 'SHOP' (which also bemused me a little, since it was plainly obvious what the building was supposed to be). The illusion probably can be attributed to the fact that the few times I used it over the years, always involved entering from the 'blind' side after the short walk from home only a hundred or so metres down the road ... and, never by car using the park.

Whatever, I DID notice the full sign yesterday ... which led me to leveraging some humour from an otherwise sad situation.

News from the playground

Rumours, rumours ...

Last gasp destination

Judging by the number of discarded plain label ciggy packets around my suburb ... either the number of smokers has not diminished much, or chucking the packets on the ground is some sort of sick 'badge of courage' for people who know the possible consequences of continued tobacco use?

Pre- 1997 Editorial cartoons

Here's another of the traditional style 'toons published in TravelWeek prior to adoption of computer processing during 1997. Titled Babes in the Woods, this one dealt with the springing of 'ticket-less travel' on Australian travel agents ... many of whom were hardly equipped to take on internet sales at such short notice.

It was also my first attempt to incorporate 'montage' in a commercial cartoon. No one was more surprised than me when it turned-out to be successful.

Hospital health.

Hospitals ... heal thyselves! Keeping people AWAY from hospitals to protect their health is unacceptable in this day and age ... surely?!

The F.I.F.O. mining crowd?

Clive Palmer called a morning press conference during a planned whistle stop in Melbourne within the last week. He held it in a hangar at Melbourne airport! Clips from the fly-by visit didn't give any clue to how many 'scribes' (or anyone else for that matter) turned up for the briefing on new local candidate appointments. My guess based on the footage would be 'not many'(?)

At this stage of P.U.P.s development, one would've thought the airport is a bit remote for the purpose of political 'stumping'. In the event, perhaps a telephone box might've been more inviting to interested parties?

Very Weak response to customer complaints

Here's a little bit of tongue in cheek design to mark one of today's leading news items ... which may be Very Worrying for some readers?

The base design is not Very Well disguised. But, I hope you'll get the picture (at least a tad quicker than the people to whom it has been addressed by upset customers and other interested parties).

Hand-drawn piece.

As promised yesterday, here is the traditional 'pen 'n' ink on board' version of the first digitized cartoon I produced in 1997. As explained, it wasn't required and, in consequence this is the first time it has ever been published.

I have mourned the demise of hand-drawn cartoons ever since. Though remarkable results can be managed drawing direct to computer devices these days ... I have never been satisfied that the wonderful little nuances that could be achieved in manual drawing/painting can ever be totally replicated digitally ... by me anyway. For that reason, I often nostalgically browse thru' the cartoon 'originals' I was able to retain post-publication (prior to the IT revolution), to marvel at details I thought were mundane ... when the era of classic pen/brush on paper was a different kind of IT.

First ever digital toon output.

In response to urging from editorial staff of Travel Week magazine, I produced the following cartoon on my home computer on July 2., 1997 for delivery on disk. It was produced from scratch on an LC Mac using Freehand. It was exported in Eps format for later rasterization by the 'zine's own in-house art dept. At the time, I had my own toy version of Photoshop, but it couldn't export CMYK graphics.

The computer came with a 500meg HD but, boasted only 4mb of dynamic ram out of the box. I had pumped that up to the max. allowable (a 'whopping' 32 mb) at a cost of $1770 ... which was a fortune in '97. (Actually, dynamic ram was more valuable than GOLD!)

The result is displayed below. As a point of interest, right up to the deadline, I was not confident the transition would work. Thus, I did the same ed/ 'toon in the previously used traditional  hand-drawn and painted mode, just in case the digitized version fell at the last hurdle. I will scan a copy and post it tomorrow ... just for comparison. (Naturally, I didn't possess a capable scanner in July '97.)

BTW ... the 'toon was inspired by announcement of a (perhaps facetious) Qantas' study as to whether gambling facilities might be an appropriate addition to then extant in-flight passenger entertainment systems. At the same time, reduced opportunities for engineering apprenticeship seekers was a cyclical fact of life.

King NONG

I dare say almost everyone who watches TV in Australia knows of Eddie McGuire (or Eddie 'Everywhere' as he is nick-named). In his capacity as President of the Collingwood football club (AFL), last Friday week he was the white knight who rode in to tell the world how he would not stand idly by to allow a thirteen year-old Magpie supporter escape some form of sanction for having made a nasty racist comment to Sydney Swans' indigenous champion Adam Goodes.

Then, mid-way through last week it was Eddie himself squirming under the spot-light  for having made a similar questionable remark about Goodes on his own morning radio show! Both objectionable remarks involved association with simians. If anyone were looking for an order of magnitude to describe the events ... one would struggle to avoid nominating Eddie's King Kong reference as the bigger of the two mis-demeanours.

Adam Goodes' understandable anguish over these events apart ... I'm troubled by how anyone who has put themselves in the prominent public position Mr. McQuire occupies, could allow the albeit momentary brain-fade which resulted in his regrettable smart-arse 'King Kong' quip on a popular radio broadcast.

In my view, there's no possible excuse.

The Wizards of I.T.

I know... the above title is almost the same as the epic Parker and Hart strip. Difference is, this strip was intended to parody an actual group of I.T. wizards working for a Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology subsidiary organization named CiTRi (Corroborative Information Technology Research Institute) during 1994. While you're trying to pick your way through that title, try to picture my problem in trying to make fun of these boffins' when, at the time, I could hardly grasp the meaning of I.T. itself.

A few back-ground details. I was originally commissioned to do the comic strip by the publisher of the CiTRi group quarterly magazine. About all he told me was the phone number of their in-house Editor. That lady negotiated my fees for the task, telling me the board had decreed that the heavily technical publication needed a 'lighter' touch in the form of cartoons. She also undertook to provide me with plain-english technical information on what CiTRi was doing. When I received the info., I immediately saw a remarkable parallel between CiTRi research elements and the famous 'Alice in Wonderland' story. To this day, I have no idea what the co-incidental project names meant ... so, it would be fruitless to ask. Suffice to say it was much easier than I had initially feared. Only snag after that was in a character study where I had named the Mad Hatter 'Hacker' which they thought may not be quite appropriate. Obtaining payment for the work was not difficult ... but unique. Believe it or not, RMIT at that time had no mechanism for paying outside contractors for services not available within campus. I had to temporarily join the institute as a staff member! Didn't get a gown and mortar board though.

The only other oddity of note was the main character. It turned out to be a caricature of the CiTRi CEO, whom I had never met or seen a likeness of prior to delivering the finished strips for publication. He later commissioned me for cartoons and cover designs for another august industry magazine ... so, obviously no umbrage taken. The strips below all appeared in the first CiTri magazine after the cotract, followed by a similar number in following issues thru' 1994/5.

From the archive.

This was originally prepared as a blog offering back on Boxing Day last year. Due to a glitch on the site hosting the blog, the graphic did not appear with the text for that day. Sooo ... here they are re-united before disappearing forever among dusty files relating to times past.

"Boxing day?
By rim on 26 December 2012 - 10:55pm

After pondering the origin of Boxing day sporadically over the years ... today, I decided to consult Google for a definitive answer. There are none that can be positively labelled as the source, though some of the suggested contributions are interesting.

Today's cartoon (which will have to join others 'warehoused' pending resolution of the image posting 'glitch') seeks to illustrate some possibilities directly related to xmas day celebrations."