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How One Cartoonist's Mind Works

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About the cartoonist, T. McCracken
890 North Bayview Loop
Waldport, Oregon 97394
(541) 563-3112

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How One Cartoonist's Mind Works
by
T. McCracken
Store Cartoon 4915.
I couldn't wait until my garden was in full swing. I love fresh tomatoes. The tomatoes in the produce section? They could have been used to stone a person to death. It ought to have been a crime to sell them.
 

 

Try this yourself. While driving, instead of talking on your cell phone, look at signs and billboards and see if by substituting an antonym somewhere, or taking a concept to an extreme and absurd conclusion you can't come up with a gag. Hold a conversation with friends and pretend your knowledge of English is suddenly limited. Start taking phrases literally. If you're lucky your friends will ask if you've fallen on your head recently, because if they ask that, it means you're well on your way to becoming a cartoonist.

Ski Cartoon 4685

Looking at the world upside down is a variation on looking for opposites. And when I say look at the world upside down, I mean it literally. For instance, while waiting in a snow storm for a bus while sitting on the bench upside down (i.e., my feet were in the air and my head was below the seat) I came up with this idea.

 

Bike Cartoon 1646

By changing skiers to bicyclists and to canoeist I was able to sell this same idea to a few more trade journals.

If you're afraid your friends will think you're brain damaged if you start sitting in chairs upside down and if you're not very good at standing on your head, try turning a magazine upside down and see what ideas you come up with.

Relationship Cartoon 5164
Another example of using reversals is to reverse the expected outcome of a situation. For example, another conversation I ease dropped on was between a man and woman who could barely keep their hands off of each other while in the checkout line. The woman giggled and uttered a cliché loud enough for all to hear, "Tom, are you undressing me with your eyes again?" As they raced to their car (no doubt they had ice cream melting), I wondered what the opposite situation of undressing somebody with your eyes would be.

 

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Cartoon Variations on a Theme & How To Use Them to Create Your Own Highly Targeted Humor

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All work on this page is copyright protected.
Reproduction via all means and all use is strictly prohibited without written permission of the artist.
copyright by T. McCracken