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The faithful readers at GoComics have taken up the name as the Rackafracka Packa (which I love by the way.) I told my friend and fellow cartoonist Scott Metzger about this gang of readers and he came up with the mascot. The Rackafracka Alpaca!!! Here is Scott’s drawing of the Rackafracka Alpaca!
I love it! Check out Scott’s cartoons here.
Okay…maybe not yet. But this cute fur ball is the creation of freelance animator Simon Tofield just took the spot in comic strip form where Andy Capp used to sit at Daily Mirror of the UK. The cat started as a YouTube sensation and is growing in popularity. Check out the Simon’s Cat channel on YouTube.
Check out the whole article here. My thanks to Mike Lynch for first posting this story.
The only kind of killing I agree with is the killing of zombies. Zombies and mosquitoes. I would not be sad to hear that mosquitoes were extinct as far as I’m concerned. Zombies, mosquitoes and onions. Onions is my kryptonite. If there is even a hint of onion in a dish than I become weak and lose the will to fight mosquitoes and zombies.
If you are not into killing any of the above than I advise you not to watch the following trailer of the zombie killing video game. It is bloody, sad, and most certainly based on a true story.
My copy writer friend and colleague Gil Zeimer is one of the hired guns the Intuit uses for their small business blog and he interviewed me. Intuit’s blog is focused on spotlighting small businesses and my business of cartooning for business can’t get much smaller since its just me. My niche is doing humor cartoons for business for their blogs, newsletters, e-mail marketing, presentations, and more.
Business is booming too. More and more companies are drinking the Kool-aid on building websites with blogs. Your company blog not only helps you with your search engine optimization (SEO), but also help create trust between the business and customer. Blogs need visuals though. How often do you click on a link after a search and if the website has just text or is bland looking do you click away and go somewhere else without even reading the content? That content might be the best ever on the topic you were searching for, but some sort of visual can mean the difference between a click through and a reader of your blog post.
So how can you add visuals to your blog?
One way is through image source websites. You can create an account with royalty free image websites like istockphoto.com or gettyimages.com. You create an account with them, you do a search for the topic you want and then based on the size or quality of your image you purchase the image you like to put in your blog. These images are of the highest quality, you won’t have copyright issues, and it can be done quickly once you are set up.
Sample custom cartoon for bookkeeping.
Maybe you want to use some humor in your blog post. This is where I come in. You can commission a cartoonist like myself to create a topical cartoon about the subject matter of your blog to help grab the attention. Cartoons are easy to read they are funny looking, colorful, and can tell a whole story in less than 10 seconds. In many cases a single frame comic is the best, but multi-panel cartoons can be used with similar effectiveness. You want to put the cartoon at the top of the post so it’s the first thing they read. With a good cartoon that is topical it’ll inspire the reader to spend maybe a little more time to read a bit of the article its attached to.
To get a custom cartoon from start to finish can take some to get finished. On average it can take a couple days to a week depending on the cartoonist and his/her work load. So what many cartoonists have are an archive of cartoons that they have done in the past that are available for purchase. For a one time deal this is the most cost effective, but if your company has a long term goal and a budget to do a custom cartoon every week than having a custom cartoon done is the way to go.
Larger company’s have writers that work for them or they hire writers on a job by job basis. As a cartoonist this is who I’d want to work with on customizing cartoons for your blog. If your company doesn’t have a copy writer, a writer I work with a lot is Gil Zeimer of Zeimer’s Advertising Shoppe. He has years of experience working with company’s of all sizes and trades. If you are a company really trying to make a splash with your blog, improve your SEO, and create a relationship with your customers than good writing and funny cartoons are the way to go.
My apologies to Tom Racine from Tall Tale Radio who was kind enough to write a comment on my post that wrote earlier today. However that post under the same title as this post was deleted because of some folly of my own while trying to play around with my website. So hear I am writing the post again.
A couple nights ago I was listening to Tall Tale Radio which is hosted by Tom Racine and the podcast was talking about Empire’s list of the top 50 Best Animated Movie Characters. I don’t exactly know all the stuff that I wrote earlier, but I have mixed feelings of the list. There are certainly some quality picks on the list, but I think where there is the most discussion is in the top 10. But don’t take my word for it. Check out the list yourself and let me know what your top ten is.
My thanks to my buddy Scott Metzger who turned me on to Tall Tale Radio.
FYI Tom, I downloaded the podcast that you did with Lucas Turnbloom where you both talked about his new strip 4G. I’ve actually have been reading the strip…but I didn’t know the story behind the Talk About It website until your podcast.
This Saturday I’m attending a Master class at the Charles M. Schulz Museum from 10am to 11:30am which is being taught by Pulitzer Prize–winning editorial cartoonist Mark Fiore. Mark is best known for his animated editorial cartoons. At this class he will be discussing editorial cartoons in a digital age. It should be very interesting.
The world of cartooning it seems is changing every day. With iPads, iPods, Kindles and other technologies and crazy fast software and tools to make cartooning easier and more accessible for everyone cartoons need to keep up. There are more ways to read comics than ever before and not just in your newspaper or magazine. And the with the well publicized “The Daily” app for the iPad that came out in the last couple weeks the future of newspapers and news websites might be here. I hope Mark will discuss some of these issues.
