It would be so fun to do a comic strip. But it would take so long for one person to make 365 comic strips a year!
So why not pick one theme, and have a bunch of artists write and draw their own strips? Like there could be a character guide where everyone has to use the same characters. And maybe every month there could be a theme that the artists work with. Each person can draw it in their own style and their own jokes.
That way, it doesn’t become a boring stale comic strip like how many others are in the newspaper. And you got lots of variety and talent working on it.
What would make a good comic strip for this model? It would be good to come up with a set of stable characters. Characters who could be put into interesting situtations.
Some ideas:
* Characters based on animals
* A family
* Office workers
* Aliens
* Inanimate objects that can speak and walk. (i.e. a toolbox as home, with hammer, screwdriver, etc)
Who’s in? It would be fun to get a large group of people, like thirty people. So then you only have to do one comic a month. No drawing talents required. ANYBODY can join. You can join the new Yahoo group, Common Comic at: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/commoncomic
i think this comic strip idea could take off. It would be so cool to have so many submissions from people. But yet, they would stand a good chance of getting their strip in, because 30 comics a month would be selected to publish. So yeah, there might be some real duds that get submitted, but that’s part of the joy. ANY person can submit and get their comic into the newspaper. There’s that sort of excitement of anyone having the chance to get published. So some days there might be some really cute drawings by a 7-year-old. That would be so funny.
this sounds like fun! i’ll join! so the idea would be, every week [or day?”> a different artist would pick up the theme/characters/storyline and continue the comic strip in their own style? with constant elements, like you said: characters, setting, etc. how about a comic strip set in chicago? illustrated by chicago artists, and each artist would do something based on the city. like characters on the subway, or a protest march, or joggers on the lake, or going to the art museum, or boating down the river, or something about the mayor, etc. there’s an endless stream of ideas here. another idea would be to have each artist draw ONE FRAME in a really long comic strip [like a book”>. after one frame was done, the strip would be passed on to the next artist, who would have to create the next frame based on the previous frames. the artists could continue the storyline in their frame however they wanted, and then the next artist would pick up from that and change it however they wanted. although when you put them all together, it might be visually incongruous with all the different styles.
HOW THIS WILL WORK: I think the structure will be that every month has a theme. You have one month to draw a comic strip using the set characters in that theme. You could draw as many strips as you wish. One strip. Two, three, whatever. Then you submit your strip(s), and they will be shown on spudart.org. So for example on January 1, the theme will be declared. Let’s say the theme is snow. You have the month of January to draw a comic strip(s) using the set characters about snow. Your submission is due January 31. Then they will be featured on spudart.org during the month of February. So yeah, there won’t be much continuity between different author’s strips. But the theme and characters stay the same. Each strip will become more like a standalone pun. Or if the author wishes, they could do several days of strips and they could connect together to form a story.
CHARACTER GUIDE: The trick is the characters. They have to be drawable, fun characters. Each character would have to be identifiable from each other. There can’t be confusion about which character is which It would be interesting how to develop the character guide. Like how many rules do you put into place to make a character. i.e. simple route: “an elephant with a tie” and that’s it. Or the detailed route. “A an elephant with a perfectly round head, with big round eyes and small mouth, the tie is horizontally striped” Or you the character could be just visually shown in the sytle guide with some different poses, and people can just go off that. The variations would then be very similiar to how people do fan art. http://www.toadythekid.com/art.htm
A COUPLE REASONS WHY THIS IDEA CAN TAKE OFF This idea is really great. People will get great joy seeing how others come up with art. “Oh man, the comic today just SUCKS.” or “wow, check out the art on this strip today, it ROCKS” Then freelance artists will get in on this, because this could become a huge showcase for artists work. To get your work featured in the Common Comic strip would be such a big promotional advertising thing for an illustrators style. People will see a certain day’s comic strip and be like, “wow, i like this persons style. i want them to draw XYZ illustration for me.”
MORE CHARACTER IDEAS: Here’s an idea for the characters… they could be non-copyrighted characters… like public figures. hrmmm, that might get too esoteric. To have a character that is Napolean would have all these estoeric Napolean jokes. Then again, maybe that would be good. What would be a funny joke about Napolean and snow? Or Einstein and snow?
napoleon kept his hand in his shirt all the time… maybe it was cold? i can come up with lots of einstein info, if needed. i think each character should have only a few identifying features. keep it simple. too many characteristics might create differences in each artist’s style, and then hard to distinguish the different renditions of characters? i don’t know. the public figures idea is neat. that might work out.
Some great ideas…. Not fond of the entire Chicago theme though as I live in Denver and know nothing about Chicago (except for the musical, I doubt they will ever make a musical called Denver). The theme idea sounds good though. This is a great way to generate a consistent flow of comics; and if there are enough submissions, then we can always pick the best ones. Public figures sounds like a good place to start, but it also may be too limiting.
I miss “Groundhog Croquet”
i have a charachter suggestion. what about some lovable and wacky pollen? the adventures it would have! high flying pollen up one day and down the next. you’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you’ll sneaze from allergies!