Happy New Year!

[gnurf]

Well it is almost June, and here I am posting a New Years picture... The reason is that I am cleaning up my image folders on my hard drive where I find some old fun stuff.

This picture was made for the frontpage of the local newspaper where I work. They came into my office and said that "Hey, we don't have a picture for the New Years issue! You got free hand and two hours to come up with one!"

So, made a fast sketch, drew the character and scanned it, scanned the photo of the church (the original is actually a daytime photo shot in the fall) and the fireworks are from Corels clipart CD.

The picture was composed entirely in Xara, and I played around with multiple copies of the church where are used different colours and transparencies. The flying character was also coloured in Xara. Then the image was exported as a tif, opened it in Photoshop for finishing and unsharp mask. And it was done in two hours (well, perhaps I passed the deadline by some minutes).

-Paul

[gnurf]

Well it is almost June, and here I am posting a New Years picture... The reason is that I am cleaning up my image folders on my hard drive where I find some old fun stuff.

This picture was made for the frontpage of the local newspaper where I work. They came into my office and said that "Hey, we don't have a picture for the New Years issue! You got free hand and two hours to come up with one!"

So, made a fast sketch, drew the character and scanned it, scanned the photo of the church (the original is actually a daytime photo shot in the fall) and the fireworks are from Corels clipart CD.

The picture was composed entirely in Xara, and I played around with multiple copies of the church where are used different colours and transparencies. The flying character was also coloured in Xara. Then the image was exported as a tif, opened it in Photoshop for finishing and unsharp mask. And it was done in two hours (well, perhaps I passed the deadline by some minutes).

-Paul

[gwpriester]

That little guy gets around, eh? Now he's added rockets to his mode of transportation.

And he's not afraid of anything :-)

Gary

Gary Priester

Moderator Person

Be It Rarely So Humble...

[gnurf]

Yes, "that guy" gets around quite a lot. It is my cartoon character, a gnurf (has nothing to do with smurfes!). You can see more of "him" (them) at http://www.surfnet.fi/comics/ and http://www.gnurf.net/gallery/ (sorry for not updating teh pages for years).

Some of them are in Swedish, but I know you don't mind [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_smile.gif[/img]

Here is my biggest international hit, enjoy:

-Paul

[Ross Macintosh]

The cartoons are very funny Paul. My favorites are the flying carpet accident and the Titanic captain. Thanks for the links!

Regards, Ross

<a href=http://www.designstop.com/>DesignStop.Com</a>

[RTK]

Paul,

I checked out the links and your cartoons are marvelous! You are very talented!

Hopefully our friend Ivan sees this thread, I know that he would get a kick out of your cartoons.

To bad that that some of the cartoons will be lost on your English speaking visitors.

I will most definately re-visit your pages for a closer look!

Great Fun!

Risto

[gwpriester]

I agree with Risto and Ross, Paul, your cartoons are terrific. I see your on surfnet. You should ask them to change it to Gnurfnet :-)

Did you use pen and ink for your cartoons or did you create them in Xara?

Gary

Gary Priester

Moderator Person

Be It Rarely So Humble...

[gnurf]

Gary - no need to change surfnet, since I have my own domain: gnurf.net (http://www.gnurf.net/ which is badly in need of an update [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_frown.gif[/img] )

Yes, I still work in the tradional way with pencil, ink and paper. The cartoons are scanned and coloured in Xara though. It is a much faster way than "traditional colouring" (water colours and colour pencils), and especially a lot easier to change and try out different colour settings. And of course change colours when the customer finally can decide which colours to use [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_smile.gif[/img]

I have tried drawing my cartoon characters in Xara with the new brushes and my wacom tablet, but it is still easier and faster to do the drawing on paper. The only exception is a flash cartoon demonstrating how masks in flash works (Gary probably remember the brum-brum-gnurf).

Also, one reason why I stick to pen and paper, is that you can't recreate the "rough" hand-drawn look in Xara (it is possible to create hand-drawn effects with filters and plug-ins, but I still find it faster in the traditional way)

Risto - One can have different opinions about if it is talent. I think it was Ross who said in another thread that it is usually about skill: learning, training and experience (but he said it in different words), and so I would say the case is here too: I have just liked to draw my whole life and have always been interested in cartoons. So you could say this is the result of 25 years of hard work and self-studies (I have no formal training or education in drawing). But thank you for the compliments

Now I think I'll post some works coloured in Xara...

-Paul