A while ago I was involved in a cartoon idea generating challenge.
Myself and the other participant each chose a topic that we wanted to produce ideas about. In my cases it was dogs; in his, houses.
We each used our topic as a base element to which we added a different element to every day.
Here is the list of daily elements I’m going to show today:
Mountain
Backpack
Water
Wood Chipper
Here are a few of the cartoons that I came up. The main point was to generate lots of ideas, rather than to produce many polished cartoons.
Dogs + Mountain
Also included with this element is the cartoon at the top of the page. All of these sketches were drawn on an iPad Pro using ProCreate. In the app I used a 6B pencil.
Dogs + Backpack
This is the first picture today exploring a very traditional rivalry: cat vs dog.
I think if I’d added a bigger backpack it would have made a stronger impact.
Dogs + Water
Looks like it’s 2-0 to the dogs at this point.
Ever since a friend of mine got an Italian Greyhound I’ve been drawing a few of these in different forms.
Dogs + Wood Chipper
I’d never draw a wood chipper before this one came up. In fact I didn’t really know what one was.
And those last two pics look they’ve evened up the score between the cats and dogs, with today ending at 2-2.
Over to you:
Time for you to give this a try!
Choose a base element, something you regularly draw or a new topic you want to explore.
Now write a bunch of different topics, anything will do. Don’t stop to think about these for too long, just jot down whatever comes immedialtely to mind.
Everyday choose a new topic and add it to your base element. Doodle a couple of ideas. Remember that this isn’t about creating perfect or polished cartoons - it’s about generating lots of ideas for cartoons.