Creating ‘Hitching A Ride’

In this article I’m going to go through how I came up with this cartoon. Every week I put together some illustrations to go with an episode of the Modern Wisdom podcast. One of the episodes was ‘How Not To Start An Online Business’.

As part of this picture I drew a Catalina flying boat, a WW2 airplane that is still used today in a variety of roles. In the above illustration you can see it overflying the Queen Mary 2 liner.

Having spent some time drawing the Catalina, and liking the look of how it came out, I thought that it would be neat to use it again in another cartoon, perhaps with a more central role.

Splicing Together Cartoons

The first thing that came to mind was another cartoon featuring a different ocean liner, this time the Normandie from the 1930s. I thought I’d try combining the two characters from the this cartoon, along with the Catalina.

Swapping The Characters

I could have kept the same two characters, and even used the original characters, however, I thought it would be more interesting to try a new character. Originally it was a seagull squatting on top of the seals head, so I thought I’d have one feature in the new cartoon.

A Glutch Of Gulls?

After that I thought why fly under your own steam, when you could catch a ride from the seaplane, so I decided to add a gull standing on a wing float, and add another gull to the original one looking on.

Flipping The Gulls

The pair of floating gulls, lets call them Stan and Dot for ease of reference, weren’t quite looking in the right direction, and while I could have adjusted their heads, thought it would be better to flip them over to the other side of the picture.

The gulls are now looking towards their mate, however, I found that the hitch-hiking gull, let’s call him Bob, was merging with the white of the underside of the wing, and easily got lost in the picture.

A Change Of Livery

The easiest way around this was to darken the plan and remove as much white as possible as not to distract the attention away from Bob. As well as Stan and Dot’s beaks guiding the viewer’s eye towards Bob, I also changed the red and white stripes on the tail plane from horizontal to vertical to help direct attention.

The Finished Cartoon

And here is the finished cartoon. I won’t be surprised if I end up recycling the Catalina again, and I’m highly likely to draw it again from another angle.