A while ago I put together an article ‘learning cartooning from ‘Calvin and Hobbes’, where I wrote that you can learn a lot while copying examples of great cartoons. As there’s a lot to learn from Bill Waterson, the creator of Calvin and Hobbes, I thought it be fun to return to the strip and experiment by swapping out the characters for some of my own.
The Base Cartoon
I chose this one because it’s relatively simple (or so I thought at the time - more on that later) with no background and a limited range of poses.
Substituting Chloe for Calvin.
I thought I’d replace Calvin with a girl character. I’m not doing an exact copy this time around, so while the size of my character is about the same, and I’m suing the same pose as the original, I’m making the eyes a little more more complex than Calvin’s usual dots.
Substituting Dobbs for Hobbs.
For the sake of variety I decided to replace Hobbs with a dog - ‘Dobbs’. As he’s a dog he’s not quite as flexible in body as a tiger, and so I’ve adjusted the pose a little.
The two new characters together
I was originally intending to just swap out the characters and keep the words the same, however, I realised that in this case they didn’t match at all.
It was at this point that I realised the cartoon was going to be a bit more complex than I’d first imagined.
Composing the haiku
In the first panel, Calvin is saying a haiku, so I started out by writing the 5..7..5.. syllable pattern of the form as a reminder.
D is for Dog
Just to make it a little more challenging, Calvin’s haiku is also alliterative - meaning that all the words start with the same letter.
So I started listening out as many words beginning with ‘D’ that could be applied to the situation of a sleeping dog.
Thesaurus to the rescue
Eventually I came up with the above.
Almost there…
Although the original is a line drawing, I decided to add some tones to finish it off.
The finished cartoon
It was a fun challenge to put that together, especially composing the alliterative haiku.
Over to you
Now it’s your turn.
Choose a cartoon that you like. I recommend choosing a relatively simple one to start with - you can always choose something more complex later.
Swap out the characters with ones of your own.
While you’re drawing your characters, note the lines that the original cartoonist used.
Try swapping out the original speech or caption for words of your own.