Wanna Be a Zoo Laffs Guest Artist?

It sure would help me stay caught up on my webcomic Zoo Laffs, if I could occasionally present a strip by a guest artist. Do you want to do one? Drawing comics is fun! Especially drawing funny animals and cute girls. Plus, DummComics has a great following. Your strip will be enjoyed by thousands, and we can put up some links to your stuff or whatever.


You can use my characters -- Alistair Woods, Buckley, Jakey the Jerk, Michael the Armadillo, Perry & Sherry, The Nice Pair, Alex Gander, Onion Puss, HornDog, and Horatio Hamhockefeller -- or, if you think none of them are suited to your gags, you can make up new Zoo Laffs characters.

I'd dig it if your strip carries on in the Zoo Laffs tradition of jokes about girl trouble, revolving around meeting women, maintaining relationships, or suffering breakups. But if you want to buck the trend by exploring other subjects, that's cool too. I won't reject a strip just because it doesn't deal with romantic foibles.

Before you get too into it, email me a rough sketch or scriptlet. This way, if your joke is too similar to one of mine or another guest artist, we can nix it or rework it before you spend much time on it. Email me at cgarrison[at]bham.rr.com.

Don't have an idea for a Zoo Laffs strip? Email me anyway. If I like your work, I might just give you one of mine!

Cartoon Map of Shelby County, Alabama

Here's the finished version of the map I've been working on for University Graphics / Creative Concepts. ( Shelby County, Alabama ) Click to enlarge:



If you want to see more close-ups, check out THIS POST on my map blog.

Pete Moss

Finished that comic I've been working on. I'm trying to get it uploaded to Ka-blam/Indyplanet so it will be at least technically available, through their print-on-demand service. I wish though I could figure out some way to fund a print run on newsprint and get it distributed to small grocery and convenience stores (where comics rightly belong.)

It's maybe not such an ideal candidate for that though, since the story turned out slightly seedier than I realized it would, or intended it to. Not sure why that surprised me, since it was pretty much there in the concept.

Anyway here's the cover (the final version does have color, just posting this since I like b&w as well.) The "worksheet" is a filler page.

Recent Roundup

Hello again, Persons.

I've just gone and collected a few pieces from some of the blogs, webcomics, and deviantART pages of our fellow SHC's. (You guys should come and post stuff here more often yourselves, just to keep the blog alive.)

I can't take the time to turn the following names into links. If you want to see more from any of these great Alabama cartoonists -- and find a whole boatload MORE Alabama cartoonists, to boot -- consult the alphabetical list HERE.

Sam McDavid

Heath McPherson

Heath McPherson

Mega Comics Group

Melody

Garth Potts

Kinch Raby

Tim Rocks

Ryan Brown on the job

This summer's being good to us, in terms of new members for the Salty 'Ham Cartooneestas. Here's another one! Say hi to Ryan Brown.

Raby! ... and I don't mean maybe.

We've got us another new recruit, y'all -- Kinch Raby, II, of Hoover. Welcome, Kinch!

Turtle Tote & Friends

Did a drawing for a messenger bag. Also, one for a t-shirt I recently made.

Shelby County map - line art

I'm working on an ad map of Shelby County, for University Graphics / Creative Concepts. Here's some line art, inked with colored lines in Manga Studio, so that I can easily do self-lining on the roads and such.

Dillard's Doodles: New Stuff

Dillard's Doodles: New Stuff: "I recently painted a cartoon map and made caricature of a beloved lizard for The Summer Reading Program at Vestavia Hills Library. The ..."

Gray Matter

We have a new inductee: Andy Gray of Gardendale!

Hulk vs. PAC-MAN

Shark Fist Shamus

Party at DS Art

From our fellow SHC Don Stewart:

Mark your calendars for the quarter-century bash at the DS Art Studio, Thursday, June 30th at 5 pm. That’s in downtown Homewood, Alabama, at the corner of 28th and Crescent Avenues. (Come early to beat the rush hour traffic!)

DS Art ® – The Visual Humor of Don Stewart
2805 Crescent Avenue
Birmingham, AL 35209
800-372-7864
www.dsart.com

Recent Roundup

Heighdy ho!

I've just gone and collected a few pieces from some of the blogs, webcomics, and deviantART pages of our fellow SHC's. (You guys should come and post stuff here more often yourselves, just to keep the blog alive.)

I can't take the time to turn the following names into links. If you want to see more from any of these great Alabama cartoonists -- and find a whole boatload MORE Alabama cartoonists, to boot -- consult the alphabetical list HERE.

Jonathan Hooks


Jonathan Hooks


jenX


jenX


Alison Marceau


Alison Marceau


Mark Martin


Mark Martin

Chris Garrison's Cartooning Workshop

Calling All Cartoonists!

Forstall Art Center of Birmingham will be hosting a one-day cartooning workshop, taught by me, cartoonist Chris Garrison (creator of Zoo Laffs and founder of the Salty 'Ham Cartooneestas). As you draw, I'll help you hone your basic cartooning skills: construction, line of action, silhouette, and expression. As the day progresses, I'll discuss inking, character design, appeal, flair, staging, and storytelling.

You are strongly encouraged to bring your sketchbooks and drawings with you for some informative input. Whether you want to draw superheroes, manga, or breakfast cereal mascots, this workshop will help you to become the BEST cartoonist you can be!

Ages 16 and up.
$75 gets you in, and a very nice set of supplies comes with the deal. And lunch is included!

Saturday, June 25th, 2011
10am - 3pm
at the
Forstall Art Center
(at the Palisades, in Birmingham)

For all the Salty 'Ham Cartooneestas reading this: If you think I might be able to help you improve your skills, come take the workshop! Or if you're not into it, but you know somebody who might be, please tell them about it.

Here are some more samples of my work.

Free Comic Book Day

Free Comic Book Day at Kingdom Comics (May 7th, 2011) went well this year. Lots of super-heroes were there:


And the promoters of the 2012 Alabama Phoenix Festival were selling tickets and T-shirts.

Also, SHC's Chris Rosko and myself had tables with a bunch of other area cartoonists -- folks who oughtta be Salty 'Hams, but haven't joined up yet: Andy Gray, James Hill, Kinch Raby, II, Lysa Shin, and ex-pat Sarah White. Other potential enlistees present were publisher Keven Gardner and writer Cam Crowder. I'll have to bug all these folks about getting on our ever growing list of Alabama talents.

a few page roughs

Some pages from a project I'm collaborating on. Not sure how far we'll get, we may come to ruin on the usual shipwreck of creative differences.

Anyways, it's more or less a parody, and so far it seems to me I'm leaning a bit on the Don Simpson (Megaton Man) look (although those character proportions are fairly common, he maybe just exaggerated them to extremes.)

Alabama Phoenix Festival

There's something called the Alabama Phoenix Festival coming up in 2012. I think it's being put together by the folks at Kingdom Comics, but I'm not totally sure. Here's the festival's OFFICIAL PAGE. And here's their FACEBOOK PAGE.


The official page doesn't really explain the festival, but I got this from their facebook page:

The Alabama Phoenix Festival is a fan-based convention featuring comics, science-fiction, fantasy, and much more. We will host a variety of guests, including media guests from film and television, authors, and comic book creators. In addition, there will also be gaming, art show, programming tracks, and expo hall. So come and join us on May 25-27, 2012 at the Cahaba Grand Conference Center, located on Hwy 280 just south of the Colonnade.

Although it's taking place on Highway 280 in late May of 2012, the official page says the festival will actually debut on May 7th (Free Comic Book Day) of this year, somewhere in the same strip mall with Kingdom Comics. Various guests will be there, and you can read about them HERE. And that will also be your first chance to get festival memberships and T-shirts. At a special rate, even!

[edit! -- It turns out that the Alabama Phoenix Festival is NOT a Kingdom Comics production. Kingdom is just supporting it and doing the comic book track for them, like they did Imagicon. The backers of APF are Steve Charleson and Tim Stacks.]

Recent Roundup

Hey hey hey.

I've just gone and collected a few pieces from some of the blogs, webcomics, and deviantART pages of our fellow SHC's. (You guys should come and post stuff here more often yourselves, just to keep the blog alive.)

I can't take the time to turn the following names into links. If you want to see more from any of these great Alabama cartoonists -- and find a whole boatload MORE Alabama cartoonists, to boot -- consult the alphabetical list HERE.

Chris Fason


Chris Fason


Chris Garrison


Chris Garrison


Jamison Harper


Jamison Harper


James Hislope


James Hislope