Hmmm, Two Knights that pass on the Ship…
This isnt a critique, but Howzabout Two Knights getting passed as some Sh**?
I’m so ashamed…
At the first practical opportunity, Cheffie, I shall pay you the punultimate compliment: I shall hold my nose and flee screaming into the night. 
The only thing to watch out for, as pcubed pointed out, is your well-known penchant for verbosity (yes, yes, “Paging Dr. Pot” 
). Trim the words to a minimum–“Pardon” or “Coming through” would suffice. I would even ditch the caption, but I’m a sadistic &*$#.
Well I for one think the caption is needed. Had no clue what it was without it, chuckled when I read the explanation. If you do leave off the captions, I suggest making it like the puzzle pages and print the answer the next day or on another page or something. Good luck with it.
The caption is needed, but I agree that the word bubble would have been better just saying “Pardon” or some other more mideval equivalent. Don’t dumb it down.
I do think it has potential, but it needs polish.
Well, if you were drawing a newspaper strip, I’d give it a look. How’s that?
Hahaha.
[sub]I didn’t get it. 
Does anyone care to explain the pun to a moron?[/sub]
hiya chef!
as an artist, I give you my opinion.
please don’t think I’m being anal…it’s just my passion, is all.
I know you said the mrs will be doing the drawing, but in case that doesn’t work out:
I think you need to polish up the drawing style a bit.
vary the line weight. keep lines fluid where they need be. (there is a ‘wiggle’ in the curve of the ship that really catches my eye.) good pens are rotring brand technical pens.
your stuff has a lot of promise, but I think you need to add something to make it ‘unique’. as it is (and I do understand I haven’t seen them all), there are no defining characteristics to it. some of the most successful cartoons have a ‘trademarked’ look.
keep the caption, trim the words. the less words that convey the joke, the better.
and yes, It may be very hard to keep coming up with ideas. I am doing a ‘cartoon’ story on my site and iI understand the difficulties.
now if only I had more time…
As I said, the concept of the comic is to take a clichéd expression and warp it a bit, then illustrate it.
The cliché that is the basis for the above cartoon is the phrase “Ships that pass in the night.”
Oh, and Bad News Baboon? THAT was some good criticism. I can actually work with that. If I do wind up doing the drawing I’ll be taking more care with it than I did for this one.
Since several people think the knight’s dialogue is too prolix, I’ll cut it back to “excuse me” or some such.
any time you need an unbiased critique, let me know.
I agree with BN Baboon. And I’ll add as well.
You might want to think about hand lettering your type.
While some comics get away with it, “Red Meat” coming to mind, most just look really stiff.
Lettering’s not easy of course and it takes lots of practice. If you do want to do it, use all caps, it makes it more legible.
Look through any given comics page and see how other comics have lettered their strips.
Good luck!
And as others have said, keep it short. Brevity is the soul of wit, as they say.
yeah, the font can be an issue.
a lot of cartoonists now scan the drawings in and shade and tweak on rendering programs. this may be an option.
It does afford you many cheats: you can save drawings that can be altered, etc. ( a generic dog, for example, can be added in…word bubbles…). while you may not think you want to go this route, you may never know when you migt be seriously pressed for time.
again, this depends of your animation style. at the very least, it will archive them for you in one neat place.
as for the fonts:there are several handwritten fonts now. a good many are indistinguishable from handwriting.
If you do want to hand letter, take it from an architecture person, look into old architecture books. Architect’s habdwriting (unlike doctor’s 
) must be legible.I can scan a few pages on how to if you cant find any.
I think the important thing is to(from the start) define perameters. you will use X font. you will use X pen weight for text…this may help you define a style and will lend an air of ‘professionalism’ to your work. consistency is key for a running piece.
if you do prefer the hand drawn method,
there used to be a company called format (or zipatone, but I think they are out of biz). They make sheets of plastic with tone on them. you cut them up with an x-acto and place of your drawings. they came in a million different patterns and were quite useful.
and another thing,
in cartoons, most animators sign their work. work on a distinct ‘autograph’. that too, is part of your trademark.
you may feel silly, but spend some time writting your name using different styles of font.
but again, good look! and congratulations! it will be hard sometimes, but very rewarding!
Mrs. Chef has a very neat hand-lettering style. If she does live up to her offer to do the drawing she’ll handle the lettering as well.
When she and I did our comic strip in college, we used that shading film ALL the time (Benday was the brand we used) for when we needed solid tone, but cross-hatching and stippling were the order of the day for most things. Our strip was characterized by LOTS of detail - more than we really needed. (Think Bruno for an idea of how detailed I’m talking about.) I’m going to try to keep things much simpler this time.
If she decides she can’t do the drawing for Klee Shade, though, I could use a suggestion on one of those hand-lettering fonts. My own handwriting style is to print in all caps but I tend to be inconsistent in height and spacing because I’m a lefty in a hurry.
My signature is pretty cool looking if unreadable… I think I’m set there.
(a co-worker saw “knights that pass in the ship” taped up to my cubicle wall, laughed, and wanted to know where it was published. He wouldn’t believe I drew it until I fished the original drawing out of the trash and showed it to him. grin)
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Yes, I got it. (Apparently the woman in your office is an idiot, or has led an extreeeeeeemly sheltered life)
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Yes, I thought it was funny. I have a weakness for puns, and this had me chuckling. I especially liked the knight’s lines (I love making fun of that kind of language) and the name of the ship. It all combined to make a funny gag.
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Hi, Opal!
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Having “S. S. Camelot” helped a lot in cluing me to the fact that they were aboard ship. Perhaps either pulling back a little more to show more of the ship, or including some other details, like waves or something to indicate it might help.
I liked it, Cheffie! Good luck with it.