At around the same time Brett Kavanaugh was hosting keggers, I was hanging out in my high school library, pouring through magazines and newspapers, on a daily cartoon quest. I think I was about as obsessed with cartoons as the Honorable Justice was with beer! I kept a notebook where I would write down cartoon ideas which I drew for the East Noble High School Scroll. I also read joke books to hone my class cut-up skills. I read most of these books while serving detention because of my class cut-up skills.
I hit upon a well-known formula for generating ideas by using 3×5 cards. I made three stacks. The first stack’s cards contained a subject or character. The second’s contained an action. The third stack’s cards were for emotions. I would shuffle them up and select one card from each stack, resulting in situations like: Juggler, robbing a bank, amazement. I would then let the wheels in my head spin and come up with something like a crowd of entertained bank employees and customers gathered around a bank robber who is holding a pistol in one hand while juggling three bags of cash in the air. He is calling out: “Now on the count of three, would someone toss another bag of money high above my head?”
This approach worked pretty well and soon I had filled my notebook up with hundreds of ideas—most of which weren’t all that good. A few of the ideas were good, however, and I would draw them up into cartoons.
I use a form of this same technique when I create ideas now, only without the 3×5 cards. Most of the free association I do today is completely in my head. Sometimes aloud. Occasionally on public transportation where I’m asked if I’m lost and need to find my way back to the home.
The best cartoon ideas are organic ones! By this I mean the idea, the scene, the characters, the dialogue fit so well with the topic, that they grow together naturally—as if they were meant to be together all along… Like Jay Z and Beyoncé. Finding that kind of organic oneness is difficult, but it’s undeniable when it’s there. And those are the kinds of cartoons that most people remember!
If you’ve got something you want said in a cartoon, drop me a line and I’ll do my best to come up with an idea that’s pure organic goodness, as if it came straight outta Whole Foods!
