For this post I’m going to look at an existing cartoon and see how it could lend itself to generating some new situations.
I am going to use a picture that I included in a book, ‘Fishing Girls’, last year.
I was starting to put some ideas together for a possible sequel and I thought I’d revisit the book and see if some of the cartoons could be used as a basis for some new gag ideas.
I got the idea for the pose above from a picture of someone sleeping on a subway train. I actually wondered whether it looked a bit too much like her left arm was suspended in space and whether it would be a good idea to have it instead propped on a branch or a bush, but decided to keep it anyway.
I liked the pic of the fisherwoman having a doze, oblivious to all the fishing swimming nearby, but started pondering what else could she be missing while slumbering away?
I started brainstorming different things that could wander into the frame or suddenly appear out of the water.
The idea of Nessie popped into my head, or at least a smaller version of her, swanning down the river with the only witness to her existence at that time and place off in the land of nod.
I next started thinking about things appearing from the river. Still with the idea of Nessie in my mind I thought of having some sort of monsters hand reaching out of the depths to steal away her catch.
While drawing this one I immediately thought of the idea of the hand bearing Excalibur reaching out of the river. I then thought that this might be more effective if she were awake and looking stunned.....or perhaps even more effective would have been to have the sword cutting the line.
Continuing this line of thought, but now started to veer off on a different tangent I started imagining someone having a sword fight with a sword fish. Which made me think of cartoon I drew a couple of years ago.
Anyway, back to the river bank...
And then started thinking about what else she could have been dreaming about, perhaps fishing in some more exotic locale? To make more of a contrast between her correct situation and the dream one I decided to make the current one more miserable by having a rainy setting. This time I also chose to alter her by making her a bit more weather proof, while keeping the same basic pose and background.
So try it out for yourself.
This could apply not just to pictures but any existing ideas. Take an old idea, revisit and see if you can reflect on it it a new way.