Wet-Day Cartoon

We've been having so much rain the last couple of days that I thought I would upload a "weather" appropriate cartoon. I think this guy has the right idea. As Eric Idle from Monty Python would say, "Always look on the bright side of life, ta-toot, ta-toot, ta-toot, ta-toot!" (envision little musical notes floating up and around the text.) And, with days like these The Three Stooges wouldn't have been able to say:

Moe: "Excuse me partner, is that the sun up there?"
Curly: "I don't know, I'm a stranger in town."

I think we can all learn something from this little guy, "always keep a good positive atti-toon"!


Until next time. Stay dry!

Summer Cartoon of the Week!

During the summer my son likes to wear Hawaiian Shirts. His place of employment has what you would call a "casual dress" Friday, so he started wearing his various Hawaiian shirts each Friday. As time went on a number of his co-workers picked up on the trend and they too began wearing Hawaiian shirts on Fridays. Well, not everyone joined in though and that is when I came up with the above cartoon idea. I actually made him a t-shirt with this very cartoon on it which he wears proudly.

I hope you get a little kick out of it. And, don't forget to wear your favorite Hawaiian shirt this Friday. What, you don't have a Hawaiian shirt?! Well, get to it. You have plenty of time to get one before this Friday rolls around.

Until next time! Aloha!!!

New Logo Design

I just replaced my old logo (see below) with the "NEW" logo above. I've always wanted to use "ZELLTOONS" as part of my logo and finally decided to do it today. I think the word "ZELLTOONS" just flows really nice and has that "cartoony" ring to it. So I played around with a number of different designs and with the help of my wife and younger son decided on this one. I had wanted to keep the star in it (see the old design below), but it just didn't look right no matter where I placed it. Both my wife and son thought it looked better without it. So now it is ZELLTOONS Cartoons by Gary Zeller.

I hope you like it. If you feel compelled to tell me whether you like the new logo or not, please be my guest. Who knows, you may yet see the star return.

You'll probably notice that I changed the entire look of my blog too. It may change again and again over the next few days. I didn't like the plain blue background and so I am going to look at different styles and looks until I find what I like best. Hopefully I will find one I do like.

Stay "tooned"!

Have a great day!

Todays Think-Toon!

Has this ever happened to you?

Try, Try Again!

A while ago I created the above gag. It never sold. It "almost" sold to an environmental magazine, but at the time they had an overstock of cartoons and decided they would have to pass on it. None of the other publications I submitted it to seemed interested.

Well, I thought it was a pretty good gag (as most cartoonists think about all our gags). So, I decided I would rework the drawing, but keep the original gag line. I then marketed it to an entirely different group of publications. And, what do you know, this time it was picked up by the SUN. Here it is below. The SUN did change the gag line a bit on me, as you can see they took out the word 'nuclear". And, they also changed my name a bit, as you "can't" see, by cropping it out entirely!

The moral of the story. If you think you have a good gag, (as most cartoonists think about all our gags) don't give up on it!

Until next time.

Happy 50th Rich!!!

We just celebrated my Brother-In-Law, Rich's 50th birthday today. What a milestone! That's half a century old! So, I wanted to do something special for him that I thought he would get a kick out of so I tried thinking, "now what does he really like to do". Well, then it dawned on me. "Texas Hold'em"! He thoroughly enjoys playing Texas Hold'em Poker. He goes to many of the local tournaments in his area throughout the year and really gets into it. So with that in mind, I began thinking of different types of play on words involving Texas Hold'em and I finally came up with "Texans Hold'im". All I could picture was a room full of cowboys grabbing all the incoming unsuspecting entries and holding them in headlocks while other cowpokes took turns paddling their rear ends. Weird? Yeah, maybe, but I couldn't stop laughing to myself while I was picturing it in my mind. Thus, the finished product is what you see now. It isn't exactly how I pictured it, but I wouldn't be able to fit all the extras and it would have taken more time to complete than I had available. (I had to put the second coat of paint on the kitchen this morning before we could go to the party.) I'm not extremely fast when it comes to my cartoons.

It was penciled in around 20 minutes during part of my lunch hour this past Friday. Then early this morning, I got up and (after working on some bills and household accounting items) I inked it on my light board. It had to be ready by late this afternoon (and I still had plenty of painting ahead of me) as his surprise party was a dinner party, so I had to work fast. I used for the first time a set of Staedtler pigment liners ranging from 0.1 up to 0.7. I mostly worked with the 0.5 & 0.7 but I did use the 0.3 for some small detail lines. I then scanned in the inked product and brought it into my Photo Shop program to touch up the inking. I have a VisBoard Tablet Monitor. Not nearly as sweet as a Cintiq Wacom tablet monitors, (none of the bells and whistles) but only a 5th of the cost. It's so much easier than using the mouse. Also, I draw left handed, but I use the mouse with my right hand. So, drawing gets extremely difficult when trying to use the mouse. This monitor works great for me. Some things I use with the pressure-pen in my left hand and others I use the mouse in my right hand. I then added the color and the various text. In most of the web comics I had done for 2 1/2 years with one of my sons, (he was the writer and I was the illustrator) I usually used shading on my comics. However, for this gag I thought I would leave the shading off to give it a more "cartoony" appearance. All-in-all I think I used 7 different layers.

Well, that's it for now. Happy Birthday Rich!
So, "toon" in next week.
Same Gag-Time, same Gag-Channel!!!

A Cuttle-Cartoon

Cuttlefish are actually not fish at all. They are mollusks. They can change their color and patterns to suit the environment in which they happen to be. Cuttlefish live it tropical areas in shallow waters. They are a very smart species. They are related to the squid, but not nearly as fast. They are carnivorous and great at using their 10 arms to capture their prey. Cuttlefish, like the squid, can eject a dark cloud of ink when attacked that can allow them to escape from their attacker.
Looks like this little guy above could be in for a big surprise!!!
Until next time.