Finkl Steel

Nobody Cares Like The Nugget

For the record, this is NOT the Golden Nugget that Ira Glass spends his time annoying. This one is at Western and Diversey.

Different Strummer

Mom's Front Door Birds

On Pulaski

The Rules

First Flowers

Buds 07

This is one of my favorite times of year - largely because of these - Buds. As my friend George pointed out in response to the cartoon I did on them last year, believing in buds is a theology of hope. I've re-posted that cartoon as the feature this week.

And here's this year's first sighted:

Chance Encounter

Farewell to Snow Ritual

During walks in the early spring, when there are few isolated patches of unmelted snow, Alice has a tradition of rooting her muzzle around and rolling herself in the last snowpiles she can find. She doesn't do this to all snow, or much all winter. It's that last surviving snow she targets. The video catches the last few seconds of her ritual. I've decided it's her way of saying thanks and goodbye for a while. I like how once she's done, she's done. Shake off and walk away.

Fontifier

Thanks to the blog of Brian Fies, creator of the spectacular "Mom's Cancer" --

ok wait, I have to interrupt my own blog post to ask, "Why can't I format fonts or imbed links in Blogger on a Mac?" Book titles should be underlined and I want to hyperlink to Amazon so you can see the awesome cover of this book. But for some reason, I can't do that here. Frustrating. I'm fighting the urge to write a stupid sentence that names the year and ends with the word "people." Back to my real post.

-- http://momscancer.blogspot.com/, I found a website, he says there are several, on which I can turn my own handwriting into a font. For $9. This may seem like just a fun computer thing, but to a cartoonist, it's a dream come true, for all the reasons Brian points out in his post on the subject. (IF I COULD, I WOULD LINK TO THAT POST HERE BUT I CAN'T. SO IF YOU CARE, GO TO GOOGLE BLOG SEARCH, PUT IN "BRIAN FIES FONTIFIER." For my part, I promise to email Blogger about this.)

So to re-create his experiment with my font, here is a clip of painstakingly pencilled, inked, erased (overlightening the ink) re-inked, scanned, and Photoshopped text from my cartoon "Kid Science" - all of which took at least half an hour to complete:





And here is a sample, all caps, of the newly created "Comic Nurse" font:






I write in all caps because I think it's more legible. With the fontification, this passage actually looks better in normal text:








I must say, I do think the handwritten sample appears to have more ooomph to it, but I don't think that's how this will translate when I try to use it in a cartoon. With spacing and boldness adjustment, I think the type can be pretty close - and ultimately more legible - than the real thing. I resist the urge to virtualize just about everything (especially bowling) but this really could save my cartooning entirely.


As my parents used to say to my constant annoyance, "We'll see..."