When a cartoonist tells someone what they do for a living, the initial response is usually “Oooh, where do you get your ideas from?” Sometimes they will even pause for you to answer, but I doubt they really expect any mind-blowing insight, and they are generally fobbed of with an airy “Oh, all over the place really”.
I can’t tell you where my ideas come from, they really do come from all over the place, but I can tell you how I get them, and I have a theory that all cartoonists come by their ideas in a similar way.
What makes a cartoon gag?
I’m a business analyst as well as a cartoonist, I enjoy analysing things, and anything that interests me is fair game. I have mentioned to other cartoonists that I like to analyse humour, and a few have recoiled in horror. To them this is heresy on a grand scale – if you analyse humour you’ll kill the magic! Thinking about humour hasn’t killed it for me though. I find that analysing gags has helped me create better cartoons, and it doesn’t impinge at all on my enjoyment of other people’s.
The thing you do when creating a gag is you make connections. There are many types of humour, but at the root of them all is at least one humorous connection. All cartoonists work differently, but what all of them do at a fundamental level, is present their brain with material from which they can pull or recognise these connections. Some refer to lists of useful words and phrases, some scribble notes, others doodle, or they might have a muse they bounce ideas off. This list is not exhaustive, but whatever method they use, they are all trying to identify humorous connections.
How to come up with a cartoon idea
Sometimes when I need to write a cartoon on a specific subject, a great idea will just come into my head. When this doesn’t happen immediately, I start to brainstorm. I tend to think in the form of mind maps so I get a pen or I might use mind mapping software, and I start to write down all the things associated with the subject and the audience. While I’m doing that I might also write down apparently un-associated things that come into my head, as the element of surprise is a key component of humour.
Here’s an example:
I needed to draw a cartoon with this caption: “Say, what’s that funny smell” so I sat down and took a few minutes to draw out all sorts of things associated with smell. This train of thought was a dead end:
…after a short while then I tried another tack and hit the winning train of thought:
That was it. The football world cup was taking place, England were playing, and in a flash I had my connection. It didn’t take long to get there, and there was much more on the mind map. It may come in useful in the future as I never throw them away, and glance over them every so often.
Where else do I look for cartoon inspiration?
I generally start with a mind map when I have to draw a cartoon on an unusual subject (packaging materials for instance), as I need to get to know the subject matter. Sometimes I talk ideas out with the client. I worked on a set of cartoons for a book with some great people at the Open University, and this process was productive, and very enjoyable. Other times I will get out a sketchbook, and a several good gags will fall out of a page of sketches.
Ultimately I get my ideas, the humorous connections, from all sorts of places, but I put in some effort up front to give my mind useful information to work with. The key to writing funny cartoons is how you get the ideas, not where they come from. Humour really is all around.
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