Saturday, June 30, 2007

Playboy Jitters

It must be nerves. I have now inked 8 versions of a rough for Playboy. The Playboy Cartoon Department wants a minor change, but for some reason I'm as nervous as a kitten inking the drawing (What? You thought the nerves went away after drawing for a few years? Nooo). Fortunately I'm using a lightbox so I am placing a new sheet of paper (Bristol Board) over the drawing and inking that. So far I have made copies using a Koh-I-Noor pen, a Rotring Isograph, a Pental brush pen, a Micron, and one of my Manga nibs. I even inked one copy using a Micron, the Koh-I-Noor and the Pental brush pen. I put this attack of nerves down to the iconic status of both Mister Hefner, and Playboy Magazine.

It could be worse, in the old days my pencil drawing would have bitten the dust with the first stroke of the pen. Anyway, I've settled down a little now. I put the job to bed until Sunday when I hope to have fully chilled out.

I can't show you the drawing now that Playboy wants it, but I'll let you know when it's in the great publication so you can buy a copy.

4 comments:

Royston Robertson said...

Congrats on selling to Playboy, Rod. The nerves are understandable!

Rod McKie said...

Hi Royston. Many thanks. I think I finally did 10 and settled on 2 finishes. It's the rawness of the originals, sort of like an unairbrushed model, without the help of Photoshop - I have never been convinced by my drawings. I had the same problems a while back with HBR, nervous as heck, and ended up sending 2 'finals' to them and a 3rd in colour.

The thing about Playboy is my daughter is a fan of Hef (she and her boyfriend watch the reality show), and she wanted to keep the rough he made notes on, but I had to send it in with the finished drawing.

Wit's Junk Blog said...

EIGHT VERSIONS? Good Lord, man. Let us know when it's going to appear.

Mike
http://www.gocomics.com/44unionavenue

Rod McKie said...

Hey Mike,

You think that's bad, you should see how many versions I have of a comic strip I've been trying to draw for years. At least you finally got yours out there.

There is a snip of it on the blog, but that's easily the 40th version of that family. I've been working on it since around 1985 and whilst it has only had 3 different names, the characters have changed drastically.

It's not that I'm a perfectionist because I have quite low standards really, it's just the guilt I feel knowing I could do it better (and I'm often wrong about that).

There has a be a good sitcom waiting to be written about the damaged people that turn to cartooning.