boulevard-ijab (IJA & ME) - one half completing the other half....

Creativity thinking - A cartoon side OR a child(ish) side?

An acquaintance had asked, how come there are cartoons (drawn by me) nowadays in my blog? Though he did not comment on the quality of the cartoons (mind you, I'm not a pro!), he did say some of them tickled him.

Well, as they say, there are two sides in every human being - the good side and the bad side. It's up to you how you interprate what's good and what's bad. But logically, donating to earthquake victims is a good deed, while attacking other countries on baseless reasons other than to fulfill one's vendetta and greed, is way way, a bad deed(s).

As for me, I'm glad to say that, there is another side of me. A cartoon side. I don't think I am feeding my childish side though, since liking cartoons (whether reading or watching or drawing them) doesn't have anything to do with our level of maturity. Look at those famous cartoons out there, in prints or in screens. They are created by adults and liked/loved by people of all ages.

How you interprate what cartoon is, is also up to you. A cartoonised version of a human being may have one arm bigger than another, eyes looking like they are about to pop out or a hair style so retro, the tip of the hairs may reach the ceiling.

But on the other hand, a cartoonised version of a human being can also be so detailed and true to nature. The fine lines on the forehead are visibly drawn, brownish body hairs on parts not covered by clothes or eyes so glassy, we are almost fooled into thinking that we are looking into a mirror.

The way the cartoons are drawn and the punch lines they utter can tickle our funny bones (depending on how many bones of that type you have or whether you have any funny bones at all haha).

The (hidden) message behind a cartoon strip may make us ponder (unless the message is so well hidden, we don't get what it means).

Cartoons can also make us understand certain instructions or guidelines better, since they 'say' straight to the point (like a cartoon flyer that explains the benefits of leading a healthy lifestyle).

A well thought-of idea of a novel-length story can be delivered to readers via cartoons. Unlike authors, a cartoonist can clearly describe a poorly lit and dampy alley with some stray dogs digging through a large dustbin at one corner and a homeless man lying motionless at another, in a two-by-four-inch box, compared to maybe more than a page of a book that an author needs.

Cartoon animations (2D's or 3D's), especially those which are realistically portrayed, can make us, children and adults alike, eagerly wait in line for cinema tickets and stay glued to the screens.

Whatever the reasons may be, we can all agree on one thing - that cartoons affects us emotionally. They make us laugh, feel sad or simply feeling awed.

I remember when I was in my pre-teens, I had 'published' this one monthly magazine of my own, called Ragam A. Nizar (A. Nizar's Antics). By published, I mean every month, I would use a new exercise book (plain pages or with lines) and would draw and write any ideas that came to mind. There were even columns like Letters From Readers, comics series, advertisements and contests, in addition to the many one-page cartoon strips. The only difference was that, all drawings and writings were contributed by me. As I can vaguely recall, they were not that bad and quite funny too.

Each month, the mag covers carried different themes. I remember the cover I had for one December month. It showed a Santa Claus slumped on a chair in his flooded house with all the presents floating around him. Fyi, towards end of the year, particularly in December, Malaysia is a wet season with flood in certain areas, thus the reason behind that particular cover.

The covers even came complete with price tag, circulation no, name of month, etc... just like how usual publications would look like. I published them without fail for about a year or a year plus, mainly for my safe keeping and with friends occasionally reading them. Just think of it as my version of Gila-Gila (a local publication) and Mad magazines....

For more than 10 years, I had somehow lost touch with my cartoon side. Not only that, I had even completely forgotten about my 'magazine.' When I became a guest speaker for Cedko's Cartoonist Conference a year ago on a non-cartoon related subject, I somehow had this deja vu feeling, that I used to like to draw before. Talk about having amnesia huh?

The memory snapped back at me after my wife relayed the conversation she had with my mum one day. She said that mum regretted the fact that she had thrown away all my Ragam A. Nizar magazines. Otherwise my wife would have gotten the chance to read them. No wonder I had suppressed memories on cartooning. Only since then, had I remember how artistic, creative and perhaps, entrepreneurial I was. And since then also, I've started to stay in touch with my cartoon side.

For me, creativity breaks ourselves from the norms of life, from all those typical stuffs we encounter with daily. For example, a factory worker may need to do soldering work as his routine. But his creativity, or rather, imagination, can spice it up by imagining those transistors, capacitors and resistors come to life.

I also value creativity greatly, something that is outside the box and out of ordinary. For example, don't you just hate it when another typical car advertisement is just showing you the clutch, the seats and the headlights? But an advert about a father fixing the seatbelt of his bubbly and talkative daughter from the outside of a car, and the father then runs a little bit to get to the driver's seat, not wanting to miss what the daughter is saying as she still keeps on talking, gives you a refreshing look on the car AND father-child relationship.

Another close example that we may all relate to - compare a dull power point presentation with all long-worded texts to complement a monotonous speaker, with the one that comes with animations and sound effects (as long as not overly-done).

Creativity also lets ideas flow and helps form solutions to problems. For example, I've read from many sources before, that for an aspiring author to succeed in his writing endeavour, he/she should just keep on writing when ideas pour in. Don't stop and think too much, for the ideas might stop or the stories lose creativity. Screw the grammar, screw the sentence structures. Those can be dealth with/edit later.

As our cute and slightly overweight member of the family, Mr. Sky (photo above) had said the other day, when he quoted the words of Edward Albee and Gerald G. Jampolsky, "Meow, meow, meow, meow, meow, meow, meow, meow........" which meant, "The thing that makes a creative person is to be creative and that is all there is to it," and "A truly creative person rids him or herself of all self-imposed limitations." What a wise middle-aged 'man', Mr. Sky is. :-o

P/S: If drawing own magazine was something that I openly let other people see me doing when I was younger, how about imagining having own TV cartoon series while taking a shower (well, for most of the times)? Each episodes would revolve around the characters that I created, with dialogues that I scripted. They even came with sound effects (yep! this mouth can produce such effects haha), with hand movements and all, to represent the flow of the stories.

Guess, now you know I was (or am) such an introvert huh, and perhaps, the reason why I still take quite a long time in the shower (though no longer talking to myself in the room laaa...:-p)

Labels: Cartoons, Creativity, Life, Sky

posted by The Pisces Man @ 5:09 am