Adam and Joe Guide: Boggins updated

I decided my previous post of Boggins in the A4 portrait format didn’t work well. It was a bit crammed.

So this is the final layout.

Boggins Landscape. Kill it!

Adam and Joe: An Idiothole’s Guide v2 Cover

Large Version

Final Cover

 

 

 

Où est la Baguette?

Frenchie

Unrelated but entertaining:

Adam and Joe Update: Boggins Sketch

The Boggins Debacle sketch.

Hate Boggins. Kill the bastard.

Boggins Sketch Final

Finished and re-scanned the Bath time sketch. It’s handy to have a proper sketch scan incase you cock it up when you colour it in.

Also I might print it out and do a thick ‘colour in the lines style’ black outline version just for fun.

Adam & Joe Bath time Sketch Final

Adam And Joe Guide Update: Draft Cover

Been planning an update for the Idiothole’s Guide I made a year ago, ever since the show time changed from 9:30-12 to 10:00-1:00.

But I was in too deep with the Barbara Cartlands.

The grip of obsession is finally beginning to thaw a little enough to sketch out some pages and to plan the page updates.

I think a few new sections might pop-in.

Here is a rough sketch of the new cover.

Adam & Joe's bath time. Bowies Special Bubbles in a bottle on the far left.

The posters on the wall might not work on the cover because of the font and the logo.

So I might just use Adam and Joe in the tub cropped tighter.

Well.. lets see how it goes.

Originally I planned to have Bowie bathing in the tub as well.

But it didn’t work either, partly because Bowie looks like something out of the Universe and partly because I can’t suspend my belief to convince myself that 3 men can fit in a smallish tub.

I want Adam and Joe to be comfy. Good thing Adam is small.

I have a lot of drawings with bathtubs or bathing.

I do spend an inordinately long amount of time in the loo both at work and at home.

It’s a very peaceful place.

On the other hand I don’t like baths.

They are pretty darn boring and the water never stays hot enough.

I just don’t like the idea of stewing in my own filth.

The ex and I used to take baths and smoke one in the bath, but you know I think the loo is a place thats much nicer on your own.

Give me a nice super-shower any day.

Text The Nation: Body Fiddles

The Nations Favorite Feature.

This is my contribution to a radio feature for the Adam and Joe Show on BBC 6 Music. This is a feature where Adam & Joe pose a question and listeners respond by sending in emails in the hope that they are funny and A&J will read them out.

It is unlikely to ever get read out (Damn them!!)

So I might as well put it up here since I’m very behind on all my postings.

I’ve never yet had the privilege of being read out.

I cry often just thinking about it. Being so interactive is ruining my mental health. (Damn you Hood!)

But here is my TTN anyway:

The Text The Nation for this week was body fiddles. Weird things you do to occupy time or have a mild OCD about. (e.g Cracking knuckles, jiggling your knee)

Dear Adam and Joe & Co.

Fiddle:

I like to take a small but long strip of hair (Left side of head ONLY, and ALWAYS with the same bit of hair. I can always find it) and run my fingers down (NOT through it) it until it is perfectly smooth and silky.

Then I like to loop the strip (one hand ONLY) and stroke the back of my left ear one time, then back of neck, one time with the smooth looped part.

Sometimes after much smoothening (is that a word?) I like to stick the strand backwards over my ear (almost a Princess Leia, but more crazy) and then I make my partner look at it and FORCE them to praise me insincerely.

Then I start smoothening it again. If it is not perfectly smooth the sensation is RUINED.

Toodles.
x

j

Update 09.May.2011:

IT GOT READ OUT! HOLY MOLY ROLLER NOVOCAINE!

I’m so excited I think I could die. I just listened to it 4 times in a row already.

Adam and Joe Illustration Crit.

Drawing only half a Bowie face behind a not-Joe looking Joe is a cop-out. I know its a cop out because Ive used this trick often.

So this James Hood fellow is the new ‘resident’ illustrator for Adam and Joe at the Big British Castle…

hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm

Ok so I’m jealous. I’ll admit it.

Madly jealous.

I feel terribly petty about it, but Adam has plugged this guy in every show since they came back from their long sabbatical and it fills me with both with an inner rage and envious bile.

Damn him. And his ‘resident’ status.

I want it to be me!!

I feel this way about anyone Adam and Joe mention – During Text the Nation particularly. There’s an immediate and INTENSE resentment towards the person whose emails have been read out. I want the world to IMPLODE violently so I’m the ONLY surviving Adam and Joe listener so they HAVE to read out my email, even if it’s just a list of my groceries for the week.

My rage against Mr. Hood is however largely because I genuinely don’t like the way he draws. At all, on any level – which I will go into in detail below.

So lets put my pettiness and territorial jealousy to one side and critique this mans work as objectively as I can (snort)

Please feel free to disagree as volubly as you like about my critique and please post any rebuttals in the comment section below. I always feel a good crit is meant to inflame and aggravate.

Lets dive right in there:

To begin – I dislike scribble drawings.

I mean, really, this faux-naive cartoon style is in itself so immensely irritating.

I’m not talking about Outsider art or even the naive style of painting (both of which I enjoy), because they have some other redeeming qualities beyond perfect and immaculate drawing. Colour, texture, humour, content, intensity of detail.

I’m talking about badly drawn cartoons that seem (to me) to be stylistically manufactured to wallpaper over poor drawing skills and laziness of observation. (I’m channeling Foz and Gary here, can you feel it?)

I’m happy to forgive it as a ‘style’ if the drawing is secondary to the content.

Perhaps the content is dark or biting or funny or witty (á la Shrigley) but if nothing new is brought to the table either stylistically or in terms of content I don’t know what there is to look at.

Therefore I find James Hood’s work rather mediocre. He brags about having won ‘Young cartoonist of the year’ – twice no less. For what I’m not really sure. (meow pussy cat)

1. His work is not funny ha ha.

2. It’s not even funny I’m-laughing-on-the-inside.

This drawing bores me and simultaneously irritates me with the terrible drawing of Joe and Adam and Photoshop colouring in. 

Adam said he ‘liked the naive style and almost grotesque drawings’ but it isn’t enough one way or another. There’s not really enough of anything. Not weird enough, not detailed enough, not funny enough.

And it’s all so Tesco’s basic. He could fill this page end to end with characters instead of largely using the Photoshop paint-bucket fill tool to colour it black

Someone on the comment feed compared him to the illustrator Andrew Rae (hardly to Rae’s credit). Rae’s work is in fact very carefully drawn and is crawling with small but interesting details.

Andrew Rae: Last Night A spread from my Comic Grey Matter as featured in Posterpaper by JaguarShoes Collective

Hood again: This one is marginally better than the space one.

Hood’s work on the other hand feels heavily stylized. Heavy being the right word. It’s all flat and lacking any subtle touches. The ‘shaky hand’, the little half-finished lines, the lumpiness, the one-tone colours in pastels.

Yawn yawn. Generic cartoon network/Nickleodeon minus the fun animation and silly voices.

Am I being hugely bitchy? Probably, but nonetheless I think my criticisms are valid ones.

Below is a Nickleodeon cartoon called ‘Arrgh! Real Monsters’ which reminds me of this style. Lots of half lines and scratches and lumpiness. There are a variety of cartoons like this. But I particularly like the monsters in this one. They have fun little quirks and live in the sewer eating unpleasant things.

Hood’s likenesses are also poor – this is coming from someone who really struggles to produce decent likenesses. Perhaps that’s what irks – I struggle – this guy just poops out some shoddy scribble and is PLUGGED, oh my lord how he is plugged, on the show. (So much resentment)

Unless labeled as such I wouldn’t be able to tell that this was about Adam and Joe at all. I mean come on man, take the time to draw Joe a chin. Don’t be so bloody lazy.

To his credit however, I think his output is prompt and very quick, as it has to be to make one for every show for the next 12 weeks.

So to conclude – I’m just not feeling this guy. On any level. Drawing, humour or observation.

And I suppose am vaguely disappointed in Adam’s taste in illustration (although I suppose it does sort of fit the studenty-scribbly aesthetic I’ve always imagined A&J probably have.)

You may of course, dismiss this critique as biased and vitriolic, and some of it, perhaps is (Young Cartoonist of the Year. Snort.) but largely I stand by my critique of Jame’s work.

You know, it’s OK. It’s not bad, but it’s not good.

It’s just so….Meh.

Scribbles. I mean, what can I say.

Masterchef Update

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I love the occasional understatements from Masterchef contestants :

One experimental (that’s always a sign) Suth Aafrecan (in your mind, say that with an accent) chef says…of his Quail on chocolate sponge cake served with a creamed chilli cabbage and a red wine emulsified chocolate sauce (seriously)

“Maybe putting a chocolate cake with quail was a little bit of a step too far….”

I am a cooking show junkie. I admit I have a problem.

Everyone needs a bosom for a pillow

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In a cunning stats-oriented move Russell Moore (An Adam and Joe fan, once referred to by the duo as “some kind of a genius man”) has convinced me that cooking show + screen grabs  =  stats boost. I’m curious to test out this theory.

In an even shrewder move Russell suggested I turn my focus from Masterchef to the lofty peaks of Nigella. (that wasn’t really meant to be a breast reference but lets roll with it).

The problem is, Nigella doesn’t bring up the same amount of bile in me as Masterchef does. It’s a laid back, casual sort of vibe on her show.

She says stupid, flowery things, sometimes, utter and complete nonsense. One such flowery outburst from a recent episode, that sticks in my mind was

“Mmmm I just love blackberries, jet and gleaming, glinting darkly from their snowy duvet of cream…”

I mean, who talks like that? Snowy duvet of cream. Sheesh.

And do I think those people, just ‘popping-in’ for lunch or dinner are really her ‘friends’? That probably isn’t even her house. She’s married to Saatchi (of Saatchi and Saatchi fame). They probably live in a gold palace paved with pigeon blood rubies and have diamonds in their chandeliers.

Does the camera focus on her licking her fingers and/or eating and pan to her cleavage a little too often? Sure it does.

But really, can you complain? Like a hindi movie, you must suspend your disbelief and just sink into it….After all, everyone needs a bosom for a pillow (Cornershop).

On a recent episode of Nigella - She says to a young and attractive man…(one of her ‘fake friends’ probably sourced on Gumtree)

N: “It’s a very artistic package you have there, if you don’t mind my saying so…”

Him: “…Uhm I think I just got a bit over excited by the chicken…”

Him “Mmmmm they are so good!”

N. in a husky voice “I’m glad you like my fajitas…you want to come again I hear?”

I’m sure it’s just my filthy mind but all I heard was -

“…artistic package”
“…got over excited…”
“mmmm…. so good”
“I’m glad you like my ‘fajitas’…”
“…you want to come again?

The Many Faces of Monica Galetti

What is this face?? Seriously? What is this?

Adam and Joe once asked the listeners in their ‘Text The Nation’ feature, (you’ll need to download my illustrated guide to the Adam and Joe show to understand this reference, assuming of course, that you give a fuck. Which I doubt.) what people they absolutely hated on the telly and many, many people (including myself) emailed in to complain about Masterchef.

They mostly complained about the way Greg Wallace eats (holding the fork or spoon backwards and then slowly, very slowly pulling it out of his mouth).

But I’ve recently discovered that Monica Galletti’s face-pulling ability (A judge/su-chef on Professional Masterchef – BBC) positively infuriates me. Every single time the camera pans back to her, she has a new and entirely ri-donc-ulous face on.

In fact that largely seems to be her role on the show. Cooking is just an additional bonus. I’m sure the producers tell her to do this because the amount of faces and the sheer range involved can’t be accidental.

This both winds me up and simultaneously fascinates me so much I’ve taken to screen-grabbing every time she makes a face. Each of the images below are totally separate shots.

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