A Blog About Relaxing With Doodling
Toons can be PunToons: art previously published by Mack Rowe
Now that you’ve read the previous eight Puntifications (see March 30 through April 7) you are ready to contemplate the mysteries of imagining images “to illustrate THE PUN.” You know…like “to dream the impossible dream.”
‘psst three cornered hat = clue to catch-a-tory’
And then there are contractions like: Wanna go to C’rackers, Venezuela?
(Editor’s note: pronounce each consonent letter “C” & “r” as their own syllable. Found in dictionary: Caracas | kəˈräkəs, kəˈrakəs | the capital of Venezuela, in the northern part of the country near the Caribbean Sea; population 2,097,400 (est. 2009).)
Still others substitute one word for three: Tijuanna sing a song?
Other Puntifications have one word standing for two: Did you like my desert joke? Well, I know a Bedouin!
Some are one-for-one substitutions. For example, a ruler on Prozac would be Kublai Khalm instead of Khan.
Fourth: Read’em aloud! We discovered that puns are more apt to “click” in you mind when you vocalize them–even when you’re reading them by yourself. It can be more fun that way.
Third: Go beyond words. The idea is to present puns in a visual format with our characters acting them out.
The following excerpts from “Jest for the Health of It!” by Mack Rowe and Neil Shawen (copyright 2001) show the creative process at work ‘behind the curtain’ in the world of MackToons:
The second puntification: Develop a theme.
Each PunToon is built around a subject or theme. So we go beyond a simple collection of single unrelated word puns. After all, we certainly don’t want to appear un-themely!
As you can see the theme here is old-time movie stars.
The following excerpts from “Jest for the Health of It!” by Mack Rowe and Neil Shawen (copyright 2001) show the creative process at work ‘behind the curtain’ in the world of MackToons:
“Puntifications
In our weekly head-banging to create a fresh batch of Puntoons!, Neil and I have invented various types of puns or, as we call them, pun-tifactions.
The first puntification: Betcha can’t do just one!
We all know that one pun begets another. So Neil and I take th same approach in creating a cartoon. Each one has several puns.
Next posting will be the second puntification: Develop a theme.
From the Mack Rowe and Neil Shawen 2001 book “Jest for the Health of It!” you get to learn the “Puntifications” behind the creations. The first of eight start tomorrow. But as an introduction to these Puntification lessons, here is page 63:
So how do we put PunToons! together? As I’ve said, “we” means myself and Neil Shawen. Because of all the years we’ve known each other and punned together, I invited him to join me (drew him in?) in creating PunToons! Neil immediately developed a case of what I called pun angst. He was concerned about how we would keep coming up with new ideas each week. I said to him that I believed our English language is so marvelously rich and profound, the possibilities are endless. Then he quickly pointed out that English does have many variations for a single word, such as necktie. So we have an endless variety of words to play with. We have proceeded on that faith, and it works–time after time! It’s knot hard!
This is how it goes. Neil works up a page of pun ideas over a couple of cups of coffee. Then he faxes it to me. I mean to tell you, puns fill the page! I think his being a cross-word puzzle junkie helps.
So I read it over, mark it up for ideas, and add some of my own puns. I select a series of puns to weave into a toon theme using my characters. Then I work through a pencil draft and fax it to him. He comments and faxes back. I work it over as a final pencil drawing until I like it (and the characters like it too!) Now I am ready to go to the final inked version. We chew through this team process each week. At this writing we have produced over 1000 PunToons!”