by Andrew Pilcher

Stre-e-e-etch

a568-130908Inspired by Billy, who is a very elastic cat. I’ve never seen any cat stretch to the lengths that he can manage.

Incidentally, if you’re wondering why I’m not drawing these Sunday strips in the traditional three-bank funny pages format, it’s because I don’t think that’s how Smith will be seen in the future. Print is dead, and the parameters we have to work to nowadays are not those that suit newspaper production, but those that suit smart phones and tablets. It’s an interesting space to work with, and it’s let me try several ideas that just wouldn’t have worked before. This is a strip I could never have done in the daily format.

by Andrew Pilcher

Humbug!

a567-130901Regular reader, Scott the Badger, this is for you.

Let’s say thank you to whoever put that conveniently placed hillock there, which made the job of the reveal on the last three panels so much easier.

Also, thanks to the two badgers who were cavorting outside my study window on the night the controversial badger cull began. You wouldn’t believe they noise they make when they’re playing – there’s scuffling, there’s snorting, and best of all, there’s the cartoonish galloping sound their claws make on the concrete drive way when they’re chasing one another.

The badger cull isn’t happening around our parts, thank heavens – that’s a trial that’s happening in the west country. I have every sympathy with the farmers who are blaming the rising incidence of TB in cattle on the badger population, but I’m not sure shooting badgers is the answer. Maybe if cattle vaccines were a more sensible price it would be more economical to vaccinate the herds than hire badger shooting posses.

by Andrew Pilcher

Someone’s nicked the top half of the tree

a566-130825We have some rather over enthusiastic tree surgeons here in Hastings. I have a conifer directly opposite my balcony, and I was warned that it was going to be trimmed by the management of our block of flats. Fair enough, I thought, it needs to be thinned down a little bit. What I wasn’t expecting to find when I got home one evening was this…

Seagulls now walk along the top of the tree, tormenting Bella with their succulent just-out-of-reachness, and the young tree just behind to the right has since toppled over in the gales earlier this year, providing the tree with a new top.
by Andrew Pilcher

Click click click click

a565-130818Another gag inspired by a photo in the Day by Day cat calendar — this one a backview of some kittens with their tails handing over the edge.

I was fascinated by Newton’s Cradles when I was a kid. I never had one but if you were in a shop in Tunbridge Wells in the 1970s and could hear a ‘Click click click’ sound coming from the gift section, you could pretty well guess that’s where I was.

This is an example of why cheating at artwork doesn’t work. The idea was that the gag would be helped if the cats stayed in exactly the same position in each frame and only the tails moved, so I drew one frame and then photocopied it another seven times. The result is, frankly, lifeless – compare it with ‘Tail Jive’ two weeks ago, where every iteration of Smith was drawn individually and it looks much better.

by Andrew Pilcher

Inevitably…

a564-130811Right. That’s that little fad officially over. Next week: Tail Jive Gangnam Style.*

* Not really.

by Andrew Pilcher

Tail Jive

Tail JiveHere’s the first of the Sundays, and what could be more appropriate than to begin with a redraw of the first Smith strip ever to be published. The version below has been seen before on this blog, it was first published in the 1981 edition of the Skinners school magazine, “the Leopard”. I much prefer this redraw, which has overtones of Andy Warhol about it, and a minimum of movement lines. Besides, Smith’s learned a few new dance moves over the years…

tailjive