Evolution of a Toon

I've been playing with toonlet.com again.

I have been delightfully entertained by the Tuesday toonlets that Daryl, over at Out and About in New York City has been doing. She's the one who got me started on this. When I first went to the site, I tried creating characters to match my family members. It isn't like drawing your own cartoons. You are offered several sets of body parts, drawn by quite a number of different people. You can create characters of your own by picking and choosing among the various parts. I believe you can eventually make sets of your own, but I haven't even tried to discover how to do that yet. I'm sure the idea is to create characters to people comic strips about completely imaginary beings, but I like the idea of trying to put together something resembling people I know.


The first one I tried was myself. Since it was a first attempt, it wasn't really the best by far. I wasn't familiar with methods or with what was offered. My first attempt at me looked like this. I had particular trouble finding hair that in any way came close to my own.


When my oldest daughter came to visit, I showed her how to do it. She managed to find a great likeness of herself. She also did one of me, and used a different hair-do entirely. I then adapted her hair-do for me, and came up with something like this. I tried that for a while.


Last night I was playing with it some more. I really searched all the various sets of parts, and found hair that actually looks much more like my own. Not that I'm particularly happy about it. I hate my hair and what it has become in recent years. But I have to admit, this does look more like mine. I sat myself at a computer and gave myself a light bulb overhead indicating a bright idea for my blog post.


Who knows? I may find another solution that I like better, or perhaps get into designing my own set of parts. I guess the evolution will continue. Meantime, I'm having fun. I've changed a few of the other characters as well, particularly little Isaac. I do enjoy putting him into different clothes, and giving him different props, like a kite, or a cat, or an ice cream cone. And of course I change his expression, using different mouths or eyes, or eyebrows. Maybe I'm doing the same thing I used to do as a child, playing with my paper dolls.

Try it if you think you'd enjoy it. It does not take any artistic talent - just takes a lot of patience and some time. That's part of the pleasure of being retired. I have lots of time.