Behind the Scenes

Here are a few extras from behind the scenes at Savage Chickens. I'll update this from time to time with doodles and such.

Your Monthly Favourites

Mar-12-2008: Oh hey - I've stopped posting your monthly cartoon favourites on this page, because I've added a list of your current top 5 to the upper right side of the home page. This list shows the most-visited cartoons of the previous 30 days.

Chickens in Print

Mar-12-2008: The chickens have been appearing in print a fair bit lately. Today, I received a copy of the latest Classroom magazine, where the chickens accompany a story about using poetry as a teaching aid. Some all-new poetry-related chickens are in the latest issue of Sphinx. And this cartoon appears in a recent issue of the neuroscience journal Neuron, in a very interesting article about autism. Go figure!

If you ever want to include a cartoon in your book or magazine, give me a shout.

Godzilla in Spring

Feb-18-2008: For fun, I've been messing around with paint. Here's my latest effort, featuring a familiar face:

December's Favourites

Jan-2-2008: The most-visited cartoons in December were: Patent, A Few Good Chickens, and Elmo. The most popular Christmas-related cartoons were Holiday Sales, Naughty or Nice, and Another Christmas Carol.

Behind the Scenes: Xmas 2007 Edition

Dec-31-2007: Here are a few scraps and doodles from the holiday season. This first one demonstrates the sort of rigorous quality control that goes on here at Savage Chickens:

Eagle-eyed Dahl fans will notice that I misspelled 'oompa-loompa'. I thought about leaving it this way for a second, but then remembered the Tatooine incident, so I re-drew it. Oh and I added the 'How to Annoy Elves' tagline to suggest a stronger sense of malevolence.

Next, here's an early scribble that led to the Christmas Revenge cartoon:

The final Chuck Norris version came from this original idea of Santa's revenge against a cookie thief. I often work through an idea like this, scribbling down alternate dialogs until it feels right. (This is how my handwriting looks when I write too fast - the bit at the top right is supposed to say "This time, it's personal".)

Next, here's the initial sketch that led to the Evolution of the Snowman cartoon:

I originally had him slowly dissolve, but I prefer the more abrupt melting in the final version. The squiggly marks here are from me making sure my pen still works.

Next, here's an idea that didn't make it this year cuz I didn't get it to work the way I wanted. It came from the idea that Timmy was a bit of a flake and would therefore make a good snowflake:

Maybe I'll try it again next year with one of the giant post-its to see if I can come up with a more elaborate chicken snowflake.

November's Favourites

Dec-2-2007: The most-visited cartoons this month were: A Thwack in Time, Monday, and the still-popular Scary Stuff.

Chickens on eBook

Nov-6-2007: The chickens make an appearance in a review of the Sony PRS505 over at For What It Worths. Looks pretty cool, eh? I just love the idea of reading a sticky note on an eBook.

October's Favourites

Nov-1-2007: Most visited cartoons in October? Chaos In Hell was easily the top cartoon of the month. And second place Sixteen Candles proved that our gal Molly still has a huge following. And the top Halloween cartoon came third: Scary Stuff.

Safety Chickens in Chicago

Oct-16-2007: This cartoon appeared in a presentation at the National Safety Council in Chicago this morning. Polly from Hewlett Packard used it in her discussion of the unique safety concerns of cleanroom environments with 24/7 operations.

September's Favourites

Oct-8-2007: With all the excitement around winning the Laura Veirs contest, I forgot to post your favourite cartoons from September. Well here they are! The most-visited cartoon was Phobia. Runner-ups were the pirate-themed Text Messaging and golden oldie Stealth Problem.

Phantom Mountain Fun Facts

Sep-21-2007: Okay I'm getting lots of questions about the music video, so here are some fun facts about the making of Phantom Mountain:

I found out about the contest late so I only had 2 weeks to make it happen and I had no idea what I was doing, having never really tried animation - at least since drawing flipbooks as a kid. I spent the first day storyboarding, then 11 days drawing, and then 2 days shooting all of the photographs and editing the video.
There are about 500 sticky notes in the video, including a butterfly and 4 or 5 stunt butterflies.
There are over 1500 photos in the video. I used a digital camera on a tripod, which I had to sort of crouch over. My back was killing me!
I drew so many cartoons that I actually developed a callus on the inside of my left thumb from drawing too much. Towards the end, I had to get up and shake out my arm every few minutes.
The old clock radio on the table used to belong to my great-grandmother.
The tarot cards are the Ryder-Waite deck, miniature version. The cards that appear in the video are: The Devil, The Tower, Death, and - briefly - The Fool.
I love Dead Dog Bob's surprise appearance. I didn't plan to use him in the original storyboard. It just kinda happened.
Will I do animation again? You bet I will! But I think I'll give myself more time next time!
How did I suspend the butterfly in the air? I used a bunch of different techniques: pins, string, and bits of yellow plasticine.
Do I still have a day job? Yes, I did most of the work in the evenings and only took two days off for the photography work.

Savage Chickens: Animated!

Sep-17-2007: I've created an animated music video for Laura Veirs, who held a music video contest this summer. Of course, I didn't find out about the contest until there were only two weeks left before the deadline. So for two weeks, I drew like a madman and took over 1500 photographs. I finished it at 3:30 a.m. in the wee hours before the deadline. It was completely insane. And I'll be posting it on the site this Friday - but for now, here's a sneak preview:

Make sure you stop by again on Friday to see the video. And wish me luck - the contest winners will be announced in the next couple of weeks!

August's Favourites

Sep-3-2007: August was the busiest month in the history of the site, mostly because of the popularity of Eight Steps - the most visited cartoon this month, and the most visited cartoon ever on the site. Distant runner-ups were: Fourth of July and Realization.

July's Favourites

Aug-1-2007: Wow - July was a busy month, with lots of new people coming to the site. And the cartoon you visited most in July was Play Time. Not too far behind were Chocolates and The Future.

Chickens in 3D

Jul-2-2007: Here's today's cartoon from a slightly different angle. In this picture, it's easier to see where I cut the chicken out of the sticky note:

June's Favourites

Jul-1-2007: June's most-visited cartoons were Body Language, Work It, and Religious Differences.

Evolution of a Sticky Note: Secret of the Ninja

June-28-2007: Remember this cartoon from back in January?

Well it's a little known fact that 90% of Savage Chickens cartoons begin life as fart jokes. Here's the original version:

I think I like the fart version better now that I see it again. I guess some fart jokes are meant to be fart jokes.

May's Favourites

May-31-2007: The most-visited cartoon this month was easily the Metal Band Name Generator. But as far as regular cartoons go, the faves were Snowflakes and The Dangers of Cloning.

Evolution of a Sticky Note: Yet Another Friday the 13th

May-25-2007: Here's an example of a cartoon that didn't change much from start to finish but you can see how I gradually polish a cartoon:

The scruffy original sketch.
A cleaner sketch to get a better idea of how it would work. I didn't draw all of those pesky violets yet though.
This is the version I almost ran, but it still didn't feel quite right.
But the night before I ran the cartoon, I thought of the "gratuitous violets" gag and decided that there needed to be a whole lot more violets.

Your Favourite Chickens

May-01-2007: Hey I was just checking out my web site statistics and figured out the most-visited cartoon for each month so far this year. Check em out:

April 2007: Barry White
March 2007: Chuck Norris
February 2007: The Meek
January 2007: The Optimist

Barry White was a bit of a surprise cuz I ran that one way back in September. I guess people were just loving the love this April!

Evolution of a Sticky Note: Monkeys!

Mar-30-2007: The Monkeys! cartoon began with the following monkey cartoon that I drew last year and never ran:

Feces or not, everybody loves dancing monkeys. Right?

Tofu Around The World: The U.S.S. Essex

Mar-29-2007: Thanks to Paul for this photo of the guys from the 31st Marine Expeditionary Unit showing off their Timmy Tofu shirts aboard the U.S.S. Essex:

Chickens Around The World: Blaydon, UK

Mar-19-2007: Many thanks to Mark for sending in these pictures of the impressive wall of chickens at St. Thomas More school in Blaydon, Newcastle-Upon-Tyne, UK:

Got Savage Chickens in your home/school/workplace? Send me photos!

Stumble Like A Chicken

Mar-11-2007: I've started using StumbleUpon as a random websurfing tool.

Wanna see what sites I like? Check it out.

Evolution of a Sticky Note: Friday the 12th

Mar-01-2007: I ran the following cartoon back on Friday January 12. The published version assumed that Jason Chicken would be sad about being so close to Friday the 13th but yet so far:

But my original version of the cartoon took the opposite approach, assuming that Jason Chicken would be enjoying his day off by indulging in his nonpsychopathic hobbies:

I think the one I originally published probably makes more sense, but I still really like the image of Jason painting a landscape.

Doodle: Boarpion vs Crabbit

Feb-26-2007: This cartoon came from this doodle:

Evolution of a Sticky Note: Eyes of the Zombie

Feb-08-2007: This cartoon was the first time that I drew chicken zombies (even though I published this one first). Today I found my early experiments with different types of zombie eyes:

But I ended up going with my original version. It just looked more undead to me:

Evolution of a Sticky Note: The A-Team

Jan-30-2007: Here's the story behind the creation of this comic:

I began with the idea of the A-Team being hired to do non-A-Team tasks. Like rolling pennies.
It wasn't working for me, so I changed the mundane activity and mixed up the design. But I can't really draw rakes. And I was still stuck on the idea that the mundane task would make B.A. Baracus furious.
Months later, I picked up the old cartoon to give it another try. I added the flan pun and chicken versions of the actual A-Team characters.
Finally I dropped the original 'mundane' idea completely and turned it into a lost episode. I added eyebrows to Face to make him more Face-like, and moved the flan to Hannibal's side of the cartoon so the flan joke and image would be closer together. Here's the full-size version.