Last summer I was interviewed by magazine editor and cartooning buff John Read for issue #3 of his excellent magazine Stay Tooned! It was a real honor for me, especially considering some of the exceptional talent and “big names” in cartooning that have graced his pages.

I wanted to order several extra copies of the magazine to give to family and friends. John offered to give them to me for free in exchange for an original sketch. He colleects cartoons of gorillas and asked me to doodle up a gorilla (black and white only) reading his magazine. I was delighted to oblige.

The extra issues arrived and then life got crazy, and I’m embarrassed to say it took me several weeks before I was able to do the sketch. Because of the long wait I went one step further and inked it. I’ve been doing all-digital drawings for well over a year now so it felt a little odd to ink something on paper but it came back to me fairly quickly. The drawing went out in today’s mail, and John has given me permission to post it here.

Stay Tooned! really is a terrific magazine for anyone interested in cartooning or cartoon art. Don’t let the fact that a schmuck like me got in the magazine fool you. You can subscribe or order back issues here.

I’m sure more than a few of my blog readers have browsed or even participated in DrawingBoard.org.

The link in the previous sentence may not work because the site is down, which is why I’m writing this post. DrawingBoard.org is in trouble.

For those who don’t know, for years DrawingBoard.org has been a fun hangout spot for hundreds (maybe thousands) of animation and comic book artists of all skill levels. Before art blogs burst on the scene it was one of the few places where artists could post their sketches and and illustrations online and immediately get feedback and encouragement from other artists. Folks also chatted about hot topics in the industry, shared fun and helpful links, and joked/complained about the latest in movies and pop culture. There were also contests and themed drawing sessions (i.e. “Everyone post a sketch of a Batman villain”). It was a fun place for artists to just hang out with other artist who shared a love for sketching, animation, and comics. Artists got to know each other through DrawingBoard.org and for those who participated regularly the site became the closest thing you could find online to a true community.

In recent years social networking sites like blogs, Facebook, Twitter, etc. have taken over some of the territory previously dominated by message boards like Drawingboard.org. I know I haven’t visited the site nearly as frequently as I used to. But when I do visit it seems like discussions are still very active, and I’m glad.

Which is why it’s a shame to hear that the site is in danger of shutting down permanently. As I understand it the sites founder has been personally paying the lions share of the costs to keep the board running all these years. My guess is he has invested hundreds, perhaps thousands of dollars over the years to keep everything humming. I don’t know the specifics but it appears he is no longer able to foot hte bill.

The site will soon be back up with a Paypal button prominently displayed, and will now be run by donations. If you’ve participated in the site and have enjoyed the experience, I encourage you to make a donation as soon as you can. With so many members, my guess is that if everyone just chipped in $5 the site could stay active for a long time. (If the link isn’t live when you read this, please check back. It’s supposed to be up and running again very soon.)

Here’s another round of interesting links that you might find interesting if they are things you are interested in:

Google’s New “Profile” Feature — John Jantsch, author of Duct Tape Marketing, blogs about a new Google feature that allows a short profile of you to show up on Page 1 when other people google your name. A great, free way to flesh out your marketing a bit. Highly recommended.

Tweetie for Mac — Folks who Twitter have been singing the praises of this new Mac software. It doesn’t allow you to organize people you follow into groups, but otherwise I like it.

Pencil Test from Milt Kahl and Frank Thomas — Short video of some raw animation (well, cleaned up pencils anyway) from two of Disney’s great masters.

20 Best Websites To Download Free eBooks — I haven’t browsed the sites or read any of the books, but thought this list would be worth sharing anyway. Hey, it’s free.

70 Corporate Mascot Designs — Since I specialize in designing corporate mascots and other characters, I found this collection to be inspiring. Some good, some bad, a few ugly, but a great collection overall. How many can you identify? (Note: Some may be mislabeled. For instance, “Tony the Tiger” is mistakenly identified as the Exxon Mobil tiger).

Inking Tips from Michael Cho — Some great tips on improving your inking skills.

Too busy for a real blog post, but here’s a quick link in honor of one of my favorite holidays: Top 100 April Fools Day Hoaxes of All Time. Enjoy!

Two days ago I posed a curious question: Are the offspring of artistic men more likely to be boys or girls? Most of the artists I know who are parents (myself included) have all girls or mostly girls, and that seemed a little odd to me.

So far thirty of you have taken my informal survey. The results are below. Assuming everyone followed the rules (you must be male, consider yourself very artistic, and have fathered at least one child), your answers seem to support my crazy little theory:

The total number of children reported so far adds up to 60, or an average of two per artist. Of those kids, 36 are female and only 24 are male. That’s an even 60/40 split (60% girls, 40% boys), or, looked at another way, there are 1-1/2 times more girls than boys. Actually I half-expected there to be an even heavier girl-to-boy ratio, but it’s still interesting that things seem to lean that way.

It’s also worth noting that one respondent had three girls and two more respondents each had four girls, but of all thirty respondents nobody had more than two boys. Of course, those three respondents had a total of eleven girls so you could argue they skewed the results (without them the number of girls and boys would be almost even). I guess it’s all in how you look at it.

Despite the spanky-looking chart none of this is even remotely scientific. This is the internet, not MIT. I majored in art for crying out loud. Still, it’s kinda interesting. Not sure what it means (if anything), so feel free to leave any comments if you have any theories, observations, or one-liners.

I’ll leave the poll open in case more of you want to take part, and if the results change significantly one way or another I’ll be sure to post an update. Thanks to everyone who helped out in this goofy little experiment.