Explanation

Blunt Cogs is an idea I had shortly after a series of posts and comments over on Anti Barney’s site, based around the idea that we’ve got very little real idea who anyone in our little group is. When Footeater tried summing up everyone in a single word, it made me think that most of us probably appear as almost cartoon characters to other bloggers. And when I recently revisited the early entries of Anti Barney and found Joke Mail’s comment of

“By being adopted by Dr Maroon, and winning such a prestigious award, you may have inadvertently got yourself caught up with all sorts of trouble - jokers, mad doctors, talking animals and bile merchants just for starters. By staking out your ground as being both foul mouthed and witty, who knows what you have let yourself in for”

I found myself thinking, “This would make a fucking good cartoon strip”

We have a wide variety of characters, most of whom are quite capable of making fucking hilariously funny comments on equally amusing blog posts.

The idea here is that you are all capable of coming up with outrageous situations and witty comments, so why not create cartoon strips of us?

I’ve recruited Kim to help build the cartoons (I knew him during his university days and have a list of things that he wouldn’t want the rest of the world finding out about).

What he needs from you are:

1. A cartoon version of yourself. This means that you can create yourself in the image you want to project. None of us are ever going to be able to verify it. You can scan an image you like, create your own on your computer, or use one of the online character generator programmes listed below (Kim & I used the Southpark one). Be creative.

http://www.planearium2.de/flash/spstudio.html (South Park)

http://www.ugo.com/channels/comics/heroMachine2/heromachine2.asp (Hero Machine)

If you know of any others, let us know.

If you create an image around 300 x 300 pixels, then it can be shrunk or cropped as necessary.

2. One, two or three panel scripts based on any of the bunch of us listed on the right. It doesn’t have to be complicated, just funny. But, anyone who doesn’t submit a version of themselves for use either gets left out of the strip, or runs the risk of someone else creating a less favourable version of them.

You’re all a bunch of egotistical cunts who I’m sure will be chuffed to bits at the idea of showing off in another media, but if anyone really doesn’t want to be involved, then let me know and I’ll remove you from the character list on the right.

I have no real idea whether this will work or not, but it has the potential to be a bit of a laugh if nothing else. We just have to play this by ear and see how it goes.

If you’re unsure about anything, just leave a query in the comments.

Kim’s e-mail is available on his profile, so send him your pictures and script ideas to him and we’ll see how it goes.

Below is the first one put together by me & Kim. Can you do better?