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A Different Point Of View | From The BortyBlog Archives

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A collection of limited-run toons I did (circa 2006) for "A Different Point Of View".

"ADPOV" was a series of audio essays - featured on FarPoint Media Network’s Wingin' It podcast - about the Star Wars Universe as seen through the eyes of hard-working sandtrooper, TD-0013.

These essays are available on Apple iTunes. Also available to play online here.

As a fan, I emailed half-a-dozen ADPOV-themed gags, titled "TeeDee" (the first two letters in the character's I.D. number) to ADPOV's creator... he liked 'em! He blogged 'em.

It also helped having some street-cred, of sorts, in terms of being a (then) currently published cartoonist in the (then) most well-known sci-fi media magazine around.

All 26 toons, including some extra stuff (featured below), were published on ADPOV's own blog from late-2006 to 2008.

And here are the EXTRAS I promised earlier (with captioned explanations):

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Sunday Boredom | Scribble-Dee-Doo-Dahs #004

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Oh dear! Another scribble-dee-doo-dah to fill the emptiness of my Sunday afternoon.

Clockwise, from top-left: space cadets on mission; crazy hairdo lady (page filler); nobody tells horse head mask wearin' guy to wear a mask; horse head mask extra; Beardo and the Beard Bear.

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More Couch Potato Doodling | Scribble-Dee-Doo-Dahs #003

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Time for another scribble-dee-doo-dah session in front of the TV on another frosty Friday morn' (with pancakes!!!).

Clockwise, from left: Brick Tamland cheats on lamp; Governor Kemp knowing what's best for his state; random space cadets and 1-spatula general; aaand, as always, one clueless Trump.

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Couch Potato Doodling | Scribble-Dee-Doo-Dahs #002

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The below was purely an exercise of “well, I have nothing to do, and the cable news is bumming me out… maybe I’ll pick up a pen & legal pad and see what happens…”

Clockwise, from left: cowboy; some glamorous babe; I don’t know what this is all about; that asshole Trump; this maybe a badly drawn Roger Stone-esque character flanked by mindless cronies/supporters (as he was on the TV at the time when scribbling away).

When a Scribble-Dee-Doo-Dah event starts, just like in the example above, I have no agenda in mind when the pen begins to make random lines on the page - those lines sometimes will cross the path of other lines, and so on and on… until I eventually see crude forms, then build up from there. I had no idea I’d summon a cowboy from a rudimentary cube; how was I supposed to know a girl would appear from two curvy pen strokes (both accidental)?; as for the, err, grandma(?) and the one-eyed teddy bear on a leash… THAT JUST HAPPENED! No idea where my head was at for that one.

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Color Me Purple

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So this self-caricatured mess - illoed circa 2010 - has no actual reason for its existence. I just DID IT!

At the time, I was animating a short 45sec movie and, I guess, I needed a creative distraction and barfed out the below:

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Beware The Birthday Banshee!

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Originally penned in 2011, the Birthday Banshee creeps up to its victim on the night before his/her birthday, lights the Four Candles of the Birthdayocalypse atop of a clumsily-made baked slab, and eerily stares at said victim… and stares… and stares… and stares some more until he/she wakes up to an extraordinarily exhausted bloodshot (almost comatose) banshee at the foot of the bed - by that time, the long-extinguished candles would’ve burnt off the banshee’s birthday hat and created a new layer of candle wax over the baked slab. Happy Birthday.

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Here We Go Again! Another Pointless Scribble-Dee-Doo-Dah

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As posted in my Facebook:

I think this scribble-dee-doo-dah is telling me something... that I am way bored at work right now.

If anybody can tell me what was on my mind when I drew a misshapen mustachioed fez-wearing marshall sucking on an empty striped straw (#drool) and a finger that’d just poked him in the back of the head... I'll owe you a gorilla #thegoonshow

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Clyde, The Kitty Patriot | Another July 4th Toon Tribute

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O ! say, can you see!!! Happy July 4th!

As a token of this special day, I present to you Uncle Sam in kitty form - portrayed by Clyde Michael.

Originally painted back in 2009 for my fan/friend in NJ - Clyde is her kitty cat afterall.

Around 2012, to pad out my illustration folio (being unemployed is a bitch; working for scraps as a freelancer is a “whoer”), I went back and tinkered with the original painting by extending the canvas and adding draped flags & floor.

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Faux Exuberance At Work

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It’s Monday morning.

You arrive at work.

You have in your head a game plan to tackle ongoing job briefs, allocating time and resources to get 'em done.

You're all fired up & ready to go.

Now, go ahead and open your emails.

At the top of the messages list: "Please, Bort, could you do this thing you've already done, but now has to be done again because of some insignificant thing nobody cares about needs to be fixed? Thanks."

Well, that just ruined my morning mojo.

So my response was a parody of annoyance and pain, yet I had to create a portrait of faux exuberance...

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You Gotta Have Faith (That Nobody Screws Things Up!)

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A simple Post-It Note scribble-dee-doo-dah sent to a work colleague who’d alerted me she’d been tasked in transmitting vital production art out to the factory offshore.

I could’ve replied with a traditional “Yep, sounds fine. Do that!”. But I took 4 minutes out of my “busy” schedule to quickly do this self-caricature and emailed that instead.

I’m quite certain THIS doodle ain’t worthy enough for a blog post - when I draw things and send ‘em out, my normal procedure is to trash the originals (and whatever JPEGS derived from the originals) without even blinking… however, I promised myself this year - either because of vanity or procrastination - to document EVERY doodle I do, no matter how meaningless and/or stupid they are.

De-Funning The Carny Cops

“There’s a lot of talk about defunding the police these days…” (as quoted by an Andy Rooney impersonator).

Well, at least one governor has made the first steps to cull the more extremist divisions in his-or-her police department:

“Reavers” - the now put-down balloon canine - is, of course, a callout to “Firefly” show.

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Absolute Nonsense! | Scribble-Dee-Doo-Dahs #001

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Nothing of any meaning here… just me doodling on my legal pad while waiting for a huge file to finish auto-saving throughout the day yesterday.

Actual “artists” - those to whom get paid drawing for a living - would label something like the below “Warm Up Sketches”… just some crap they do at the beginning of the day before any actual creative stuff happens.

For me, when these scribble-dee-doo-dahs were barfed up, it was mid-afternoon (I was all coffeed out, exhausted, dying to get home and dive into a warm bath) and, every time Illustrator auto-saved an open file that’d take 5 minutes to complete, I’d lean over to my legal pad on my left and:

  1. clumsily draw a bloated shape with a colored highlighter;

  2. if it started to look like a “something”, I’d lightly draw in some structural lines with a red pen;

  3. continue this until whatever-it-was looked MORE like a “something”;

  4. grab a blue or black pen to define the shape and shading of the “something”;

  5. add a background color with a highlighter so the “something” can pop off the page;

  6. add more tones to the “something” with a highlighter.

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Curious Little Shadows | From The Abandoned Projects Drawer

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Curious Little Shadows was an attempt (c.2011) to go darker than my usual goofy “trying to be funny” illustrations. And was hoping, naively, I’d evolve these gloomy situations into 30 second animated shorts. Or a illustrated story book… sooooo, no concrete objective. What’s new, right?

Essentially, these “Shadows” are little bean-sized creatures with no discernable features, except for eyes and whatever ambient light hits their fleecy bodies. They wander the forest floor clustered together, for the most part, avoiding predators of all sorts (for which there are many)… I never fleshed out WHY they were constantly on the move - I guess I figured nothing in nature has a personal goal to aim for, except for survival.

With almost every dire encounter they face, one of the Shadows will perish. The Shadows, after the initial shock, do not mourn - they have to keep moving, keep hiding, keep surviving.

Looking back almost a decade later, this whole abandoned project (#abandonedproject) was an experiment in self-taught backlighting. More accurately, lots of happy little accidents just happened to formulate some purposeful motive - i.e. hmmm, that whoopsie-doodle slip-of-the-wrist brushstroke looks out of place… wait a minute… what if I add another brushstroke next to it? Wow, that… that works! Wasn’t the plan. Well, dummy, quit arguing with yourself and keep doing it!

I planned to make one of these illos into a 10 second test animation - the toothy red-eyed encounter pic - but never got past converting the pic to 16:9 aspect ratio (below).

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Good Ol' Boys & Daisy#1 & Daisy#2 & Daisy#3

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First, HBO announced “Gone With The Wind” would be shelved in response to current “public outrage” over confederacy and slavery aspects of the film. And as race relations upheaval and debate transpire all over the US, it won’t be long before other films and syndicated TV titles get mothballed as a result.

Well, looks like them Duke boys have found a way ‘round broadcast censorship vis-á-vis the confederate flag atop of the Charger.

Flagrantly False Fun fact: The folks of Hazzard County were ignorantly unaware Uncle Jesse was a pioneer in genetic engineering; yet, mentioned in hushed tones around town were rumors of his early experimentations with inbreeding, but let’s table that abhorrent chatter for another time (or never).

And, for those degenerate “fancies cartoon cloned women” freaks out there, I present to you the Daisies:

Maul Ain't No Shusher | A Starlog Archive Cartoon

It's time for another episode of…

Poor Quality Scan Time!

In tonight's installment, we find mega-tattooed villain Darth Maul at The Phantom Menace's theatrical premiere. Unfortunately for the patron in front, Maul has no qualms about making him aware he’s obstructing his view!

Featured in Starlog Magazine #276 (c.2000), I recently rediscovered this gag's existence after a brief visit to archive.org.

Hmmm... this may've been an accidental goof, but, the poor decapitated popcorn-lovin' patron depicted in the gag has an uncanny resemblance to Starlog's editor, David McDonnell.

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Muffled Mayhem

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A timely toon based on current anarchic events... regrettably, the cast and cartoonist were wearing face masks, thus the text came out muffled. My bad.

Whatever it was, I'm sure it was both funny and thought-provoking.

Tried fixing both word balloon script and gag line in post, but to no avail.

Tonight on Buck Rogers : Twiki vs The Tamagotchi!

Remember that Tamagotchi fad decades ago? Anyone? Well, as Twiki quickly discovered, those things became exceedingly annoying pretty quickly!

An ol' gag of mine, originally published in Starlog #255 (20+yrs ago) in b/w, but recently colored here for your viewing.

Penned as my first published pseudonym “Big Bad Bubba” - c.1998 - back before changing to ”Bort”.

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Have A Happy Heart Tree Day | File This Under "Hodor"

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Drawn at a time when there was a torrential downpour of Hodor memes (c.2014), I think I remember a “Happy Heart Tree Day” facebook post. That got me to doodling this piece:

The pair of clogs hung from the weirwood tree’s branch is another annoying in-joke (a’la facebook friends).

Or, if you’re a Game Of Thrones nutball and wanna try ‘n’ read some fandom theory as to why there’re clogs on one side and a paraplegic Bran Stark (with Hodor) is on the other… paralysis …. footwear… there’s some vicious ominous taunting analogy there…