Another really old one, which illustrates nicely how different my style of drawing was at the beginning. I think this is an important one because it summarizes the whole premise of Happysad probably better than any other cartoon I’ve made.
There you go: end of story. Or is it?
Some people are getting impatient… To them I say: I’m working on new stuff guys, but you have to wait just a little bit longer. In the meanwhile, to get your appetite (and mine) going, I thought I’d start with a few re-runs. Yes re-runs, don’t we all love them? Look at it this way: it will be more like a re-release of a dvd with added bonuses such as… the director’s commentary. Long story short, I’ve decided to repost five of my personal favourite episodes and raise a corner of the veil by adding some comments.
And we start of with… the very first Happysad cartoon ever.
This is how it all started. One morning, back when I was going through a particularly bad time in my life, I woke up with this one idea for a cartoon. It was something completely different from the cartoons I usually make. Drawn much more simple and basic, to put all the focus on the message itself. I thought it would be just this one-off. It wasn’t. I thought up another one. And another. And… well, you know what happened next.
Happysad just took me by surprise.
Let’s give this another try…
You may well remember how lots and lots of fans were asking for Happysad tees, how I finally uploaded one of the most popular cartoons (the Lost in Translation one) to Cafepress.com, to see what would happen.
What happened was: ONE person bought the t-shirt. Can you possibly imagine what a unique item this person now owns? The only Happysad Lost in Translation t-shirt in the whole wide world! I don’t even have one of those! And can you imagine how incredibly filthy rich this person will be when they put it up for sale on eBay in a few years, when I’ve become world famous?! The best part is: they will be incredibly rich AND own a Lost in Translation shirt, because they ordered it twice! 
So do you want to be rich too? Well now ‘s your chance! I finally followed the advice of all those visitors who suddenly felt a bit less like buying a shirt “because it was too detailed”, and I’ve uploaded a new design. It’s a slightly reworked version of the desktop background image I once posted here. It even contains… a dash of colour!
So go and check it out now, at http://www.cafepress.com/kartoen !
If I haven’t lost count somewhere, this should be the 500th Happysad cartoon!
And now this one’s published, I’m going to take a break. Yes, I really need one. Digging so deep every day has been therapeuthic but also quite exhausting. I’m kind of worn out now, so I just want to have a rest, reload the mental batteries and look for some new inspiration.
I don’t know for how long this will take, could be a few days, could be a few weeks… but I’ll keep on checking the comments here and maybe publish some other stuff in the meanwhile. So don’t go away, I’ll be back!
Jeroen
