The International Cheese Glyph

Things in cartoons tend to look like things in other cartoons rather than the things themselves*. In UK comics teachers still walk around in mortar board and cloak, testing their canes or suppleness. Burglars still wear half face masks and hooped jumpers, toting sacks with 'SWAG' written on them on their backs. Telephones still look like old wall-mounted telephones and it's only recently that televisions have developed flat screens. Mashed potatoes will always be depicted in billowy mounds heaped onto plates and with sausages sticking out of the top. And cheese will always be a yellow prism with woodworm.
*This sounds like a theme for Cubie'n'Bouncy.

Backgrounds

This month's story arc has been a bit of a challenge for me. It's all set in woodlands, and it's not a natural sort of setting for me to draw. The main thing I'm trying to get over is the density of the vegetation and the overgrown undergrowth. The biggest task for me has been to try to keep the woods I draw from looking mechanical. It's so easy for a cartoonist to come up with a glyph that conveys the idea of 'tree' and then reproduce it over and over again. Hopefully I've succeeded in giving the woods a properly organic look while still keeping everything in my style.

If you want to see someone who is a master at this sort of thing, take a look at Little Dog Lost by Steve Boreman. I'm quite in awe of the countryside he draws.

Note the concept of cartoon shorthand and glyphs - I'll be returning to that in a month or so.