Create your own cartoons

This blog has a good number of followers who are not native English speakers or who present to audiences that are not native English speakers.  To date, I have only created cartoons in English.  I feel bad about this, but I just haven’t had the resources to commit to translating and reproducing my cartoons.
Recently one of my twitter colleagues, Ivan Tasic, launched his new evaluation blog which is written in Serbian.  I offered to translate a couple of cartoons to help with his launch.
Noticing our conversation, another twitter colleague and international evaluation superstar, Pablo Rodriguez, asked if the offer would be good for his Spanish language evaluation blog.  I can’t say no to @txtPablo.
On top of this, I keep having conversations with evaluators who want cartoons that are culturally relevant for specific audiences (including my Patrons).  So what to do…

Create your own cartoons

So I had an idea, why not create some blank cartoons.  Most of my drawings are pretty generic anyway.  This way, if you want a cartoon in another language, you can rewrite it in power point.
I created my first set of 5 and put the power point deck up on my Patreon page.  Any of my Patrons who pledge even a dollar will have access.  If I get some positive feedback, I’ll create more.

How to add dialogue.

The easiest way is just to add the picture to a power point deck then overlay with a text box.  Again, if you’re one of my Patrons, I’ve given you a head start on all 5 by sticking them in power point (just replace the text).
Creating the separate cartoon is then just as easy as hitting “save as” and choosing your favorite image format.  Mine is PNG.

The Conversation

This is my favorite type of cartoon.  One person sets it up, the other person delivers the punchline.  You’ll see this type of format throughout my cartoons, you can use this image (right click, then “save as”) to recreate many of them.  Or you can use it to create your own.

The Presentation

This is a good base if you want to say something very direct to an audience.  Just put a box around the text if you want it to look like a slide.  Cartoons are not about subtlety.

The Unspoken

This base lets you say the kinds of things that are unspoken by forming it as a thought.  That’s right, cartoons give you the chance to speak the unspoken, do not use this power lightly.

More bases

My Patrons get two more bases.  I’ll also be adding more in the future if they seem to be of value.
Let me know in the comments if you use them, or plan to use them.
Also, if you create new cartoons using these bases, I’d love to see what you come up with so please share.