Blogging, AI and Why I'm Using Substack

I will leave my old blog posts here, but I’ve been posting on Substack, and I am enjoying the interaction with other cartoonists, writers and people who appreciate work created by humans.

Click to read more Arctic Circle comics on Comics Kingdom

In common with all parts of the internet I like, Substack isn’t perfect. However, unlike Facebook and Instagram, it doesn’t harvest our data to sell, and it isn’t using our images to train AIs. AIs that are taking the work of cartoonists who are just starting out. If Midjourney, Stable Diffusion and Dall-E had been around when I was learning the ropes, I would have struggled to get my first few clients. My work was used to train Midjourney and I’ve enjoyed playing with that AI image generator, but I’d rather draw my own comics. Just as ChatGPT is useful for writing marketing blurb or for drafting emails to the council to ask them to let dogs on buses; it can do the mundane stuff, but I don’t want it to take the joy out of the writing I do for fun, making comics and books.

Join more of the good humans and see what I’ve been posting on Substack here: https://alexhallatt.substack.com/archive

Living in New Zealand: Cartoonists Like Me Need a LOT of Tea

Working from home means being very close to the fridge. To keep myself on track, I distract my stomach with big mugs of tea. I’ve been borrowing the boyf’s Land Rover mug and that couldn’t continue, so the talented Coralie Winn, who works out of the gallery near Spooky Boogie, made me a big mug of my own.

Click to see options for using the image

Now I just have to resist the chocolate.

Arctic Circle Animals - Real and Fictional

Seen recently at the Canterbury Museum - real (though stuffed) Arctic animals.

Compare and contrast the real and comic strip polar bears, lemmings, snow hare/rabbit and Arctic tern.

Uncanny, right?

And of course there are no immigrant penguins in the real Arctic…

Herne Bay Cartoon Festival 2018

Last weekend was the Herne Bay cartoon festival. I think this may be the sixth time it has run and it's a great little event. It is organised by local residents Sue Austen and Steve Coombes as well as cartoonists like Royston Robertson and a lot of volunteers. Only about 30 cartoonists attend and the festival uses lots of little venues. It was great to go back to where I used to live as a student. Not much has changed apart from the type of people who live there. I think they will ultimately change this threadbare Kent seaside resort for the better. They have to contend with a lot of postwar ropey building stock and a pebbly beach that is strewn with litter, but with people like the cartoon festival organisers working on it anything is possible.

I ran a cartooning workshop at Beach Creative on Saturday and there were a lot of creative kids there. Toast cafe next door do fabulous lunches.

There were a lot of great exhibitions on around the town, Including the funny women exhibition at the seaside museum. Unfortunately no one knows who drew my favourite cartoon of that exhibition but I was happy to see Tove Jansson Moomin originals.

Some of us spent a blisteringly hot Sunday morning baking on the pier. We were painting and drawing big cartoon boards. I had one of the holey boards which was great fun to watch when I was finished and had got back from throwing myself in the sea. After a restorative ice cream we had a cartoonists carousel ride before I dashed for the bus to head to Canterbury and another trip down memory lane.

More photos of the event here: https://procartoonists.org/feeling-the-heat-at-yet-another-sunny-herne-bay-cartoon-festival