Do ToonStackers Dream of Cartoon Sheep?
Hey! Want to try this new thing I just learned about? What you do is, instead of staying up all night typing hilarious stuff into the Dall E Mini, try laying in your bed and close your eyes. If you do this properly for long enough, weird stuff starts to happen! You'll drift into an unconscious state and eventually you’ll start seeing all sorts of images sorta forming a nonsensical narrative. It might even make you feel emotions! It's called dreaming, and it's the thing I'm totally into right now. Have you tried it? What do you usually dream about? For me, sometimes it’s dreams about falling, or my teeth falling out, or falling while my teeth are falling out. But more often than not I just have regular old dreams about all my friends and family ostracizing me. Sometimes I even dream about cartoons. Like, fully formed cartoon ideas. It’s as if my subconscious wants to get in on the action and contribute to my daytime life. Usually the cartoon ideas are nonsensical but I do have a few about my friends and family ostracizing me that are a real hoot. I hear this happens to a lot of cartoonists, so I asked the Toontack folks to send me their cartoons about dreams, or dreaming, or ostracizing me or even any cartoons they came up with in their sleep! Goodnight!
-Ellis
Johnny DinNapoli
I don’t dream/remember my dreams often, and that’s a big ol’ stinkburger, because when I do dream they usually have a fun, cinematic quality to them. The last time I dreamed a lot was a few years ago when my book club read Crime and Punishment. For two weeks straight I had the most intense nightmares of my life. It was strange and frightening but also...impressive?
Navied Mahdavian
Sometimes dreams don’t work out. Which is why you should always have a backup safety job, like, for example, becoming a cartoonist.
Iky Chan
In my dreams, everyone gets along and loves each other. Even cats can fall in love with mice!
Tom Chitty
When you were a kid, you dreamed about flying to the moon in a rocket ship—but your chances were slim to none. In fact, your chances were nearly the same as if you literally wanted to be the moon.
That's why my advice, to the youth of today, is to dream small. Aim for attainable. There’s no shame in satisfactory!
p.s. I have a free Substack you may look at: Drawn by Tom
Amy Kurzweil
My dream was that, if I submitted this cartoon often enough, one day the New Yorker would buy it. That dream is now gone. My new dream is that everyone is ostracizing Ellis, and all of our teeth are falling out, and like, we’re all in my childhood home except it looks like the gymnasium of my elementary school? And I’m naked but it’s not weird at all, or, like, I’m wondering if it should be weird but no one has said anything about it, and then I’m on stage performing and I realize I don’t know any of the moves to this dance but it’s ok because it’s a solo so I just make it up as I go and also I haven’t been to math class all semester! and now someone’s chasing me through a house with infinite doors but I can only run in slow motion! And I really have to pee and I can’t find the bathroom! Oh gods of cartoon publishing, save me from this extremely regular nightmare!
More fun ways to avoid sleeping.
Sign up for Kendra’s Urban Sketching Workshop in Manhattan on June 11th
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Listen to Hilary’s brand new podcast What’d You Do This Weekend?
Pre-order Sofia Warren’s book, Radical!
Order Send Help! a desert island cartoon collection by Ellis Rosen and Jon Adams, out now!
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The same goes for Sofia Warren’s advice newsletter, You’re Doing Great!
See more cartoons from Ellis Rosen’s weekly Junk Drawer!
Amy, get out of my dreams!😂