Category: Beartoons

  • Lebron James Returns to Cleveland Cavaliers

    Lebron James Returns to Cleveland Cavaliers

    7-11-14-Bearman-Cartoon-Lebron-James-returns-to-ClevelandThe buzz on the internet today is that Lebron James is returning home to play basketball with the Cleveland Cavaliers.  Today’s cartoon pokes fun at the Cleveland fans who in 2010 burned Lebron’s jersey when he went to play for Miami.  In fact then (and now) Cavaliers owner Dan Gilbert stated in a now famous letter when Lebron left,

    This shocking act of disloyalty from our home grown “chosen one” sends the exact opposite lesson of what we would want our children to learn. And “who” we would want them to grow-up to become.

    But the good news is that this heartless and callous action can only serve as the antidote to the so-called “curse” on Cleveland, Ohio.

    Well Cleveland continues to be “cursed” while the Miami Heat went on to win two championships under James.  That is all seemingly water under the bridge as James and Gilbert seemingly have made up.

    James stated his reasons for returning on Sports Illustrated:

    To make the move I needed the support of my wife and my mom, who can be very tough. The letter from Dan Gilbert, the booing of the Cleveland fans, the jerseys being burned — seeing all that was hard for them. My emotions were more mixed. It was easy to say, “OK, I don’t want to deal with these people ever again.” But then you think about the other side. What if I were a kid who looked up to an athlete, and that athlete made me want to do better in my own life, and then he left? How would I react? I’ve met with Dan, face-to-face, man-to-man. We’ve talked it out. Everybody makes mistakes. I’ve made mistakes as well. Who am I to hold a grudge? 

    In Southeast Ohio, college basketball means more than the NBA.  However, I always liked Lebron James public persona (minus the mistaken way he decided to announce going to the Miami Heat).  I think his actions in continuing to support the Northeast Ohio community with his Foundations and Donations should have kept more Cleveland fans on his side.   Now they have the chance to love him once more.

     

  • Lara Croft – Time Raider

    Lara Croft – Time Raider

    Lara Croft Time Raider by Bearman Cartoons

    Lara Croft – Time Raider is to blame.  Yes if you have been wondering where I have been it is all her fault.  Work has been crazy busy the past several weeks but in my down time I have been playing games on my new Xbox.  To my wife’s gratitude I finally cleaned up the basement entertainment cabinet by donating my old PS2, Gamecube and Wii.  As well as the old DVD player.  In it’s place came the Xbox so I have my video game system and DVD player in one.

    And unfortunately that means Lara Croft has been sucking all my free time as I veg out on the couch instead of drawing or spending time on the internet.   But I am not a total waste as I spent two days volunteering this past weekend.  Don’t you think better of me now?

    Any guilty pleasures you have that are pretty much a waste of time but you still do them anyway?

  • Is there a Correlation between Social Media Followers and Website Pageviews?

    Is there a Correlation between Social Media Followers and Website Pageviews?

    6-16-14-Social-Media-Lack-of-Engagement-Bearman-Cartoons

    Is there a correlation between the number of social media followers a person or brand has and the amount of visitors and pageviews that it generates on their websites?  The short answer – NO!  Well at least for me.

    Scott Jenkins and I were passing emails back and forth last week (I always think of Scott as Hodge from his former comic strip).  He was looking to potentially increase his presence on Google Plus and noticed my follower count there and wondered if that has increased my overall pageviews as my numbers have increased.   Honestly not so much because as Google Plus has increased, I have lost the pageviews I used to get from StumbleUpon and Digg (which are both dying a slow death).

    Average Daily Visitors

    People tend to assume that because I have a bunch of engagement on my site that it means I must have a ton of visitors.  Well I am about to reveal my numbers for the first time publicly.  When I was posting three times per week two years ago my average visitors was about 400 per day.   Now that I only post once a week, it is in the 200’s.    Here is how my numbers break down of where people are coming from to get to my site during May:

    Top-ChannelsAs you can see Social Media only accounts for about 16% of my total traffic with Search and Direct make up the majority.   Looking just at Social Media you can see the effects of referrals from this year compared to last year.

    Social-Media-Referrals

    Google and Reddit have increased while Stumbleupon, Facebook and Twitter have decreased.

    While Google Plus was the majority of visitors for May, it has more to do with that being my Charity Challenge month and a larger influx of support with links to my site than typically.

    So why waste time on Social Media?

    Simple answer is that different ones may give you things other than direct traffic.  The majority of the people who have converted to regular readers and commenters on my site, found me via Twitter (or me being social on other blogs).

    Reddit gives you a thick skin (haha).

    Google Plus has given me more commission work than I ever had directly on my blog  or via other social media/search efforts.  And here is the secondary benefit.  An additional outlet for people to see my work and another outsource for engagement.  I have several people who will engage with my posts on twitter or facebook but it is the exception versus the norm.

    To be honest, I was of the belief that a social media platform should only serve to drive traffic to my site.  And for those that display ads it is a potential worry if people are engaging with you outside your site, you won’t make money.  But as I said I am doing better than display ad dollars (the majority of which is going to charity btw) and gaining another level of engagers who might in the future want to buy a t-shirt or book.

    And the data pans out.  Since July 2011 when I joined Google Plus, Beartoons.com had 495,971 pageviews.   In the same time my posts on G+ have had 8,652,696 views.  

    Posting Schedule

    This is what I do as a cartoonist.  If you can give up control it might work for others.  It varies a bit by social media but my posting schedule for Google Plus:

    Day 1 – Post a link and teaser to my site (at times I might reshare this later in the day for those who are in different time-zones)

    Day 2 or 3 – Post the actual cartoon on Google Plus.  I have tips on what I find is the best way to do it but that is for another post.  This step  is for those that prefer to engage without leaving G+.  But I make sure to put the link to my site in that post as well.

    Important:  I am getting bad at remembering at times on twitter or FB, but it is important to check your status at least daily so you can engage with those who comment.  I see a bunch of cartoonists who post a link, have people comment and then you don’t hear back from them for days if at all.

    So how does this play out to your own experiences??  Anyone want to confess what numbers they are getting on their own site and what they think helps/hurts?

     

  • Sherlock Holmes Cartoon

    Sherlock Holmes Cartoon

    6-7-14-Sherlock-Holmes-Cumberbatch-Miller-Bearman-Cartoons

     

    A Sherlock Holmes cartoon in present day could cause some dilemma as there are currently two series running using the iconic Sir Arthur Conan Doyle character.  Which one to choose?  Some are enamored with the BBC/PBS co produced “Sherlock” starring Benedict Cumberbatch in the role.  Others will prefer the CBS version titled “Elementary” starring Jonny Lee Miller.  I don’t have to make choices because I like them both but I would definitely give the edge to Elementary (mainly because they produce more than six hours a season).

    But when you have two Sherlocks at once, won’t there be confusion when they both show up to 221B Baker Street (for the uninformed that is the address Sherlock Holmes lives in the books).  Things are easy as the BBC/PBS version takes place in London while in the CBS version, Sherlock (while still maintaining the Baker street address) has moved to New York City.

    And for those who like trivia, Jonny Lee Miller’s first wife was this famous actress (click the link to find out).

    I know Christina Wald at PopSmoothie likes the BBC/PBS version as my inspiration to draw this was from her recent sketch of Cumberbatch.  Any other fans of either series?

     

  • Game of Thrones Poster – The Fox and the Hound

    Game of Thrones Poster – The Fox and the Hound

    Fox-and-the-Hound-Game-of-Thrones-Bearman-cartoons

    This Game of Thrones Poster that parodies the HBO series. came about last week based on a five minute quick caricature of The Hound from the series.

    Game-of-Thrones-Hound

    I liked it so much that I thought I should color it.  So 5 minutes turned into a five hour project to give you “The Fox and The Hound”  Imagine if Disney bought HBO.  This is what you might see in the promotional poster.

    Obviously the Fox is Daenerys Targaryen portrayed by Emilia Clarke and the Hound is Sandor Clegane who is better known as the Hound (duh!).  He is masterfully played by Rory McCann.  I have mentioned before that typically I am not into fantasy realm movies/shows like the Hobbit or Lord of the Rings but this one has me hooked.  Now if they could get other good shows to make it worth paying the rest of the year like Showtime.

  • Whatever Happened to Pinocchio

    Whatever Happened to Pinocchio

    Bearman Cartoons Whatever Happened to PinocchioWhatever happened to Pinocchio after the Fairy Tale Ended?  Well I have been thinking about a bunch of Fairy Tale characters when watching “Once Upon a Time” and am thinking I will periodically draw a cartoon of different characters and my take on what they are up to now.   Pinocchio losing his wood made him a ripe candidate to get Viagra from the pharmacist but I think he is right to question the side-effects.

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    Charity Challenge Update

    We are in the final week so  let me know if I missed anyone.

    Including Bearman in a Cartoon ($10):

    For a week four total of $10.  HOWEVER as I said before:

    I have made a decision that if we hit the limit of $1500 that I will still pay cartoonists for adding Bearman to their webcomic through the end of the month as well as match to the $500 limit.  So I am adding the three toons from this week and I am going to keep matching even though I hit the 500 limit.   So with the 1500 hit plus the $30 in webcomics from this week and the total of $620 in matching donations

    I have committed to donating $2130 so far.

     

     

  • A Different View of Net Neutrality

    A Different View of Net Neutrality

    5-21-14-Bearman-Cartoon-Obama-Net-Neutrality

    I have a different view of Net Neutrality than most based on what I have read.  That being said I am always open to additional info to sway me back to the masses belief that what the FCC has been proposing of late and the deal between Netflix and Comcast is completely bad for the internet as a whole.  But first of course I find that with all the discussion around the topic, the person you don’t hear from is President Obama who in 2008 stated:

    “I will take a backseat to no one in my commitment to net neutrality.”

    That prompted today’s editorial cartoon as it seems everyone is driving the conversation around Net Neutrality with the exception of the President.

    I could write a huge diatribe about my feelings about the Netflix/Comcast deal but I found an article by Maggie Reardon of CNET that helped explain some things better for me so it may help others as well.  Check out her article here.  This portion was particularly helpful:

    “The other thing to realize about the Internet is that the network itself is a shared medium. Information is chopped into packets that traverse the Internet separately and are reassembled at their destinations. Packets from your email or a video you selected from Netflix travel alongside packets for everyone else’s data. Just like a highway where all cars are subject to the same speed limit, but still travel at different speeds due to the congested road, some packets arrive at their destination sooner than others.

    For some forms of communication it doesn’t matter much if the packets arrive in order or if some arrive a little later than others. This is true of most text-based communications, such as text-based websites or email. But for other forms of communication, such as audio or video, it’s crucial that all packets arrive in order and in close succession. If some packets are delayed or dropped, the experience of the video or audio once the packets are reassembled is not pleasant. There’s often buffering, pixelation, and/or jitter.”

    How I explain it:

    Here is how I explained it to my wife and figure it worked for her that others might find it beneficial.  Think of the internet like Amazon.  You order from many manufacturers but the processing and delivery are all handled by an Amazon warehouse (let’s ignore the vendors that drop ship directly for this example).   Let’s say Amazon has 100 bays to process items into the warehouse and 100 more to process items out of it.  Everything flows well until too many manufacturers are trying to unload their items at the same time.  It causes slow downs much like on the net.

    With a company like Google (YouTube) or Netflix they are sending an abundance of trucks to the warehouse at any given time.   This causes delays in them getting their items into the warehouse and therefore delays it getting out.  This is what causes dithering or delays in video at times.  So Amazon either has to build more bays or enlarge the ones they have to accommodate Netflix traffic.  The question becomes who should pay for that?  Should all Amazon customers pay for it or just the ones getting items from Netflix?  Well one way to do that is to have Netflix pay for the upgrades and then Netflix can choose to eat the cost or pass it on only to their own customers.

    But if everyone pays for faster access, won’t it hurt those without means to pay?:

    One of the arguments I consistently read about the issue are from those that take the information highway analogy and liken it to ISPs creating a toll road.   Right now they have the incentive to continue to expand and speed up all the roads.  But what happens if they create a toll road for companies to gain faster access.  Then ISP’s like Comcast will begin spending money only on infrastructure to make the toll roads faster and therefore leaving the “free roads” to maintain same speeds and service levels as today, never to increase again.

    This is where I think the FCC and the President should be taking a stand.  I don’t think it should be an open access to allow payments for every large company to take advantage of to the detriment of smaller companies.  Rather I look at there being a download percentage limit.  Right now YouTube and Netflix each account for over 10% of the total internet traffic.  So let’s say the FCC rules state that any company with over 10% of the download traffic on the web can at their discretion enter into a mutually benefiting agreement with ISP’s to deliver the same uninterrupted service that others who don’t carry as large of data can enjoy.  Notice I didn’t say faster.

    To me the biggest hassle in traveling is dealing with the WIDE LOAD trucks that slow traffic for miles and impede my own travel.  If the government created wide load lanes that the trucking companies had to pay to use but I didn’t get access to, I would be happy with the arrangement.  They get a special lane and I my speed is not degraded to get to my destination at all.

    So what do you think?  Am I missing anything?

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    Charity Challenge Update

    Week 2 let me know if I missed anyone.

    Including Bearman in a Cartoon ($10):

    Blogging about the Challenge ($5):

    Adding me to Circles on Google Plus ($1):

    • 483 People added me in this week.

    Dollar for Dollar Match for Contributions to Crayons 2 Computers:

    For a week two total of $1033 and meaning I went over the $2000 goal.  HOWEVER:

    I have made a decision that if we hit the limit of $1500 that I will still pay cartoonists for adding Bearman to their webcomic through the end of the month as well as match to the $500 limit.  So I am adding the three toons from this week and I am going to keep matching even though I hit the 500 limit.   So with the 1500 hit plus the $30 in webcomics from this week and the total of $620 in matching donations

    I have committed to donating $2120 so far.

    So no more payouts for blogging or adding me on G+ but if you are interested in getting involved with your webcomic or matching donation?  See this post.  And

    Best way I can ask you to support those who support me is to visit their websites and check out the amazing work they are doing.

  • Mick Jagger Can’t Get No Satisfaction

    Mick Jagger Can’t Get No Satisfaction

    5-12-14-Bearman-Cartoons-Mick-Jagger-Satisfaction-Caricature

    Mick Jagger can’t get no satisfaction but he sure can sing it even now in his 70’s.  Way back in 1975 during an interview with People magazine (when he was only about 31) Mick proclaimed “I’d rather be dead than sing Satisfaction at 45.”   So of course I had to draw a caricature of Mick Jagger in a meme along with that familiar quote.

    In my teens I can picture thinking about people 15-20 years older and thinking to myself “I will no longer do that when I am THAT old”.  Now you look at whatever your age is and think damn I am still young enough to pull it off.  Mick still struts it like a peacock without needing a cane yet so keep at it as long as you can Mick.

    Charity Challenge Update

    Week 2 let me know if I missed anyone.

    Including Bearman in a Cartoon ($10):

    Blogging about the Challenge ($5):

    Adding me to Circles on Google Plus ($1):

    • 341 People added me in this week.

    Dollar for Dollar Match for Contributions to Crayons 2 Computers:

    For a week two total of $421 and running total of 1383!!!

    Best way I can ask you to support those who support me is to visit their websites and check out the amazing work they are doing.

    Interested in getting involved?  See this post.  And I have made a decision that if we hit the limit of $1500 that I will still pay cartoonists for adding Bearman to their webcomic through the end of the month as well as match to the $500 limit.

     

  • Believe in Yourself Motivational Poster

    Believe in Yourself Motivational Poster

    Bearman Cartoons Motivational Poster Believe in YourselfBelieve in Yourself is something we all tend to forget.  So today’s motivational poster cartoon reminds you that “Don’t ever let someone tell you that you’re not good enough.  Never forget that you were the fastest sperm.”  I am saddened by those I see on social media constantly putting themselves down for what they deem their negative qualities.  Focus on what you do right and hopefully look at this and laugh.

    Charity Challenge Update

    Blown away as I am this year.  Not only by the traction on Google Plus but all the wonderful people sharing the info on their blog and including “Bearman” in their cartoons.  This is almost a full time job trying to keep up with all the wonderful activity so if I missed you, I apologize and let me know in the comments and I will include you in next week’s tracking.

    Including Bearman in a Cartoon ($10):

    Blogging about the Challenge ($5):

    Adding me to Circles on Google Plus ($1):

    • 727 People added me in the first week blowing away last year which in itself was a record breaker!!

    Dollar for Dollar Match for Contributions to Crayons 2 Computers:

    For a record breaking week one total of $962!!!

    Best way I can ask you to support those who support me is to visit their websites and check out the amazing work they are doing.

    Interested in getting involved?  See this post.

     

  • Pumpernickel Meaning

    Pumpernickel Meaning

    Pumpernickel Meaning in German by Bearman CartoonsLesson time once again.  If you check out the listing for Pumpernickel in the dictionary the first definition is:

    a dark coarse sourdough bread made of unbolted rye flour

    However when you look at the etymology of the word and it’s origins, it is actually based on two german words.  “Pumpern” means to break wind and “nickel” means goblin or devil.  So together they mean “Devil’s Fart.”  Think about that next time you buy a loaf.

    If interested check out this Snopes article which discusses another widely accepted but not as accurate origin of the word involving Napolean and his horse.