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I have been following the career of John Tayman for about six years, in some circles people wait for these with baited breath……………….oh….the new Bang Cartoon is coming out Monday….

He has an extreme use of color, his content is generally willed with satire on the NFL. Some say too much, but he is always cutting edge and every parody has a storyline behind it.

Bang is one of our affiliates, we should be listed on his site later on today…but more than that I got to talk to John the Artist, and John the football fan, and here’s what he had to say. So enjoy and check him out often.

I have been following your work for a long time….how did you get started in cartoons and did you have any formal art training?

No formal art training, I’ve just always liked to draw, and even though I always wanted to use my creativity to make a living, I never considered that I’d ever be a cartoonist. I decided about ten years ago that I’d rather do what I want to do rather than what I had been doing, so I went to school and started a second career as a web developer / graphics / animator.

I got started doing Bang Cartoons because I love the NFL, I’m addicted to it like many of us happily are, I’m just a natural smartass and I had a new toy that could animate some goofy things I thought about what was going on..

Your cartoons have always been cutting edge, you say what people think. Do you ever get any fallback for being too harsh? Too cynical?

It depends on the cartoon and the team in question. Back in 2005 I made a cartoon about the Super Bowl being played in Detroit, and I portrayed the city as a run down crime ridden dump, and it got a whole bunch of people mad. They organized against me on their message boards, wrote to me and told me what a jerk I was, how wrong I was about their city, etc etc. I did an interview for the 6:00 news that week, some reporter from up there called me and did a phone interview. I ended up asking him if he worked for the chamber of commerce, because he spent the whole time trying to tell me how great Detroit was. Conversely, after the interview of course my traffic went through the roof, as did the positive email from people in Detroit telling me how much they loved the cartoon.

How do you pick your topics?

I am a football junkie. I watch it all day on Sunday, listen to it on the radio, read about it on the net, etc. So I watch the topics and whatever looks like it might be fun I’ll start thinking about it. My favorite thing is to go around lurking on message boards, Nothing better for goofy ideas than seeing what the fans are talking about.

There’s things I won’t do.. serious crimes, death, certain other things I won’t touch. These are supposed to be about fun and poking some holes in the big bubble these heroes exist in. It’s not about character assassination.

One of my favorite things about your cartoons is your use of color….they are so bright and vivid. Do you do that purposely?

It’s kind of hard not to, football and sports in general is very colorful. Uniforms are bright and showy, stripes, and contrasting colors. Teams and players and fans identify with and represent (and can thus be represented by) colors

Was the podcast a natural progression for you? Which medium do you prefer?

Yes, Tom is in radio, and when we saw the advent of podcasting, we knew it was a natural. There’s so many things that are funny to play with each week there’s no way I can make enough cartoons to cover it all. the podcast gives us both a place to really stretch our legs and have fun.

I enjoy the podcast because really, all I have to do is sit there and say whatever goofy thing comes to mind. Tom produces the show, he organizes the material and presents me with a basic outline about 2 hours before showtime. (I will contribute whatever goofy thing I find during the week, but it’s Tom’s discretion as to what makes the show and what doesn’t.)

The podcast is very immediate, the humor comes very fast. We have some structure, but we pretty much let it fly. A cartoon is fun, but it is very tedious in the making.

I was just watching your Flawed Execution Cartoon…how long does it take to prepare something like that start to finish?

A three minute cartoon takes about 40-50 hours depending on what is happening in it. Most of that time is spent drawing the characters and setting it up. Some take less time, but that’s about the average.

“Flawed Execution” was about 30 hours,, most of the characters in it have been in plenty of cartoons before so I’ve already got charicatures drawn of them. Conversely; “Beginner’s Cluck” took over 100 hours, I did the Foghorn segments the old school way, and did a few hundred drawings to make it work right. An homage to Looney Tunes wouldn’t work if it wasn’t at least somewhat of an attempt to do it right.

Which Bang Cartoon is your personal favorite?

Several stand out….Pacman, Dogpile, The Bunker, Beginner’s Cluck, Hoedown, and The Big Ticket come to mind.

Watch Beginner’s CLUCK

What do you see in your future?

A hell of a lot of work. Eventually Tom and I would like to do the show on radio, but podcasting is one of many waves that the future is washing up. We honestly believe our show is better than any other show out there, be it on the internet, terrestrial radio or satellite. No one does what we do as well as we do it. It may sound cocky, it may sound arrogant, but we know it.

Been a rough year to be a redskins fan….any coaches out there you’d like to see coach the Skins?

I’d love to get Mike Holmgren in here in a GM capacity.. He can definitely assemble talent, and I have to believe he could find a coach who could make it successful.
Thanks again. I know how busy you are, and it’s cool you take time for people. When I get it written up I will let you know and I will help get the bang stuff out for you too.

Thanks!