Thing #14 Time for a bigger toolbox

When I initially saw all of the links to the many tools, I shut down my computer and went to the mall. Town East isn't really a reprieve from being locked in my house and glued to the computer screen, but last night as my family and I watched Rush Hour 3 on cable, my six-year-old saw Jackie Chan in a nice, fluffy, white bathrobe and decided that he, too, wanted a bathrobe. Since he has gone a record 8 school days without a mark (yeah!!! it's a miracle), I caved and went in search of the fluffy gift. Before we left, I did explore the ToonDoo creator, so while my youngest and I searched through a couple of department stores, I was thinking about what to toon.

After standing in line for over 3o minutes at Sears because the only cashier on the entire floor had no clue how to take a check from a customer or how to ring a sale with someone's temporary credit card pass, I really wanted to make fun of the guy by creating a cartoon in his honor. But ToonDoo doesn't have a relevant image -- although there are plenty goofy-looking people, there are no store backgrounds. There is a way to create our own drawings, much like paint. But I didn't really have the energy to try this out, and as I said in a previous post, my creative juice is on "E."

I gave up on the mall episode, and I, still, couldn't think of anything educational to do with a cartoon...nada. I started thinking about some of the works we cover throughout the year, and I returned to Romeo and Juliet, my ole fallback. Usually, we discuss Shakespeare's use of language, especially his puns and double-talk. I decided that I'd try to create some toons using puns. Of course, the cartoons I created have absolutely nothing to do with Shakespeare, but at least, I can introduce the idea of wordplay.

When working in ToonDoo, we can save the cartoons in a private place or a public place. If it's in the public place, people can comment on and edit the toon (I'm not sure if their edits change our toon, or if they just use our toon as a foundation and create a new toon). At this site, there are all kinds of fun activities -- sharing, competitions, forums, blogs, etc. We can even upload our own photos and play around with them.

I tried to copy my other cartoon here to share with my kind readers, but it is 8.4 MB, and we are limited to 8. I just thought I'd share that fact with you, another lesson learned.