Tramp Stamps: 24 Stickers for Dressing Up a Doodle

The short version: Tramp Stamps are DrawDick's own stickers, a pack of 24 pieces called Doodle Disasters: googly eyes, a crooked crown, a rubber duck, a stink cloud and twenty more ways to give a doodle a personality it did not ask for. Every piece is below, and every piece is in the editor: open Stickers, pick one, and press where it goes. Then make it bigger, smaller, turned or flipped until the doodle looks suitably ashamed of itself.

Dress up the doodle. Make it weird.

What a stamp is for

A cartoon dick is two circles and a tube. A cartoon dick in a chef's hat, holding a coffee cup, with sweat dripping off it, is a story. The cartoon guide makes the same point the long way: a face, a prop, a pose or a setting is what turns a shape into a joke.

Drawing those details by hand is half the fun, and also the half most people give up on. A top hat drawn with a mouse tends to come out looking like a bin. Stamps skip that part. Pick one, put it where it belongs, and your doodle has an expression, an outfit or a problem in one go.

The 24 stamps

Here they are, in the pack's own five categories, each with its name. The names are half the joke, so they are worth reading.

Eyes

Four pairs, four moods. ZERO THOUGHTS is the googly eyes, pupils drifting in different directions. VERY SUS narrows its eyes at you. OH NO has seen something. NOT TODAY has already closed its eyes on the whole situation.

Expressions

BIG MISTAKE is an enormous toothy grin, the face of someone who has just pressed submit. SIR DOODLE is a curly handlebar mustache, which makes anything distinguished. ART? is a speech bubble asking the only honest question about most of what gets drawn here.

Accessories

The biggest category, because a hat solves most problems. YOUR MAJESTY is a crooked crown. BIG EXECUTIVE is a top hat. YEE WHAT is a cowboy hat. LET HIM COOK is a chef's hat. BUSINESS CASUAL is a mullet, business at the front, party at the back. STATIC PROBLEM is hair standing straight up. FANCY LITTLE GUY is a bow tie, and ABSOLUTELY COOL is a pair of sunglasses.

Props

Things to hold, or to have happened to you. IMPORTANT BUSINESS is a tiny briefcase. EMOTIONAL SUPPORT is a takeout coffee cup with a face. UNQUALIFIED ASSISTANT is a rubber duck. PARTICIPATION KING is a trophy with a number 1 on it, and MINOR DAMAGE is a bandage.

Effects

The finishing touches. TOTALLY FINE is two drops of sweat. SUDDENLY FANCY is a burst of sparkles. QUESTIONABLE AURA is a green stink cloud, and INNOCENT OBVIOUSLY is a pair of angel wings on something that is not, in any sense, an angel.

How they are made

Every stamp is made in one style: thick, rounded black outlines and a small, muted palette of gold, pink, blue and green, so a crown, a duck and a cloud look like they belong together and sit happily on the same drawing.

They are made to be stacked. The inside of each piece, the whites of the eyes or the band of a hat, is filled in solid, while everything outside the outline is see-through. Put sunglasses over googly eyes and the sunglasses win cleanly instead of turning into a tangle of lines. Each one is vector art, so it stays sharp whether it ends up tiny or covering half the page.

Each stamp also carries an anchor point: the spot it is meant to attach by and turn around. A hat's is low down, at its brim, so a hat can sit on a head instead of floating somewhere near it.

And a stamp, once published, is never redrawn in place. If one of them ever gets a new picture, that is a new version beside the old one, so a drawing made with the old one goes on looking exactly as it did.

How to put one on

Open the editor and:

1. Open Stickers

   On a computer or a tablet, Stickers is in the toolbar down the side of the canvas. On a phone, it is in the row of tools along the bottom. Its joke name is Tramp Stamp.

2. Pick a sticker

   The library opens on Doodle Disasters, sorted into the five categories below. Through October it opens on Spooky Little Problems instead, the Halloween pack: tap Doodle Disasters in the row of packs at the top to switch, or Emoji for the emoji. Sticker size sets how big the next one goes down.

3. Press where it goes

   Click or tap the drawing, and the sticker lands there. It lands by its anchor point, so press where the head is and a hat lands brim first. Keep pressing to stamp more of the same.

4. Fix it with Select

   Pick Select (on a phone it is under More) and tap the sticker. Drag it somewhere else, drag a corner of the box round it to resize it or the round handle above it to turn it, or use the bar over the canvas: Smaller, Bigger, Turn left, Turn right, Flip, Duplicate and Delete. Undo takes back any of it.

Stickers save with the drawing like everything else on it, so they are still there when you come back, in the download, and on the drawing you submit for review.

Making the most of them

• Stack them. Sunglasses over googly eyes, a crown on a top hat. Each stamp is solid inside its outline, so the one on top wins cleanly.
• Mix in emoji. The Emoji pack sits next to Doodle Disasters, for when the scene needs a rubber duck and an eggplant.
• Give it somewhere to be. The preset backgrounds are 36 cartoon scenes, from an awkward office to a haunted laboratory, waiting for a doodle in a cowboy hat.
• Skip the blank page. The cartoon starter builds a cartoon from sliders and hands it to the editor as shapes you can move and draw over. Then stamp a mustache on it.