Bad Grandad’s inventions: designing props that fail

Bad Grandad’s inventions begin with a reasonable object and end with an unreasonable outcome. A teapot sends tea through its handle. A pencil bridge folds before the first ant crosses it. The object looks familiar, but its purpose has gone haywire, leaving the reader to spot the coming disaster.

Bad Grandad belongs to Fanton’s newspaper-comic world, where the humour depends on timing rather than destruction for its own sake. A cartoonist can show a gadget working perfectly, plant one visual warning, and let the gag arrive through action. The fault must be legible without making Bad Grandad look foolish for the wrong reason.

That makes prop design part of the writing. Is the machine too complicated? Is the catch hidden? Does every part belong, or has one unnecessary lever created a chain reaction? When the drawing is clear, a tiny mechanical mishap becomes a complete story.

Australian settings sharpen this kind of comedy. Suburbia supplies tidy sheds, optimistic hobby benches and machinery assembled with the confidence of someone who read the instructions halfway. Heat, crowded markets and festival audiences add pressure, proving that a dodgy invention can fail before Bad Grandad reaches the main lever.

Drawing the failure before the machine works

A useful invention gag has three drawings: the machine at rest, the instant it loses control, and the aftermath. The middle drawing carries the joke, but the first must establish why the machine was trusted. Too strange and there is no expectation to break; too ordinary and the failure lacks surprise.

His pen-and-ink paper notes demonstrate how much can be settled before the heavy black lines arrive. Loose thumbnails test posture, scale and timing. They ask whether the kettle’s spout points at the cup, whether Bad Grandad is turning the wrong wheel, or whether the reader can understand the fault at a glance.

A trip to a suburban Bunnings can provide authentic material. The aisle of tins, fasteners and mystery hoses suggests plausible parts, while rows of identical tools under fluorescent light make them look as though they belong in a serious plan. The best prop borrows that confidence: ordinary enough to build, strange enough to betray its builder.

Materials that make the joke obvious

Paper, card, timber, foam and household objects are ideal because their construction is easy to read. A bent paperclip can imply a spring; taped cardboard can imply a load-bearing tower. Bad Grandad’s inventions should look assembled from serious attempts, not delivered ready-made by a joke machine.

Material also controls the kind of failure. Card buckles dramatically. Foam rebounds too late. A wooden gear can splinter, but only if the grain and angle make that plausible. Colour helps as much as shape: a red trigger among grey machinery becomes a visual exclamation mark.

That readability matters when the gag leaves the page. At a Melbourne laneway market, a handmade teapot on a trestle table might sit beside practical pots and polished kettles. Its exaggerated handle and impossible spout would still sell the absurdity, while a careful passer-by might test the object’s balance before buying it.

Turning a small fault into a full disaster

A single fault is often funnier than a random explosion. If the machine is meant to launch a cork, one stretched elastic band is enough. If it is meant to catch a falling egg, the broken promise is a tray positioned on the wrong side of the room. Cause and effect must remain connected.

Escalation should grow from the mechanism rather than louder behaviour. A valve opens, the pipe pressure changes, and the next event becomes inevitable. Each addition can be modest, but together they transform a minor design error into an elegant malfunction with impeccable comic timing.

During a Sydney summer afternoon, a device tested at breakfast may warp by lunchtime, especially beneath a verandah that traps the heat. The lesson for Bad Grandad’s inventions is simple: test them under the conditions that will make their failure most convincing.

From rough prop sketch to finished panel

The finished cartoon has no room for a complicated explanation. The Dandy’s compact black-and-white page rewards line discipline: weight must separate the machine from its operator, and the eye should move in the intended order—Bad Grandad, the warning detail, the moving part, then the point of impact.

A useful sequence begins with the prop alone. Draw it large and ask what it wants to do. Sketch the successful version, then alter one connection, hinge or handle. Add a tiny sound cue such as a rattle or hiss. Finally, decide how much reaction belongs to Bad Grandad and how much belongs to the bystanders.

The wider archive of sketches, mini-strips and television projects appears through Andy Fanton’s blog. Moving between those formats reveals a practical rhythm: invent visually, simplify aggressively, and let one clear gag carry the weight instead of explaining every piece of fictional engineering.

Testing the gag with a real audience

Testing does not require a laboratory. Read the sequence aloud, show the drawings without commentary, and watch where attention lands. If the eye pauses on the wrong detail, the machine may need clearer signs. If everyone notices the loose bolt immediately, the warning can become subtler or arrive later.

A live setting exposes assumptions hidden on the page. At Adelaide Fringe, a tiny prop must read from the back row, and a pause for laughter can change the timing of the next movement. That experience translates neatly to comics, where the reader controls the pace but still needs a clear route through the image.

Every failure should leave something behind: a dented helmet, a tea stain shaped like a map, or Bad Grandad defending a plan that worked perfectly until the final second. Those traces turn a broken mechanism into part of the story and make the next invention feel inevitable.

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Explore Bad Grandad’s strips, drawings and other work on Andy Fanton Dot Com, share your favourite doomed machine with someone who values practical engineering over common sense, and follow the site’s social links for new comic strips, television projects and fresh disasters.