Today RockToons turns 10 years old. That’s a whole decade of tooning the rock world on the web!

It was October 15th, 1996, that cartoonist Tyler Martin launched a very simple RockToons page in his personal webspace folder that came with his dial-up internet account. It only had a handfull of bands. Many people were creating fan sites for bands on the web and as an artist, he figured this was one way he could pay homage to his favorite bands on the web and share original content with others.

The toons were somewhat simple and crude, but back then the web too was simple and crude… and nearly empty compared to what it is now. Those old RockToons graphics ended up getting downloaded and used on several websites resulting in the RockToons site starting to get a little popularity. By April of 1997 RockToons upgraded and got its own domain name like you use to view it today.

Tyler plugged away tooning bands that he liked or that were requested by visitors of the site. He had never signed any of the toons but just included the RockToons name on them feeling like that credited him. But he came to realize that he alone could not be “RockToons”, he knew he could not fully toon the rock world without some help. In late 1999 he got some e-mails referring him to artists Nina K. and J. Axer who also had been doing some band toons and in January of 2000 they became the first official contributing RockToons Artists besides Tyler himself.

In the years following, more RockToons Artists were added to the list. Each one adding their own personal style and favorite bands to the site. To this day, 26 different artists have made their official mark on RockToons. To get even more toon activity going, guest artists were invited to join in the fun and a lot of great talent features their toons in the RockToons guest galleries as well, in fact that is where many of the official RockToons artists were “discovered” for the site.

The site itself has been through many design changes and formats to get where it is today, and it is still technically under construction (the new artist pages will be available soon as well as the updated guest artist gallery). Also the forum has spawned an active community that has grown as a family over the years, in fact, we are pretty sure some of the members don’t even know there is a site that goes with the forum.

So here is to 10 years of RockToons! Much thanks goes to all the artists that have contributed their creations to the site over the years to entertain us all. Also thanks to all the viewers that have visited, linked to and supported the site and all those long time members of the forum that have kept the site alive even in its times of rest. And here is to another 10 years of tooning the rock world. What bands would you like to see tooned in that next 10?

We will be celebrating this event over the next couple weeks by posting new RockToons from a host of RockToons artists both past and present. Starting tomorrow…

This entry was posted on Sunday, October 15th, 2006 at 11:30 pm and is filed under Announcements. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.