Smokey The Pectoral Bear Raises Your Children Right

Well Mike Fontanelli has switched obsessions. He's abandoned his role as champion of Native Americans in favor of spreading the lore of Smokey The Pectoral Bear.

Smokey the "Bear" is a misnomer. He is actually half man /half bear. He has pectoral muscles, walks bipedally, talks and will not wear a shirt. He teaches his son all-American man morals too: "Son, always remember to never wear a shirt while patrolling the forest. Bare your naked breast with manly pride."


You might think you already know everything there is to know about Smokey The Bear. But you're wrong. - Unless you have read this mysterious freak of nature's gripping ethical adventures in Dell Comics.

Smokey does more than just put out forest fires. His role is much more all-encompassing than merely ridding the wilds of arsonists. He has many surprising responsibilities.

INTERFERING WITH NATURE

Smokey is revolted by the natural order of things.
He needs to stop carnivores from eating cute things.

Eating an ugly old Mom is just fine though.

TO PUT ANIMALS OUT THEIR MISERY

Smokey is always on the lookout for wounded animals so he can end their misery with his missile of mercy. "Hey Mr. Racoon. Is that a limp?"
"Uh, no sir, Mr. Smokey! It's just a little scratch! I stepped on a burr! Nothing serious at all." "Tsk, tsk" says Smokey. If there's one thing I can't stand; it's to see a poor ignorant beast in pain."
"Oh, please, Mr. Ranger Bear, sir, don't cock that rifle! Honest, it doesn't hurt a ..."
BOOOOM!
Thud.

TO SETTLE DISPUTES WITH ASSHOLES USING SUPERIOR FIGHTING SKILLS

Smokey is a good bear. There is an evil bear though. His name is GIMP. He tries to kill everyone - even animals without scratches, nicks, wounds or blemish. Smokey stops the killings with mixed martial arts. Here Gimp tries to kill Smokey and his baby.
Then Smokey pushes Gimp's car over a cliff. It lands and bursts into flames. Smokey pulls his burning cousin out of the mangled melted metal hulk, eager to put him out of his misery.
But when the whole forest catches fire he makes a deal and promises to not kill Gimp, if Gimp will just help him put out the fire. Gimp always lies and tries to kill Smokey and his baby in every issue, but Smokey is so good that he believes the 3 time loser every time. Dell comics feels that this message of trusting your most vicious enemies will comfort Moms. I find comfort in it myself.

After Gimp betrays Smokey for the 57th time, our hero decides to give him a lesson in Greco-Roman wrestling on a floating log.Smokey is also quite adept at American fisticuffs. Fighting fair is the best way to take care of murdering hairy blue monsters.

Smokey knocks out the killer and gives him another chance in the next issue, hoping that Gimp might pick up a scratch so he can without guilt put him out of his pain.

TO EDUCATE OUR YOUTH ABOUT THE POCKET GOPHER

TO BEAT ENDANGERED SPECIES WITH STICKS

Smokey never forgets to give the recipients of his mercy killings a decent burial. Here he is waving to Moms from the cemetary. "You can trust me with your kids" he seems to be saying.

There are many more Smokey thrills to come.

Icons In Balloons

I have just discovered a balloon genius.


They kinda look like the construction models at Filmation, when they would redo old classic cartoons like Tom and Jerry or Mighty Mouse in the 80s.

This is my favorite.

If you can tell me what this last one is, you are a genius too.

http://www.yoyodclown.net/cartoon_cart_.htm

50s Woody, Conservative Control and Style

Lantz cartoons are not only fun; they are very interesting to study. The different period styles offer different kinds of entertainment.The first Woody had the most unique and funny design. The animation tended to be loose and unstructured. the direction was even more haphazard.


http://klangley.blogspot.com/2007/01/woody-woodpecker.html

When Lantz was imitating the Looney Tunes Avery and Clampett cartoons, they missed the point. The timing was mushy and the gags were mostly executed without much conviction. But they are still fun, lively cartoons. I had "The Screwball" on a silent 8mm film when I was a kid and I ran it a million times.
The poses in the early 40s were wacky, but not too carefully planned to balance against each other.

MID 40S - Dick Lundy Tightens The Tools

In the mid 40s Dick Lundy came in from Disney and tightened everything up. He streamlined the posing and gave the timing much more control and variety.

These poses are extremely principled. No extraneous details. The style - or aesthetics of it come straight out of the 40s West Coast animation principles. Lantz had been imitating that style superficially before Lundy brought the real thing over from Disney. It's a style built amost solely of principles.

Perfect line of action. The forms flow around the line of action.
The details-clothes, hair, color separations wrap around the forms.

Perfect hierarchy.

In this quest for perfect principles, Lundy created a beautiful style for Lantz, but also lost some of the wackiness of the earlier sloppy style.

Unlike Warner Bros., Lantz really never quite got all the elements that make a good cartoon working together at the same time. But each period, even up to about the mid fifties has some good stuff in it.

I bought the 2nd Woody DVD and found out that most of the cartoons were from the 50s and I groaned. Though Lantz completely changed Woody's design and made him cute instead of zany, you can still find some pretty good animation in some of the early 50s films . The design of most of the cartoons is really bland and conservative, and sometimes just plain drawn badly - but not in all of them.
I was looking for some cartoons that have crummy drawings but good animation - because that is a very intersting combination, and then was surprised when I found one where I actually kind of liked the design.

THEY RUINED BUZZ BUZZARD

I really hate what they did to Buzz in the 50s - even more than Woody! After seeing those great 40s Buzz Buzzard cartoons animated by Ed Love, I sure wonder what they were thinking when they evened him out and took away all his nasty appeal.

40s Buzz



Yeesh Buzz

This degree of conservatism is evil.

But I like these...


I like the way Woody is drawn in Buccaneer Woodpecker. It's conservative, but very stylish.
He has very controlled poses and subtle stylish angles bending around his classic cartoon principles.



I like conservatism when it is stylish and very controlled. This animator has a neat way of drawing hands. It reminds me a bit of John Sibley.
You can see the great control in these poses. They are very direct and non-ambiguous.
All the separate shapes that make up the character are carefuly put together to make a whole statement. No arbitrary corners, no erratic details sticking out of his silhouette to distract you from the overall pose.
If 40s cartoons are your standard for high quality animation - as they are for me, then these don't stand up. But if you had never seen 40s cartoons, and grew up on 90s cartoons, these would seem positively brilliant.

The poses are still lively - unlke today's disjointed talking corpses.

There is still much entertainment created from what only can happen in cartoons. The animators are so used to bending the laws of nature, that even when they are going through their conservative stage, they just take cartoon magic for granted. They haven't yet got so conservative that they stop animating things that "don't make sense". That did happen in the late 50s.
That's a beautifully conservative stylish pose there.

Interesting to see just slight stylization. I like it. It must take some self control, not to go further with it.


This animator has a lot of natural appeal. I'm not sure which one it is. Maybe someone can help me out here. La Verne Harding?

When you draw small, you have to get rid of more details, and just go for the basic pose. This animator still manages to squeeze out some style.










Look how well planned these poses are in relation to each other. Everything about Woody's pose draws us down the line of his sword right into...you know.

Compare these to modern cartoons. Characters don't relate to each other visually anymore. They are merely in proximity to each other. Just close enough to say their one-liners.
Butt stabs were still essential to cartoon humor, even as the 50s started to calm everything down.


This would be considered completely wild today. How many times have you been scolded for drawing "too cartoony" at work?






I'm not opposed to conservative styles, as long as they are not so conservative that they throw out the essentials of cartoon quality- skill, style, control and butt stabs.

The Viewmaster Woodies are much more appealing than Lantz' own cartoons from the late 50s.

________________________________________

It's a good thing Woody couldn't see the future.

Diversity Within The Same Character

Here are 2 of my favorite stereotyped typical primitive every day white men. Loud, obnoxious, arrogant and stupid. We all have pointy noses that stick way out from our faces. We have no lips either. Only our women have any brains. But most offensive to me personally is the idea that we have triangles for ears. Animation is even more mired in generalization these days, that it discourages variety in character designs of any species. Many cartoons today think it's a sign of quality to have every character look exactly the same as each other - especially in prime time. Even the dog will have the same face as its master, except with a dog nose pasted on. Animation has always had to fight against its own tendency to generalize, but it's worse than ever today.

If your show is in a hip "pointy style", then every character is crawling with corners - and no individual face. Animation producers and executives and even creators just love to come up with tons of rules to stifle the imaginations of the few creative cartoonists we actually have in the industry.

This was not always quite so severe.


There was a time when individual characters changed all the time from cartoon to cartoon - or even within the same cartoon. And I love this variety.

http://www.animationarchive.org/2008/09/biography-john-k-on-flintstones.html

I have always loved cartoons, where you could tell the difference between animators by how they drew (and moved) the same characters.


Not only am I for creating distinct specific characters, I take it even further than that. I want each instance of each character to be diverse in the specifics, yet maintain his own general traits.
The biggest misunderstanding of a classic animation tool is the slavery to the model sheets that top animation brass foists on us today.

Model sheets used to be drawn to help animators get a round about visual description of the characters. It was still expected of the animators to come up with their own specific poses and expressions. Each animator would also draw the character's details in his own style. He couldn't help it. It's natural for actual creative people to put their own stamp on a character or even a scene. We are doing it, even when we try not to.


So I'm amazed that we have arguments about how we need to have less stereotypes in cartoons, when every studio you work at beats generalization into you until it becomes impossible for you to do anything unique that might break out of the whole generic field.
Yes please, let's make individual characters - and then on top of that - individual instances of each character for each emotion and for each artist.

Even the Flintstones, which were wildly erratic and "off-model" in the beginning are very generalized, toned-down versions of real living characters who had a lot more specific physical traits and personalities.
I used to have heated arguments with Ed Benedict about whether or not an animator should have some leeway to stray from the models at all. As unique a designer as he was, even he had been trained into believing that every animator had to draw the same way according to the tyrannical model sheets. But it's practically impossible for real creative people to do that.
http://johnkstuff.blogspot.com/2007/05/ralph-and-norton-hide-outside-window.html

Pete Emslie Wants To Know...

Hey John,

I've been reading all the comments on your recent post about specific
vs generic designs as they apply to Indians in cartoons. I had been
planning to write up something similar myself, only in regard to
blacks and the art of cartoons and caricatures. About a week ago I'd
even sketched a few faces from this series of mug shots you'd posted
recently of the "Baggy Pants Gang", with the idea of showing how
different individuals can look, while still retaining those features
that are common to their race, such as the wide, flared nostrils,
thicker lips, and dark hair and eyes.

Anyway, before I go ahead and write something up for my blog, I'd like
to offer you first dibs on this. Fact is, you get much more traffic on
your site with a more far-reaching readership, so I'd be happy to let
you use these if you'd like to post a follow up to your Indian topic
relating specifically to the visual portrayal of blacks. In fact, I'd
even suggest asking your readers outright whether or not they consider
my cartoons of these dudes to be racist, when they are so obviously
based on existing humans. It would be interesting to me to hear their
opinions. By the way, don't feel bad if you'd rather not use them, as
I'm just offering them to you as a courtesy between friends. I just
think it would have a lot more impact on your site than mine. Let me
know what you think.

Pete
http://cartooncave.blogspot.com/


POLITICAL CORRECTNESS RUNS AMOK


Hi Pete,

those are all good drawings but to me, defeat the purpose of caricature. Caricatures are meant to be funnier than the subjects, not sweeter.
Anyone who wears his pants under his exposed bvds in public invites brutally honest ridicule and satire, he shouldn't expect a reward of pretty flattery. "Thank you for being rude and stupid. What else would you like to get away with?" And I don't care what race you are.
Cartoonists should provide equal opportunity ridicule.

Cartoons and comedy shouldn't be apologies for actual human appearance, behavior and personalities; they should make fun of it. Most people with a sense of humor can especially laugh at themselves. All races and cultures in most times enjoy a good joke based on themselves.

They still mostly do today, but are afraid to admit it in public, because of the PC police.

Generic Well Drawn Oaf by Chuck Jones

ARE ALL LUMMOXES THE SAME?

Here is a character "type" that Chuck Jones specialized in - THE OAF. Jones did the best Oaves of anyone.

This OAF only has one specific visual trait, which makes him a stereotypical Oaf. He's large and dumpy. Otherwise he is a completely generic 40s animated cartoon design. He's a big fat Elmer Fudd. Whoops! He has another Oafish trait coined by Chuck Jones - tiny legs supporting the huge dumpy body.

Jones made his proportions funny by using ridiculous contrasts.

Chuck Jones did more specific Oaf designs later with more unique physical traits as he got good at working with the general oaf type.
So what can we learn from an almost generic character? Plenty! If he's drawn phenomenally well.

Specific poses- while the character is a generic design, his poses aren't. They are very specific unto themselves and also specific to Jones' own style. They aren't stock animation poses. Jones is making them up on the spot, custom-tailored to the story. He is doing it with the aid of an extremely good knowledge of animation and drawing fundamentals.

His construction is solid.
The lines of action are strong and clear.
Clear silhouettes and staging.

Hierarchy of details - subject to the larger forms and graphic statement.

Here's an expression that is specific to Chuck Jones. In his world it's generic, because he uses it a lot and expanded upon it later, but compared to most other cartoons of the period it is unique. It doesn't conform exactly to the formula of the Disney studio.


Perspective. The strong perspective of the mallet and the character are used to add humor to the situation. Jones' drawing tools are in service to the story and gags. They aren't used arbitrarily, just to show off that he draws well. (Not till later in his career)


GODDAMN THE ANIMATION SCHOOLS
These fundamental cartoon drawing skills are what the schools should be teaching. I wish to Hell artists would come to me who already have all these skills down. It would make it much easier for me to revive the kinds of cartoons most of my visitors expect from me.

If you don't have skill, you will have trouble controlling any visual idea. You will certainly not be able to tailor your drawings to a specific character in a specific scene in a specific story.

You will be a slave to the poor dexterity of your fingers and your small visual vocabulary.


Well the schools aren't going to change their evil ways, so your next best bet is just to study these great old cartoons themselves. Copy the drawings using the techniques I (and a few other blogs) explain to you and you will quickly improve.


Remember, there is a huge difference between general principles and style. You can't be an individual until you understand how things work. These early 40s cartoons are not overly stylish yet, but they are extremely controlled and can teach you a lot.


Back to the cartoon....
...as the cartoon progresses, Jones' poses and expressions become more and more original - or specific.





The gags in this little action sequence are the poses themselves. The guy keeps running then freezing in mid air in funny poses. If the poses were stock animation poses, they wouldn't be funny.



Amazing control! Perspective, construction, dynamics, organic flow; it's all there!

Here is a typical Jones oafish pose mixed with a typical Jones post explosion expression.

This is from 1942, right around when Jones started to find his niche. His cartoons were very experimental for years and you could see him grow from cartoon to cartoon. Extremely fast growth too!


Compare Jones cartoons from 1942 to 1947 to any 5 years of any modern cartoon studio or series. everything today is against growth. The whole system is geared to stop you from learning anything and putting your knowledge to entertainment use.

CASE OF THE MISSING HARE

HARE CONDITIONED

Here is a Jones cartoon with a very specific variation of an Oaf. The incongruous combination of a well-mannered, well groomed gentleman with an oafish body made for a great contrast and opened up possibilities for humor.

Hare Conditioned - Looney Tunes
Uploaded by finash

Jones played against the type and surprised our expectation of what an oaf should be.




I love the poses of him and Bugs riding in the elevator. Not much animation, but great observant visual humor. Jones did it by understanding the physicality of an Oaf and then drew the character trying to maintain dignified posture against his own physical nature.



LEARN THE GENERAL FIRST,
GET GOOD AT FUNDAMENTALS,
THEN START DOING KNOWLEDGEABLE VARIATIONS
AND YOU MIGHT FIND A PERSONAL STYLE

Sherm Cohen can help you

While the design of these characters is decidedly primitive, they can still benefit from some strong staging tools.




http://cartoonsnap.blogspot.com/2008/09/how-to-draw-lively-poses-spongebob-tip.html


http://cartoonsnap.blogspot.com/2008/09/more-spongebob-drawing-tips-push-those.html

Sherm explains some good tips very clearly and you can apply them to any character design.
But don't let that deter you from learning construction!

Darwin, Aristotle and Mike

KNOWING THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN GENERAL AND SPECIFIC AND PUTTING IT TO USE CREATIVELY

Mike has the best toy collection of anyone I know, and all us cartoonists collect toys. He categorizes them carefully too... which is very fun to look at but it's also instructive.When you see a variation on a theme it inspires you to vary your own themes and strive to evolve your style and avoid genericism.
You might think there is only one generic cartoon Indian design, but here are a whole pile of variations on a type, which is just like real life.
Knowing the difference between a general category and a specific instance of it is the key to understanding just about anything better.


Aristotle and Mike are 2 similar types - people who like to classify or categorize, and then collect tons of variations within the category to compare, contrast and see the limits of variation. It's the key to invention.

http://www.tutorvista.com/content/biology/biology-iii/animal-kingdom/animal-classification.php


http://animaldiversity.ummz.umich.edu/site/accounts/pictures/Mammalia.html

Darwin used Aristotle's classification system and figured out how evolution worked by comparing degrees of variation from general wider plans.

Classification is a wonderful observational tool. Maybe you can be the next Darwin, just by learning the same thinking process Mike, Charles and Aristotle use.
For example, every one of these Indians (like every one of every race or wider - of every species) shares some general traits that separate them from other toys. They also share a trait put there by the artists... they are all fun to look at, they have appeal and humor. This is a trait missing from much of modern art, entertainment and culture.


But look closer at at a group of individuals and you will find all kinds of differences between them. Some individuals are closer in design to others; some are farther apart.


If they become so far apart that it gets harder to see common general traits, then they become part of a wider group. The farther apart they are, the bigger the group category or class.
Indians are part of the larger group (species) of humans which belong to the primate order, the class of mammals, the phyla of chordates (animals with backbones), the kingdom of animals and then life itself. The farther back you stand, the more general the groups become.





The closer you look at the groups, the more specific the groups become. The generic idea of Indian can be broken down into tribes, and location.
http://www.mygenealogist.com/native-american-genealogy.htm South American Indians share some general visual traits with Eskimos and other Indian groups in between, but less with them than with closer groups.
And you can look closer and closer until you finally get right down to the individual -which animation rarely does.

All these Native Americans share some obvious broad general traits-wide high and angular cheekbones and a very specific kind of nose that's widest at the bottom and pointed downward.




Animated cartoons tend to be very general or "generic". Even more general than the wider group of cartoon art, which includes comic strips, comic books, magazine cartoons and even cartoon toys.
Animated cartoons by their nature have to be fairly simple so you can do a lot of drawings in a reasonable amount of time.




The simpler your drawings, the less individual details you have to vary. That's a reason Disney tends to reuse character designs over and over again. The other reason is of course, conservatism. The more conservative you are, the less you like specific variations. You like to leave things alone.
Personally, as everyone who reads this blog knows, I hate generic - BUT!...I find it useful. Principles are general tools that are useful to all skills. They give us more control and (if we so choose) variation over what we wish to create.

Just how specific you are depends upon what level of generality you stop creating at.

I don't go for simple stereotypes of any type of character, human or animal. I find them boring. But in order to create specific characters well, you have to be honest and observant enough to see how things look in general first - THEN you can do specific variations.


These toy sculptures show that you can have a wide variety of individual designs, even within a general type.

I think modern political correctness has confused "classification" with "stereotypes" and stereotypes with "evil". All life is organized by traits in common on different levels. Humans even organize themselves on purpose into general stereotypes - like Democrats and Republicans.

Today's democrats think the very idea of observing shared traits in any group of humans means you hate that group - but they get furious if you personally vary from any of the attitudes of their own group beliefs. I am completely baffled by this trendy doctrine. People are too eager to look for things to be offended by today.


When I was a kid, there was much diversity in my neighborhood and everyone recognized it but was not particularly offended by knowing it. I remember being punched in the face once for being a public school kid (which generally meant protestant). I wasn't offended by being stereotyped as a square secular kid. I was offended by the fist crushing my nose, though. And I still had lots of friends from the "Catholic School".

Generalities about my neighborhood when I was a kid: There were 3 schools within 2 blocks of each other. The Public School, The Catholic School and The French School.
The Catholic kids were mostly Italian and were tougher than us. They grew up quicker-they had mustaches and B.O. when they were 12 and looked like men in wrinkly turtlenecks and corduroy pants to us, which we thought was hilarious and frightening. We looked like sissies to them. The English Speaking Catholics - especially Italians - tended to hang around in gangs. Not well organized murderous gangs like today's. These were kids from 8 years old to like...12 or 13. They liked trouble and fought a lot. They had their own unique group gestures, expressions and attitudes - yet within the obvious and funny stereotype, they varied widely.

All the Italian kids wore pointy shoes, which they were ashamed of and everyone else made fun of them. Then they would chase us and teach us what the pointy shoes were for.

The French kids had their own stereotypical types and behaviors. The also saw ours and made fun of them. Everyone basically made fun of everyone else. No one was offended. There were occasional fights, but not too many serious ones. It was all very interesting, colorful, fun and scary. It taught most people growing up realities about social life. All from just natural observation using the faculties that separate humans from animals.


OBSERVANT VS INTOLERANT
Good cartoonists know the difference between being observant and being intolerant. 2 completely unrelated things.

To be an observant artist you have to be able to see broad categories of things (including people). You have to be able to see common traits; in fact you can't help it, your eyes are more developed than the average person- but you also can benefit greatly by seeing the amount of possible variations within a class. You have to have a wide scope of observational faculties. From far away to very close.


Looking at all the possibilities of variation within the group of toy Indians here, you can see a lot of leeway for individual characters and creative expression.

These are all good sculptures and very true and observant to the general traits of their subject. Yet they are all different.


Why Chief Wahoo is Smiling

http://www.clevelandmagazine.com/ME2/dirmod.asp?sid=E73ABD6180B44874871A91F6BA5C249C&nm=Arts+%26+Entertainment&type=Publishing&mod=Publications%3A%3AArticle&mid=1578600D80804596A222593669321019&tier=4&id=7CA0BB1EC3494C8DA8700A7A11F1C97B


This Nutty Mad Indian looks like Mike Pataki!
Here's an Indian that looks like the one in that Art Davis Porky Pig cartoon, "Nothing But The Tooth".



Mike sometimes categorizes his toys by what kind of toys they are too. His bobble head collection is amazing! So much better than modern bobble-heads. Look how accurately the sculptor above captured the general features of the Aboriginal Canadians! Even the almond shaped, slightly slanted eyes.Extra Treats:

It seems like other countries don't have the same politically-correct hangups we have in the decadent west. I hope PC blinders disappear from our world soon so cartoonists can be free, creative observant and fun again!


Doesn't this mask above look like the group called "cartoon-writers"?

It's a good thing there are still open minded fellows like Mike to preserve our great creative and observant past.

Kurtzman Bonanza

http://comicrazys.wordpress.com/2008/09/22/pigtales-krazy-komics-25-1946-harvey-kurtzman/

Boy, I still remember the thrill of discovering Kurtzman in the early 80s. I found a tiny book with black and white reprints of his old pre-Mad comic book work. Hey Look was in there and so were his take-offs of Dennis the Menace and Blondie and some of his early "realistic" comics. I took all these tiny images and xeroxed them up into a binder for myself. I showed the stuff to everyone I knew. Some cartoonists loved him instantly. Many thought he was primitive and I would yell at them.

http://allthingsger.blogspot.com/search/label/Harvey%20Kurtzman


Between the 1st and 2nd seasons of Ren and Stimpy, I kept some of the artists on, even though we had no work to do - just to train them and improve their skills. I made them study story structure, composition, experiment with BG styles and techniques and I also took a few of them and forced them to broaden their cartooning techniques and control.
One of my exercises was for the cartoonists to take Hey Look poses and draw Ren and Stimpy in those poses. Some of the cartoonists who at first thought Kurtzman was "primitive" quickly realized how many great artistic tools the man used. These fellows improved vastly over 2 months.*

Their poses became much more concrete and readable. More dynamic, more alive and more to the point. I also tried this same exercise with Milt Gross - who the artists rebelled even harder against!
But anyway, the point of this post is how lucky young cartoonists are today. All this great stuff that I used to hunt for in dank basements and sweaty comic book shops is all becoming available for free and in much better copies on the web. Take advantage of it! Study it. Draw it. Analyze it and race past your ignorant trend-following competition!


Thank your lucky stars for generous collectors and archivists like Ger Apeldoorn , Shane Glines, Steve Worth, Kevin Langley, Kent Butterworth and Chris (Lopez?) from ComicCrazies. There are many more too, and the number of great blogs is growing.
A lot of this stuff I've never even seen before! Look at these panels of crowd scenes. It's amazing how controlled and organized they are! The whole of each page works as a design, and then it's broken down into smaller groups of shapes, each with its own sub-hierarchy.
I personally like Kurtzman's work even more than the Mad artists he supervised. Kurtzman did the layouts for most of the Mad (and E.C) comics. In other words, he drew quick compositions in thumbnail form. The artists lost a lot of the larger design element inherent in Harvey's work. His organized crowds became chaotic hard to read jumbles in the hands of the more famous cartoonists - in my opinion. But one thing most fans are in agreement on: Wally Wood, Jack Davis, Will Elder and the bunch did their best work under Kurtzman's direction.


I love this little story about James Cagney's dancing! Kurtzman has great taste in other arts.
Kurtzman is a rare creature that sees the big picture. Most artists get buried in the details. The fact that Harvey drew each character "simpler" than most artists makes it easier to see the composition and big picture and we can learn from that. It also makes beginner artists tend to think he is "primitive".

Harvey thinks like a good animation director or a good short story writer.

http://comicrazys.wordpress.com/index.php?s=kurtzman


One other thing none of the E.C. artists ever captured completely was the sense of life that Harvey's characters had. His characters seem motivated from within. You can tell they are thinking and feeling creatures, acting on their impulses. They also react to each other beautifully. They aren't merely illustrating a script.

This is a quality I don't see in anybody's cartoons today. Even well drawn ones (if there are any left).


I am awestruck by the organization skills in Kurtz' pictures.
This is a man who has great natural instincts combined with a sharp reasoning mind. He reminds me of Clampett. He can take a ton of elements and weave them together into a clear whole, and at the same time get the best work out of a crew of other talented cartoonists who probably don't even realize it.


Here is a great picture of my pal, Kevin Kolde thinking about his first dance.




http://klangley.blogspot.com/search?q=kurtzman



If you have articles and art by Kurtzman and would like me to link to them, just add a link in the comments. Hey, does anyone have any of his early realistic comics? I love those too!

*(those who resisted broadening their tastes and skills went on to a warm welcome on Animaniacs)

ORIGINS OF WONKY

Some people wonder what I mean by "wonky".

I mean an arbitrary placing of shapes within a picture. When a picture is filled with unrelated 2 dimensional shapes that have no overall graphic concept holding them together.

The inspiration for wonkiness was not actually wonky though. Wonkiness is a misunderstanding of controlled distortion.


Here's what inspired the late 80s, 90s and up to today's wonkiness.
TIN PAN ALLEY CATS
http://classiccartoons.blogspot.com/2007/07/censor-this-tin-pan-alley-cats.html

Tin Pan Alley Cats blew my mind when I first saw it. I couldn't believe a cartoon could be this imaginative and beautiful and alive.
Right from the opening pan of the waterfront I was sucked into the mood and atmosphere of the cartoon. I noticed the distorted perspective in the buildings and noted that even with distortion, you could still have mood. I was used to seeing 50s distortion-particularly Maurice Noble's Chuck Jones BGs. I liked them, but felt they were cold - graphic for graphic's sake, just to show off and steal the show from the characters.

Tin Pan Alley Cat's BGs didn't do that They enhanced the the strangeness of the unreality; drew your attention to it but it was all planned to make you feel something, not just notice intellectually that the cartoon was graphic. It makes you feel like this weird world is real and you are inside it, experiencing everything that is going on.


As distorted as these buildings seem, they still follow a careful graphic plan and composition. Each building doesn't just go its own way and the windows don't go in opposing directions.


The difference between Tin Pan Alley Cats and modern distortion is the first is carefully planned and on purpose; the other is superficial and by accident.

I'm amazed that UPA gets so much credit for creating graphic cartoons and purposeful distortion, when it was done so much better much earlier.This Clampett distortion was inspired by Milt Gross, so the ideas are even older.
All through the 80s I had tried to do this sort of distortion in the typical bland cartoons I had worked on at Hanna Barbera and Filmation. I got yelled at a lot.

BAKSHI AND ME

Then Bakshi hired me in 1986 to help him develop some TV concepts and he let me try all my wonky theories and flat pointy character styles out.

None of this stuff sold, because the networks just didn't get the "new look" and the types of stories we were creating.

The Rolling Stones came along and gave Ralph a video to do. I designed it and directed the animation. Ralph directed the live action but built the sets to match my wonky BG styling.

This is completely obviously stolen from Tin Pan Alley Cats and I didn't really understand what I was copying. I just wanted to do something wild that emulated my heroes. I sort of combined Clampett with Hanna Barbera, partially on purpose, but also because I am terrible at perspective. Drawing wrong perspective gave me a great excuse to draw mistakes!


to be continued later today...

Wonky 2

This follows part 1 above this post...
I met Jim Smith during Harlem Shuffle. He could draw real construction, composition and perspective and liked old cartoons as much as I did.

Ralph sold Mighty Mouse to CBS in 1987 and we put together a big crew in a week.

http://johnkstuff.blogspot.com/2007/10/mighty-mouse-show-presents-tribute-to.html

Jim drew some amazing semi-distorted BGs in the storyboards he was doing. (I wish I could find some to show you!) These drawings still had a composition and an organized graphic plan. When they got to layout, they were misinterpreted as being arbitrarily abstract and "wonky" came into existence as a full-fledged new cartoon style.

I also drew much more emotive and exaggerated characters than anyone else at the time did, and many of my artists again misinterpreted this as meaning no-rules. So for every Bruce Timm Ken Boyer, Eddie Fitzgerald, Lynne Naylor and me there were 5 other cartoonists who looked at our stuff and decided anything-goes, as long as it's weird. I had unleashed a monster that I've rued to this day.
Mighty Mouse was a mixed blessing to the cartoon business. It freed up cartoonists and brought back creativity, excitement and invention to cartoons. It also brought back story structure and characterization - in the best episodes. It reminded the whole business of what cartoons were for in the first place.

It also was full of accidents, mistakes, sloppy execution and rushed work that I had no time (and not enough experience) to get under control.

MIGHTY MOUSE'S IMMEDIATE INFLUENCE

Even though Mighty Mouse wasn't a huge ratings success it was immediately imitated by the rest of the industry. In a way that was flattering, but it was also frustrating to me, because what everyone imitated was the mistakes. They imitated the wonkiness. No one picked up on the novel concept of specific acting and expressions, the satire, the constant custom-made new ideas and experiments.They just imitated the surface. Satire was misinterpreted as parody. Anti-establishment inside gags were now imitated by conservative establishment studios.
Hanna Barbera came out with "A Pup Named Scooby Doo" the following year. It was pushed by Tom Ruegger, Charlie Howell, Gordon Bressack and a bunch of young brash HB writers. A bunch of writers tried to "write" a cartoony show into existence.

Now these were all friends of mine at the time. We hung around and played Pictionary at their writer parties (I always lost). They were nice guys and they pushed me at Hanna Barbera a couple years before to design some shows they created with a more modern style. I helped them create story bibles for shows that never sold. I witnessed them at writer meetings on Scooby Doo and discovered an amazing creative process. The way the ideas are chosen for script driven cartoons works like this:

A group of writers meet in a boardroom and shout at each other like a bunch of McKimson characters.

They shout out what plots to steal from the latest hit movies. They yell in a strange secret cartoon-writer language, belting out phrases like "WE NEED A SCOOBY BEAT HERE!"

or "WE NEED TO LAY DOWN A PIPELINE!"



"WITH ARMS AKIMBO!"

Each time a writer blurts out a "gag" it's followed by huge laughter -
but only by one person - the writer who yelled it. All the other writers roll their eyes and tell him what an idiot he is.

Then they all start up again.This pushing, shoving and shouting goes on for a few minutes. Whoever shouts the loudest gets his ideas in the script.

The whole process is built around stealing ideas that someone else came up with for a medium that all cartoon writers wish they could be in. They rearrange the ideas from live action, then decide which live action characters to base the incidental characters on.

"a-la Danny Devito", "a-la Robin Williams" You see this stuff all over every cartoon script. It's an admission that cartoon writers can't create original characters. For some reason, executives do not see anything wrong with this.


All this stealing is performed with what appears to be total sincerity. After a big shout down where the writers knock out a formula plot that they have all already written 50 times, and plug it up with handfuls of other people's ideas they all slap each other on the back and go off to their separate rooms to type up all these horrors and inflict them on long-suffering cartoonists.

So this same bunch of personable fellas at HB, after seeing Mighty Mouse, got together and wrote up the new drawing style and stories for the self-parodying Scooby Doo show. Someone in the art department run by Bob Singer, who chastised me for drawing too flat just a couple years earlier, then had to draw the show in what they thought was my style. They did a cautious conservative version of wonkiness, thinking that's what I love more than anything. You can tell by the drawings that they didn't really believe in it and it pained them to do it.

A couple years later, this misinterpretation of wacky "hip" cartoons and the same HB crew merged with some of the Mighty Mouse crew and grew into Tiny Toons, then Animaniacs - which took our mistakes and self-indulgences way beyond anything we had ever imagined possible.


Nelvana also immediately copied Mouse's mistakes and took the wonkiness to more extreme levels...
As I was trying to figure out what we did wrong in Mighty Mouse, and what I could do to build on the things we did right, I - in horror and revulsion - watched my mistakes grow into a whole school of cartooning doctrine at other studios - studios that just a year before thought everything I was trying to do was evil, crazy and ugly.


More wonkiness to come....






I sort of got of the topic in this post, talking about imitating other kinds of mistakes besides wonkiness so I'll try to get back to that in the next post.

Irv Spector, a new favorite for me

Remember this post? I wasn't sure who this artist was and Ger Apeldorn and Paul Spector let me know it was by Irv Spector -- Paul's Dad.

http://johnkstuff.blogspot.com/2008/09/more-handsome-cartoon-compositions.html

He's great! He has all the principles down and a really great personal style. If I were to guess his influences, I would say...Herriman, Walt Kelly, Dan Gordon and of course animated cartoons.


I had seen Irv's name in the credits of many Famous cartoons. He was an animator and storyboard artist there (and maybe more). It never meant anything to me, because Famous cartoons are (mostly) so non-descript. If only they had looked like this instead of imitating the west coast cartoon style.
These are beautiful and cartoony at the same time. I'll break down some of the panels when I get some time.Anybody know where we could see some of his storyboards?

http://allthingsger.blogspot.com/search/label/Irving%20spector

Thanks to Ger and Paul for finding me a new influence! The funny part is I bet I have some of his comic books, but just thought they were by Dan Gordon (who I also love) I see some differences now. Irv is more interested in strange artist perspectives and Dan is maybe goofier.

I'm sure they worked together.


Here are some panels that show off some of the concepts I write about. Are you seeing what I'm seeing in them?

1

2

3

4

5

Wicks Made a Clean Bastard

David inked some stuff just for fun, so I thought I would share the love.



And here's the culprit who brought bland animation into the mainstream more than anyone else. I can't believe there's a book bragging about ruining cartoons.

Filmation predated Dreamworks and Dic and set the standard for extreme hesitancy to make a creative statement that many religiously follow now. Filmation brought fear of fun to animation.

Stooges Studies For Toys

These guys are really hard to draw! They are so unique and have too many interesting subtleties, not only in their physical features, but in their personalities. It's murder trying to cram them all in and still get a likeness.

Ask the competition how hard it is to get likenesses:



When I showed the owners of the 3 Stooges drawings like this they said: "Why is Moe punching Larry? How come you draw him mean? Moe's not mean. He's just....frustrated."

Jim Smith Studies

Excuse the rain damage.

My Moe

I think the 3 Stooges made the funniest films in history. They are the perfect combination of comedic acting, timing, slapstick and cartoon gags. They never cheat you with filler and insincere pathos either. It's the most honest comedy you'lll find anywhere. They give your money's worth.



They have rereleased all their films (plus some lost ones!) in chronological order.


That's good news and bad news. The picture looks great, but the sound has been "remastered" till it's hardly there any more. You have to turn up the volume on your set all the way and still you are straining to hear the voices and sound effects that were perfectly clear on TV and video tapes just a few years ago. Why do they do this? The old cartoons have lousy sound on DVDs too. Each new release has thinner and thinner sound. Does anyone have an explanation for what they are doing? And why they hire deaf people to remix sound?





This volume (3) has one of the craziest, fastest Stooges films of all time! "Cactus Makes Perfect". It's more cartoony than most cartoons and has the funniest shaving scene ever.

Bonus Kissable Larry

Rock N Rule - Mok, Robin Budd and dog noses on humans

TRUE DESCRIPTION OF THE MOVIE PLOT

SCENE: blue scrolling text

NARRATOR: The War was over... The only survivors were street animals: dogs, cats and rats. From them, a new race of mutants evolved. That was a long time ago.

NARRATOR: Another time, another place.

NARRATOR: Mok, a legendary superrocker, has retired to Ohmtown. There his computers work at deciphering an ancient code which would unlock a doorway between this world and another dimension. Obsessed with his dark experiment, Mok himself searches for the last crucial component -- a very special voice.

Despite the fact that the concept for this story is pretty embarrassing:
humans with dog noses,
Imitation 70s rock and roll still exists in the future,
and to be taken seriously it takes place in a dark post-nuclear holocaust world (like a million 70s and 80s movies),
there are moments of really good modern animation and even a character who has a unique design.

SERIOUS AND COOL 'TUDE FILLED CANADA AT ITS PEAK

The poor Canadian animators were stuck with some bad decisions coming from the top but genuinely tried to do some real animation and and have some fun and show off along the way.


The most unique character design is this villain guy: MOK, obviously a caricature of Mick Jagger. I suppose they couldn't afford to get Mick Jagger to do the voice, so they used Lou Reed instead.

The design is so specific and complex that it would be pretty much impossible for anyone to animate it. It doesn't follow traditional animation construction; it's not made of easy-to-animate pears and spheres - unlike some of the other characters in the cartoon.
Just the lips themselves are hard to draw from any one angle, but Robin Budd completely controls it in full animation, and ignores all the stock mouth animation that had come down to us from Disney and invents his own.



I can't say for sure, but all the designs in the cartoon look compromised by the bad ideas coming from non-animators. For some reason, someone decided to animate human characters because human characters would be taken more "seriously" by the audience. Someone at the top wanted Nelvana to be noticed and respected by live action critics and players I guess. The whole thing has "Pleeeeease take me and my dog noses seriously" written all over it. So of course, no one did.BUT maybe during a committee meeting someone else said it would be easier to animate funny animals and so a bizarre compromise was struck.
The characters all had to be designed stiff and too tall (for seriousness) but then had dog noses pasted onto human faces, which just makes the characters even more unappealing than regular 70s Hanna Barbera human characters.

I'm just guessing, but I bet that Mok has been partially designed by committee. The dog nose especially looks weird on him, because he is so specifically Mick Jagger, the human, not Pluto the dog.

It also looks like The Nelvana signature (square eyes) has been grafted onto many of the characters.



The facial construction of this character is so complex that it's amazing that someone could have actually animated it without the typical problem of melting features that you see in so many modern Disney 2d movies.

Robin Budd was the lead animator on the character and he must be some kind of genius to have been able to pull off such a difficult animation problem. Even though I'm cringing all through the story about how evil can be cured by 70s rock and roll, I'm fascinated by the skill of execution of some of the animation.

This character didn't have a huge influence on Canadian animation later, just because the character is so hard to draw and animate. Only Robin could have done it (maybe he had some good people who followed him too)

The character did influence Disney animator Glen Keane who used some of the characteristics of Mok for his Ratigan character in The Great Mouse Detective.

Thanks to Jenny for letting me steal this off her blog.



Except for the square eyes and long legs, Mok wasn't and isn't typical of the Canadian style , but was a pretty interesting experiment and departure from what was thought of as "animation style" in 1980.

The more typical and recognizable Canadian style traits are all over the rest of the film though.


This is ultra Canadian style.
I'll describe the general traits to look for in these and other Canadian models in the next post. Maybe you can already see them.


Thanks to Brad Goodchild for keeping some Canadian history together for us!

Updating George To Make Him Hip And Ironic

I've been getting some complaints that my tastes and ideals are too outdated, and that animation needs to constantly evolve.

So Rob Mac has done me a great favor and improved George Liquor for me, bringing him into the modern world of cartoon irony.

I have 5 networks beating down my door already!

Now all he needs is some 'tude and I'm set.

Thanks Rob!

Random Stuff

Here's a nice inking job by Harmke.

And here are some random things I found while searching for things to blog about.



Terrytoons are interesting. It's supposedly the bargain basement low budget studio from the golden age, but they fully animated everything and they loved crowd scenes. None of that is cheap. Where they skimped maybe is in the cleanup and inking. The finished drawings are often sloppy, but under the clean up is still a good drawing. They also must have thought sound effects were a needless luxury so they used the same 5 over and over again.
I wonder why it never dawned on Paul Terry to do limited animation. Thank God it didn't!
I forget where I found this nifty indian kid model sheet. It's very Bluthy and very well drawn. It'd be nice to see this kind of great technical ability in other styles. If you know who did this, let me know so I can credit it! I could analyze the crap out of how good these drawings are but am taking it easy this weekend. It has all the principles I love.
Craig Marin sent me this picture of a lovable old time puppet.

Mike Fontanelli's Latest Gifts

Wait'll you see what you can get arrested for these days.
http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/years/2008/0911081baggy1.html


And here are some gifts from me. I came across these gorgeous cels in my research for 80s animation.

For Karen - What Makes Lasting "Iconic" Characters

Hi Karen



you asked me why modern characters don't have the lasting appeal of Looney Tunes and Hanna Barbera characters.



You said that even though some of your movies have made money, the characters don't seem to outlast their initial stories. In my opinion, that's because modern movies focus more on "the "arena", the formula animation plot and the special effects but they pay very little heed to character.



Characters that are charismatic, unique and engaging can fit into any "arena". Iconic classic characters appeared in different scenarios all the time, and the audience never questioned it. In fact they looked forward to seeing their favorite characters over and over again. What made these characters iconic?



I'll give you my theories. First of all, there is no one quality that makes an iconic character. There are various ingredients that go into it and not each lasting character has all the ingredients.



One ingredient, I think is the most essential (to a cartoon or film character):

The Look - the individual character design

A character has to have an automatically recognizable and appealing look, even if it has nothing else.



You have to want to wear it on a t-shirt, just because it looks so nice. It should make good toys.









Most of today's characters don't have distinct looks. They are semi-realistic and have no strong visual statement. No conviction to a design.





This stuff looks like it was designed for a 1985 DIC show.

Modern characters are generic to look at - some are even proud of it!







Do these look iconic? Do they make cute toys? If you saw these in the supermarket, would you know who they are? Or would you just say "Oh, there's a lumpy turtle! I'll get it for my niece Tabitha."

The Voice

Having a distinct cartoony voice adds a lot of instant appeal and recognition to a character.



Acting - Baby Bottleneck

Uploaded by chuckchillout8



It used to be an automatic requirement for cartoon characters to have strong distinctive voices. That's why cartoonists went to radio to find stars who made their living on their voices and acting alone.















FF04nosehandling1

Uploaded by chuckchillout8





FF03DoesBarneyKnow

Uploaded by chuckchillout8



Too many of today's cartoons use "star voices" which sound like no one in particular. If a cartoon character sounds like your next door neighbor, then he doesn't sound special or unique.



Here, turn this on, close your eyes and just listen to the voices. Doesn't it sound like your next door neighbors trying to solve a community problem? Can you tell one character from another?







Most characters that have lasted decades had strong distinctive character voices.

The Personality

Strong personalities like Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Foghorn Leghorn, Yogi Bear, Jinks the Cat seem real to an audience and therefore stand a chance of lasting a long time.

WB characters don't have quite as distinct character designs as some other classic cartoons, but they have really distinct voices and personalities.



Compare these personalities to say, Droopy (who is in some great cartoons) or any characters in feature animation today. Modern feature animation characters have completely stock bland personalities. Every movie uses the same characters. The bland lead, the tough feisty woman, the gay villain, the obnoxious sidekick etc... these aren't unique individuals, because you see them all the time.

Uniqueness

A unique character has to be surprising, something you don't see every day of the week or has a combination of incongruent traits that add up to magic. They can have some traits you identify with, but can't merely have standard traits if they are to stand out from the tons of forgettable stock animated characters.



This uniqueness should reveal itself on as many levels as possible: the look, voice, personality, and movement.



Many WB characters have all these traits in one character.





The character that is the most unique ever created is Popeye.



He is a bald old man with one eye, no teeth, scrawny except for bulbous forearms and calves. Despite being old and decrepit looking, he is the strongest man in the world and loves to fight. He gets extra strength from spinach. He is ignorant and has a completely unique made up dialect and voice. He is low class yet has great nobility.



In today's environment you could never sell a character this unique with so many odd traits, yet he is one of history's most famous and popular characters; purely American during America's best period.

Character Chemistry With Other Characters

A character doesn't exist by himself. He has to have other distinct characters who together create sparks and chemistry. When you have this type of clear entertaining relationship, the stories write themselves.





































So those are some of the ingredients that go into making characters so strong that you can make many stories out of them. They don't have to die after the first blockbuster weekend that doesn't make enough money to pay for the cost of production and marketing. Real star characters go on to make money for decades after their initial introduction. Why? Not because of the "story". But because people love the characters. The stories are written around the characters. This is the opposite thinking of today's "Create an arena and then stuff it full of characters that fit it."







But the most important ingredient in a star character is not the character himself or even any of the parts that go into it. The secret magical ingredient is the creator who understands character and chemistry. This ingredient is the rarest of them all.



I can explain to anyone conceptually what makes a good character, but that won't make it any easier for the listener to go ahead and start creating them.





You could know music theory and still never be able to come up with memorable melodies. It takes a certain kind of talent who can create melodies - not every musician can do it, even if they are virtuosos in other aspects of music.



The same thing applies to creating characters and being able to bring them to life. You have to just naturally have a feeling for character and gripping situations - and you have to have enough experience in your medium to know technically how to pull it off.



In live action, the actors themselves are the characters and they make it easy for the director by bringing their own custom made personalities with them.



In animation, you have to be able to put yourself into the heads and hearts of many characters and that's why it is such a rare talent and not many animators can do it without a good director.

That's why these shorts programs are so crazy. Modern TV execs think that anybody can create characters and it's just a matter of luck until one comes along, so they try out anybody off the street and waste tons of money, instead of finding someone who actually has the talent and letting him develop it with a crew over time.





That's what Leon Schlesinger did at Looney Tunes. He found and nurtured the best cartoon directors in history. He let them experiment; they tried out lots of characters, honed their skills and they ended up creating more popular characters than anybody else....and made a ton of money for Warner Bros. for 60 years.









It's not enough to have great characters; you have to have great directors who know how to bring them to life.





How many horrible Bugs Bunny cartoons have you seen made in the last 25 years? It's not easy to keep characters alive, no matter how great their raw material is. You need the great director who understands character and uniqueness. That's the most important ingredient to lasting characters.





BONUS TREAT

A GOOD CARTOONIST CAN ADAPT TO DIFFERENT STYLES AND MAINTAIN HIS SIGNATURE

You hear the word "style" used too much today. Young cartoonists excuse their lack of knowledge by saying they have a style. Even executives; folks who by nature are as blind as bats toss the word around as if it means something to them. They used to hate the word "style", but for the last decade and a half it has been trendy to pretend you like it.

People call that flat stuff you see everywhere a "style". If it's a style, then it's a style made up of mistakes-and the exact same mistakes that hundreds of cartoonist make just through natural ignorance.

Well at one time "style" did mean something, and actually had more than one meaning. Having more than one meaning confuses things by allowing people to equivocate between the meanings when they try to talk about it.

One meaning of style is "personal style."



Another is a wider general or "house style". Like the Warner Bros. style.

But within the "Warner Bros. style" are 5 or 6 "directors' styles".

Each director in turn constantly experimented and evolved his style.

Within each director's unit are individual animators' styles whose styles also evolved with time.


Looking wider, you can say the Warner Bros. style is part of the "40s pear and spheres style" which also includes Disney, Terrytoons, MGM and Columbia.



The "UPA style" is both derived from and rebelling against the "pear and spheres style".

Through all of these cartoons you can see similarities of wider principles. People confuse principles with style all the time.

When cartoon studios in Canada look at a good cartoonists' portfolio that has solid principles, they say "Oh you draw in John K.'s style". In other words if you draw well and solid and fun and non ambiguous, then you all have the same style, which is ridiculous.


Nick Cross, Jim Smith, Katie Rice, Helder Mendonca, Bob Camp, Vincent Waller

all draw really well and all have their own unique styles on top of their good principles. The fact that none of them draw in the modern "generic group style" means to bland people that they all draw the same. Their very uniqueness and good drawing - to a modern dummy makes them all the same.



Then there is a whole group of people who draw in a generic style that is a combination of the "spumco and Tartakovsky style".
The above fake commercial is drawn in Dave Sheldon's personal style which came from a lot of influences out of the 50s rebellion against pears and spheres. Dave was one of many stylists I used on Ren and Stimpy. His style was probably the most influential of all the Spumco artists.Genndy and Craig McCracken did their own take on the 50s and created a lot of original stuff.


The imitators of this stuff from the last 18 years combined it into a non custom-made generic unindividual group style. It started in the early 90s in LA, and then made it to Canada about 5 years ago - right when great Spumco artists were being turned away by Canadian studios who told them they needed artists who could adapt to other styles - which meant could adapt to the style that rips us off ignorantly.

Now this resulting soulless flat broken glass style is everywhere and animation executives all think it is hip and modern - but then wonder why none of the shows are as popular as Ren and Stimpy or Dexter's Lab. D-uh!


An unevolving generic group style like fake-Disney, or fake-Genndy is a dead animal, unlike a wider group style like the "pears and spheres" 30s and 40s "style",





Hank Ketcham and Walt Kelly have very individual personal styles, yet both these very different looking finishes are based on the exact same principles of good animation drawing. They were both animators trained at Disney's who broke away from the stifling genericism at the studio to become successful on their own. They benefited hugely from their Disney training.
Harvey Kurtzman is not an animator, yet has a style that uses the same principles again.

This 40s animation technique of drawing is not really a style at all - it's a drawing approach that suits animation and is open to constant development, growth and experimentation - when it is in the hands of clever individuals who don't cage themselves in by the group style.


Whew! Now on to Harvey Eisenberg...

Harvey was an animator, then a layout artist at MGM on the original Tom and Jerry cartoons. Then he went into comics and used the 40s principles pretty generically at first,
but quickly developed his own individual style, and in turn adapted to the changing styles of animated cartoons over the next couple decades.




he was able to adapt to totally different looking styles, because he had his principles of drawing down pat, was really talented and knew how the more modern takes changed from the overall 40s "style" on the surface.

The link below will take you to some Yogi pages drawn by a few different artists, all trying to draw in the same "house style" but still letting their individuality come through.

http://comicrazys.wordpress.com/2008/08/25/yogi-bear-sunday-comics-gene-hazelton-et-al/


My point? Good drawing skills are adaptable and give you more creative choices than blind imitation.

The Canadian Bear

Is this the same bear? Believe it or not, it isn't. It's 2 different characters. It's the Canadian bear that appears in countless Canadian model sheet packs on sundry ultra boring shows meant to punish Canadian children who are too unique or lively.
Where did the Canadian Bear come from? Let us trace its roots...

Well first of all, probably 90% of animated cartoons around the world can be traced back to Disney. Disney cartoons had more influence on the world than any other more creative cartoons from the same period and earlier. It's gotten to the point where most animators can not even imagine straying from what they think the Disney rules of design and motion are (after 7 generations of copying and forgetting what the reasons for the style were in the first place).

Even Anime is a direct descendent of Disney design style. But the funniest imitation of Disney's blandness is Canada's. It's like a caricature in reverse. Canada has taken the weakest aspects of Disney and emphasized them, while leaving out all the useful and appealing parts.

Disney invented a particular style of cuteness in the late 30s and early 40s. Its pinnacle is the 1942 film Bambi.

This style serves 2 purposes:
1) Functional for animation

The characters are made of simplified forms that rotate well in space. They are very solid and at the same time organic. Two seemingly contradictory concepts perfectly combined into one design style.

When animated by experts like Frank and Ollie, Milt and the rest of the great Disney animators, it makes for a beautiful and almost magic visual experience.

When people copy Disney, they miss this aspect of Disney's design. - that it has construction and flow.

This is not the only way to design solid flowing characters, but it's the one that worked for Disney, and Disney convinced the world that they were the only animators who had any reason to exist.
2) To make Moms go "oooooooooooH!"

Besides being well designed for movement, they are also emotionally designed to be ultra cute.
Almost every character is the exact same character design. It is a generic but perfectly balanced set of huge cute eyes perfectly mapped onto a perfectly solid egg shaped head. A huge head compared to body size with a huge cranium relative to muzzle size.


Baby proportions, and thus cuteness to Moms.

The only real variance in design from character to character is the length of the muzzle and what kind of ears it has.

It's the same face on different types of animals. They all have rounded triangular eyes, that are mirrored by a light shape around them. Big-ass pupils that take up about half the space of the eye itself.


Here is the Disney formula character design and construction at its apex. This is where Cal Arts eyes degenerated from. The textbook animation design is right here and obvious for all to copy. More modern copies of these characters do not quite get it.


Here it is again. Exact same design; different beast.

As the decades wore on, the characters got less and less construction, and less cuteness - even drawing the same characters.
They added angles to the same designs in the 1950s and the pupils started to shrink.


By the 60s, the heads got much smaller, the proportions got blander, eyes got smaller, they lost the framing rings around the eyes and the construction started to melt as the animators got older and shakier. The angular style was still there, but a much milder, less daring version of it.


This eventually led to the tiny head Bluth style as the cartoons got less and less cute. You still see the same Disney construction formula. They are still the same designs they used in the 1940s - just way toned down.



Father and farther away from the source; still copying, but copying the previous copy, instead of trying to understand the original.



same same same same same....

From Disney Bears to Canada. A Journey towards blandness.

I've always wondered why when before they start animation on a Disney movie, they spend tons of money experimenting with variations on their stock design style.

All these preproduction drawings are much more interesting than the designs that finally appear in the movie. These are all still based on the stock Disney formula, but they experimented with the proportions at least.

Technically they are all beautiful animation drawings. They have all the fundamentals and some artistic flair on top of them.

In the end, of course they settle on everything in the middle:
Even though this is pretty generic and sappy, I still love the Bongo film. The animation and backgrounds is just so stunningly expert and at times beautiful, that it sucks me right in.

Song Of The South is the same way. Disney has a small bear design and a grown up bear design, with some slight variations here and there along the way, but basically recycling the same designs for decades.

ENTER WINNIE...

In the 60s, Disney took Winnie The Pooh and animated it
They combined their own cute style and construction with E.H. Shepard's quaint and charming style.

This eventually did serious damage to Disney's style in the 80s. It ushered in blander small-eyed bears by the hundreds.

THEN CAME THE 80S


By the 1980s, the drawing skills were gone and so was the cute appeal. We had a super bland even more generic version of Disney with none of the good things about the studio left. Now you think this is ugly?

Here is the Canadian copy of the bland 80s Disney.

No construction, no line of action, no silhouette, no animation functionality and really tiny unappealing eyes - yet this was sold on its "cuteness". And there's nothing remotely cute about it, except that it sort of reminds you of Disney from long ago. We've been trained to think even crummy 7th generation imitations of what was actually cute once, is still cute now.

Here's the same design in another show, only even lousier.


My gosh, aren't these adorable?




A great irony is that the success of these fake Disney shows in turn influenced Disney to steal from us Canadians.When characters are this generic and faceless it's impossible to sue those who steal from you.

So now you know how we got from here:





To here:
Imitators think that by imitating the superficial aspects of a 10th generation of other imitations, they will somehow absorb instantly the quality and appeal of the original.



That means this:



equals this:



This is the basic Canadian entertainment thinking. Whatever America does (or did 60 years ago) we will copy the copy of the copy of the copy of the copy, until there is nothing left. - Instead of actually trying to entertain with skill, knowledge, varied individual influences and experiences from our own lives and personalities.

Here is the modern insincere animation look. Just as we've seen the Disney character design style copied and mangled for decades, now we have spent almost 2 more decades copying (without knowing why) the Nickelodeon/ Cartoon Network "style".

Who do they make this look for? Each other? Certainly not a regular audience of humans.
I don't even know what these are, but it's obvious where they came from.

Postscript: I don't want other Canadians to thinking I am bashing them. I'm proud to be Canadian and there are many unique and wonderful things in Canada.

I also realize (as most Canadians do) that we copy American culture. And don't do it very well. And do it too late.

I'll do another post about this in more detail, but I find it ironic that Canada wants so bad to distinguish itself as having its own culture, but in the process destroys any chance of letting it happen.

The government has crazy complicated bureaucratic rules that stifle creative competition, skill and originality in entertainment and art, while thinking it is encouraging it.

I can say from lots of direct experience in both countries that if say anyone with money in Canada actually wanted to seriously compete with American animation, we would kill all competition. Not in a year, but easily within 5. The talent is there. We could be known as the leaders in quality creative money making cartoons all over the world and force everyone else to imitate us. Instead the whole business is set up to stay way behind America's own backwards business model and to badly imitate its every mistake and awful trend.

More on this later...

A Sentimental Republican

Canadian Beer Commercials and more of my culture

Labatt's 50 is the best Canadian beer. Thanks to Murray the Canadian Animator for alerting me to these commercials!












There was a show on Friday nights called "Kraft Theatre" This wasn't exactly the same one, but it has what I watched the show for...the recipes.

Kraft wanted you to buy every product they made and glue them together into unGodly combinations. I wish I could find some of the 60s recipes, but wait for the titles of this show to finish and then watch the commercial. The scary part is that Moms would actually make these foods!

Kraft Recipes




Canadian Wrestling on Saturday Mornings

We didn't get Saturday Morning Cartoons until years after they appeared in the United States. Instead we got "Bingo", "Curling" "Bowling For Dollars" and Canadian wrestling which had tons of beloved stars. The meanest wrestlers were a french family called "The Vachon Bros." Maurice "Mad Dog" Vachon was the meanest of the mean and we loved him.



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xV-rp4dhdBs&feature=related


Andre the Giant when he was a Canadian Wrestler

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HngzSCiZ_Eg&feature=related


THE FOREST RANGERS

Here was a show about a man who lived in the forest in a barricaded fort, safe from the police with a bunch of kids. The show was boring, weird and Canadian but had a theme song that I can't stop whistling to this day.





Then there was this alarming show for kids.




An Important Canadian Show THat Formed Us All

Watch this!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XeBDqOEypXI&feature=related



This was a show about a German Shepherd that traveled from town to town looking for homes in crisis. He would listen in outside a window while a brutish Canadian Dad was beating his wife and forcing the kids to eat puffed wheat in bags without prizes.



Then he would scamper in and settle everything with drizzling compassionate fangs.



The whole family would learn Canadian values from the dog and then all get along and sleep in the same bed together, a cured and balanced family...because a wet smelly Canadian Dog took them under his dewclaw. The he'd dump his new friends and ride a train to another town and another family in crisis and fix everything up for them.







Joni Mitchell -An Actual Canadian Super Talent and a Real Original





Boy, did she come up with a style. Her songs give me piss willies!

Here's one that'll surely raise your neck hairs:




and here's what we get now...
Canada Ruined By Imitating Stupid American Fads

Canada's Cartoon Roots

I'm sorry, but I'm having trouble with Blogger. It keeps changing the sizes of my fonts and I haven't been able to fix it...


By 1970 (and even earlier) no one was making pure entertainment oriented animated cartoons anymore.

WHAT HAPPENED TO ENTERTAINMENT CARTOONS BY THE 70S




Animated cartoon shorts were dead. Only Disney kept making traditional animated features, but all the animators were old and tired by then and the animation reflected that.

The cartoons in the 70s that purported to be aimed at entertaining kids weren't animated. They were the worst kind of limited animation and the animation was being done in Asia. No one making these cartoons were doing it to have fun, let alone to be inventive.

THE LAST FULL ANIMATION IN AMERICA WAS IN COMMERCIALS




The only "full animation" left was in animated commercials. They were "full" in the sense that they didn't stop moving, but the drawing style had completely degenerated into either kleenex box art style or clumsy combinations of 20s cartoon strips mixed with underground comics.

America had created, developed and made the greatest animated cartoons in history but that age was long gone.

For us young Canadian cartoonists, the future looked dreary. We had grown up watching the classics on TV: Looney Tunes, Popeye, Disney, Lantz and that's what most of us looked up to and wanted to emulate but there was no where to go to work on fun clever cartoons like that. Many of us emigrated to America to work in the depressing Saturday Morning cartoon factories.

Most young wanna-be Canadian animators wanted to do full animation. We hated Saturday morning cartoons and wanted something better, something that at least moved.

Sheridan College offered some hope that there was a market for this. They taught what they termed "traditional animation". What they meant was animation that moved smoothly with a lot of drawings. They also looked down upon Saturday Morning cartoons.

I personally think there is more to quality animation, full or otherwise than mere smooth motion. But in the 1970s and 1980s anyone who could animate smoothly, who knew what squash and stretch, overlapping action, weight and other old animation skills were, were extremely rare and admired by the rest of us.




The drawing on the cover of the Sheridan Animation program says it all: Quality animation is merely a lot of drawings per second. The quality or entertainment value of the drawings being moved were not serious considerations of the program.


A Cosmic Christmas 1977



The Canadian animation style first got wide notice with Nelvana's Cosmic Christmas. It had a lot of drawings in it, compared to what we were used to seeing in modern TV cartoons.

The story, personalities and concepts - as you can see from the images and plot description are completely corporate and conservative and preachy. Nothing different than Saturday Morning cartoons.

A small town is immersed in holiday season festivities. A small boy named Peter and Lucy, his pet goose, are suddenly confronted by three aliens (wise men) investigating the real meaning of Christmas. For 2,000 years the alien visitors have been searching the universe for the significance of a brilliant star. Peter realizes that it is the Star of Bethlehem, and he and Lucy lead the way. It's a difficult journey, but it changes the town as it (along with the travelers) discovers the meaning of Christmas. Young and old, rich and poor participate in the rediscovery of the meaning of Christmas, which the space visitors carry away with them.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s9yeS6091bI&feature=related

The fact that it was actually animated at all was a real advance in TV cartoons.

Canadian animators, even the ones who loved classic cartoons and were inspired by them, unfortunately faced big handicaps. The classic cartoons were developed bit by bit, cartoon by cartoon...by cartoonists and animators. It took a decade or so of hundreds of animators to develop all the classic techniques by trial and error.


Canada had no such history. We just had the old cartoons on TV to watch and try to figure out in a week with no one to teach us.

Classic cartoon designs were designed to be functional and appealing. They were made to be animated. Cartoon construction was a lost science and art. We could only imitate it very superficially without understanding what was behind it.


So here's where I think the early Nelvana cartoons failed to live up to the promise of great animation. The designs are primitive and fight the very act of animating.

Characters are too stiff, have no construction and someone at the top is not allowing the animators to use lines of action and some of the classic tools that make cartoons work and look better.


Devil and Daniel Mouse 1978



Frank Nissen was the main designer on the early Nelvana cartoons and he had some unique quirks in his style that influenced the rest of Canadian animation for the next few decades.

Stiff designs, long rectangular eyes and extra lumps in places that interrupt the potential flow of the poses.

A strong trait in Canadian animation is that the characters stand up straight and stiff, and when they bend their limbs, they do so in jagged awkward ways. This is the Sheridan College style and goes against all the principles of classic Disney style, which the Sheridan teachers all claim to be their inspiration and goal.

Romie-0 and Julie-8 1979

Intergalactic Thanksgiving 1979



A space-traveler family- in a covered wagon spacecraft at that- land on the planet 'Laughalot' and encounter King Goochi. His subjects, who are entertained by the King all the time, don't do any work.

Prince Notfunnyenuf meets the daughter of the space travelers and takes her on a ride about the planet. They encounter the other inhabitants of the world who live below and do all of the work, the "bugs." They carry the valuable message back to the other people on Laughalot that you "can't keep takin' out if you don't put back!"

Easter fever 1980



http://thecanuckleheads.blogspot.com/search?q=nelvana


Dan Haskett, an American who was to become one of the animators who brought back more looseness and classic construction and Disney principles to American animation in the 80s, worked for a short time at Nelvana. You can see him trying to recapture some of these classic qualities in these model sheets from "Easter Fever" (probably compromising them against management wishes). After he left, the looseness and construction and organicness left Canada's mainstream animation and it plugged on with its stiff signature design style.

Take Me Up To the Ball Game 1980

Baseball players from Earth try their luck against the Alien All-Star Intergalactic Champs. It's an interplanetary space jam!

This model sheet is almost constructed and definitely celebrates classic squash and stretch. I bet there was a big fight with management to get it to be this "cartoony".


The birth of Nelvana was celebrated in Canada as a hipster revolution. Young rebels going against the mainstream and pioneering a new edgy style where every old tired cliched story now happens in space.

Again - the fact that it used animation at all during that era attracted a lot of talented natural Canadian animators like Chuck Gammage and others. It was the only place where an animator could actually animate. Most animators I've known are pretty happy just to be animating. It's never been enough for me. I guess I gravitated more to design, acting, characters and story, which I think are even more important to cartoons than smooth movement - although I'm certainly glad to have great animation when I'm lucky enough to get it.


With an army of great talent, Nelvana got ambitious and decided to make a rebellious fully animated feature using worn Saturday Morning Cartoon ideas - Rock 'N' Roll and the future.

This film has some great animation, and some of the most awkward character designs and most patronizing ideas in history.


Drink a bag of milk while you are waiting for the next post...

For AAron - Makeover for Looney Tunes Merch

A Little About Canadian Culture and Unique Achievements

THE STUBBY



STUBBIES!

Canada is a nation in search of an identity. In fact the government spends tons of our tax dollars trying to invent one for us by keeping American culture away from us - but it doesn't work. It just delays us from discovering US cultural trends.

Canada is by nature basically a milder version of American culture. But we are 10 or 15 years behind. We imitate most every trend and practice that begins in America, but being so far away from it, and being at least a decade behind and having not generated it ourselves naturally out of our own culture and people, we don't ever quite get it.


We have imitation US sitcoms, imitation US gangsta rap, imitation imitation wrestling. McDonald's and KFC's are everywhere making us fat and lethargic.

We are mostly imitators, but we do have some slight differences and some unique talents.
For one thing we know something about America, but Americans barely even know we exist. They think Toronto is the capital. Americans know more about Mexico than about their more similar neighbors up north.


When Canada does have something truly unique, we have this awful tendency to get rid of it.
Canadians make great beer, much better than American beer. Even so, I'll still see Canadians in Canada buying cases of Bud or Miller and it shocks the Hell out of me! The stuff tastes like rat piss!



Canadian beer used to come in manly brown bottles called "stubbies". Our beer is so superior to US bottled pee that it deserves a handsome and unique container like this. Yet Canadian businesses are so eager to imitate US business, that they will copy even inferior ideas, like putting beer in long neck girly bottles for modern man and his skinny fingers. Real men's hands need to firmly grasp short thick stubbies.



Labatt 50, the most manly and tasty Canadian beer is now in these wimpy pantywaist American style skinny bottles.

Canada also s the quart beer bottle which is extra manly. That's what we drank from when we were 12.



Humpty Dumpty Chips guy ruined by American "tude"











Canada makes the worst pizzas - they make it with white Velveeta cheese and luncheon meat. It sort of looks like a pizza but tastes like a grilled cheese sandwich with fried bologna on it that they call "pepperoni".

BUT they make up for that with something called "Montreal Smoked Meat". This is kinda liked corned beef but much tastier and juicier. If you are in Toronto, go to Mel's on Bloor street for a great variety of smoked meat sandwiches. In Ottawa, Dunn's is good. Montreal probably has it everywhere since they invented it.


Canadians all have summer homes in the wilderness that we call "cottages". There is a whole world of unique culture that happens at cottages. That's where we shed our American ways and revert to barbarism.




There was a TV show about cottage life in the 80s called "Mosquito Lake" starring Canada's funniest man, Mike McDonald. Unfortunately it was written by bad Canadian writers trying to imitate bad American sitcom writing, instead of having Canadian comedians (like Mike) write the show sincerely in a Canadian way.



Canada grows comedians and then tends to export most of them to the US. Those of us who don't play hockey in the winter, have nothing better to do than hole up in the basement for months, drink from stubbies and make fun of each other. This is a great training ground for comedy.

Then when we grow up the Canadian government which controls and restricts the entertainment business, while trying to force us to be uniquely Canadian, sends many of its most unique talents to the US, where the market is much larger and slightly more open. It used to be a lot more open to originality, talent and competition, until they deregulated the entertainment companies and caused American culture to degenerate into severe blandness, that today is no longer that different than Canada's media culture - just a Hell of a lot more expensive.



Americans think that there is no bacon in Canada, so they invented something called "Canadian Bacon" that is chopped ham stuffed in a tube. You can't find this substance in Canada but it' all over the States.

ACTUAL CANADIAN BACON




We do have an extra meat called "Back Bacon" or "Peameal Bacon" which is super tasty and lethal.




THE TOQUE (pronounced "tuke")


Americans always laugh when I say "toque". They don't what it is, but they stole it from us. It was invented for function - it's meant to keep your head and ears warm in freezing weather.




Americans wear them to be be cool and gangsta in the middle of summer, just like they wear their pants underneath their underwear.





In Canada, toque styles change every year. The classic toque has a pompom on top.Of course Canadians have the best Hockey players, but the Americans spend zillions of dollars to steal them from us.



We have great fighters because the drinking age is 12 in Canada, and so drunk kids always fight each other on the streets - especially in Quebec, where adult teeth were a rarity when I grew up.

This is all background for the origins of Canadian Style animation.

There are some unique naturally Canadian cultural things, but the Canadian media and the Government cause Canadians in general to abandon them for superficial imitations of American culture. We copy good things and bad things about American trends indiscriminately.


We even have Canadian hip hop and homies now.




The government reacting to US influence encourages non-creative people to come up with uniquely Canadian symbols and properties and forces them upon us.

We had "Ookpik" in the 70s, but I
think he died an ugly well-deserved death.

In 1967, to celebrate Canada's independence, the government commissioned a new flag and
accepted a design that looks like a bargain basement corporate logo designed by a Sheridan College design student.


Canada's image is like a blander imitation of the United States. It's a shame, because there is a ton of natural talent in Canada, but it isn't encouraged honestly or intelligently.

It's the same way for animation. Canada produces some of the best animators in the world, but the general commercial style is a bland imitation of American style...which is an bland imitation of classic American cartoon style.


I'll get into more details, bit by bit.

Here are the main 3 ingredients of the Canadian style of animaton.



Those 3 influences, government meddling, plus America's constantly degenerating culture have led to the modern age of Canada's exciting style.

Canadian Animation - The Beginning

These cartoons are the earliest Canadian made commercial animation (as opposed to the NFB independent films) that I remember. These are meant to be entertaining.

THE WIZARD OF OZ

The Wizard Of Oz is actually pretty clever, considering it was made for 10 bucks an episode. It's obviously influenced by UPA, but has its own interesting ways to do limited animation. It was animated at Crawley films, who also subcontracted some Roger Ramjet cartoons. The studio had its own unique style, and you can see it in The Wizard Of OZ and in the Ramjet shows they animated.

The Wizard Of OZ has one of the greatest cartoon theme songs. I sing it all the time.

THE NEW ADVENTURES OF PINOCCHIO

Here's a puppet animated series that played in Canada all through the 60s. I don't know if it was made there, but every Canadian grew up with it. It also has a great theme song.

I like the designs a lot. Very original and appealing.

Rocket Robin Hood

This show had the best theme song ever.

It also must be the cheapest cartoon ever made. Each half hour episode consisted of about 3 minutes of new footage, and the rest was filled up with recaps of what you just saw before the commercial and the same short bumpers that explained the characters' personalities to you. Those bumpers were the best part.

There were 2 seasons of it. The best one was made by Shamus Culhane. I say "best" because it was so badly drawn and clunky. The designs were such that you didn't know whether it was supposed to be serious or not.

Learn about realistic hero Little John and His Barney Rubble eyes. Nice belt design too.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x7pcqYtKwJs



The 2nd season was taken over by Ralph Bakshi, who ruined the show by bringing good artists on to do the layouts. Then it wasn't as funny anymore.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BokBaUE5Yeg&feature=related



Rocket Robin Hood is basically Canada's version of Filmation cartoons. It's comic book art dumbed-down in the theory that animation drawings need to have nothing specific about them so you can animate them. (Ruby Spears in LA actually had Jack Kirby designing and creating shows for them in the 80s, but they would never use his style, on the grounds that "you couldn't animate it". ---as if you could animate the crappy designs they did actually use.)

I always wondered about cartoons that tried to imitate comic book art, but then would completely tone down everything that we liked about comic books. They'd take out the individual styles that comic artists had, take out the violence and then have crappy stiff animation on top of it. What is the point of superhero cartoons?


Rocket Robin Hood is at least funny in its unabashed badness.


None of these cartoons influenced what became the "Canadian Animation style". Most animators who grew up with these cartoons thought of them as embarrassing garbage and swore to rebel against them and bring back "quality animation" when they grew up....me included. We all found "Art Of Walt Disney" book and were inspired to became a nation of the next Walt Disneys.


The Canadian style really started with the combination of the Sheridan College Animation Program and the early Nelvana specials.


Believe it or not, Nelvana began with what was supposed to be a rebellious bunch of guys bringing new ideas to cartoons. And they did it behind a stinky cheese factory.

I'm trying to find images of these Nelvana holiday specials and some early Sheridan college animation, like "Green Onions". If you can help me out, I can illustrate my next post on Canadian Style cartoons better. Send me some links!


BONUS CARTOON - DODO

This wasn't made in Canada but aired every day at lunchtime. It was made in England, which to Americans, might as well be the same place because you can fold Canadian money to show the Queen's butt.




They sure knew how to make theme songs in the 60s!

Bonus 2

They ran this cartoon back to back with Dodo in Ottawa in the 60s. I would race home from school every day on my mustang bike with the banana seat to watch the lunchtime cartoon shows. The theme songs would send me into a frenzy. Then the cartoon would stink.




Hey do any of you fellow Canadians collect old Canadian commercials? I'd love to do a post about them:


Kraft Theater Recipes
Famous Canadian William Shatner for Loblaws "where more than the price is right"
The Dominion song: "Mainly Because Of The Meat"
The Kraft Teddy Bears
Beaver Lumber

Working on a post about the Canadian Style...

a few people have asked me "what is this Canadian style you speak of"?

It's not an easy question to answer and I don't even know if it's all that important. But I'm working on a short historical post that traces the roots of the Canadian commercial style (as opposed to the National Film Board animation, which comes in many styles).

It may be important in this respect: regional styles are like accents. Many people don't know they have accents, because they grew up with them.This is very true of Canadians who all think we talk like American newscasters.

I got a rude awakening when I moved to LA and everyone started making fun of my accent. I swore to them that there was no such thing as a Canadian accent, which only made them laugh harder.



There is also a Canadian visual cartoon accent that most Canadians don't know they have, but it's blatantly obvious to me because I watched it develop. All my animation and cartoon influences are directly American and the Canadian style didn't start to appear until I was fully formed, so I escaped it.

America, having a much bigger population than Canada, has a few regional cartoon accents,The Cal Arts accent being by far the strongest and most influential today. Cal arts style animators, like Canadians swear they don't have a style or visual accent, but it is completely obvious to cartoonists who don't have it.

Having an unthinking regional style or accent is like being trapped in a cage. Once you can recognize your accent, you can work to allow other influences to keep your accent from holding you back.

It's not an insult to say that groups of people have a group style or accent; it's merely a fact of nature. It's up to teachers to show the students the difference between stylistic habits and real technique. Visual elocution should be taught in animation schools to broaden our visual communication skills and help us to recognize the difference between proper technique and blind habit. Substance over naive style.

Let me say, that a personal accent is an attribute; a group accent is a handicap. Some animators are like character actors (Ken Duncan, Carlo Vinci, Rod Scribner); they can do something that is purely unique to themselves and that should be taken advantage of, the rare times it appears. Unfortunately, animation tends to encourage herd mentality and forces everyone into the regional styles.


Weiner noses are part of the cartoon accent in Canada:


maybe I'll have something ready and up tonight with more detail and fun.

More Handsome Cartoon Compositions - helpful to layout artists

Ger Apeldoorn is a great resource for rare cartoon art. He collects all the stuff that I would love to have.

http://allthingsger.blogspot.com/2008/08/not-only-did-i-miss-posting-this-week-i.htmlHere's another Kurtzman above. The whole spread is fun, but take a gander at the first splash panel. It uses all the same compositional tools as the last one I dissected for you. He uses elements in the background to frame the characters to make them read clearly - and to look good.

It's the same principle of hierarchy of levels of shapes too.

http://johnkstuff.blogspot.com/2008/05/more-bg-layout-note-hierarchy-of-form.html

The whole picture works as a shape, then it is broken into sub-shapes, and these in turn keep getting broken down.

Each sub level follows the form of its larger parent.


Interestingly, Kurtzman, did a knock off of Blondie for awhile and abandoned all his natural instincts.



Kurztman, being so god at life and composition, apparently thought Chic Young's art was still and rubber-stampish, so he abandoned his own natural instincts made his knock off even stiffer!


Here's the real Blondie, which actually had a lot more life to it (and was pretty funny too!)

This comic below is a different style than Kurtzman, but the artist (Irv Spector) uses some of the same handy compositional tools.

Either way, it's very appealing and controlled. I love the contrasts in the top panel:

CONTRASTS
The building is tall contrasted to how wide it is.
The front entrance is very small compared to how big the building is.
The roof has more detail than the walls do.
The windows on the walls contrast in shapes and sizes and are very small compared to how big the wall is.
The fence is short and near the bottom of the picture. It is contrasted by the tall negative space created by the tree.
The foreground tree is in turn contrasted in size and direction by the smaller tree silhouetted behind it. - which you can read easily because of the negative space between them.

CONTROLLED CROWD GROUPINGS.
That little crowd of animals in the lower right works well as a single shape.
A clump of animals, that all follow a similar direction. They are all leaning back. They are not totally symmetrical, nor evenly spaced. The giraffe's neck pokes up the give the clump a more interesting overall shape and to create a nice negative shape between the clump and the house.

AVOIDING THE MIDDLE AND ASYMMETRY
The building is slightly to the right of the composition and tilts to the right at the top. The rest of the details on the building follow basically this same titled perspective.
This is not wonky. This cartoon license with control. Spector picks one dimension to distort and makes everything that is warped on the distorted object follow the same distortion.


The area of bricks is both:
to the left of the vertical middle.
Higher than the horizontal middle.
The smaller groups of detailed bricks come in different arrangements and different amounts.
There is a group of 7 bricks. A group of 5, a group of 2.

A professional BG layout artist at a service studio was working on one of my shows. All his layouts were very evenly spaced and had no contrasts and went to him one day ask him to use more contrasts and organic thinking. He told me there was a "rule of 3". He had arranged groups of bricks on a background for me in perfectly even groups of 3 and I asked him why they were so even, like wallpaper. He said haughtily, "I used the rule of 3's!". When I asked what that was, he rolled his eyes, thinking, "You call yourself a director and you don't know the rule of 3's?"

He said that this rule was to avoid monotonous symmetry. He said "even numbers are symmetrical, odd numbers are more interesting." Then he started to draw some grass. He pointed out that no one wants to draw every blade of grass, which I agreed with. He drew an expanse of lawn and then began to fill the area with groups of 3 blades of grass, each group expertly and evenly spaced, as though he had been doing this pattern for decades. Each group having the middle blade being the longest.

http://johnkstuff.blogspot.com/2006/11/composition-6-avoid-middle-asymmetry.html

MORE CONTROLLED DISTORTION
http://johnkstuff.blogspot.com/2006/10/eager-beaver-1946-functional-beautiful.html

as opposed to "wonky" and unsure of itself:


Here are cluttered poses trying to hide under shiny airbrushes. A lot of modern cartoon art directors purposely stage things from awkward camera angles, thing they are imitating live action and thus achieving "quality". You would never see a classic cartoon staged so clumsily.

Here is no composition, no thought t the overall image. It's merely an area filled with things that have no graphic relation to each other. Things just fell where they did as if all the elements were tossed in a salad and then dumped onto the frame.



Here is someone who has been paying attention to my posts about composition. He is using negative space to help frame the positive shapes. He is using artistic silhouettes in the trees, and making the trees flow, sing some hierarchy.

The church is too cluttered and filled up with details and too evenly designed, but the artist is making improvements and using tools now as man is supposed to do, so that is very encouraging to me. It's still has some Canadian cartoon style hanging on, but I imagine that will disappear with more practice.

Notes for Harmke