80s Pre-Wonk

Here is a color key painted by the very talented Vicki Jensen in 1984 or so.
It's from a layout I drew for a cartoon show presentation called "Rockin' At The Rim". It was a show concept created by some rich guy's kid and his swarthy lawyer. These two guys ran into cartoon writer Charlie Howell at a bar and told them their idea for the greatest show in the world and asked if he would develop it. He, in turn asked me to help him with it. Charlie is one of a handful of cartoon writers who started as an animator.


I was never good at drawing backgrounds because props, objects and perspective evade me. This style though (if you can call bad drawing a style) morphed a few years later into the Bakshi Mighty Mouse style.This BG (the Cow's lair) is a better drawing than mine, probably designed by Jim Smith who actually can draw perspective, and he only slightly bent things while still maintaining a composition. The painting might also be by Vicki, or at least keyed by her.

This Mighty Mouse style later morphed into all out wonky cartoons when imitated by other studios who dropped the control and turned the apparent anarchy into sincere chaos.

I have more stories about "Rockin' at The Rim" if anyone is interested. I might have a couple more drawings from it. I'll have to dig through my files. I wonder if Charlie still has the story notes.

Tony Benedict Predicts The Future (And is Funny)

Here's a dashing photo of Tony Benedict. From this picture it appears that he worked at Disney's early on and had a crush on Annette. I know him from his storyboards at Hanna Barbera. He was one of the last privileged artist/writers at HB. He both wrote and drew his own stories even into the 1980s if I remember correctly.
I first discovered his work while I was in Taipei in 1985. Many of the Jetsons storyboards I worked from were drawn by old-timers like Alex Lovy and Lew Marshall. Their storyboards were thoroughly professional. They were staged logically, the characters were "on-storyboard-model" - simple yet perfectly clear and therefore easy to work from.

Then one day, the latest storyboard came through the fax machine and it was completely different. It was not merely "correct" and logical, it was super cartoony, alive and funny as Hell. The storyboard itself was a work of art. Unfortunately I don't have a copy of it to show you.
Anyway it was one of those storyboards that just inspired you to put more effort into your cartoon because it looked like the artist was really having fun drawing (and I think-writing) it.
Once I discovered Tony's work, I called Bob Hathcock (my producer) and begged him to send me all of Tony's storyboards to work on. I knew if they sent his work to one of the other overseas factories, it would be totally wasted and you'd never see what he did make it to the screen.
Maybe someone out there has a copy of Tony's SB work on the Jetsons. Maybe Tony, if you read blogs? I would love to post some of his unique stylish and funny work.
Tony did the board for "High-Tech-Wreck" which was my favorite episode of the Jetsons to work on. These are some of the layouts we did. I think "Ronald" did the ones below.












If anyone has any copies of Tony's work, I'd love it if you posted it and sent a link.