Bickenbach Yogi and Huck

anybody seen any more of these online? I'd like to get 'em all in one place and would be happy to link to any site that has some.

These might be Bick's work too, but I'm not sure...

Stylish Flintstones Comics

Chris Lopez has done us another great turn. I don't know where he gets these old comic strips, but it's generous of him to share them with the world.
I loved these comics when I was a kid. I'm more critical of them now, but still enjoy looking at them. I wish I had them all.
Most of the drawings are probably Gene Hazelton (according to Chris they might be Dick Bickenbach) but both had very pleasing, sedate but somewhat modern styles.
Someone drew a good dead Fred.
This looks like an Ed Benedict character. He told me he ghosted for awhile in the 60s.
I love the great lettering in the comics. The title lettering was always a thrill. Unfortunately these are from truncated versions of the strips that leave out the title panels and possibly other panels. What a crime!
I have been spoiled by widened tastes and discovering many more great cartoonists over the years. Harvey Eisenberg's careful compositions and perfectly balanced poses make me think of these comics as being kind of clumsy by comparison. Milt Gross' wild layouts and funny posing makes this stuff seem really tame to me now.
I think the big difference between strips that catch on and strips that may be great, but not so popular is character. I'm of the opinion that a wide audience reacts best to cartoons about characters, rather than mere genius of execution - or even humor. They'll take mild humor with strong characters over hilarity with weak characters.

Milt Gross, Harvey Kurtzman, Geo. Herriman all did brilliant work, but never created strong characters that the public could latch on to. Segar, a lesser draftsman than all mentioned created Popeye, Olive Oyl, Wimpy, Bluto and a host of interesting characters who could carry long stories and many stories. That's the key. He has drawing skill for sure, but is not as adventurous visually as the other guys.


The Flintstones were such strong and distinct characters on TV, that they didn't need to be executed brilliantly in order to last 3 decades. A mere 6 seasons were played over and over again forever because the public got the characters. They seemed like real folks and people like to hang around with characters more than with geniuses. Same thing can probably be said about Peanuts. Or the Simpsons. I've never thought much of the meandering stories and weak gags in the Simpsons, but I sort of understand how the public got used to the characters through sheer exposure. It's on 12 times a day. It eventually became like visiting your neighbors and befriending them. Even if your neighbors are boring, they are easily accessible and recognizable, so you enjoy their company through familiarity and habit.

Tex Avery on the other hand is an obvious genius, an innovator and very funny, but he never achieved the popularity of the Warner Bros. characters or even Tom and Jerry, who are barely characters at all - but at least they never go away. People got used to T&J because it's all Bill and Joe made for almost 20 years. Tex never settled on any strong characters and it robbed him of the acclaim and riches his greater talent deserved.

The Flintstones comics weren't funny and didn't match the show concept exactly, but were stylish enough to look at and our already strong familiarity of the likeable TV characters made us enjoy the strip version - at least until it got too influenced by late 60s comic strip styles and no longer had any resemblance to the Flintstones. I love silhouette panels in comics and the odd time they do it in animated cartoons. It really tests an artists' skills to make something read clearly in silhouette.
Familiar characters done reasonably well give us comfort. Genius makes us feel and think - or run away if we are kind of stupid. Some folks just want to relax and forget about the day's troubles.

I like Clampett because he gives us everything - fantastic characters and funny stories with great execution.

Hey do me a favor, willya? Type in "Clampett" in that Ligit search slot at the upper right of the blog and see what happens. I'm doing a test.

http://comicrazys.com/2009/10/23/the-flintstones-sundays-1965-1966-dick-bickenbach/

random fun

Corbett sent me this picture of a store across the street from George Liquor. I imagine Fred Market is George Liquor's arch rival.
I love these early designs of the Flintstones. That has to have been done by one of the layout artists- probably Dick Bickenbach.
Mary Blair, of course. Don't try to steal this style. No one but she can do it. She has enough bad imitations already.

More Don Martin later and maybe a couple more critiques.

L.O. 10: Acting: Jetsons 1984 - George Ghoul and Trends

Ed Benedict had a way of designing characters so that they were instantly "iconic". There was no vagueness about them as there is in most character designs since the 70s.

In most cartoons dating back to the 70s, the animators are expected to draw "on-model". The modern meaning of this is to not ever make up any original poses or expressions for your characters. You are only allowed to use the poses that the character designer drew. So if he only drew 3 poses, you are stuck with that. You could have a cartoon series that goes on for years, but your main character can only have 3 drawings. Do you know anybody in real life that only has 3 poses or expressions? (excluding cartoon production managers)This George model is at least very well drawn. It looks like it was roughed by Ed Benedict, then slickly cleaned-up by Dick Bickenbach. But you would get pretty tired of seeing the same drawings over and over again in a half hour show. A lot of cartoon producers haven't yet figured that out.


Here is a strange "turnaround" drawn by someone other than Ed years after the original Jetsons appeared.


Elroy also looks like a combination of Ed and Dick's work.

ELROY ALWAYS SMILES

On this model sheet, Elroy can only smile. Even if you kick him.

What happens if the writer writes a sad scene into a cartoon and you have to follow the studio's rules of drawing "on-model"? Which of the poses above would you use to have Elroy say "Mom, my baby duck died."? This used to happen all the time. You'd get a scene where there was no appropriate corresponding expression or pose on the model sheet that would match it.

GETTING PERMISSION FOR A NEW EXPRESSION

Then you would have to go up through the bureaucratic chain of command to get permission to make a new expression, A committee of 50 managers, executives and front-runners would ponder the new expression, argue amongst themselves about it, then have you change it about 10 times.

Then the model department would get wind of the outrage that someone who isn't a character designer drew his own expression, throw it out and come up with their own (without having read the story, without knowing the context or having listened to the voice track) and what you'd finally get would be an official crummy new face, but it would have a studio stamp on it and it would be lifeless. And the new expression would have cost the studio $15,000.

Those who haven't worked in the cartoon business yet probably think I'm making this up, but you'll find out once you get a job.
One of the first cartoons we did in Taipei had a scene where George is telling ghost stories and scaring the kids. Of course there were no model-sheets of George making scary faces and the producers expected me just to send drawings of George smiling to the animators. The actor, George O'Hanlon wasn't expected to act without emotion though and on the soundtrack, I could hear him hamming it up and trying to make the scene come to life - funny and scary. For some reason they didn't have an equivalent "on-model" theory for the good voice actors. Like "here are the 3 vocal inflections that George is allowed to do".


Being naive, I still didn't believe the "on-model" rule of never veering from the model sheets-even though I had been told the rule a million times by every producer at Hanna Barbera and Filmation, Marvel, Dic and the rest. I never thought they really meant it. It's just too bizarre to believe.



This scene was layed-out by a young Chinese cartoonist named "Bin". That wasn't his real name, that was the western name James Wang assigned him for me. I wanted the studio to give me and the western crew Chinese names to make it easier for the Chinese crew to remember who we were too, but this seemed to outrage the management. The manager of the studio was called "Mr. Fat" and the artists made fun of him all the time. He was only mildy plump by our Carl's Jr. diet standards, but in Taiwan he was considered a total blimp.





Joe Barbera had created a character named "Orbity" to update the series. We all hated Orbity and everyone tried to talk Joe out of it. But Joe always wanted to make sure the latest generation of kids had whatever the latest trend was jammed into the shows, whether it belonged or not. "The kids love that ugly little Spielberg character - the one that looks like a turd with big wet eyes", he said.
When I handed out scenes to the layout artists, I acted them out and did quick scribbles to give them the idea of the scene.




I thought Bin did an excellent job on this scene (especially having never been asked to draw cartoony or act before in his life), and if I remember correctly, after it was animated and colored -with moody shadows and everything, it actually came out pretty good for 1985. I can't remember if I got yelled at or not.

A Filmation storyboard artist begs for the Layout department to draw a scene without tracing the model sheet. Maybe the model sheets didn't have a perfectly symmetrical pose like the storyboard.

Tom and Jerry Layouts - functional and elegant

I found these beautiful layouts from a Tom and Jerry cartoon. They are probably drawn by Dick Bickenbach. Dick was an animator before he became a layout artist so he knew how to make his poses functional for the animators.

These drawings have everything I always talk about in my lessons.

They not only have all the principles of good cartoon drawings, they do the job they are supposed to. They don't merely work as individual drawings. They work functionally as layouts.

The function of layouts is:

to tell the story in continuity
to show each important change in expression, pose, story, event

To be staged clearly, so that you can easily see what is happening
negative shapes, strong lines of action
with all the details of the characters flowing along the lines of action and construction

to leave enough room in the frame for the characters to move

Poses that compose well together



Now Tom and Jerry is a very conservative cartoon series compared to Clampett's, Avery's and even Jones' cartoons. Bickenbach was a very conservative cartoonist and animator working on very conservative cartoons.But, these drawings and cartoons use the exact same principles, tools and functionality that the more creative cartoons do.

On top of that they are very handsome, stylish in a manly conservative fashion and that is completely admirable and awe inspiring from a standpoint of skill and professionalism.


Ed Benedict made fun of Dick's work sometimes, just on the grounds that it wasn't very imaginative and that shocked me. To someone of my generation who worked in an environment where almost nobody had real drawing skill, or functionality, let alone style, Dick stood out as a giant cartoonist.

I would kill to have artists of this caliber work on my cartoons.

A talented animator that worked for me once has his own series now and he complained to me the other day about how the youngest artists on his team had no drawing chops whatsoever. To say nothing of functionality.

I assume that that is because people in their early 20s grew up accepting the primitive execution of South Park, The Simpsons, Family Guy, Dora and other TV cartoons that have no discernible artistic values or storytelling skills at all.

People of my generation also worked on crap and had no good training either, but we at least grew up watching the great cartoons, so the standards we aimed at were much higher.

Today we have no standards to shoot for. Complete amateurism is considered perfectly acceptable by studios, networks and worst of all, the audience.

Dick here worked in an age of supremely high standards, and among the great cartoonists of the day, he was in the upper echelon.

His drawings are not only functional and expert, he has a real charming and elegant subtle style.

You can buy these drawings by the way here:

http://www.animationartgallery.com/atomandjerryvintage.html


Here are some modern cartoon drawings to compare.Symmetrical cluttered frames, no composition, stiffness, no thought or planning involved.
I'm not picking on this particular show. It's no worse or better than a million other modern cartoons out there.

It's a good example of no skill whatsoever.

No principles
No Composition, no poses, let alone opposing poses
not functional

emotionless

soulless

Dead on every level

It's not the artists' fault that:

Networks don't run classic cartoons on TV anymore

The audience's senses have been dulled by uncreative sensory-absent entertainment

schools don't teach anything concrete

Executives don't know what they are looking at

Cartoonists have to follow bad scripts


No, it's not the artists' fault, but it sure is a damn shame to be entering a dark age so shortly after the brightest time in human history.