Malibu Beach Party Caricature Night

Kali got a job doing caricatures at a party in Malibu and asked me to join in on the fun.
That's Emma above. The party was in her honor.
Here's her kid brother, Ellis who is a budding artist himself.
Here are the party organizers and their flattertures.

Kali knows her eyebrow biology.



These crazy girls came back twice.


These girls actually asked me to draw them making goofy faces. I made them hold their expressions until they froze that way forever.


Pilar looked kinda sick affter I showed her the picture, but I think Rose was happy.
There is always a magician every place I have done caricatures. We go together.



Here's Kali's buddy James and his doe. James got Kali the gig.
Some man and his happy seed.

______________________

Here's an even more exciting party!
http://kalikazoo.blogspot.com/2008/06/ralph-bakshi-photos-and-sleepless.html

Were you at the toy show Sunday?

If you got a caricature, put it up on your blog or site and send me a link in the comments and I'll tell everyone what good sports you were.

Here's Frank, who was an extra good sport. He sat there through his drawing, while Eddie Fitzgerald practiced his new art form on him: The verbal caricature!

Yes, the ever creative Eddie has discovered a new art for his drawing-challenged cartoon-writer friends.

Eddie would stand behind me while I caricatured people and Eddie would describe people's faces to them-like this.

"You look like you have a dead squirrel on your head, with its intestines falling out."

Well now, thanks to Eddie there is no longer any need for artists anymore. The writers can do it all!

Thanks to Chris DeCarlo and others for your support

Chris must have thought some of my lessons, advice, stories and cartoonist profiles were worth something to him because he dropped 25 big ones on that Paypal button to the right of the blog. He's the first one to do it, and no one even prompted him. Maybe some day this blog will find a way to support itself.

http://johnkstuff.blogspot.com/2006/05/animation-school-lesson-2-squash-and.html

Send me a picture and maybe a note on what inspired you to donate, so I can feature you Chris, and thanks again!

You're one of the good ones.

Your pal,

John K.

P.S. Too bad audiences weren't ready to pay for their own entertainment. I bet if each fan spent the price of 4 movie tickets per year, we could make whole new cartoon series without pesky old networks. Just the stuff the fans like.

New Contributors:

Nate Bear just made a nice donation. Thanks Nate!

Also thanks to...

Matt Greenwood,

Gregg Underwood

Robert Herman

Dennis Hyer

Paul Stadden

JoJo

Mitch Loidolt

Eric Parks

Callum Barker

$150.00 USD from Chris Alvino!

Walt Quote Of The Day

"All cartoon characters and fables must be exaggeration, caricatures. It is the very nature of fantasy and fable. "

Walt Disney
Walt said a lot of smart things, and this is one of the smartest.

Caricature VS UNDERTURE

Walt Disney

"Animation is different from other parts. Its language is the language of caricature. Our most difficult job was to develop the cartoon's unnatural but seemingly natural anatomy for humans and animals."

CARICATURE

A caricature is a drawing that is based on observation of something's specific distinct features. A caricature artist has to have a good eye for what makes something or someone look different than others of its kind. What makes this man unique from all other men?
What makes a rabbit unique from a skunk?

These caricatures are by Marlo Meekins. She really has a gift for this ability.
When you caricature, you have to abandon your preconceived notions of how things look. You have to be let your model show you what a nose looks like, or whether the space between the eyes is close or far.


A caricaturist should really be wary of developing a style.
Or worse, to steal a famous caricaturist's style. How many Al Hirschfeld and Mort Drucker clones have you seen? Are any of them as good as the originals?


When you try to emulate a famous caricaturist's "style" you are undermining the usefulness of doing a caricature. Now you have to filter what your subject looks like through "Gee, now how would Al interpret this person?" So you are not really getting the most of what you can from the subject. The subject is the style.

Of course there are tons of bad caricaturists-you see them at the theme parks usually. They draw everyone to look the same and just change the hair. These aren't really caricatures.

Caricature is really important in animation because animation tends so much to reuse designs from the past and the whole assembly line process of animation allows a succession of artists to retrace the first artist in line's initial pose or expression. And each time it gets traced it gets toned down a bit until the actual drawing that appears on the screen doesn't reflect the animator's idea. How many animators have complained about getting a bad assistant who tones down her or his work? I even hate tracing my own rough drawings because I myself tone down my first sketch.

UNDERTURES

An underture is the opposite of a caricature.

It takes out specific features. An underture is a drawing that says nothing about the character it portrays. It is the absence of opinion or definition.

Undertures are less interesting than real life.

Here are some famous undertures from animation:

These are considered subtle and "realistic", when actually they are neither. Real people have distinguishing features and subtleties. Nobody looks like this. It's neither cartoon, nor real. It's just nothing. It's no ideas, an excuse for not having to create anything.


Now, I'm ready for the few of you who will rush to justify characters like this. There'll be some reason like, "Well, John those are the HEROIC characters! They have to be subtle and bland and have no distinguishing features."


Milt Kahl would disagree with you. He hated animating the Prince and any kind of "realistic" characters. He wanted to go back to fun stuff like Br'er Fox and I agree with him.

Now, here are some real life heroic characters from the movies.None of these characters (well maybe the last one) are bland-either in look, or in personality.




Do they have distinguishing features? Would you rather watch a movie with stars that you can't recognize because they have no faces?

Even heroic or "handsome" characters can have distinguishing features:






Here's an underture of the most beloved leading man in the movies. It's less specific than the actual man himself in real life.
The same thing applies to female characters. Here are some undertures.
Here's Mary Blair's version of Alice. It's still bland, but a lot more interesting graphically than what they settled for in the movie.
Sleeping Beauty is very well drawn, but has no distinguishing features. The angles give her some graphic interest, but as a character she is not remotely interesting. Every girl you know in real life is more interesting than this.
Maleficent has some mildly specific features, at least compared to the average animated humans. She has a pointy chin and a hooked nose and big heavy lidded eyes.

Here's a real life beautiful person.


Our real lives are filled with potential inspiration for our cartoons. We don't have to have bland characters if we choose not to. I mean, why are we cartoonists in the first place? To tone down real life?

Even general types can be caricatured.

Here's what babies look like:
http://uncleeddiestheorycorner.blogspot.com/2007/02/baby-anatomy.html

Here's an "animation baby".
It's as if the artist had never seen a real baby. He just copied some other animator's baby who copied a previous one who copied a previous one.....

I used to caricature babies all the time because they are so funny looking. I wish I had some to post. Maybe Eddie can find a couple for me.


Here are some Undertures to collect and trade:

Beautiful people with talent

I may be doing some projects with these fellows. How much do you like them?

Beautiful People 19 - from memory

Usually I draw my caricatures out of the tabloids, like these 2 below.

While waiting for Eddie to arrive at my favorite pizza place-Lido's in Van Nuys, I doodled up these folk from memory.







You get a different kind of caricature when you draw from memory, maybe more cartoony and more of the essence of the person, because you are not distracted by a lot of details in the photographs.

If you saw the show on Sunday, then post a comment down below this post!

Beautiful People 18 -

Can anyone tell me what they do for a living?If only humans were as cute as Mickey. These come close.
Here's someone below who has so many things wrong with him that it's hard to make it look like him. Imagine being this f-cked-up and still having girls toss their underpants at you.

Here he is again. I did this one for a science textbook about evolution. They needed a depiction of the missing link.
Don't forget-if you want me to draw your perfect head, or something else...


write me at Cartoonmister@aol.com
Orders are pouring in!
(it costs money-but it's a good deal)

Beautiful People 17-

Don't forget-if you want me to draw your perfect head, or something else...


write me at Cartoonmister@aol.com
Orders are pouring in!

Beautiful People 16

Love every one of us and bring us home to worship.

If you want to buy some original John K. art here's a few nuggets. I can't afford anything under 100 bucks though!

If you want to special commision something-like have me draw your own perfect head or whatever, then email me at cartoonmister@aol
That's an email just for capitalistic transactions, though, not gossip!
and if you don't have a paltry hundred bucks, here's some cheapo fun cartoon merchandise!
http://www.cafepress.com/happytime

Thanks for coming back to my crap over and over again!
You folks are such pals.

Johnny

2 Types of Cartoonists - Origin of styles

There are 2 basic types of cartoonists, each exemplified by the illustrations above.
The one on the left is by T.S. Sullivant, the one on the right by Milt Gross.


Almost every cartoonist since the early days has a style based on a variation of one of these, or some combination of the 2.

CARICATURE or CONSERVATIVE CARTOONS

T.S. Sullivant represents the kind of cartooning that is based on interpreting real life. His style is caricature. He keenly observes what things really look like and then changes their proportions to create a funny version of life. His animals have anatomy. His scenes follow the rules of perspective.
This I would call the conservative cartoon approach, because he is not creating anything from scratch and has strict rules and disciplines based on actual observations in nature that he adheres to.
I love and envy highly skilled conservative art.
http://duck-walk.blogspot.com/2006/04/ts-sullivant.html
http://images.google.com/images?q=t.s.%20sullivant&hl=en&hs=9fW&lr=&client=opera&rls=en&sa=N&tab=wi

Animation cartoonists that lean towards the conservative representational style are Chuck Jones, Milt Kahl and Ken Anderson.

CARTOONY or RADICAL CARTOONS

Milt Gross is the opposite of conservative. He is radically creative. His drawings are made by design and invention and don't represent what things actually look like. He defies anatomy and perspective and just arranges all his elements purely upon what is pleasing to the eye. He is a master creator and designer.
http://www.bugpowder.com/andy/e.gross.html
http://inspiration-grab-bag.blogspot.com/2006/02/milt-gross-newspaper-comics-1928-32.html
Bob Clampett, Tex Avery, Jim Tyre and the Fleischers are animators that lean towards the more cartoony and wacky style.


EARLY COMIC STRIPS
Most early cartoon art followed the conservative approach, but somewhere near the end of the 19th century pure cartoons were invented, or maybe they evolved from caricature. I need a comic strip historian to help me here.

Some early comic strips, like the Katzenjammer Kids and Mutt and Jeff are pure cartoons, in that the characters are made of balls and tubes and simple, non-anatomical shapes.
http://www.bugpowder.com/andy/e.sterrett-all.html

Here's a nice page from Cliff Sterret who falls mostly in the cartoony/designy school of cartoonists.

Look how cool the cat is!

Note how it looks nothing like an actual cat. This is an important point!

I'll talk a lot about that in more articles.
http://www.coconino-world.com/modules/sterret/polly_tm/cvpolly.htm









Other comic strips like The Yellow Kid or Little Nemo are more representational like Sullivant's work.


Some strips, like The Kin-Der-Kids by Lionel Feininger are a combination of the two, in his case leaning towards the representational style, but with elements of cartoon-abstract design.To see more classic comic stips go to Andy's Early Comics Page:
http://www.bugpowder.com/andy/earlycomics.html


This post is the first in a continuing series about the history, forms and traditions of cartoon styles.

Animated cartoons grew directly out of the rules and styles of comic strips and then developed some new ideas of their own and became what I think of as the most creative art form in history.

Keep abreast of these articles if you want to be able to better grasp why you draw like you do.

Links:
Shane Glines at Cartoon Retro has the most amazing collection of Milt Gross' comic books.