Dr. Mr. Horse, Hospital Heart Throb

I found a bunch of old model sheets from Stimpy's Pregnant. I thought about spinning
off Dr. Mr. Horse in his own soap opera series.
...supported by his faithful love interest, Nurse Sheep who worships the stable he trods in. Tears and laughs abound.

Girls would eat this shit up, I tell ya.

A Birthday Card For Jesus

The Fire of Christ burst into Keegan McFly's breast last night and impelled him to create this glorious message of peace to share with cartoonists and lesser folk everywhere.

Merry Christmas!

(thanks to Keegan, Christ, Zeus, Zoroaster, Jehova, Buddha, Clampett, Allah and the rest of the pantheon of immortals)

Especially Today

Popeye Reasons To Be Animated

Obviously, Popeye cartoons use many ingredients to make them so special. Throbbing is one of them.
Personality is another, but those are secondary qualities of cartoons. Well, actually maybe throbbing is pretty important since it is hard to imagine live action being able to throb to the beat.

But the one creative quality that is unique to animated cartoons is demonstrated artfully in this here clip.

POPEYE SHOWS US WHAT CARTOONS ARE ABOUT

There are 2 types of impossible gags here.

1) Visual Metaphor - the hand with the vice grip. It's a good gag, and appropriate to the character and story, but kind of obvious since it is half literary.

2) The Eye gag - this one is more creative because it just comes out of nowhere. When I show the clip at festivals, the hand gag gets smiles, but the eye gag gets huge laughs. it's less expected.

I wonder if this is one of Dave Fleischer's gags. I talked to Shamus Culhane and Myron Waldman and they both sort of complained about how Dave would come around and make them add gags that were really out there. Good for Dave, I say!

Mr. Meat's Theme Song

IT'S MAINLY BECAUSE OF THE MEAT

Oswald Impossible Crap

Here's Oswald and his gang doing stuff that works only in cartoons.

Here's another common ingredient from all early cartoons, not necessarily essential though:

From a Lantz cartoon called "Carnival Capers" I think. Around 1932?

The Ingredient That Made Me Want To Be an Animator

The essential ingredient of cartoon animation is not on this list.

I had a great clip reel that Kedz made for me but I no longer can post clips on my blog for some mysterious reason. It used to be easy, but Internet Jesus has changed everything without telling me so the same steps I used to use no longer satisfy Him.

You'll have to use your imagination and pretend all these pictures are moving.

Toby and Skip by Harmke

Toby & Skip: Smells like trouble from Harmke Pasterkamp on Vimeo.

Here's my pal Harmke's cartoon she made in cute school. She did it all in ToonBoom Animate (which works the same way as Harmony, only is a lot cheaper)

and you can find some of her PRODUCTION ART here:and of course there has to be

the TOBY AND SKIP OFFICIAL FACEBOOK PAGE

Harmke has also done excellent inking for me.

We would work together more if only Toon Boom would make their damn animation software compatible with itself!
Here's the Amsterdam cartoon unit: Mitch, Harmke and David. They gave me the tour and we ate minced meat together.

Coming

some cute relief
a film by my pal, Harmke coming up...

Last Bristol Heads I think

It's too bad Eddie isn't here to provide his brilliant play by play caricature commentary.
While I'm drawing, he stands behind me and stares at the poor victim in front of me and describes how funny looking they are in vivid picturesque terms.
Eddie is a genius verbaturist. His literary descriptions are a million times more pictorial than the cartoons that result from script writer stories.
Maybe Eddie would be so kind as to offer one of his verbatures in the comments for one of these poor brave souls.
Everyone beg him to do it!
Or maybe Eddie will offer up the secrets to providing perfect verbatures.

More Heads From Bristol

There were a lot of mustaches running around Bristol last week, so I asked this one why. It turns out that in Britain, many people celebrate national prostate cancer month by growing a bush under their nose. True!
Emma is not celebrating national prostate destruction.

Simon's prostate doesn't seem to be causing him any problems.

These 2 lovebirds waited forever in line to get a drawing but were turned away because I had to run to do a seminar. So after the show I called their asses down to the stage and give 'em what for.
I bought the cheapest camera in existence and it doesn't always pick up the drawings. Sorry.

More Heads From Bristol