The Ripples - George Clark

Here's a guy who has almost every cartoon skill wrapped up together: great composition
Each individual shape is fun and designy, yet it fits neatly within a complex group of shapes
Just the shape of this car and window is beautiful on its own. Then it is filled with a beautiful grouping of flowing organic yet constructed characters
His poses all work together. They don't seem just pasted next to each other like some of those modern flat cartoons I've been making fun of. This is all thought out to make each object part of a whole composed picture.
He is a master of negative shapes between the flowing poses. The spaces between are as pretty as the forms they separate.
And then, like some other rare comic strip artists' work, all the individual panels are composed against each other to make the whole age look planned and designed.
I suspect that George Clark was a big influence on Owen Fitzgerald - and therefore Mort Drucker. Look their stuff up for similar approaches to composition, flow and design.




next: later Clark and pretty girls


http://lambiek.net/artists/c/clark_george.htm

http://www.animationarchive.org/labels/Complete%20Guide%20To%20Cartooning.html

Mort Drucker's Girls

Mort Drucker Compositions/Layouts

Mort uses the same big picture idea that Owen, Gross, Kurtzman and Frazetta uses, but also adds little details (like crosshatching) on the last levels.




Hierarchy:
First Level: Ground plane and Sky.
2nd level: Driveway on Hill and road
Next level: Hill split into driveway and vegetation
Next level: Vegetation split into grass and bushes. Note that there is more negative space (the grass) than filled space (the bushes)
Next level The bushes make a long organic form that flows along the hill and driveway.
Next level: Then the bushes are broken into separate rounded forms that flow along the overall long form.
Final level: Each individual bush is broken into an outline of leaves hat radiate along the organic form of the bush.

7 levels- each smaller one is subject to the form of the next level up. No level exists in its own wonky abstract plane ignorant of the the overall picture.

Mort Drucker's Bob Hope and extra treats

Mort Drucker is an all around great cartoonist. Everyone knows his caricatures and movie parodies in Mad Magazine and lots of artists copy him - superficially. They copy his surface, the little squiggly lines he cross-hatches with, the Searle noses and stuff.

But it's not just his details that make him great. It's his grasp and control of all the essential drawing tools.

He's great at girls too.


He seems to be heavily influenced by Owen Fitzgerald. The way he composes his characters together in a scene, the opposing poses, the groups of characters as blocks of people, the use of negative shapes...
He draws really cartoony cars that still are solid, and he can draw anything from any angle.
His clean compositions, full of pleasing negative shapes to draw your attention to the filled shapes.Hierarchy of forms within forms.














I'm gonna break down some of his skills in further posts.

From what I hear, Drucker is self-taught! He looks like he has many influences: illustrations, animated cartoons, comic strips, comic books. His style tells me he is a big fan himself of cartoons and drawings of many styles. He puts them all together in a completely unique and fun way - and it looks like he is really having fun too.

RARE DRUCKER TREATS!

Thanks to Sherm for finding this stuff! Hey Sherm, gimme the link to the site it all came from!

And thanks Alex for giving it to me....