Kid Design Geniuses - Vintage Halloween Costumes

There were other mediums besides old cartoons that used to be good to kids and understood how strange kids' tastes are.

#1 rule of kid stuff. All kid products should be weird and make no sense. Logic is the enemy of fun. Any executives listening?

Toys used to be cool. Golden Books, comics and other related products all had their own styles and strange design customs.

One of the greatest kid design mediums in history was the Halloween Costume. I don't know who these designers were, but they all shared some traditions and odd ideas.

The basic concept that held all the infinite design variations together was this:

A costume has to be a character who wears a drawing of himself on his shirt. I wish I knew what genius came up with that inspired idea! Wouldn't you love to have a shirt with a picture of yourself on it? I know Eddie would.
It's even better if the character wears his friends on his shirt.

Another variation of the concept: The picture of the character on the shirt has to look different than the mask of the same character. It really helps if the colors also don't match.

I have a feeling that the guys who made the masks never met the guys who made the shirts. Maybe they were outsourced to different continents?





I wonder where the patterns on the shirts came from? Were they inspired by medieval knights' costumes?



Every little kid in the 50s and 60s looked like they were on the Children's Crusade on Halloween. Is that what Halloween is? A holdover of the Crusades?


KNOCK-OFFS ARE GOOD TOO

I love when companies just steal characters and do weird versions of them and give them funny names. This works for all toys and merchandise.
Here's a great site with lots of cool costume fun!

http://retrocrush.buzznet.com/archive2003/costumes/

and for the girls...

http://retrocrush.buzznet.com/archive2003/costumes/girlstoys.html

As with everything, the modern version of this product category has completely degenerated.

OLD = COOL

NEW = POO

In the late 60s everything that was once cool went to Hell.Lumpy, bland, puffy brown stuff for kids.
Imagine going on a crusade dressed like this? The infidels would know how weak western children have become and destroy what's left of our civilization in a flash of fire and blood.



The 50s and 60s was a Golden Age for kids. So what did the kids who had all this fun do when they grew up? They became dirty hippies and then corporate executives and ruined everything so that no more kids could ever have fun again!

They took the prizes out of cereal, the violence out of cartoons, the fins off cars, played soft rock, went to Cal Arts and created reality shows.

The end of the world is nigh.

Ed Benedict Article from Animation Blast

Amid Amidi created the first animation magazine that really gave people who loved cartoons what they wanted in a magazine. They wanted rare art, interviews with lots of artists -known and lesser known- from every creative department in animation and some new opinions and insights that didn't follow the accepted ones that had been handed down for generations.

ANIMATION BLAST set the model for all the animation blogs that followed. Amid certainly inspired me to add my 2 cents worth every day.

The magazine is a classic and if you want to get back issues, better order them quick, because many of the issues have since sold out.

http://www.animationblast.com/inprint/backissues/

Here is an article from Amid's design issue. He interviewed me about my design hero, Ed Benedict.


There was one mistake in the article, and now I can correct it: This BooBoo model is the one I am talking about in the article.
Boo Boo Bear's profile looks completely different than his front view.
The BooBoo drawings printed in the article aren't Ed's. They are mine. I inbetweened Ed's 2 views of the character to show how to morph the one view to the next.

I like looking at Ed's development sketches. He takes an idea and then does lots of variations of it, looking for a design that clicks. If it didn't click, he'll toss the concept and he'll try another idea and develop that- all the time waiting for a design that is not only a design, but an instant iconic character. In other words, when you look at the final design, it's so much a character that it just seems like it's always existed.

These are all his exploratory sketches as he was hunting through his brain for the finished character.Ed was an animator long before he became a designer. He animated on Oswald cartoons in the 30s (with Tex Avery, Bill Nolan and other stars), then did storyboards and layouts for commercials and layouts for Disney in the 40s. In the 50s he got his first break at character design on Tex Avery's shorts. By this time he knew functionally how to design characters that would work for animation and not merely look "designy".

Even so, the animators at MGM resisted what he was doing at first. They didn't like the "UPA style" and thought it was impossible to animate. Ironically, they did some of the best stylized animation ever. A lot better than the animation in UPA's own cartoons!

Tex, on the other hand, loved Ed's work and the only condition he gave Ed, was that each drawing had to make the gag work. Ed layed out Tex's cartoons following Tex's storyboard poses. He didn't just design the characters as many "designers" do today. The designs had to be functional. There is no better training to be a character designer than to be an animator first. Then you know the difference between what can work, and what will just cause problems for the animators. (This advice applies to storyboard artists and writers too)

When Ed started designing the characters for Hanna Barbera's TV cartoons in the late 50s, he had a double problem. He had to design to please Joe Barbera as well as the audience. Joe never liked the stylized characters and only went along with it because it was the fashion. Ed would do his exploratory designs and then have to pull them back to please Joe who didn't like anything "too weird".

By the late 60s, Joe had pulled everything back so much that everything became super bland and that was the end of fun cartoons. The Saturday Morning Age of cartoons and their awkward bland designs have since even influenced feature animation films which I never in a million years expected to happen.

WHAT MAKES A GREAT ANIMATION DESIGNER? (besides talent)

A solid foundation in traditional animation.

You have to understand the basics of how characters move, talk, act. The only way you can know this is by doing it. It's of no practical use to think you understand it in theory.

The best way to learn it is by animating simple rounded characters. Not stylized characters that rely on motion tricks.

In any job in animation, you want to be able to put your money where your mouth is. If you are expecting someone else to make what you do work, and they tell you it won't, you would want to be able to prove it by doing it yourself.


The ability to not be chained to it.

A good designer needs to understand the functions of animation, but also needs outside influences.

Animation has always been a small, mostly inbred industry.

It can benefit by animators with open minds, who don't want to merely animate generic characters smoothly - as most top animators do.

Designers need inspiration from a wide variety of sources- related arts such as illustration, caricature, comics, actors, performers, family and friends.

With lots of added inspirations, we can add much color and variety and humanity to our animation, without designing shapes that can't functionally work.

Mort Todd on Don Martin's Influences, more Dentist

Mort Todd

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mort_Todd

is a cartoonist, comics editor and all around cartoon/comics buff. He was the guy who was responsible for getting my Spumco COMIC BOOK off the ground at Marvel comics a decade or so ago.

http://talesofwhoa-meat.blogspot.com/2006/10/salute-to-spumco-part-2.html

He knew Don Martin personally, worked with him and did a lot to help Don get some rights back to his original artwork. I asked him in my last post to let us know who Don's influences were and he kindly replied.

Mort Todd on Don Martin

I talked with Don Martin about his influences and, believe it or don't, he wasn't much of a comics fan as a kid. He was certainly inspired by Virgil Partch (VIP)

http://www.animationarchive.org/2005/12/media-virgil-vip-partch.html

http://inspiration-grab-bag.blogspot.com/2006/04/virgil-vip-partch-1950s-magazine.html

which is evident if you've seen his early album covers.

He also liked Milt Gross (Banana Oil)
http://www.animationarchive.org/2007/08/milt-gross-banana-oil.html

and Bill Holman (Smokey Stover

** Note that my Cigarettes the Cat is pretty much stolen from "Spooky". I actually got the idea for the design from the retard cat in Clampett's Kitty Kornered and changed him into a non-retarded cat and then later discovered Smokey Stover and Spooky. So, I'm caught. Hopefully I took it a lot farther and changed the personality.

http://www.smokey-stover.com/jim_ruth_pg1.html

[his fire hat may have inspired Martin's way of drawing feet, no?]). He dug the Popeye comics and cartoons but wasn't aware of Tex Avery or Bob Clampett (by name anyway).

All artists are influenced by others which is most evident by their early work. To see later stuff by Jack Kirby, it'd be hard to realize his early swipes were of Alex Raymond and Hal Foster.

Also, concerning the humor art of Gene Colan, I had him do some stuff at Cracked, shot from his pencils. Beautiful stuff from an underrated artist who was rarely successfully inked by other artists.

Great blog, John, and a true service to mankind!

Beast regards,

Mort Todd



Hey Mort, what are you up to these days? How do I find you?