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. According to the date on the envelope, Bob would have been thirteen years old at the time. It’s amazing that these childhood sketches have survived for over eighty years.
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TAG FOR “Comics”Cartoon Brew's home for up-to-the-minute, unedited announcements and press releases direct from industry sources.
October 4, 2011 5:27 am
During last Sunday’s keynote speech at MIP Jr, Sam Register, the exec vp of creative affairs at Warner Bros. Animation, revealed that they have teamed up with Aardman Animations (Wallace & Gromit, Chicken Run) to create stop motion Batman shorts. The rest of Register’s depressing keynote is about Warner Bros. Animation’s short-sighted (but typical) brand management strategy of exclusively resuscitating old properties instead of encouraging fresh talent to develop the next generation of concepts and characters. In Register’s own words, “Currently we have nothing in the pipeline that is original. We are not taking any pitches, because we are busy. I get a lot of calls to meet or see new properties. I can’t.” This is the video of Register’s entire speech: (via Mayerson on Animation) 36 Comments » posted in Business, Comics, Shorts, Stop Motion, Aardman Animations, Batman, Sam Register, Warner Bros. 
October 1, 2011 12:05 am
Mutts by Patrick McDonnell is one of the best comics strips of the modern era. McDonnell’s love of classic comic strips, comic book artists and animation history is obvious – and homages to the medium’s past are a regular part of the fun. Couldn’t resist posting today’s nod to Winsor McCay:
(Thanks, Ed Austin) 12 Comments » posted in Comics, Patrick McDonnell
September 20, 2011 2:17 am
Tom Wilson Sr., the creator of everyone’s favorite clumpy loser Ziggy, passed away last Friday, September 16, at the age of 80. I never knew much about Wilson until last year when I read the book Studio Cards. Wilson actually had a really interesting career in the Sixties and Seventies as the art director of the goofy Hi-Brows division of Cleveland’s American Greetings. Through his position, he helped encourage a lot of artists and writers including a young Robert Crumb. The most complete obituary about Wilson that I’ve read so far is this one in the Cleveland Plain Dealer. I was surprised to see the article directly contradict Wilson’s own version of how he came up with the name Ziggy. It quotes one of Wilson’s former colleagues Tom McGreevey who says that Ziggy’s name was actually inspired by the barber of one of Wilson’s colleagues. Because of some research I’ve recently done, I feel that I can add a bit to the story. The unnamed colleague was John Gibbons, a prolific greeting card writer who Crumb once called “Cleveland’s funniest person,” and Gibbons did more than suggest Ziggy’s name. He was also the concept person for Wilson’s illustrated book When You’re Not Around, published by American Greetings in 1969 and featuring a proto-Ziggy before he even had a name. Gibbons felt enough ownership as co-creator that he even tried to sell a Ziggy newspaper strip before Wilson sold his in 1971, and he was the strip’s primary writer in the early years. With both Wilson and Gibbons now gone, the true genesis of Ziggy may be lost to history, but it’s safe to assume the strip eventually became Wilson’s baby, and as time passed, came to reflect his personal viewpoint more than anyone else’s. To bring this back around to animation, here’s the beginning of the delightful 1982 TV special Ziggy’s Gift which was directed by Richard Williams. 14 Comments » posted in Comics, John Gibbons, Richard Williams, RIP, Tom Wilson, Ziggy
August 21, 2011 5:15 am
Bob Schuldt was going through his grandfather’s possessions when he discovered an envelope addressed to his grandfather from Robert J. McIntosh:
Click on the image above to see all the drawings. Bob McIntosh was, of course, a superbly skilled background painter who worked on Bambi and dozens of UPA theatrical shorts. One of Bob’s background paintings appears on the back cover of my book Cartoon Modern: Style and Design in 1950s Animation The lesson: always look through your grandparent’s belongings, and when you find something, email Cartoon Brew. 4 Comments » posted in Animators, Classic, Comics, Bob McIntosh
August 19, 2011 7:52 pm
Signs of an advanced society: a restaurant devoted to a classic comic strip. This is the Charlie Brown Cafe in Hong Kong. More photos posted on this blog. (via @magicjordanchan) 23 Comments » posted in Cartoon Culture, Comics, Charles Schulz, Peanuts
August 17, 2011 6:35 am
Del Connell, who was a veteran Disney animation artist, Western Publishing editor, and comic strip/book writer, passed away on August 12 at age 93. Connell started working at Disney in 1939. Among other accomplishments, he worked in Joe Grant’s Character Model department, served as a story artist on Alice in Wonderland, and wrote the shorts The Pelican and the Snipe and The Cold-Blooded Penguin. In the 1950s, he started a thirty-year run at Western Publishing where he wrote and edited thousands of Dell and Gold Key comics featuring cartoon characters from Disney, Warner Bros., Walter Lantz, Hanna-Barbera, and MGM. He remained especially close to the Disney characters: he wrote Donald Duck comics for decades, scripted the Mickey Mouse newspaper strip between 1968 and 1988, and invented Goofy’s alter-ego Super Goof. I never met Connell, but heard plenty of nice things about him from his colleague Pete Alvarado who worked with him at Western Publishing for many years. For more about Connell’s life and work, follow these links: Extensive chronology and memories of Del Connell by his grandson (story via Disney History blog; the Connell photo at the top of this post is taken from Mark Evanier’s remembrance post) 4 Comments » posted in Animators, Comics, Disney, Del Connell, RIP
August 8, 2011 3:50 am
Add the home of Peanuts creator Charles Schulz to the list of famous animator and cartoonist homes that have popped up on the real estate market recently. The 7,894-square-foot, 6-bedroom home was built in 1949 and is situated on two acres in northern California’s Sonoma County. According to AOL Real Estate, Schulz purchased the home for $250,000 in 1973 from the Roman Catholic Diocese of Santa Rosa. Schulz and his wife Jeannie sold the home in 1996. The second owner listed the place way back in November 2009, and the price has now dropped from $2.9 million to $2.275 million. From the photos, which you can VIEW HERE, the place appears to be in need of an overhaul. The home has a nice stained-glass window in a “chapel” room, which the real estate people suggest can be removed and replaced with a big-screen TV. They’ve even created a mock-up of what this new den of Godless debauchery could look like:
More photos of the home after the jump: 19 Comments » posted in Cartoon Culture, Comics, Charles Schulz, Peanuts, Real Estate
August 5, 2011 12:49 am
Some fans of Disney comics are calling Ducktales #3 published by Kaboom! the single worst Disney comic book they’ve ever seen. Here’s a detailed review of the issue by Chris Barat. Some of the complaints will make sense only to those familiar with the Disney comic universe, but the incompetent drawing and staging will be evident to all. Panels are flipped and repeated, characters speak to other characters that aren’t even drawn into the comic, backgrounds appear to be drawn by a twelve-year-old in MS Paint, and even the cover is an uninspired swipe of an earlier Daan Jippes cover:
UPDATE 1: Here are some examples of what these comics could’ve looked like if Kaboom! had hired artists who understood the principles of drawing, composition, and design. UPDATE 2: This comic is so bad, it even inspired its own parody of the DuckTales theme song (via):
(Thanks, Dan) |
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