JOHN K DRAWS EDDIE [EXPANDED]

 What do you think of this gay-looking John K caricature of me? Yikes! I'll bet I'd just gotten a haircut. John loves to catch victims when they're fresh out of the barbershop and looking like a clipped poodle.

Here's (above) a photo for comparison.

Another John caricature! Teeth like piano keys, no chin, Ubangi ear lobes, warts, shovel nose, giant nostril...yep, that's me!

For comparison, here's (above) a caricature I've posted before. I include it here to show that John rarely draws people the same way twice. He's always searching for a new take on the subject or a new graphic technique.

Compare that to the way most artists draw caricatures. When the average artist finds a likeness that works he sticks with it and every subsequent drawing of the same person derives from the same template. Not John. He rethinks the problem every time he draws. Man O' man!

Last but not least (above)...My daughter's drawing of me eating a hamburger. Boy, that's a big nose!

JOHN K CARICATURE

HAW! Fresh from a box in the garage...another caricature of me by John K. Geez, that guy can draw!

JOHN DRAWS EDDIE

I've been sorting old papers and...Haw!...I discovered more John caricatures of me. Here they are, in all their glory!

Wow! This first one (above), the one where my hair is like a flaccid condom, is great! Let's see if John's trademark Eddie touches are there: shovel nose, giant wart, Ubangi earlobe, buck teeth, non-existent chin....check! They're all there!

Yep! That's me...drummer for a band called "The Handicapped!" I've got sagging pecs, a gut, and a crewcut.

Naturally my chest hairs grow straight up. Two of my fingers are growing out of the side of my hand.

Here's my kid when he was a toddler. John liked to draw his head elongated like the head of the creature in "Alien." On some drawings he would the have the head held up by Dali-type crutches.

EDDIE FITZGERALD CARICATURES

Here's (above) the cover of a Mother's Day card drawn by my kid when she was in Middle School. Haw! Am I really that much of a scene stealer?

Here's a pencil enhancer...or is it an eraser... designed by John K and beautifully sculpted by Anthony Hrymakowski. You may have noticed the resemblence to (Ahem!)...me.

And here (above) is a clean-up of the original John drawing. Gee, I made it to the top (literally) of the pencil universe. My place in history is assured!!!!!!

CHRISTMAS GIFT IDEAS

Marionettes are a great gift. The hand-carved ones can be pricey, though. The one above costs $1100!!!!  It's worth it if you have the money, but if you don't there's no shortage of worthy mass produced ones...or you can make one yourself out of cardboard.

 How about a John K t-shirt!?

How 'bout a John K doll?

...or a Calder-type mobile? The knock-offs aren't always designed well, but now and then a decent one pops up. If you can't find one worth buying you can make your own. There's some good YouTube instruction on the subject.

Calder also did a lot of wire sculptures (above). I made some myself using my own designs and they turned out great! I had them (sans wooden stand) in the window for years. All you need is wire, needle-nose pliers, and something to bend the wire around like a board with a nail in it.

Framed fine art prints make a good gift. Use glass or vinyl in the frame only if the picture is light-colored.

I like Mexican dioramas. I have a little one similar to this (above) on my bulletin board.

How about a framed picture of Doberman's Sister (above)?

It'll look good next to your friend's picture of Percy Dovetonsils.

Or his picture of Ben Turpin.

Or Reggie Van Gleason.

Last but not least, how about an Edith Piaff CD? Everybody likes Edith Piaf!

FUNNY DRAWINGS

'Only two drawings this time, but they're both heavy hitters.

How do you like this early one (above) by John K? It's so wonderfully ignorant, so delightfully low...so...so, class clown. It reminds me of why I got into the cartoon industry in the first place. When you draw every day for a living it's so easy to get diverted into the refinement of technique. You need to see something like this to be reminded that what we do is all about getting a laugh.

This one (above) is by my daughter. Apologies if I posted it before. I can't remember. Anyway, that's me sipping a soda at Carl Jr.'s. Boy, it's so streamlined, so stripped down to essentials. Here a man with weird hair and a massive bull moose of a face, puckers his lips to drink daintily from a needle-thin straw. How did she come up with that?

For comparison, a few days ago I took this picture (above).

DOODLES AND SKETCHES

I found an old envelope of scraps in the garage and here's a few samples. The picture above is my kid when he was a baby, drawn by John K.

Haw! Another John baby picture of my kid. This was for his first birthday. 

I think this (above) is a John drawing too, but it's not done in one of his usual styles. Haw! I remember telling him that the colorful, plastic watches little girls were wearing looked better than the ones worn by most grown men, and this drawing was the result.

Here's (above, right) a really early caricature of me by my daughter. She hadn't discovered her own style yet but I see glimpses of it in the eyes, teeth, ear hair and beard stubble. I love the transparent pants. 

I think this (above) is me again. She often drew me with a cigarette, even though I didn't smoke. Haw! Little kids are fascinated by adult smoking.

These are fragments of doodles I did with a hard, HB pencil applied with a light touch. I held the pencil high, the way Chuck Jones said to do it, and it worked. I wish I'd done more HB sketches. I usually work with a 4B.

JOHN KRICFALUSI, KELLY ARMSTRONG

Haw! I don't believe it! This is the most insulting caricature I've ever gotten and yet it's so funny that I wouldn't part with it for anything. How does John do it?




Here, thanks much to commenter "ibcf" and his source Bob Jacques, is an unedited deleted scene from "Tales of Worm Paranoia."  Animator: Kelly Armstrong. Boy, Kelly did a great job on this! It's a pity it had to be deleted for time.

MORE EDDIE CARICATURES

Here's more sketches that other artists did of me, starting with one above by John K. The man's incredible! He's always trying new techniques!

Bruce did this one (above). That's me in the middle. His Kent Butterworth on the extreme left is definitive and so is his Art Vitello. That's Art holding the cup of coffee.

Also in the picture: Rich Aarons, Ken Boyer, Girard Baldwin and Art Leonardi.

 What's going on here (above)? It's a John caricature, that's obvious. It looks like an Arab cab driver, or rather a camel driver, is taking me to L.A. while I count money for some reason. I have no idea what prompted this.

How do you like the camel driver's socks and sock garters?

Here's (above) how I draw myself: suave and slim with lots of hair. It's a lie I know, but I can't see myself any other way. 

  

Haw! Nobody else draws me as suave. I don't see how they can fail to see it. Above, an anonymous unsuave sketch of me geeking out over Chaplin. 

This one (above) was done by my daughter in McDonald's. She sees me as having an  immense stone face which is home to colonies of bacteria and scabs. Yikes!

EDDIE FITZGERALD CARICATURES

Caricatures OF me by other artists, that is. Here's one by John K. He's convinced that I survive entirely on a diet of mayonnaise sandwiches and fast food. 

Uh-oh...John again. Oh, Man! Is that (above) cruel!!!!! But it can't be accurate. I know I look like Sean Connery in the James Bond movies, regardless of what my lying mirror says.

  

More John. He never said this (above) was me, but really.... 

Mike did this one of me reading a funny script by Henry Gilroy. Man, he totally NAILED Henry.

Ted Blackman did this one (above). It makes me look like Harold Lloyd. Ted's an amazing guy. Hes an animation producer but he could easily have been a newspaper cartoonist or a stand up comedian.

Never, ever get a cartoonist mad at you. The retaliation would be too horrible to think about. Here I am (above) with Mike Bell as drawn by the other Mike. In a comment Mike says he didn't do this...but then who did?

Haw! Bruce Timm drew this. It's embarrassing because I really did say what's attributed to me here, but I should have given more attention to how it would sound to others. Art is obviously about beauty, not ugliness. I only meant to say that comedy is about ugly people doing stupid things....beautiful ugly people doing intelligently stupid things.

KIRK DOUGLAS AND "THE BIG STORY"

This is a post about 'The Big Story," a brilliant puppet film about Kirk Douglas. There's lots to say about it but none of it will make much sense unless I first discuss the 80s/90s TV show that paved the way for it, a British leftwing comedy called "Spitting Image." It was a topical show about what was then current in British newpapers. I don't think it ever played in America.

Above, some of the Spitting Image puppets. They were life size which allowed for the use of real life backgrounds. It was a great idea!

One day two of the show's ace character designers, Tim Watts and David Stoten, pitched an idea for a Spitting Image-type parody of Kirk Douglas. It would be a stop-motion short made with armature puppets. Tim Watts may (I'm not sure) have already pencil animated the film in 2D while he was at Cal Arts. Anyway, the producer, Rodger Law, agreed to bankroll it.

The Gods must have been on the artists' side because they were able to get one of the best impressionists ever, Frank Gorshin, to do Douglas' voice. He may even have influenced the writing which was based on real dialogue from Kirk Douglas films. I'm a Gorshin fan and so far as I know it was the best thing he ever committed to film. 

 Here's the finished short (above). Do yourself a favor and take a minute and a half to watch it.

 Okay, what did you think? Not too shabby, eh? The film got the 1994 Oscar nomination but lost to a Wallace and Grommet-type 2D short called "Bob's Birthday." The Bob film was great but I still would have given the laurel to The Big Story. It contained ideas and techniques that seem fresh even today, and which might have strongly influenced  computer animation when it came along.



The short payed off for Rodger Law because it allowed him to do several amazing Lipton commercials in the Spitting Image/Big Story style. That's one above.

Actually, I'm just assuming that Law was responsible for those commercials. Maybe it was Uli Meyer. I'm not sure.

Now here's where the story gets weird. The Spitting Image style rode a wave of popularity for several years then inexplicably ran out of gas and died. Oh, the caricature style lingered on in magazine covers but the film applications withered on the vine. "Why?" you're asking...but I don't know why. It just did.

That's tragic! It was a style that would have worked great in the Pixar era. Unfortunately the two styles never coincided.

Imagine what might have come about if Douglas' greatest animation fan, John K, had been green-lighted to do a Douglas-type 3D feature!