LOVE THOSE CALIFORNIA WATERCOLORISTS

More pictures from the super-cool California Watercolor movement of the 1940s: Hardy Gramatky (above), Erle Loran (middle), and Dong Kingman (below). Click to enlarge.

HAS ALCOHOL CONTRIBUTED TO ANIMATION?

Even though I have no desire to drink on the job myself I sometimes wonder if other people should.

I began to think about this a long, long time ago when I got a farm laborer's job hoing cabbages. I remember the sinking feeling in my stomach when the farmer showed the three of us the field. It was sundrenched and acres wide with long, straight rows of cabbages diminishing in railroad perspective to the horizon. Our job was to rake out unwanted cabbages so the that every wanted cabbage had a foot of space to grow. He showed us how to do it then left us there, faced with the stark reality of sun, flies and endless vegetable rows. One of the experienced guys offered me a drink from his flask and I, with a look of superiority, declined. Boy, did I regret that! That was the roughest work I ever did!

I did learn something from it, though. Some jobs are so mind-numbingly tedious that they can't be done without liquor. Prohibition must have made some forms of work nearly impossible. I imagine that the only thing that made hoing possible was the knowledge that there was a jug in the bush at the end of each cabbage row.

Maybe this applies to animation. It's a creative job but there's a certain amount of tedium too. Maybe the old, golden-age animators were right to to get soused at lunch. Maybe liquor is the lubricant that made it possible to do all the great work they did. I say maybe because I don't know. Having an mp3 player and headphones is my substitute for booze and it seems to work... but everybody's different.

thanks to Jenny for the Freddy Moore picture that I stole from her site.

LANDSCAPERS ARE MY NEW HEROES

I promised to write something about the Japanese Garden near where I live. It's at Balboa Park on Balboa near Woodley. The park covinced me of something important.

That something is that landscaping is an art which is worthy of the respect we give to architects. Why aren't landscapers consulted before a major building is built? Why can't a new building be built to conform to a landscaping idea instead of the other way around? Maybe landscaping is the beacon that can lead us out of the dark age that Bauhaus plunged us into.
This is the only life we have. Everybody reading this will be dead in a few decades. we need beauty in our lives now, while we can still enjoy it. Architects don't seem to care about this. They're invoved in some insane competition to see who can build the most alienating concrete wind-trap. I wish someone would write a book explaining how architecture became corrupted and irrelevant, which is certainly where things stand today. Anyway Japanese gardens like the one in Balboa Park suggest another way of doing things. Somebody should ask landscapers how they'd solve the problem of urban blight.

WHAT IS THE PROPER ROLE OF AN ANIMATOR?

No, Leon Schlesinger wasn't an animator but this is the closest picture I could find on the net to an animator wearing a crown. Anyway, to get back to the title question....

What is the proper role of an animator in an animated cartoon? That's easy. I can answer in one word..."king!" In animation the animator is king. Everybody else's job exists to make the animator look good. The rest of us, even the director, are like the hairdressers and make-up people on a live-action set. We exist to make the actor, i.e., the animator, look good. We exist to maximize his chance of achieving glory on the screen.

In a saner world the animator would be a star. His name would be known to the public and the public would argue over who the best animators are. Animators would have groupies, artistic pique, scandalous divorces, punch-outs with paparazzi, would get fat for parts and write tell-all biographies. The best of them would also break their backs to make the performances that will be remembered forever.

It seems to me that the best way to achieve this is to bring the animation back under the roof of the parent studio. Why we ever let it leave is beyond me. Animators are our performers. In their absence we've had decades of souless cartoons. We've been trying to tell stories without actors.

We need to start training animators now. The studios should help art schools to organize their animation programs more efficiently. Good animators should be rewarded with good salaries and stories should be written with the kind of scenes that animators like to work on. Most of all we need cheap and easy to use pencil test programs and internet tutorials on their use.

A TRIBUTE TO SALOON PAINTINGS

Am I the only one here who likes saloon paintings? I mean the reclining nudes that always occupy the center space over the bar in the old westerns. It's in the interest of the bar to put one up because every red-blooded man will be tempted to order an extra drink just so he can toast the lady.


Of course we're cartoonists and if we were painting the bar picture we might put up something a little different. I could see this Milt Gross guy reclining in a bunch of grapes and cupids, couldn't you? Don Martin would have made a good saloon painter. Of course his pictures would have needed those long Baroque frames with all the gold curly-cues.


Bar nudes can't be too sexy. If they are the patrons won't try to toast the lady, they'll try to jump over the bar and rub her bottom.

THE NEXT NEW THING

This is an exciting time to be in the animation industry because it's possible to glimpse the new thing that's coming and it's a doosey. Thank heaven! I thought I'd burst if I had to sit through another CGI feature of a bunch of wacky misfits who are forced to seek a new home or another 2-D TV show featuring nerds and smart-alec kids in suburbia. And screw anime! It's just not good enough! In my opinion what's coming is embodied in these thumbnail copies of Milt Gross poses that I drew at ASIFA. Much credit to Steve Worth and Mark Kausler for making them available. If they don't excite you that's because you dismiss them as being old-fashioned print-media drawings that could never animate...but they do animate. In fact there's plenty of precedent for it, which I'll discuss in future posts.

HOW MY KID DISCOVERED BREASTS

What follows is a completely trivial story. It's so mind-numbingly banal that I can't believe I'm trying to foist it off on other people. I'm just too sleepy to come up with something better! Oh, well! Here it is.....

I've always been influenced by things I've read. A case in point is an article I read about something called childhood amnesia. According to the author in later life your kid will forget nearly everything that happened before the age of four. Isn't that interesting?

Now maybe I was eating chicken when I read this because for me the compelling application of this idea was that I could give my two-year old the legs of the chicken rather than the breast and he'd never remember it. The cute little twerp never ate most of the food on his plate and was indifferent to chicken. I, on the other hand loved chicken, especially the breast when it was slow cooked upside-down in an oven so it retained all its natural juices. I figured I'd introduce him to chicken breasts when he was four, that way he'd believe he had them all his life. It was a silly thought, I now realize, but at the time I thought it was a revelation from heaven.

As it happened I forgot to tell him about breast meat for an extra two years. That's two extra years of juicy, to-die-for meals for his grateful dad. One night when he was six my wife cooked a particularly succulent chicken and put it hot and steaming in the middle of the table. My kid eyed the legs and licked his lips as usual. I decided to celebrate the world-class chicken by opening a special bottle of wine I'd been saving so I went out to the kitchen to get it. Little did I know that my wife was carving in my absence and gave me a leg and my son a big, heaping slab of breast meat.

When I came in I poured some wine into my wife's glass and as I did so I heard my kid say, "Hey, there's something strange about this chicken." Strange? What strange? I looked at my kid and he was thoughtfully touching his tongue to a morsel of breast meat on his fork. Inside I had a fit! "Uh, Kid,...if you don't like that I guess I can trade my leg for it." I began but he stopped me. "That's alright, Dad. It's not horrible." I could see the moist flavor bubbles on the surface of his chicken. "Really, I don't mind trading, Kid." He waved me off. "Dad it's actually (Munch!)...mmmm...actually...(Munch! Munch!) well, kind of interesting." I frantically sniffed my chicken leg as if to savor it. "Yes but legs, AH, now that's flavor!" My son: "Yes but this is not just (Munch! Dribble!)...I mean... (Drool! Munch! Dribble! Munch!)this is REALLY GOOD!" No more thoughtfull eating after that. He shoveled it in like there was no tomorrow. "It's so odd that I never realized how good chicken was before!"

From then on he got the breast and I got the leg. I just couldn't bare to withold it from somebody who likes it so much. He's in his twenties now and loves chicken breasts as much as I do. He does remember that there was a time when he didn't find chicken so appealing but he can't remember why.

I

SOME PERSONAL PICTURES

Here's a couple of pictures (above and below) of me surrounded by cartoonist friends, Kali, Margo and Katie. I got the pictures from their blogs. Heh, heh! Eat your heart out guys!

Here I am (above) with Theory Corner fan Sophorn. The man's amazing! He not only draws but builds terrific custom cars as well! The censor stamp is to cover a minor photo distortion that made me appear fatter than I am. I only covered up a little bit of the picture, nothing you'd miss.

Here I am (above) drawing at ASIFA. Once again I used the censor stamp, this time to cover up a tiny distortion in the photo that made me look older than I am. I just covered it up a tad, nothing drastic.


Here I am presenting a cake that Marlo, Katie and Kali made for John's birthday. You don't mind that I used the stamp again do you? It's just a little touch-up. Once again a tiny error in the photo made me look older than I am. Boy, there's a lot of lying camera lenses out there!

SOME PICTURES FOR A BOY'S ROOM

Here's a few pictures I would loved to have had on my wall when I was a young teenager. The picture on the top is from Tesla's lab and shows arcs of high voltage electricity jumping the gap between two Tesla coils. Every self-respecting kid wants a set-up like this in his garage. I tried to find a good black and white photo of Edison's lab, which I also would like to have had, but found nothing that grabbed me.
Here's (above) a picture of two gladiators. It's a grizzly scenario and it appears to have been painted in urine but boys like this kind of spectacle. Click on it to see more detail.


The busy black and white photo is a replica of Sherlock Holmes' flat on Baker Street. The man on the horse is obviously Napoleon. Every kid identifies with Napoleon but few adults do. Kids also identify with pirates. Thanks to The Pirates of the Carribean there's no lack of interesting posters on this subject.

Here also is Attila and his barbarians. As a kid this would have inspired lots of imaginary swordfights as I fought to defend Rome and my bedroom from the screaming hordes.

HOW SHOULD ANIMATION BE PROMOTED?

It occurred to me while writing the boardgame post that I never really liked to play boardgames, even as a kid. What I really liked about them, and the reason why I rifled through them so often, was the promise implicit in the packaging. The promise was that I was in for wild, unspeakable adventure and excitement. I think my whole life was influenced by these promises.
The same promises were made by film trailers and posters for circus and magic shows. "You have to SEE it to believe it! It's the WEIRDEST thing your eyes have ever beheld!" Gee, I love that kind of rhetoric! It addresses itself to the fear that we all have that we'll lead lives of quiet desperation, passing through life without ever tasting real adventure. Ad-makers and promoters know all about this fear. I see them as philosophers who prompt us to change the world to make it more exciting. We should aim to eliminate quiet desperation just like we eliminated smallpox.

How should animation be promoted? Just like the posters promote the projects above! We should use every trick of rhetorical and visual hypebole to promise mystery, excitement, humor and adventure. When that's done, we should break our backs to deliver on the promise! I like the formula that's implicit in the Clampett cartoons: begin the cartoon in such a way as to promise a lot...then deliver even more!

POETRY CORNER AGAIN!

Here's a poem I liked when I was a kid. It's the poem that used to be on the inside of the box of the boardgame, "Clue."

What amazes me about those old boardgames is how successful they were in creating a mood and an identification with the characters. Haunted house and crime games actually gave me a creepy thrill. I thought the games were assembled in real haunted houses which had to be vacated before dark. A Yogi Bear game actually made me feel that somehow Yogi existed and was pleased to know that I was playing his game.

I missed the golden age of board games, which I think was in the 30s and 40s, but I can get a sense of them from museums and antique stores. They were designed to create a whole world when the box was opened. The graphics on the inside of the heavy lid, the weird proportions and textures of the trays, even the weight of the playing pieces was somehow important. A lot of thought seemed to go into giving the user a sensual rush on opening the box.

I saw a 30s Mickey Mouse cel painting kit behind glass in an exhibit on Wilshire. You won't believe this but the inside of the box actually conveyed the real atmosphere you'd encounter in an animation studio. In fact it was BETTER than the real atmosphere! How did they do that!?
Anyway, I'm running out of space. Here's the poem that gave me shivers when I was a kid:

ALL IN THE GAME
by Suzanne Weaver

THE FAMOUS ASS CAKE PICTURE

Well, here it is, the famous Ass Cake picture! The picture was taken at Bob Clampett's house in the early eighties. It was Bob's birthday and John Kricfalusi and Wendell Washer had conspired to make this truly one-of-a-kind present for Bob. The heart shape is actually two Sarah Lee cakes shaped into buttocks with licorice for hairs and a real pair of butcher shop bull testicles to represent...well, to represent testicles. The cow tongue represents...er...a tongue! Bob loved it! I, in my red and white Uncle Eddie costume, took the picture.
It's worth commenting on John's expression (detail, above) in this picture. This is my all-time favorite picture of John. He's ecstatic! I don't know if a human being can look happier than he does here. And why not!? He's in the home of his hero, he's surrounded by friends and he's got his whole career ahead of him! It was a magical night. I swear, you could feel the electricity in the air.

WARNERS SHOULD RELEASE "COAL BLACK" ON DVD

Have you ever wondered why black characters in recent cartoons are so badly drawn? The ones above are from Clampett's "Coal Black" in the mid 40s and they're drawn great, but take a look at the ones from modern cartoons like "Bebe's Kids" and "Boonedocks"....Arrrgh! What happened?




I really don't know what happened but I'll make a guess.
"Coal Black" was considered racist by some critics and was taken out of circulation. Later artists, many of whom had never seen Coal Black, were forced to reinvent the wheel and come up with a whole new way of drawing funny black people. That's a tough problem. When I try to draw a funny white guy I can reference Elmer Fudd and dozens of others. I don't have to start from scratch. I can reference a tradition. Artists who try to reference the tradition of funny black drawings have a door closed in their face.

Let me make it clear where I stand about racial issues. I can't stand racists or racism. I would never do anything to promote racism. But even I can see that that the ban on Coal Black is handicapping the development of funny black cartoons. History will never forgive us if we let the hip-hop era slip through our fingers without comedic comment. Warners doesn't have to put Coal Black on TV but it should at least make it available on DVD where artists, including black artists, can get hold of it.

IS YOUR CLUTTER UNARTISTIC?

I don't know about you but I judge another artist's worth entirely by the quality of the clutter in his house. I don't blame an artist for having clutter, that's normal, but an artist's clutter should be...what's the word I'm looking for.....artistic!


Even insurance salesmen have clutter but the difference is that our clutter is ..."heightened!" We know how to create interesting piles. Our piles lean in interesting ways and contain challenging shapes and colors. Even our kitchen utensils hang in a stimulating way.


My advice to artists who are talented but somehow never acquired the ability to make interesting piles is to hire a pile advisor right away. Don't procrastinate! You may already have lost jobs due to your inattention to this area! For the convenience of artists who live in L.A. I'll mention that I'm open for consultation but I warn you that I don't come cheap and I must have classical music and occassional saltines while I work.

HOW I ALMOST BECAME A MOVIE STAR (PART III)

OK, so there I was in the casting director's office with one of my buck-toothed clones. The director said she wanted us to go outside into the hall and think of a sketch we could do by way of an audition. My heart almost stopped! Audition!!!???? I thought I had the job because of favoritism! What's this "audition" stuff!? We were supposed to knock on her door when we were ready to perform. I was shocked! Only ten minutes before I had the part sewed up because the star liked me...now I was expected to prove myself??? "Prove???" You mean merit!?? How could that be? How could the universe be so cruel!?

Out in the hallway I asked my clone if he had any ideas for a sketch. He said he didn't, that he'd leave it up to me. I frantically pieced together a story from old comedy ideas I had and I ran every bit by him . He OK'd each part in turn and when I asked him if he wanted to change anything he assured me that it was fine just the way it was. We knocked on the door and the director leaned back in her chair and said, "OK, entertain me!"
My clone had the first line so I waited a moment while he prepared. I was kind of proud of myself for coming up with such a funny opening line, something about a guy asking me if I'd mind watching out for him while he changed his pants in the middle of traffic. Finally the clone looked up gravely and slowly said the line from hell that I'll never forget........."Uncle Vanya, what were talking about is the inadequacy of society to meet the demands of self, and this inadequacy is revealed by the gardener's social maladaption, which can only be pointless, is that not true!?" I was white as a sheet. Self what?

With quivering lip I pretended he gave me the pants line and I said something like, "You mean change your pants in the middle of traffic? Why that's rather unusual isn't it?" the clone looked at me like I was crazy and replied with something about death being the root of all godliness. I was mortified, reduced to a quivering pile of jelly. The clone was quoting something from somebody like Chekov! It had nothing to do with what we agreed on! I was a dead man!

My knees started shaking and my whole body trembled. I couldn't remember any more pants lines. From what seemed like far away I heard the casting director thank us and tell us to send in the next two clones. Shaking like a blender full of rubber I turned and slowly dragged myself out the door. As I plodded barely conscious through the waiting room a bunch of clones studied my shaking and tried to imitate it. I paid no attention. I passed shaking into the parking lot and into obscurity knowing that I had just lived the worst day of my life.

Well, there's more but I have to be brief so I'll end it there. Now you know the story.

Story copyrighted by Eddie Fitzgerald, 9/10/06

HOW I ALMOST BECAME A MOVIE STAR (PART II)

So there I was! My buck teeth and the persistance of Dom Deluise had landed me a part in a major film! Life was good! The film was still in pre-production while the set was being constructed and I didn't worry about the role I was going to play because I knew I had it locked in.

One day I got a summons from the casting department. Nothing strange about that. I used to have a desk there and they were probably mad because I forgot to clean it out. I casually walked across the lot and to my suprise, before my eyes could adjust to the interior light, I was pushed into the waiting room of the casting director. What I saw there was absolutely the strangest, most disturbing thing I'd ever seen in my life!

Lined up on chairs all around the waiting room were clones of myself. Every one of them looked just like me: receeding chins, big noses, big ears, buck teeth, similar clothes...it was like looking into an endless mirror! Not only that but someone tipped them off that I was the original and they were all imitating me!!!!! If I scratched my nose eight clones scratched right along with me! I can't begin to tell you how weird that was! I forgot to say that when I last talked to the director he'd taken a Polaroid of me. He must have given it to the casting director and she must have scoured the town for clones who were professional actors! Thus the room of me!

I don't have the bandwidth to finish this. Sorry but I 'll need a part three to end it. Do stay tuned because there's an unexpected twist and the story gets even weirder!

Continued next time! (copyright 9/8/06)

HOW I ALMOST BECAME A MOVIE STAR! (PART I)

I don't know if I have enough bandwidth to tell this story, even in two parts. I'll do my best. Here goes....

A long time ago a friend with connections got me a job storyboarding for a big Universal film called "The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas." It was an expensive film for its day and the actors were some of the time's most expensive actors: Dolly Parton, Burt Reynolds, and Dom Deluise. I wasn't a union member but the director liked my work so he paid for a union storyboarder and didn't use him, just so I could work on the film. It was great! I had a fancy office next to the director, I got to hob-knob and explore, and the work was really fun!

One day I was sitting on a box eating a tunafish sandwich on a soundstage, watching the dancers rehearse. The girls were wearing next to nothing so you can imagine that I was pretty absorbed, so absorbed that I failed to notice that someone was watching me. When I finally turned around I was amazed to see that Dom Deluise was right behind me, staring down at me. He lunged at me and shouted, "I've been watching you! You'd be perfect to play my dumb assistant!!!! You're an actor aren't you!!!???" I was completely dumbfounded and, with tuna dripping from my mouth, I blurted out. ".......Uh...no." He looked disappointed then bolted up. "It doesn't matter! You want the role don't you!?" I nodded yes. "Then you've got it!!!! I'm gonna talk to Collin (the director) right now!" And he stormed out.

I was in seventh heaven! I'd been...even now I have to swallow when I think about it...DISCOVERED! I could live in Beverley Hills, snub all my friends, wear cheetah-skin jackets, live (as Ren would say) de highlife!...MY SHIP HAD COME IN! My feet barely touched the ground! When I went home that night I raced to the phone and called everybody I knew but to my suprise they were skeptical: "Eddie, think about it. Dom Deluise is probably a nice guy who promises things like that to people all the time and nothing ever comes of it. You're just getting your hope up for nothing!" So many people said that that I began to think they were right and over the next week I gradually put it out of my mind.

One day I got a call summoning me to the director's office. He said, "Dom Deluise has been pestering me for a week. He says he has to have you for the dumb assistant. Have you ever acted before?" Weeeeeeeelll, this time I was prepared! I confidently rattled off every grade school play and pageant that I was ever in, making it seem like the whole kid world would have collapsed without me. Collin listened blankly then looked out the window. After an eternity he said, "OK... you've got it! But remember! Less is more!!!" WOOOOOOWWWWW!!!!!! Thank God for buck teeth! Moments later I found myself in the parking lot jumping up and down and punching the air! SUCCESS! SUCCESS AT LAST!!!!!!

TO BE CONTINUED TOMORROW...........(copyright Eddie Fitzgerald 9/7/06)