THEORY CORNER FOR WOMEN (NO MEN ALLOWED)

Imagine my excitement when the editor of Theory Corner for Women burst into my office and informed me that if I hurried I might just be able to get an interview with the world-famous cartoonist and stud muffin, Uncle Eddie, at his fabulous Theory Mansion. I didn't need to be told twice!

It was night by the time I arrived at the house. Uncle Eddie's social secretary led me to the sprawling grounds in back, to a large outdoor hot tub. A maid was lighting up bits of paper in a nearby outdoor fireplace. When it flared up, she threw in kindling wood, then placed a few logs on top. Uncle Eddie was sitting in the in water, surrounded by candles, thoughtfully looking up at the stars.

One glance at Uncle Eddie and I almost forgot that I was a working girl. When he spoke to the maid his speech was odd, a little English or maybe mixed from foreign travel. He had a solid look, with gentle, squinty eyes, and sensuous buck teeth. His hair, almost grey, seemed impossible to keep down. After introductions were made, and Uncle Eddie graciously posed for a picture (above), the interview began.

TCFW: "Do you feel like living, Uncle Eddie?"

Uncle Eddie: "I always feel like living, as you call it. death is just death -- dying off -- disinterest in everything -- decay. And I am not decaying, I hope.

TCFW: "Are you a happy man?"

Uncle Eddie: "What does happiness mean to you? I mean, how do you equate it? For me it's all love, no matter what else you call it. Some people call it power, To me it's very simple -- love, love, love..."

TCFW: "But what kind of love? Body love, spiritual love?"

Uncle Eddie: "The whole works! No matter how it begins, it must end with the whole works -- that's how I look at it."

TCFW: "A woman needs that too...'

Uncle Eddie: "A woman needs many things -- but mostly affection, constant affection."

TCFW: "You make it sound simple."

Uncle Eddie: "I think we're talking too much about it, talking about something that needs very little speech."

The outdoor fireplace was sparking. A twig sprang out and fell on the ground between us.

Uncle Eddie: "This is the way the world will end. Not with a whimper, but with fire -- a big fire."

THE HUMAN LION

It strikes me that I wrote about this subject a year or so ago but I couldn't find it in the archive. Maybe I just thought about writing about it and never got around to it. Anyway here's my thoughts on this subject and if I'm repeating myself then...then I apologize!!

The subject is...the human lion. Every girl wants to marry a guy who has the attributes of a lion. The guy may be short or poor or ugly, but if he's a lion then he's choice marriage material.



I can't define what a lion is but you know it when you see it. When I see a woman who's intelligent and noble and yet thoroughly feminine, that's close to what I mean by being lion-like. Somehow the femininity helps to bring into focus the other qualities, which either sex could possess, and overlays them with a sense of unique character and depth and appeal. When you see a feminine woman with lion-like characteristics you feel (in addition to being horny) glad to be human, in fact you feel positively proud to be human.

Of course the analogy doesn't totally hold because in the end only a guy can be a lion. Why is that? Maybe it's because a man has to struggle past more obstacles or diversions to become a lion. Maybe because the characteristics of a lion perfectly suit the male temperament. It's what all men want to be and very few are able to achieve.


My guess is that human lions are rare. Maybe one in ten or one in twenty, maybe one in a hundred. My advice to women who are lucky enough to know a lion is to push all other players aside and do everything they can to nail the guy. Lions are the kings of the jungle for a reason. No matter what negatives the guy possesses, they don't matter (provided he's not a criminal type). Lion trumps almost any flaw. Unfortunately there's not enough lions to go around. Maybe it takes a lioness to trap a lion.


There's a great movie about this: "Dodsworth" with Walter Houston and Mary Astor. The whole film is a meditation on the subject of the human lion. I wish there were more films like this.

TONY CURTIS SMOKES

I've had a pretty busy day today so forgive me for putting up a skimpy post. Here's some doodles I did while watching "The Defiant Ones" on TV a couple of days ago. Tony Curtis smokes up a storm in that film but I couldn't draw fast enough to get

most of it.

Anybody know of any films that contain good smoking scenes?

A FUN BOOK

I'm reading a few books at once as I always do. I'm still reading "Animated Man" and I just finished Mc Bride's famous (some would say infamous) book on Frank Capra. Here's one of the books I have on my bed stand: "The Worst Case Scenario Survival Handbook: Extreme Edition." Have you read any of these Worst Case books? Are they serious?

Here's (above) my favorite chapter: "How to Escape From an Angry Gorilla." The situation is that a gorilla has grabbed your arm. Maybe he's doing it to be playful, maybe not. There's no way to tell. You have no choice but to assume he's hostile. The book wisely advises the reader to be silent and act submissive. So far so good.

Then the book takes a giant step. If submission doesn't work try treating the grab as a sexual (my word) advance by the gorilla. It almost certainly wasn't sexual but the idea is to plant the thought in the gorilla's head. It's as if you're saying to the gorilla, "Hey, big boy! I like you too. No need to get rough! Let's you and I go steppin'."

You groom his arm. Maybe the gorilla is starting to get hot and bothered. Hopefully this causes the ape to walk away in confusion. Hopefully. But what if he doesn't? What if he takes it seriously and...Ugh! It's too horrible to think about!

I hasten to add that the book doesn't mention sex. That's my interpretation...and maybe it would be the gorilla's too.


Here's (above) another chapter: "How to Survive if You're Buried Alive." Aaargh! How gruesome! The book advises that you only have an hour or two at most before the air runs out. What you should do is wrap your shirt around your head like a bag with a big knot on your forehead to provide an air pocket for your face. You then kick the wooden coffin lid with your feet. The weight of the dirt above will have weakened the lid and if you're lucky you might succeed in breaking it. Your main problem will be channeling the dirt as it falls into the container and you dig your way upward.

Does that seem realistic to you?

A NOTE ABOUT STORYBOARDS

That's me (above) pitching a board at Disney's. I think the guy giving the black power salute is Bob Taylor. I can't see very well but I think the drawing I'm pointing to is a black and white doodle of Donald that I later re-did in crayon (reprise below). I love working in crayon but hardly ever get the chance. One of these days I'll do a post about how great crayons are, even the Crayolas you get in the supermarket. But I digress.

What I really want to talk about is how much influence a storyboarder should have on a film.

I'm a storyboarder myself and I like it because in some ways it's close to direction and I like to direct. In a small and limited way storyboarders are the visual kings of the projects they work on and like every other storyboarder I like to be king.

Hearing me talk like this would have amazed animators in the 30s and 40s. In the golden age of Warners, when cartoons were done right, storyboards weren't a big deal. Boards were done by writer artists and were so rough and so lacking in continuity that a casual reader would have had trouble understanding them (example below). That's why so few Warner boards of that era survived. Nobody thought they had any value. Really, the story only came together visually in the mind of the director who did a bunch of drawings for his handouts.

Later on, in the TV era, writers and executives effectively got rid of directors and a new category of artist was born, the non-writer storyboarder. This was a terrible defeat for animation.

The problem is that films with a strong script and storyboard feel often don't lend themselves to animation very well. If you look at the funniest Bill Nolan black & white Terrytoons you'll see that the highlights, the real audience-grabbing scenes, are often something the animator (or the animator-director) thought of. Cartoons lost a lot of their playfulness and innovation when animators were reduced to fleshing out other peoples' ideas and layouts.



Of course audiences like structure and and so do I. In the current factory system some of the storyboard feel is inevitable. Even so, without the animators' input into the stories cartoons will continue to be a sad thing, very much cut off from its roots. We need to bring animators and directors back under the roof of the parent studio. We storyboarders should remind ourselves that the animators are the stars (or should be) and we're just there to make them look good. Everybody else, the executives, directors, writers, storyboarders, layout people and colorists...all exist solely to make the animator actor look good on the screen.


BTW, this post was inspired by Mark Mayerson's almost current blog about storyboards:

http://mayersononanimation.blogspot.com/


The storyboard at the bottom is from Ward Kimball's "Mars and Beyond." I don't know if it helps to make my point, I just put it in because I like it.

CLAMPETT AND THE ART OF THE INBETWEEN

GREETINGS CARTOON FANS!

Thanks to friends John & Kali I'm able to post a real discussion of animation with lots of examples and not just a couple of stolen frame grabs. I even have a link to a film clip at the bottom! I feel so adult!

OK, enough gushing! Let's get down to it!

This is Porky on the doorstep from Clampett's "Kitty Cornered." This was the first Clampett I ever saw and when it came on my jaw practically dropped to the floor!
I was used to pose to pose animation where the inbetweens were just technical necessities. I didn't question that, I just assumed that animation involved a certain amount of tedium and there was no way of getting around it. Now here, in front of me, was a whole different way of animating! Here the animator (Rod Scribner) did his own inbetweens. I was shocked! It not only worked but it was fall-off-the-seat funny!


Most of the poses on this post are inbetweens. I had to leave out a lot to conserve bandwidth, but you can see that Scribner is cartooning like crazy, throwing in every funny idea that could fit. The pose above with raised arms reminds me of the old Keystone Cops poses that you used to see in newspaper comics. I love how Porky's fat little body compresses here. Look how delightfully seedy his eyes are!


This (above) is the kind of toothy, squinty expression you only get in inbetweens. Inbetweens should look like inbetweens. They should show all the transitory little emotions between the major emotions. Even a sad person will have a happy inbetween or two and visa versa.


Here (above) Porky struggles to get the word out. Even if he didn't stutter he'd have to struggle. We humans communicate with grunts and whistles from our lips and voice box and getting it all out past the mushy part of our muzzle requires an effort!
"OH BOB! YOU WERE SO GREAT! HOW DID YOU AND SCRIBNER THINK OF STUFF LIKE THAT!!!???" Oh...uh... pardon. I lost it for a moment.



So here's the pig again! He pushes out toward camera with his mean little baby face...


Then he antics back, looking very much like a human all of a sudden (as all animals should periodically), then...

BAM! A really explosive thrust outward (above) with big, dilated eyes and killer arm positions! Those arms work great with the bowed legs. Scribner was a great cartoonist as well as a great animator! What a dynamite combination!

Oops! He withdraws into a little compressed ball of peevish anger. Somehow we become aware of the nightshirt again.

His muzzle (above) prepares for another outburst. The cheek muscles pucker and stretch in preparation for forcing the words out.


A big antic (above) allows us to see how large the cranium is. The arms fly up as if to do another Keystone Cops pose but instead...


...instead he grabs the air like a baby and diddles it! And wow, look at the far away stare in Porky's eyes!

Is the anger dissipating? Sort of! Here's (above) another classic inbetween face showing the tired, squinting eyes again. Emotion is very tiring for us and we have to go into near sleep between emotions sometimes, even when we're excited and in the middle of broad action.

The world of inbetweens is a strange, surreal world where characters' real emotions hold sway. It's the world that would exist if all of us were prevented from taking stock poses to impress other people. It's the world of the ego rather than the super-ego. It's a place where people flash angry, infantile, ridiculing, lecherous, acquisitive, stupid poses at each other. In a funny studio the inbetweener would be a respected professional possessing great and mysterious secrets about the human condition.

Back to the cartoon: Porky snaps out of his reverie into this hilarious Joe Besser fists-up-to-the-cheeks pose. I like hands that hug the face. After all, the face is the master, the controller. What could be more natural than to have its minions nearby?

Gee, I must sound crazy talking this way. Anyway, it's a tribute to Bob Clampett that his cartoons stimulate discussion like this. I'm a huge fan of Jones and Avery but their animation is pretty straight-forward and not as nuanced as what Clampett and Scribner did.

Here's (below) the Porky on the step animation!
CLICK ON THIS TO SEE THE FIRST EVER OFFICIAL CARTOON CLIP!!!




OK, that's enough for one day! Return to your work-a-day world secure in the knowledge that you're a new man (yes, even if you were a woman before)! You've been up to the mountain! You've been refreshed at the fountain of Clampett!

I JUST WATCHED "THE MIRACLE WORKER!"

I hope you can tell what's going on in these sketches. I had to leave some out because I couldn't understand them myself!