MY FAVORITE BOOK

I'm embarrassed to say that my all-time favorite book is one that I still haven't finished, Homer's "Odyssey." I first encountered it in an old-fashioned literature anthology that we used in 3rd or 4th grade. I was impressed by the earnestness with which the stories were told. The author really seemed to believe that reading about Ulysses was the most important thing you could do, and of course he was right.


My favorite character was the cyclops. He seemed oddly human and appealing but these qualities didn't prevent him from being single-minded about eating the Greeks. I remember thinking how strange it was that the cyclops could think and speak but still have no mercy on his fellow creatures (sounds like animation writers, doesn't it?). It was the first inkling I had that the world contains some puzzling characters whose motives can never be understood but who must nevertheless be resisted.


Years went by without any thought of The Odyssey then I saw "The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad" in a theater. Wow! My kid heart almost jumped out of my chest! I instantly recognized my old friend the cyclops, made even more terrifying by Harryhausen and Bernard Herriman...Sinbad was from Iraq but the feel of the story was unmistakably Homeric...minus the cheesy Hollywood touches. I began to think of the Greeks as the storytellers who delivered the goods, who could explain life to me better than anyone else.

Still later I saw "Jason and the Argonauts" and that firmed it up. There again was the Homeric sensibility even though the story was written by someone else. I loved the ideal that permeated the film: manliness, intellect, courage and a thirst for adventure. Isn't that what we all crave? I don't claim to possess any of these Homeric qualities but having them in front of me as distant ideals changed the course of my life.

I don't think the picture above is of Homer but it's the way I like to think of him so it gets a place here. I mentioned earlier that I never finished The Odyssey (I listened to an unabridged tape set of it a couple of times but maybe that doesn't count). Maybe I never will finish it. I have a taste for modern stories now and the Odyssey's way of telling a story seems too old-fashioned to me. The really odd thing is that I can still say with complete sincerity that it was and is the most influential book I've ever read. It's amazing how even a small dose of Homer goes a very long way.

NEGLECTED ANATOMY LESSON #1

GOOD LORD! Look what women have to put up with! NO WONDER there are so many lesbians!!!! Um...wait a minute, that's a bit emotional. Let me start again...

I know a number of art students hang out on this site and I thought I'd post something just for them. My guess is that anatomical drawing teachers are pretty selective about what they teach. That's a pity. The day will come when students will need to draw the omitted item and they'll be totally unprepared! Well, worry not, Theory Corner is here to help! Get out your pencils and notebooks and get ready to take notes!

NEGLECTED ANATOMY LESSON #1

MALE BACK HAIR




Hmmm. Let's try to make some sense of this picture (above). It looks like the hair occurs in tufts. The pattern here is kind of mangy. It looks like a patch of moth-eaten buffalo skin that I found in an attic once. Amazingly the biggest tufts occur at the sides, near the bottom of the rib cage...what's that about? And looking closer I see the rib tufts seem to have sent out feelers to the shoulder tufts. Hmmm. Are the tips of the shoulders hairless? That's incredible!

Phew! Well that's enough with that picture!

Here's (above) a picture of a less mangy back. It looks like the hair is combed away from the spine. You don't suppose the guy's wife combs this stuff do you? And what are those little correction-tape notes? Why are the hairs in need of correction?

Notice that the neck is hairless. I assume that's because he cuts it. I mean surely nature wouldn't be so cruel as to just start the hair abruptly like it's a jacket he's wearing.

Man! Nature dealt this guy (above) a bad hand! Or maybe it didn't. I showed this to my daughter and asked her if she found it attractive. She of course said no (actually "Ew!" was the word) but then I asked if she'd feel the same way if she liked the guy. To my amazement she said something like, "Oh, well that's different. If I liked the guy the hair wouldn't matter." Isn't that interesting? I'll end this lesson on the comforting thought that a providence seems to take care of us males. Women are somehow prevented from realizing how ugly we men are. Isn't that wonderful?

DAUMIER CARICATURE SCULPTURES

Here's some Daumier caricatures of French bureaucrats of the mid-1800s. Neat, huh!?

THE PRICE WE PAY FOR STORY

[NOTE: Blogger (or is it YouTube?) doesn't support archived YouTube videos that are more than a year or so old. This post relies on video reference and suffers from the loss. Even so, the text is still worth reading and the subject is an important one.]

I like a good story, even in short TV cartoons (this page is about TV shorts), but I sometimes have to remind myself that story comes at a price, sometimes a very high price.

It's a case of losing something to gain something. With story-emphasis you lose or drastically reduce the likelihood of humor, good music, memorable performance, innovation, atmosphere, funny cartooning and funny animation. What do you get in return? So far as I can tell...momentum. You're less likely to get up to get a cheese sandwich if you're wondering whether Scooby Doo and his friends will discover that corrupt real-estate dealers are behind the so-called haunted house. Is the price worth it? Watch the story-light cartoons on this page and judge for yourself.





One of the greatest casualties of today's extreme story emphasis has been music. Can any story that animation writers are likely to come up with match the entertainment value of Cab Calloway's band in the "Snow White" film above (topmost)? Nowadays studio musicians are given a cartoon after it's already been written and animated. Musicians are almost an afterthought when budgets are figured out. Does that make sense? Isn't music the most fundamental of all the arts?




And what about atmosphere and texture? How do you like the atmosphere in "Mysterious Mose" (second film from the top, above)? Would a cartoon with story emphasis have had time to play out the rich atmosphere and gags in Betty's bedroom? Would the story that replaced the atmosphere likely have been as memorable or as funny? Would "Bimbo's Initiation" (above) have been improved with the addition of more story?

[Chuck Jones came up with a memorable story for "Scaredy Cat" (later remade as "Claws for Alarm") but that was more a situation than a story. Arguably situations fit short subjects a lot better than stories.]




Another casualty of story has been performance. Great cartoon performances need time to play out. Story-emphasis cartoons are always racing ahead to the next plot point. What's the rush? We have to remind ourselves that stories exist to justify and give context to great performances. Audiences crave great performances, that's why we have the Oscars every year.

'BE BACK SATURDAY!

MORE CARICATURES BY GRIGOR EFTIMOV

THEORY CORNER FOR KIDS: A BEDTIME STORY

I know a lot of kids read this blog so here's something for them. It's a really sweet little story called "The Pokey Little Animation Writer." The story starts in a suburban bedroom where Billy's parents are roused out of their sleep by a knock on the bedroom door....

Knock! Knock! Knock! "Huuuh?" said Dad, waking suddenly. "Who...Wha...Wh...Who's there? For Pete's Sake, stop knocking!"

"Um...It's me Dad. I can't sleep! Er...I have urges I can't explain!"

"URGES!? Oh, Bashaw! What kind of urges could you have at your age?

"Well Dad, I know it's strange but I have an urge to find an animation artist and beat him up. I know it doesn't make sense but I get really mad at the thought of artists writing and directing their own stories. I guess that's silly isn't it? I mean, why should I get mad about what artists do?"

"Son, did you say... 'beat up?' Oh, Good Lord! I didn't realize you'd grown so fast! Um... Sit down , It's time you and I had a talk."

"Son, I'll just say it outright. Your mother and I are...are...outcasts...hated and shunned by all civilized people because of what we are...animation writers. And you son, you will grow up to be an animation writer too!"

"That's right," said Billy's mom, "that's why you get so mad when you think of low-life artists making their own cartoons!"

"But Dad...won't the artists feel bad if we take their medium away from them?"


"Naw," said Dad, "they don't have feelings like we do! If they had feelings they'd be writers like us. They just have...notochords!"


"Now get to sleep, Buckaroo! If you're good I'll take you out hunting tomorrow! If we find an artist directing a cartoon we'll trash him and you can break his pencils!"

And they did. And Billy and his family lived happily ever after.




THE END

SHOULD CARTOONISTS TAKE LIFE DRAWING CLASSES?

Good question! My answer is yes...but with caution! We're cartoonists after all and not illustrators. A cartoonist can actually pick up bad habits in a life drawing class.

I don't know about you but when I draw undraped models I'm always shocked by the drama and profundity of the body. The human machine is awesome. Layer over that the nuances of intellect and personality and you have a very appealing subject to draw.

The problem is that it's too appealing. If you're like me, no matter how much you may have resolved to caricature the model (whole-body caricature) , the moment you see her all you can think to do is to revert to stark realism. Anything else seems unfit for the importance of the subject. This is why you have to double your resolve to caricature. If you have trouble doing this then you should pose the model draped for half the session.

Another problem is that realistic life drawing encourages scratchy lines. Realists tend to search for the forms with lots of tentative strokes til they get what they want. Cartooning isn't like that. A cartoonist needs to learn strong, confident lines.

Some cartoonists put their best effort into realistic life drawing because they're frustrated with the way their cartoons are turning out. Life drawing becomes a sort of holding pattern where they concentrate on general draughtsmanship for a while while the rest of their life sorts itself out. That's OK if the rest of their life does get sorted out but what if it doesn't? They can stall for so long that life drawing becomes the only skill they really have.

In my opinion you have to keep your eyes on the prize and remember what you're in the session for. If you're a cartoonist don't get lulled into doing what the realists do. They have their own reasons for being there, which are not your reason.

IS COLOR EVIL?

I'm exaggerating of course, color isn't really evil, but it certainly is aggressive, scary, and alien.

What do you think of the Kokoschka watercolor above? Probably Kokoschka started out with the intention of making a weird, "edgy" picture but I can't help regarding it as a normal picture gone awry. I imagine the artist beginning by filling in a line drawing with color then wondering what would happen if he let the gray and red dabs find their own boundaries based on the intrinsic "will to power" of the color.

I imagine the artist being horrified to find color oozing out of every pore of the drawing til it mutilates and almost obliterates the human subject. In my fantasy the painter is amazed to see how blithely color takes a human-like life.



No, I'm not crazy. I'm just trying to see what would happen if I identified with the color I was using and gave it a sort of personality. I have a feeling a lot of painters do this. In the Van Gogh above I imagine the color feels tied down and restrained by all the lines. Artists frequently use lines and textures to anchor a color, to pin it in place, to subordinate it to line.



Here, in the bedroom painting, color is restrained another way, this time by being diluted with white or gray( or color mixtures that have the same effect as adding gray). The muted color is confined and imprisoned by the additives. It's made a slave to the line drawing that contains it. That's not a bad thing for us viewers. The restless color wants to break out of its bonds and our subconscious awareness of this struggle makes the muted color seem more alive and intense.



Another way to restrain color is with shape as in the Gauguin above. Simplified shapes make for strong walls that effectively keep color inside.



Gauguin got the idea of creating drawings that would approximate the natural borders the color would create for itself if it were unshackled. I don't mean that the color naturally wants to take the shape of a girl and a man's face. I mean the colors found a natural proportion in relation to one another and the girl is the subject the artist imposed on that proportion. The color still comes off as aggressive and unleashed but it's been tamed a little to suit the artist.

GEORGE GROSZ NUDES

In case you don't know the name, George Grosz was a Weimar artist who did scratchy drawings of seedy naked people with transparent clothing. He also did some pretty good oils. That's my favorite above. Click to enlarge.

I thought fans of Grosz might like to see some of his watercolors. What do you think?

WHAT'S ON MY WALL

The red-haired girl on the top is by Lynn Naylor, girl artist extroadinaire. The picture on the bottom is a blow-up of Sadie Hawkins from a Li'l Abner strip. Nice stuff, huh?



I wish more artists would post pictures of what's on their wall. I'm always curious to see

what people put up, it tells you something about them. Most of what I have on the wall can't be scanned: Halloween masks, African masks, home-made theater dioramas, framed kid art, cels, etc.

WHATEVER HAPPENED TO ANIMATION DIRECTORS?

Is it just me or does anyone else wonder if the job and the job title are disappearing? In TV animation the director (often called a producer) is simply a sort of art director. The closest thing to a director in the traditional sense of the word is the writer.

The writer determines what the tone of the series will be, what stories will be made, all the details of the story, what characters will be used, and sometimes even what voice talent will be used. The writer is not answerable to the director, the director is expected to take the script that's handed to him and do the best he can with it. If he doesn't like it, well... there's the street.

A popular book for animation writers outlines the process:

Notice what's missing here? The script goes directly to the storyboarder. No nosey, interfering director to get in the way. What on Earth could a director contribute anyway? The advice to writers, "...nothing is left to the imagination of others", says it all. The director is one of those pesky "others."

I don't mean to say that the author wants to dispense with directors. My guess is that the director was omitted simply because the modern director's role is too unimportant to list in a short summary (obviously this doesn't hold for artist/creator-driven shows at places like Cartoon Network).

MIKE BARRIER'S "THE ANIMATED MAN"

It's silly to review a book that I've only skimmed but I'm going to do it anyway while the first impressions are still vivid in my mind. I'll go back and read it cover to cover next week when I finish the book I'm currently reading. My tentative opinion? It's great! Buy it! You'll regret it if you don't!

The book is full of suprisingly drastic opinions. I've never heard some of these ideas before so I'm at a loss to know what to think of them. For Mike the most important thing Disney ever did was to make Snow White and Pinnochio. Everything else was downhill from there. Disney never had the money or the time to make comparable films again.

Mike also believes Disney's impact on the American consciousness is over-rated. Changing demographics would have skewered things toward his kind of family entertainment even if Disney had never existed. He goes on to say that Disneyland was a creative disaster for Disney because it locked him into doing media for kids exclusively, something he hadn't done in the early films. The book is full of thoughts like this.

Mike is no stranger to drastic ideas. In his online review of John Canemaker's book on Mary Blair he says that Blair's flat style didn't fit with the kind of stories Disney was trying to tell. He then goes on to speculate that Disney knew it didn't fit and deliberately introduced the new style to subvert the animation department which he was no longer interested in. That seems doubtful to me but then I'm not an historian. Well, whatever the truth of the assertion you can't deny that it's interesting.

This is a suprisingly drastic book and admirers of Disney will find much to disagree with. It doesn't provide a lot of insight into how the films were made, maybe because Mike believed he'd covered that in his last book. On the other hand Mike also genuinely loves his subject. I'll have more to say about it after I've read some more.

FACES TOO SPECIFIC

One problem with a lot of modern portrait paintings is that they're too specific. Even a realistic portrait should be somewhat iconic. The picture above isn't a picture of of eternal beauty, it's too specifically a painting of Beulah J. Kratz (or whatever her name is). The same problem holds for the other three Lovis Corinth pictures immediately below.

Actually, this one of the nude holding the hairbrush isn't half bad.

I don't mean to say that all potraits should be sanitized and idealized. Not at all. But the more specific the picture is the more the style should be iconic, cartoony or deliberately mannered. The picture above by Otto Dix is a good example. It's very specific but it's cartoony and it works.

More realistic portraits are better off idealized somewhat like the pictures immediately above and below. They're by Raphael (above) and Rubens (below). You accept them as realistic but they're subtley stylized as well.


Do you agree?