CARTOONING'S "GREAT EXTINCTION"

I've heard that geologists believe there were at least two great extinctions on Earth, one caused by an asteroid collision and the other by a volcano. I believe I can point to a third one, one that decimated funny cartoonists in the late 1920s and early 30s.

Don't believe me? Look at Lantz's Oswald the Lucky Rabbit (above) which I assume is close to the design Disney used when he invented the character in the 20s. It's a bit flat but it has guts and looks like it can sustain comedy. I can imagine this guy putting a hot iron in his girlfriend's underpants.

Here's (above) the same character years down the line. It's overdrawn, grotesque and definitely not funny. I can't even imagine pulling off a gag with a character like this. John thinks the studio mindlessly shot itself in the foot by attempting to copy Disney. Steve Worth thinks Lantz might have been a victim of his own success. Maybe he had so much work to get out that he had to hire a lot of unfunny people.

Here's (above) another version which is cuter and more appealing. You can do some gags with a character like this but only some. The design emphasizes charcter and dimensional animation possibilities, not comedy. This was the era of the Great Extinction. If you were funny and worked at one of the big cartoon studios then you probably kept your jokes to yourself... that is, until Tex and Clampett came along.

Print media underwent a similar extinction. Opper (above) was doing funny cartoons in 1903. Somewhere in the 20s a lot of the Opper-types were weeded out and a new species replaced them (below)...

...the designers! One of the best designers was George McManus (that's his strip above). His stuff is beautifully drawn but it's not exactly funny. Mc Manus could be hilarious when he wanted to be but during The Great Extinction funny artists had to keep a low profile. Exceptions can be found: Milt Gross, Segar, Goldberg and De Beck; nevertheless, open any newspaper cartoon anthology from this period and you'll have to look hard for the practitioners of funny.

Eventually the writers (including artist/writers) took over. Little Orphan Annie (above) had so much dialogue that the charcters must have become stoop-shouldered. Newspaper strips of this era were READ, just like a novel. Eventually a counter-revolution was mounted but that's another story. The Great Extinction in print media raged for decades and it's still with us, even today.

BEATNIK POETRY

Sorry to put up more YouTube videos. I really am overdoing it. I'll return to mostly print, I promise. Anyway, here's the poem that opens up the film, "Trainspotting." It's actually a good poem, or at least it seems that way when given the star treatment that the filmmaker gave it. Technically it's a punk poem rather than a beatnik poem but the beatnik pedigree is pretty obvious when you hear it.





This is an awful poem but it's too funny to exclude. Were beatniks really like this?

TWO OF MY FAVORITE MOZART ARIAS

OK, OK, I know cartoonists hate opera but you can't hate ALL opera, that doesn't make sense. What's there not to like in this beautiful song by Mozart, "Voi Che Sapete?" I love songs that make an argument, as this song does. With a little time I might be able to articulate what that argument is. Reading the lyrics will probably be slight help. The content of musical argument usually has more to do with subtext than with formal story points.

Too bad YouTube didn't have Elizabeth Schwarzkopff's version of this song.





This (above) is from Ingmar Bergman's version of "Magic Flute." It's not the best aria in the film, that would have been the one that's sung earlier in the story when the queen is first introduced to the knight, but this is still pretty good.

Radical feminists hate this song because it portrays the heroine's mother as crazy, or at least lacking balance, and sets up the case that the father would be a more fit guardian for the daughter because he's more...what's the word...philosophical. I'm not taking sides here, you be the judge!

WELCOME TO THE MIKE PLAYHOUSE

Tonight Theory Corner relinquishes its bandwidth to my friend Mike's TV show, also called Mike's Philoprogenetive Playhouse. Here you'll encounter the celebrity artist's fav actors, musicians and lechable women. First on the bill (above): Spike Jones with Perez Prado.

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Mike's a big Soupy Sales fan. Here's (above) an excerpt from the famous early 60s kids'show.




Hang on because it starts to get weird here. Mike is a big Sophia Loren fan. He watches the films endlessly, waiting for the nude scenes which, in the era these films were made in, never came. I have to admit Sophia looks pretty good here.





Now things REALLY get weird! Here's Annette Funicello (above) singing "Lonely Guitar, There is No One to Love Us." Mike drools rivers over Annette and probably cries over songs like this one.




Here's another Annette film called something like "Swingin' Pajama Party." Actually Mike isn't in love with the Mouseketeer Annette but rather the older Annette shown here. I don't get it. Annette was a cute kid, no doubt about it, but she didn't age well. I can speak candidly about this because I'm safe at home at my computer. If I said this infront of Mike who knows what would happen?




Last but not least, a sample of the awesome (according to Mike) acting ability of Shirley Temple. I saw "Heidi" with Mike and had to endure endless tear-filled replays of Shirley returning grumpy old men's vitriol with sweet, little moppet charm. Now if only Shirley had sung "Lonely Guitar..."

YOUR NEXT BACKYARD PROJECT

Isn't it beautiful!? I've had this picture for years but I can't remember where I got it. I think it's a detail of a Mayan wall. If anybody out there is about to undertake some brickwork, I recommend that they throw out their plans and redraw them to incorporate this.

Of course this probably requires a stone mason at a trillion dollars an hour.

FASCINATING WOMEN

Above, Edith Piaff. When will we see her like again?




Jeanne Moreau, infinitely charming.




Marlene Deitrich. I have yet to meet anyone who doesn't like this song.





Billie Holiday singing "Strange Fruit." John K turned me onto this.





My namesake, Ella Fitzgerald!

IT'S EASIER TO WRITE FUNNY

You often hear animation writers complain that there was no time to make a story funny. Well, that happens sometimes, no doubt about it. I sympathize. The question needs to be asked though, "Why were the stories so unfunny when you did have time?" I imagine that this is an unanswerable question. Animation writers believe there's never enough time.


On the other hand, maybe they're right. The kind of shows they come up with defy funny writing. How do you come up with a laugh-out-loud funny story for a typical writers' series premise like: "Six grade school friends (the skateboarder dude, the minority computer whiz, the perky intelligent girl, the over-eater, the inventer and the beautiful Bratz-type girl) solve problems in the school by making their fellow students aware of the importance of being themselves"? Is it even possible to write a funny story for a premise like that?


I do have advice for writers (hopefully artist/writers) who are lucky enough to work on short cartoon projects where humor is at least possible. If you need to write quickly then:


BUILD YOUR STORY AROUND A FUNNY SITUATION.


One character accidentally sits on another's hat and crushes it. He tries to apologize but the situation strikes him as so funny that he laughs instead. Believing the first guy is unrepentant the owner of the hat grabs a pair of scissors and cuts the other's tie in half, The two retaliate against each other in ever escalating steps till they're demolishing each other's houses. That's a funny situation, stolen from Laurel and Hardy. "King Size Canary" was about a funny situation. Funny situations are easier to write than plots, and they can easily be extended into stories. All you have to do is figure out how to get your characters into the situation and that's easy.


What some writers don't realize is that comedy isn't there just to get a laugh...


COMEDY IS AN ORGANIZING TOOL.


If you commit to writing a funny cartoon it's amazing how many story structure problems just vanish. In the example above the set-up is obvious: two friends meet in a kitchen and declare their undying affection for each other, an affection that would surely stand up to any test, no matter what. They then proceed to wreck each other over an accidentally crushed hat. If you have a good situation (sketch) idea the set-up practically writes itself.


In other words...

YOU CAN WRITE FASTER BY COMMITTING TO COMEDY.

A funny series premise is easier and faster to write for than an unfunny one. Complicated, writerly series premises are inefficient. They cost more to make and they're harder to write for.


BTW, I don't mean to imply that all stories should be written exactly the way I described here. There are lots of ways to go.

THE MOST NAKED COUNTRY IN EUROPE

In my Theory Corner opinion the most naked women in all of Europe are to be found in Scotland. Are they the prettiest over all? Who knows?  What I do know is that in at least one, narrow area they shine, namely that they're the most astonishingly naked women in Europe, i.e., they're the sexiest without clothes.

Every other European nationality can only lay claim to "National Geographic" nudity, which is somehow chaste and wholesome. Only Scottswomen, who live in a damp, bleak and overcast country, and whose excrutiatingly delicate skin rarely sees the sun, can claim nudity which is gloriously filthy and dirty.

Why aren't Scotswomen more sought-after by men?

Because they come attached to this (above): the mean, ornery, Goth skinhead of a Scottish brother. How'd you like to have this guy trailing behind you on a date?

Scottish women often have freckles, which is shockingly sexy. Your eyes follow the path of the freckles down the cheek to the neck, and down the neck to...well, you know.

Surprisingly, Scottish women hate having freckles and do everything they can to cover them up. Here are before and after pictures showing the so-called "improvement." Which do you prefer?

YOUR GREAT, GREAT GRANDCHILD'S HOUSE: 2200 A.D.

Here's my best guess as to how your family will be housed two hundred years from now. Your successors will live in a tropical jungle populated by beautiful exotic plants and animals. Their weather-proof furniture will be arranged in clusters near tree trunks, ponds and waterfalls. No rain will fall on the house area if your family doesn't want it to. No bad weather unless your family desires it. Tame leopards, monkeys and beautiful birds will play in the livingroom.

The way I see it, walls won't be needed to keep out bad weather. Surely two hundred years from now there'll be devices that can keep an exposed area warm and dry, even in the middle of a storm. Walls won't even be needed for privacy since the air around the rooms can probably be made opaque or luminous depending on what the owner chooses. Most of the plants in the area will be real but maybe your family's walls will be holographic images of plants. I wouldn't be surprised if the paths and roadways leading to homes disappeared into faux holo-plants. Confronted with the dense wall of plants the owner would simply walk through them till he found himself inside the house.

I wonder if hard living structures will even exist in the future. If security and shelter can be had without hard walls and a roof would anyone still choose to live that way? If they do I predict the architects of the future will ransack the past for ideas based on real, historic structures. I wouldn't be surprised if some people decided to live in homes that looked like Thai temples or Italian villas.

My guess is that most people would want to live in newly-grown tropical rainforests but some will no doubt prefer the look of dense, temperate zone evergreens or Arizona-type deserts. I assume that plants of any type will be made to thrive anywhere our successors choose to plant them. Of course it's possible that people will live and work in virtual-reality cities that we can't even imagine. Maybe our successors will choose to imagine themselves as intelligent fish living in a coral reef or ants in an ant hill. The limitless possibilities of virtual reality make this kind of speculation difficult.

FAMOUS FILM SCENES

The Oddessa Steps sequence (above)from "Battleship Potemkin." Maybe the most influential film clip in the history of cinema. It awakens everybody who sees it to the power of editing.




Leni Reifenstahl's 1936 footage of divers at the 1936 Berlin Olympics. Once again, the power of editing.




Orson Welles'famous uninterrupted scene from the start of "Touch of Evil".





A trailer for Godard's "Breathless". Godard may have been a flake in his personal life but he sure could cut film.

SCREAMIN JAY HAWKINS, BO DIDDLEY, "DEM BONES". THE PLATTERS

Here's Screamin' Jay Hawkins doing "I Put a Spell on You". Hawkins' true love was ballads, the kind Jim Nabors used to sing.




One of Bo Diddley's best songs. Ralph used it in "Fritz the Cat".





Not the best version of "Dem Bones", but it's still interesting. I imagine this is the universal anthemn of doctors all over the world.





The Platters doing "Great Pretender". Silky smoothe and satisfying!

JITTERBUG, TAP & BOOGIE WOOGIE

I hope you weren't working on anything important when you stumbled on this site because there's no way you're going to finish what you were doing now!

The first video (above) is a jitterbug sequence from "Hellzapoppin'". Some say it's the best jitterbug ever captured on film.





Next is a tap number by the Nicholas Brothers from "Stormy Weather." The original uploader quotes Fred Astaire as saying that he's never seen a finer tap dance on film. A few years ago I recognized Fayard Nicholas in a theater and foolishly asked for his autograph. I say foolishly because Fayard was in what looked like his late 90s and it took him 15 or 20 minutes to painstakingly write his name. I felt terrible for putting him to the trouble.




Classic Boogie Woogie!





Classic Fats Waller, including the kind of mugging to the camera that inspired Clampett and Rudy Ising...or was it Harmon? I'm always confusing the two.

A word of thanks to John K who introduced me to these singers and dancers long ago and who has impeccable taste in these matters!

THE CAMPFIRE STANDARD

In addition to whatever way the dictionary defines story, a story worth its name is something worth telling and worth listening to. It's so compelling that you just have to tell your friends about it. It's so evocative that it feeds your imagination for weeks or even months after hearing it. Whenever I think about story I imagine indians sitting in rapt attention around a campfire listening to a charismatic storyteller. It seems to me that if a story isn't fit to tell at a campfire then it's just information and belongs in a file cabinet somewhere. It certainly has no place in the entertainment industry.


Imagine trying to tell modern TV animation stories around a campfire, stories like: a little boy tries to pass himself off as something he's not, gets in over his head and learns the value of being himself. A little girl snubs a poor classmate for wearing unfashionable clothes then the poor classmate does a favor for the richer girl and the two become friends. Really, who wants to hear that? Imagine trying to tell stuff like that to a bunch of story-hungry indians. They'd just stare at you. What the indians want to hear is something like: "There I was, backed up against the tree with six drooling wolves moving in for the kill..." You know that's what indians want to hear because that's what everybody wants to hear. Anything else is just wasting our time.



Now I know that cartoon comedy isn't likely to drum up the particular type of excitement generated by viscious wolves but it ought to be an equivalent excitement. Just like the wolf story it should rivet listeners to their seats and should make them want to retell the story to friends. That's the way I felt when I saw John K's shower room sequence in "Naked Beach Frenzy" and Ren's mad scene in "Space Madness." I don't think John would have any problem entertaining indians around a campfire. We need more storytellers like that.

PETER COOK

If you haven't seen Peter Cook then I'm envious. That means you'll be seeing him here for the first time. I only wish I could turn the clock back and see all this for the first time! Enjoy!

"A SEASONAL PLACE"

I'll bet I'll regret publishing these sketches. The drawing and acting sucks, the characters look different in every panel, mis-spelled words...it's a mess! The only reason I'm putting it up is because I know that if I put it in a desk drawer to rework another day, it'll never get done. Besides, if I don't post this then I'll be left without anything to put up tonight. OK, so here it is, flaws and all......"A Seasonal Place."

THE PARIS ART SCENE, CIRCA 1885

There were lots of art schools and lots of type-A art teachers. Here (above) an angry art teacher goes berserk and possibly beats the class with another student.

Paintings often had to be done on a tight schedule. Here (above) an artist puts the finishing touches on a painting as it's being delivered to the buyer.

According to Daumier one painter paints from nature while another paints from what the first painter painted.

Some painters had fancy studios...

...others painted in hovels. No heat, no bathroom. Rats.

Here (above) is Montmare which, because it was situated on a steep hill, had low rents. Lots of artists here.

Here's a Lautrec poster (above) . Is it for the Moulin Rouge? Does it say "The Queen of Joy (Life?) with Victor Jose"? What the heck is that about? Whatever the real meaning the picture, it reminds me that a number of Lautrec's other posters for that club depicted the customers rather than the stars. Sometime the posters seemed to advertize the interesting people and friendly women you'd meet there. Lautrec did a couple of paintings from the vantage point of someone walking behind adventurer-customers looking for excitement.

The Moulin Rouge Gardens. Outdoor entertainment, good food, spirits, a beautiful giant elephant...looks good to me. Why don't we have more places like this now?

KANDINSKY

Am I the only person here who likes Kandinsky? He was a Russian painter who was infuenced by fauvism but left the movement when Matisse declared that fauvism was incompatible with abstraction. How do you like this railroad painting? I think he and Gaugain (spelled right?) "owned" green!

These "Blue Rider" paintings with the colored frames (above) are terrific in my opinion. He sneaks in some white puffballs...more about that later.

This watercolor (above) looks like a tiny model for a stage set. You can see the Matisse influence but he Russianizes it somehow.

Here's (above) an early example of how Kandinsky adopted pointalism to traditional Russian style. The dabs of paint look like little puffballs. When I first saw them they reminded me of cheesepuffs and I found myself wondering where the Russians ever got the idea of painting on black vevet with junk food. After a moment's reflection I figured that was a pretty superficial observation; the picture obviously referenced balls of lint. It's a pretty picture, though. The dots of light are like stars or fireflies. It makes the whole scene seem magical.

SCRIPTS OR STORYBOARDS?

It won't come as a suprise to anyone that I'm on the storyboard side of that controversy, especially if we're talking about animated cartoon comedy. I've written in both script and storyboard formats, and the boarded stories always turn out funnier. That's because a board provides constant feedback on how the visuals are going. Some ideas just don't look funny when drawn and it's nice to be able to toss them in favor of something that draws better.

It's also because scripts are a form of book. They're a medium of their own and what feels good in the medium of print often doesn't feel good in animation. As an example, scripts tend to be dialogue-heavy, even when they're written by artists. That's because ddialogue driven scripts are leaner and easier to read. Dialogue comes in trim little columns surrounded by oceans of white space. It looks better on a page. You can read it faster. It's an amazing but true fact that dull, dialogue-heavy, talking head cartoons get made for the trivial reason that their kind of script is easier to read.

Here's an example. This is an excerpt from a first-draught script I wrote for Animaniacs. A witch's candy-covered house attracts the Animaniacs and she tries to eat them. They turn it around and harass the witch to distraction. The script reads OK whenever it depicts dialogue but watch how hard it becomes to read when it describes visual gags:
Which part would you rather read?

It's also true that stories that originate on storyboards tend to emphasize visual gags, the thing that animation is best at. When I'm drawing I naturally pay more attention to the way a character looks in clothes, the way he bends to pick things up, etc. Sometimes these details are so funny that I end up building a whole sequence around them. That feels right to me. Comedy is best when it's about little things. Scripts, on the other hand, favor the overview, the big things and the complex subplots.

Now that scripts dominate there are very few funny cartoons. Since scripts are uncongenial to visual comedy the powers that be have decided to eliminate visual comedy. This is the shocking price we've had to pay for our script addiction.

COVARRUBIAS

'Just a few pictures by the uber-caricaturist, Miguel Covarrubias. Enjoy!

POETRY CORNER

Here's (above) Sylvia Plath's "Daddy," read by Plath. I like this poem, but it seems self-indulgent and even crazy to me. Boy, Sylvia could certainly can hold a grudge. What could her father have done to her to make her write a poem like this? My guess is...not much. It's possible that he had a mentally disturbed daughter who was willing to throw his reputation under the bus in order to establish her own reputation.

Anyway, love it or hate it, you have to admit that it represents an interesting extreme of revenge literature. The unrelenting, venemous intensity reminds me of "Who's Afraid of Virginia Wolfe?" and the several pages long curse in the Bible aimed at anyone who touches the Arc of the Covenant.





Here's (above) Allen Ginsberg reading "America." I confess to liking this poem even though I completely disagree with the content. Walt Whitman popularized this kind of rambling, sloppy, stream-of-consciousness dialogue where the poet argues with an abstraction. Like Whitman, Ginsberg is often silly and easy to parody but you have to admit that it's appealing on some level.





Here's (above) Jack Kerouac reading one of his poems on the old "Tonight Show" with Steve Allen. Kerouac comes off as immensely sincere and the poem is an interesting, example of word music, at least when Jack reads it.

THEORY CORNER FOR MEN: PICKUP LINES

Hello men! I get a lot of letters asking for advice about dating. Normally I don't answer because, well, some things can't be taught. I recently changed my mind after receiving a gut-wrenching letter from a Theory Corner men who told me that if I couldn't help then there would be nothing for it but a leap into the Grand Canyon. It occurred to me that I might be able to help this man and through him some of the other luckless, blighted males who frequent this site.

I agreed to meet the letter writer outside my favorite Hollywood disco. Out there on the street we'd talk theory then inside we'd put it into practice. 


Uncle Eddie: "Alright, listen up! The basic format is FMAC: find, meet, attract, close. Got that?"

Student: (writing nervously, nearly dropping pencil) "Got it Uncle Eddie!"

Uncle Eddie: "The trick is to play hard to get by deliberately ignoring the woman you're interested in while winning over her friends, including the men. To do that you employ a device called the 'neg'."

Student: "Huh? What's a neg?"

Uncle Eddie: "The neg is a negative comment, a sort of accidental insult. The purpose of a neg is to lower a beautiful woman's confidence. Maybe tell her she has lipstick on her teeth or offer her a breath mint after she speaks. Now what's the number one characteristic of an alpha male?"

Student: (drops pencil; when he leans down to pick it up his glasses fall off) "Um...er, I don't know, Uncle Eddie!"

Uncle Eddie: "The number one characteristic of an alpha male is the smile. Smile from the moment you enter the club! It indicates confidence! OK, let's go in!"

Uncle Eddie (inside the club...the sound is deafening...Thoomp! Thoomp! Thoomp!) : (shouting) "You see how all the guys are dressed? You gotta be bold, over-the-top! Dress average and you'll fade into the background! Wear a conversation piece! Now go up that group over there and start talking! Don't think about it or you'll chicken out! Did you memorize the dialogue? "

Student: (squints to read his notes) "Yes, Uncle Eddie! I walk over to them and say, 'Hey, it looks like the party's over here.' Then I turn to the girl I want and say, 'If I wasn't gay, you'd be so mine!' (he blushes).

'Um...I don't get it, Uncle Eddie. How do I get the girl if she thinks I'm gay?"

Uncle Eddie: (rolls eyes) "Once she feels comfortable and unthreatened by you, you forget the gay thing."

Student: "But isn't that lying?"

Uncle Eddie: "Naw, that's flirting!"

Well, that's enough for one post. Now I don't want to hear anybody talking about diving into the Grand Canyon. I'm a hiker and I don't enjoy stepping over dead bodies.

Editor's Note: This info was derived from a book: "The Game: Penetrating the Secret Society of Pickup Artists" by Neil Strauss.

WHY I'M NOT A FAN OF "IRON GIANT"

Let me start by saying that I have nothing against Giant's director, Brad Byrd. I'm criticizing his film because that doing that helps me to make a point about the way I believe animated films should be made. In other words I'm contrasting my own pie-in-the-sky ideal of film-making against what Brad was able to do in the face of real-world obstacles. It's not a fair comparison and I recognize that. With that caveat in mind watch the clip above and come back here for discussion.

Well, to start with the robot looks pretty good. Whenever he leans there's a great perspective shift and his glancing back and forth at the rock and tree was impressive in the sense that the space between those items seemed immense. I don't know if I've ever seen that awareness of horizontal space in an animated film before. How did they do that? And the grinding metal SFX were great! Anyway, that's what I liked about the sequence. For me the rest of the clip was all about lost opportunities.

There's no art in the way the kid tried to teach the robot to talk. Theatrical dialogue is supposed to be better than the way real people talk. What if Romeo had said to Juliet," Hey, Juliet! It's me, Romeo! Boy, you look great standing there on the balcony!" Would we still remember the play after all these years? There's no excuse for lackluster dialogue. Hollywood is full of dialogue enhancers. Remember how interesting the language teaching sequences of "My Fair Lady" were? It's an interesting subject if it's handled right, even in an abreviated time frame as it was here.

This dialogue problem set a bunch of dominos to falling. Lackluster dialogue led to a lackluster recording and the lackluster recording led to lackluster animation. The reading and animation were convincing all right, you can't walk off the street and do that, but that's the problem. That's all that they were -- convincing. As I've said elsewhere, it's not enough for an actor to be convincing in a role. Real life is convincing and I get all I want of that for free. When I pay for media I want it to be better than life. I want a performance in the true sense of the word, one that'll blow my mind and make me want to tell my friends about it.


Now there were some good animators on this film, you could tell, but they had nothing to work with. The writing wasn't there. did you feel chemistry between the robot and the kid? I didn't. The exchange between them was cold as ice. The boy's mother called and the kid simply turned his back on the robot and matter-of-factly started for home. Didn't it occur to anyone that if boy didn't care for the robot then we had no reason to care for him either? Imagine if the boy had been a real fleshed-out character like Penny in "The Rescuers." A boy like that would have never have willingly turned his back on his new-found friend.

The writing also hurt the interrogation sequence. The CIA guy's threats were so artless and blunt. Imagine a similar scene played by Darth Vader. Fans would have lovingly quoted the threats for decades. The villain is supposed to be a guy we love to hate. I didn't love to hate this guy.

And why the arid silence? Didn't the filmmakers believe in music? Music might have soothed over some of the writing problems and explained the characters' emotions to us. Maybe the money ran out. If they ever re-release this they should add some sound.

Well, that's it.

JOHN CLEESE, ANDY KAUFMAN, SAM KINISON

I'm probably overdoing this YouTube thing. After all, people don't need me to look up comedy shorts. I did it because I was having such a blast watching these films that I just had to share them with someone. Anyway, here's three more and I'll try to restrain myself after this.

JERRY LEWIS, W.C. FIELDS & JIM CARREY

MORE CLOUD DRAWINGS

Here's a quick sketch I did while leaning outside my car window. All the time I was driving there were great cloud formations but I couldn't get my hands free to draw. What a pity; no record will ever exist of the flottila of battleships chasing the runaway amoebas or the indian bracing himself to get hit with pies. Finally these came along, the caterpillar with a bonnet and the people in the school bus throwing dogs and cats out the window. It was too good to pass up! I pulled over to the shoulder and drew fast with cars whizzing by only a few feet from my paper.

Here, to fill out the post, is Jerry Lewis's famous elevator scene from "The Errand Boy."

VINTAGE SID CAESAR

Here are a couple of sketches featuring Sid Caesar, Carl Reiner and Howard Morris. If you're seeing them for the first time then I envy you.



I love sketch comedy and it breaks my heart that we so infrequently see this kind of thing in animation. I'd love to do some short cartoons that are built around funny sketches. Avery's "King-Size Canary" was a arguably a sketch cartoon as was the "Shampoo Master" and lifeguard sequences of John K's "Naked Beach Frenzy."

Before I close here's a tip of the Theory Hat to Steve Worth, the erstwhile wizard of the ASIFA-Hollywood Animation Archive. Steve just won a well-deserved Annie for his work on the archive, escorted on stage by the famous "Annie Trophy Girls." Way to go, Steve!

CARTOON ACTING

Animation acting isn't the same as live-action acting. Our medium requires that whatever action we draw also moves funny. That means the story has to be written with cartoon posing in mind.

In the action above, the story point might have been satisfied by having a nervous character point to the ground and say, "Here! Dig here!" In the drawings above I use twice as many words as that. Why? Because certain actions look good in cartooning and pointing is one of them. I just wanted to milk the drawing opportunity. The words are repeated simply as an excuse to have fun by drawing more pointing poses. Of course the story has to contain characters that would plausibly act like this. Stories written by writers rather than cartoonists seldom do.