WATERCOLORIST HARDIE GRAMATKY

Hardie Gramatky (that's his painting, above) was of course, the famous author and illustrator of the "Little Toot" children's books. He also animated for Disney for seven years beginning in 1929, and was a major figure in the California Watercolor Movement.  Michael Sporn just put up a post about his animation, and I thought I'd supplement it with a few words about his painting.

Strangely Gramatky never worked as a background painter at Disney's. He was an animator,  and was reputed to be a pretty good one. Check out his animation (and David Nethery's interesting comments) on Michael Sporn's blog, the Sept. 6, 2011 entry:  http://www.michaelspornanimation.com/splog/

BTW how do you like the juicy, vivid colors here: purple, black and green? How do you like the loose, painterly line?

A lot of artists are more familiar with Gramatky's later work (above), which was full of contrasts and used the white of the paper whenever possible. I don't know who pioneered this style, but over time a large number of California painters adopted it.

You don't suppose Gramatky invented this style, do you? 

My painting teacher would never let any of us use black. What would he have said if he'd seen Gramatky's pictures, which are full of it? The picture above looks like something Milton Canniff would have done. Click to enlarge. 

Gramatky excelled at all the styles he tried, but my favorites were done in the gritty, cartoony, quick sketch method he applied to Depression-era subjects like the one above. 

If I didn't know Gramatky did the painting above, I'd have guessed it was an early painting by Lee or Mary Blair. 

Like I said, Gramatky did the Little Toot books (above). I have early printings of two of them, and I treasure them. I wonder if these were published by Western Publishing, who did the Golden Books line. Western benefited from a lucky accident that delivered first class lithographic equipment into their hands. The company attracted top illustrators partly because artists knew their work would be printed beautifully.

Gramatky was a close friend of urban painter Millard Sheets, and the influence (above) shows. 

I was only able to locate one oil painting (actually acrylic according to Linda Gramatky) of Gramatky's. That's it above.  It's terrific, but  I think watercolor conveyed Gramatky's cheerful, light-hearted personality better. 

VINTAGE MENS MAGAZINES (EXPANDED)

While searching for the pictures I used in the Philosophy Girls post (the previous post), I stumbled on some interesting men's sleaze magazines from the 50s. These weren't high class mags like Playboy and Esquire, these were the raunchy low class ones that dads all over America hid in their sock drawers.

What struck me about these magazines was how expertly they were put together. They usually combined high and low class elements. You'd find genuinely beautiful and insightful photographs side by side with the lowest sleaze. It seems incongruous at first, but when you think about it that's the way real life is...the sublime and the ridiculous served up in equal portions.

How do you like the picture above, shot in glorious, dramatic, philosophical black and white?

The photos were often shot in small apartments with modern, minimalist furniture. I imagine that a lot of readers lived like that, or wanted to. It was really smart of the magazines to avoid classy locations.

A lot of sleaze magazines avoided the porn laws by selling themselves as art reference. Every issue had to feature some models in classical art poses. I love the example above, which is funny and kitschy, but also artistic in its own way. Click to enlarge.

You would think that the sleazies would favor girls who look kind of dumb and slutty (above). After all, in real life girls like that are more likely to be sexually available.Well, these women are represented in these magazines to be sure...

..but the pearls of greatest price (above) were not exactly slutty girls...they were fallen girls...world-weary, downright evil...fallen girls, like the one above.

These women (above) came off as completely dissipated. They'd not only seen the dark side of life, they dwelled there. It was the only side of life they knew, or cared to know. 

Editors liked to give these girls "Evil eye" poses. 

Were the girls in these pictures really that bad in real life? Who knows? For the sake of magazine sales they certainly had to look like they were. 50s man wanted to feel like he had an adventure when he read magazines like this. He wanted to feel worldly, like he'd come in contact with the seedy underbelly of life and only just barely escaped unscathed. The magazine was selling reader self-image as well as sex.

Interesting, huh?

Wait a minute! Is there room for a Post Script?  Auralynn When, who gave me the link for these photos, says diversity is what made the sleazies so interesting. These magazines contained good girls, bad girls, beautiful girls and plain girls. Some were completely confident in the nude, some were embarrassed to be seen only half naked. Auralynn says that's what made these early magazines so vibrant. A good analysis!

PHILOSOPHY FOR CRIMINALS (STARRING, "THE PHILOSOPHY GIRLS")

BUTTERCUP: "Wow! Girls, look at this article! It says in the animal kingdom you find creatures that kill for sport, even when they're not hungry. They just want stay in practice, and they find any activity other than hunting to be boring. The author says that maybe some humans are like that."

PETUNIA: "That sounds a little more complicated than it needs to be, Buttercup. Murderers just want something, and they rub people out who get in their way."

GLADYS: "Hmmm. You're assuming that most murderers think about what they do, but I think it's more...impulsive...than that. They don't think about it...they just do it, and regret it later!"

VIOLET: "Well, I don't know if that really explains it, Gladys. I mean, most people are able to restrain themselves."

MILDRED: "Maybe murderers aren't like everybody else. Maybe they were just born without self control."

GLADIOLA: "Wait a minute. I think I get what Violet was driving at. Murderers must have self control...if they didn't they wouldn't be able to get through the day."

RODNEYETTA: "Yeah! The act of murder might have been impulsive, but there was a precondition. The murderer had to have laid the groundwork by doing a lot of thinking about the subject over months and years."

GERTRUDE: "Right! Over time the murderer psychs himself into thinking that he's an adventurer, or an instrument of higher justice. He gradually refines the image of himself as he who favors the decisive act, he who is superior to the average man who overthinks everything."

GLADYS: Wow! Heavy!!!!"

GRETTA: "It's heavy, alright! The murderer primes himself with so much bad philosophy, that the violent, impulsive act becomes inevitable."

LILY: "So what do we do? It's hard to flush out bad philosophy!"

DARLENE: "Maybe we should write a book that argues right to the points that convince borderline people to commit crime."

DAISY: "I don't know, Darlene...do you really think they'd read it? I mean...do murderers read?"

MAGNOLIA: "Of course they do! Human beings are thinking creatures! They'll read it if it really argues directly to the points they care about! We're The Philosophy Girls! We can do it!!!!"

ALL (ALMOST ALL): "Hooray!!! Well said, Magnolia! Now let's take a quick skinny dip to clear our minds!"

THE END

Many thanks to Auralynn When for the terrific pictures!

SOME TERRIFIC EARLY CARS

What's your all-time favorite auto design? The Duesenberg? The 1938 Alfa Romeo (above) ? They're great, but my favorites are all older than that. I like the romance of the really early cars when steam, gasoline and battery power all competed for the buyer's dollar. I just got a book about the subject, and it includes some interesting history, which I'll pass along here.

According to the book, the first functional steam car was invented by a Frenchman in 1769. He pulled canons with it it. But that's only the first steam car. There were spring driven and compressed air vehicles before that.

The first American steam car we know about was made in 1805, and cars managed to get into the newspapers with increasing frequency after that. The first picture of an American auto we have was of the Dudgeon Steam Wagon (above) in 1853.  It looks like a miniature locomotive. 

Early cars were mostly tractors, but inventors tinkered together smaller, lighter recreational vehicles as novelties, or to promote other products they were trying to sell, like carriages or batteries. 

Eventually bicycles became a big deal and for a while it looked like the steam powered bike (above) would be the horseless carriage of the future. The bikes were lighter, faster, and cheaper to make than cars. I guess they just weren't comfortable over long distances.

Here's (above) a Stanley Steamer from 1906. What a design! It looks like it's moving when it's standing still! I rode a few yards in one of these with Jay Leno. It was the best ride in a car that I ever had. The car started instantly, and drove very smooth and quiet. 

The English in particular went nuts over steam and continued to make beautiful steam cars right up to the 1950s. 

They came in all sizes and shapes.

But, I digress.

So what happened to steam cars in the U.S.? I'm not sure. They ran quieter, were easier to repair, and were pretty safe relative to internal combustion engines. Some of them were also fast. A racing version of the Stanley Roadster 1908 model was clocked at 127 mph.!

Maybe they got a bad rep because so many railroad locomotives were blowing up. Or... maybe patents were the problem. 

The patents that made steam power so attractive were spread out among small time inventors all over America. The gasoline engine people came later and had to rethink the whole way a car was put together. Maybe fewer people owned the gas patents, and that made manufacture easier. 'Just guessing. 

This (above) isn't the electric car that Granny drove in the Tweety cartoons, but it looks a lot like it. It's the Oldsmobile Curved Dash Runabout from 1903. The canopy distracts from the basic idea, which is that of a sofa mounted on a high buggy. No sides and very little front to enclose the driver. If you closed your eyes while on the road you might imagine that you were flying. 

Oldsmobiles (above) are often thought of as old people's cars, but Olds sold an adaption of  their racing car, called "The Pirate." 

Here's one of my favorite car designs: the 1913 Mercer Raceabout! Check out that extra seat on the running board! No doubt that seat played its part in accidents, but I'd risk it. Wouldn't you?

This (above) isn't a beautiful car, but it gets points for being a funny one. It's the cartoony Cabriolet Locomobile (above). I love how the chauffeur's seat is exposed to the elements, but the owner's seat is entirely enclosed. The carriage tradition demanded that the chauffeur be out there in the ether, buffeted by bees and rain and hail. 

I like to think of an eccentric, Type "A" owner using the speaking tube to regail the harried driver with threats or with bad poetry. 

JOHN KRICFALUSI: GENIUS!

John K recently did some astonishingly creative cartoons for Cartoon Network, and I'll discuss one of them here. Actually, it's not a whole cartoon, but a half-minute promo for CN's "Adult Swim." Quick spots like this will attempt to lure adults to the late night show, while warning little kids that the cartoons are not for them.

In this cartoon a cute little Girl Scout and her friend head for the Adult Shack to watch Adult Swim Cartoons, and are stopped in their tracks by an irate Kirk Douglas-type character.

He's outraged that these little rugrats would presume to set their unworthy eyes on the ultimate adult TV show.  He chases them away then storms back into the shack, in the process executing one of the funniest walks in the history of TV animation. That's it...that's the whole story! I warned you...these spots are ultra-short!

Here we are (above) at the halfway mark with the curmudgeon ranting at the kids. This is no ordinary curmudgeon, but rather a fearsome, wild, Type "A", bull curmudgeon, the kind that in real life does a wide angle lean down into your face, allowing you to see  to see every microcapillary and boar bristle on his smoking hot skin.

The curmudgeon (above) turns to walk back to the shack. John, being John, chooses to turn him around in a way that makes it clear that he only has two dimensions.

There he goes...

To give punch to the unusual turn, John pops on a yellow background...

...and widens the shot.

The old, blue night sky background dissolves back in...

...as Kirk completes his turn.

Now commences one of the funniest walks you'll ever see on TV.

John's really into animating on his own films now.

He loves doing dialogue scenes.

A lot of people think good dialogue depends on having the right mouth charts. That's not true.

Dialogue involves the whole face, and sometimes the whole body. You have to act the dialogue, and not simply put weird mouth poses on it.

Dialogue is a great excuse to explore emotions that we try to hide from the world. To see what I mean, film a friend as he speaks, then still frame it.

.

The chances are that you'll discover a whole range of mood changes in what appeared to be simple speech.

In still frames, even happy people appear to be alternately sullen, quizzical, pained, awed, surprised, bored, elated, depressed, suspicious, dominant, submissive, etc. In animation these quick mood swings can be hilarious.

Speech itself is kind of interesting, apart from the emotions it conveys. Sometimes the mouth doesn't want to say what the speaker commands it to say.

Sometimes a syllable can hide inside your character's mouth and he has to dig around for it with his lips and tongue.

When he finds it, he pushes it to the front and it explodes out,

Sometimes the whole body refuses to take orders from the mind. My own, Eddie Fitzgerald belief, (developed from years of watching John K, Scribner, Tyre, etc.) is that the body and face parts don't always work together in harmony.

The brain decides what emotion it wants to convey, and different parts of the body either conform or rebel. It's as if they had minds of their own.

Funny, blustery characters have a special problem with getting parts of their body to co-operate with each other.

You feel sorry for people like that. Even when they're trying to intimidate you, they have to devote part of their attention to putting down this inner mutiny.

Sometimes a character just can't take the weirdness of it all, and he begins to cry.

An instant later he forgets why he was sad, and puts himself to the task of preparing the next syllable.

But I digress.

Back to the film again: the curmudgeon pushes a man out of the way while he rants.

This reminds me of something McKimson was supposed to have said, that much of Warners' humor had to do with pushing people.

He arrives at the shack immediately after pushing the guy. His arm is still extended.

Now he rallies his whole body for a really big syllabic explosion.

I love how he telescopes his pushing arm (above) back into his body while he anticipates down.

BAM! This syllable gets a big accent. I wish I'd included more inbetweens, because I think the unattached tongue travels all over the mouth here.

'More fun with the eyes. No doubt this is justified by something on the soundtrack.

Watching all these inbetween expressions has been a ton of fun. I feel sorry for animators who only do extreme poses and let their assistants do the rest. Surely a really funny animator will want to do his own inbetweens.  On scenes like this an assistant is mostly for cleanup.

We continue to track along as he walks into his shack. He reminds me of a Trapdoor Spider returning to his lair to wait for another victim.

I can't help digressing again to imagine how a lesser director would have handled this final glimpse at Kirk. My guess is he'd have stopped the curmudgeon at the door, then on a new angle had him deliver a final line, and slam the door behind him. What a mistake! That would have given too much emphasis to the door. Like Marty Feldman said: "People are funny, not things."

Here's (above) an excerpt of the cartoon showing most of the poses I discussed here. Many thanks To John K who allowed me to bypass my computer problems and load these pictures remotely from his house.