Here's (above) a newspaper comic from 1896! I've blogged about this artist before, but I can't help doing it again...I guess I just can't decide whether I like him or not. Good technical draughtsmen were abundant in the 1890s, so the primitive drawing style must be deliberate. Maybe readers regarded this artist the same way we regard Edward Lear or Steinberg now, as primitive and sophisticated at the same time.
Be sure to click to enlarge all the pictures in this post.
Ahhhh...refreshed at the fountain of Herriman (above)! Here he is caricaturing Opper's style.
Newspaper cartoonists back in the day must have been under a lot of pressure to come up with funny poses. This artist (above) doesn't seem to have a knack for that, but you gotta give him credit for trying.
Slapstick was king in those days (above). I wish it was today.
Herriman again (above). I love the guy in the white suit, who's standing in profile. I also like the guys on the lower left and right.
I like the way this artist (above) lays out his page. He finishes the gag but still has space to fill at the bottom, so he ends the page with a bunch of random afterthoughts. Artists were free to pioneer new formats in those days. Sometimes they worked, sometimes they didn't.
I'm amazed at how common plagiarism was in those days. How do you like the Dick Tracy rip-off above?
Here's (above) an interesting one. Helen Kane had just lost her lawsuit against the Fleischers (the judge claimed he couldn't see the similarity between her voice and that of Betty Boop), so she decided to stake her claim on her personna with a comic strip character of her own that looked just like Betty. It didn't do very well, and Helen Kane slowly slipped out of the public eye.
BTW: I heard a contradictory story, that Kane lost her lawsuit because it was determined that she had stolen her character from yet another singer. I have no idea what the truth is.
Thanks to Allan Holz from "Stripper's Guide" for the comics. A link to his terrific blog can be found in the right sidebar.
I think it would be amazing if the newspaper cartoonists of today would be as experimental as the ones in the late 1890s, considering all the new, exciting technology that has come about over the years, like the iPhone, Photoshop, Illustrator, etc.
ReplyDeleteAre any of these newspaper strips worth studying from? I feel like I've pretty much knailed UPA, Disney, Warners, Lantz, Fleischer, early Hanna-Barbera, and a ton of other different styles that I've been studying from for the past year and a half or so. Most of the stuff I come across seems way too easy now, and I'm looking for something that looks like would be a little more difficult than what I'm used to.
I like how creative the artists are in their page layout, like the Herriman ones.
ReplyDeleteFor me, I can read modern strips like 'Garfield' and maybe get a laugh from the punchline. But there's no experimentation in drawing, page layout or format. In which case, why not just read a joke book?
I wish we had such stylistic abundance in cheap and readily available forms now. It didn't hurt animated cartoons to be preceded by 20-30 years of brilliant print cartooning either. I sometimes wonder if a renaissance of print cartoons in the 21st century wouldn't lead to a similar rebirth of animated cartoons.
ReplyDeleteIt's always fascinating to see human drawings by George Herriman. Until Allan started posting them I've only been familiar with his funny-animal Krazy Kat strips.
ReplyDeleteI've yet to see any drawings of human from Walt Kelly, however.
Hey Eddie...
ReplyDeleteI heard you were one of the creative forces behind WACKY WORLD OF TEX AVERY and that I'm probably the only person here who loves that show, if not for how hilariously cheesy it is :)
As always, keep up the good work every day!
Anon: For professional reasons can't really comment on that show, but it certainly was fun to work on. I worked with Mike Fontnelli on that.
ReplyDeleteIs that because of NDA's? John K talks shit all the time about shows he used to work on.
ReplyDeleteAnon: No, not non-disclosure agreements. I just don't believe in being disloyal to people who were nice to me.
ReplyDeleteI have a few recommendations, Roberto Severino, but they're not comics but Russian animated films. They're art directed, partially or fully by Perch Sarkisyan. You can only find most of them or all of them online, so I don't think that makes it easy to study.
ReplyDeleteI'd recommend Cipollino first, I don't know how that compares to the Disney you've studied, whether you've tried some of the more complex characters. If you feel confident enough after that, you can try some of the really hard styles. Shareholders, A Hot Stone, and Blacksmith the Magician are some pretty intensely stylized works.
http://www.animator.ru/db/?ver=eng&p=show_person&pid=936&sp=2
You can look at those films from that page and look them up through YouTube by hitting the Russian flag to change the language and copying the Russian title into YouTube.
Maybe these aren't the best suggestions, they're clearly putting the cart before the horse since some of them aren't even subtitled, but I think they're worth studying.
Since someone asked: Walt Kelly's humans are a lot of fun.
ReplyDeleteI believe it was proven Helen Kane did not invent the Boop-Oop-A-Doop refrain by showing even earlier footage of a Jazz singer using it. I could be wrong but I think I read that in Leslie Carbaga's Fleischer book.
ReplyDeleteHelen Kane Did NOT Steal her character from someone else.
ReplyDeleteShe Stole the Word "Boop Oop a Doop" from a black singer by the name of Baby Esther.
Betty Boop was still modeled on Kane, even though Kane had stolen the scat lyrics from a african american woman. Nobody even knew that she had done until the trial.
Although Betty was a caricture of kane.
Btw, Helen Kane's singing style was common, many women could do that style, although it was most assosiated with Kane, And kane added the Boops with it, in which Betty Boop caricatured.
Helen Kane & Paramount Publix, held a contest, to find a look and sound alike, Mae Questel won first place in one of those contests, and was later hired by the Fleischer Studios to do the voice of Betty Boop from 1931.
Kane's Popularity never decreased in 1930, around about 1934, it decreased. becuse she was still on stage and radio before-hand. Helen complained that the impersonators and voices of Betty Boop & Betty Boop in general was stealing all her work.
Helen found out she had breast cancer, so she quit show buisness for a while, she made a comeback in the 50's until she died in the 60's.
Thanks Jessica! You seem to know what you're talking about, so I'll assume your version is the right one.
ReplyDeleteI also published this as a comment on the latest post (Dec. 11, 2011) so more people will see what you wrote.