HANDS HAVE A LIFE OF THEIR OWN

I love to draw hands. That's because hands have a life of their own.

Hands are pretty good at revealing what their owner really thinks. A face may listen to a boring speaker with what looks like rapt attention but way down below the hands are playing with keys or tapping on the table. Sometimes the hands are more than just magnifiers of their owner's true feelings. Sometimes they have feelings of their own. Hands may be macho, gay, happy, sad, lecherous or virginal, even if their owner possesses none of these qualities (these thoughts cry out for drawings to illustrate them. Sorry, I didn't plan this post very well). I'd love to do a short, pencil-test film of an extreme version of this idea where a guy's hands, acting completely on their own, grope the people around him and get him into trouble.

Here's a drawing where the excitable hand is frightened and clings to the face, which is only mildly disturbed. At least that's what I had in mind when I drew it. The understory about the excitable hand is sometimes for the artist only. Sometimes you want the understory to be so subtle that the audience isn't even aware of it.
Most stories don't lend themselves to this hand theory and those I board the normal way, as above. Even so, it still works for the occassional scene. I'll try to find some examples.

WOULDN'T IT BE FUN TO DESIGN A TEXTBOOK? (PART 2)

A good textbook would have to have lots of faces. Kids need to see examples of civilized, effective, kind and intelligent adults.
It's a good idea to get these pictures from fine art sources. Fine art does a good job of isolating noble qualities.

Some of these fine art faces also get across the idea of man as a rational, fundamentally decent being. What an interesting idea to propose to kids who may see only the dark side of life at home!

THE NEW REN & STIMPY DVD IS OUT!!!!

Do whatever you have to do to get this DVD! Steal purses from little old ladies, sell your children into slavery....anything! It's that good!

A lot of fans were put off by some of the gags in these cartoons and it's easy to see why. There's some gay jokes, some cruelty to animals, some gross gags...most people will find at least one thing that rubs them the wrong way in here. That's the bad news. The good news is that the remaining 99% of the content is pure bliss and, taken as a whole, the contents of this set are probably the most innovative and funny thing to happen in animation in the last half century.

For me the best cartoons in the box, the pearls of greatest price, are "Naked Beach Frenzy," "Ren Seeks Help" and "Stimpy's Pregnant." Naked Beach Frenzy is hands down one of the funniest cartoons ever made. I defy anyone to sit still during the lifeguard and Shampoo Master sequences. Ren Seeks Help is packed with tour de force acting scenes which will probably change the way animation is done forever and Stimpy's Pregnant contains what might be the greatest Mr. Horse sequence ever. And those are just the top three ! I could write all night about the great gags in the other films!

It's a digression but I can't help putting up the note John wrote to his fans on a card on the inside of the box. John is not only the greatest artist working in the industry but he's the greatest writer as well. These are beautiful words. If you read enough of what he writes you begin writing and talking that way yourself. Like everything John does the words beg to be imitated.

BTW, people who pre-paid for the set are getting their's in the mail now. I'm not sure when the discs will appear in the stores.

WOULDN'T IT BE FUN TO DESIGN A TEXTBOOK!?

You'd want to have lots of exciting images in it. You'd want pictures that provoke kids to crave adventure and seek out awe-inspiring events. Let some other book prepare kids for a life of quiet desperation and bureaucracy. This one would show the cubs what it would be like to be a lion!

Kids textbooks should be awe-inspiring! They need to contain pictures like this one of what could pass for King Kong's island. The feeling of menace is palpable! It's also a picture that's full of hope and aspiration. It seems to say, "If you have the guts to get here I'll show you wonders beyond anything you've ever imagined!"

A terrific image for a kid! Earnest and competent adults risk their lives for what they believe on the surface of a mysterious ocean far away from home!

It probably sounds like I'm trying to turn kids into soldiers or pirates. That's because I only have the bandwidth for four pictures so I'm limited to expressing a single thought here. Of course there's more to life and textbooks than what I've presented here.

There would have to be lots of maps in the book. Kids love maps especially when they're illustrated as beautifully as this one. There used to be lots of visionary, artist-conceived maps, especially in the 1910s to 1930s. Present-day maps are merely informational.

MORE "INDIANA JONES" PICTURES

Here's a few interesting pictures from my picture file. I believe this (above) is the ramparts of an old, fortified town in Hungary. I love this picture because it sucks you in and makes you want to run along the colonnade like a kid. Can't you hear the thumping of running sneakers on the wooden floor?

Why can't modern architects make spaces as interesting as this? The roof tops are fairly plain and unadorned but their placement makes them fascinating to look at. From the point of view of an observer looking over the railing the roofs form a kind of roof city, a mysterious town above the normal town, inhabited by...what? You can't stop your mind from weaving stories about it.

A cool castle. I don't know anything about it. I swear this castle just appeared in my file without me scanning it in.


Here's a covered bridge (above) in Switzerland. Notice the paintings up in the rafters. Why would anyone paint pictures in such an exposed place? The wood is thick, ships beam/ Ghepetto's workshop wood. Is there anything more beautiful than thick, weathered, structural wood? The sides seem a bit tall to me. Maybe that's to protect users from cold, icy winds that howl down the stream in the winter.

IF YOU'RE A GROTESQUE ARTIST....

IF YOU'RE A GROTESQUE ARTIST, STOP IT! STOP IT RIGHT NOW!!!!!

There are a lot of grotesque artists out there. I feel sorry for them because there's no market for this stuff. At least the over-the-top grotesque artists like the guy who did the picture above can probably get published in punk or alternative magazines. What about the artists who are hybrids: half normal and half grotesque? These unfortunates are doomed. They're not drastic enough to appeal to punks and not normal enough to appeal to a mass audience. If you're one of these caught-in-the-middle types I have a valuable piece of advice for you...stop doing what you're doing! Stop it right now, this minute! Either get more drastic or get more normal! Stay where you are and you'll be eating cereal for dinner for the rest of your life!

I wish I could have illustrated this piece with drawings that are more illustrative of this middle condition. I couldn't bring myself to hold fellow cartoonists up to up to ridicule so I opted to use classic pictures instead, only I had trouble finding them. Thomas Rowlandson is a famous grotesque artist but I couldn't find really good examples of his work. The lame Rowlandson above is the best I could do.

I also tried to find examples of my own inadvertantly grotesque art. Normally my house is cluttered with this stuff but now that I need it I can't find a single drawing. By grotesque I don't mean the extreme Worm poses I've posted so far. They're just exagerrated. Believe me, I have nothing against wild or extreme cartoon drawings. By grotesque I mean drawings that are unintentionally off-putting to the audience, which lack an understanding of the principles of design and therefore have no pleasing elements to balance out the gross parts. Grotesque art of the kind I'm talking about subverts the intent of the artist which was simply to be funny.

Please don't ask me to evaluate your work. I wouldn't presume to do that! All I can offer is advice: if you even suspect that you fall into the category I'm talking about then get a designer friend to redraw some of your questionable drawings so you can see what you might be doing wrong. Pay the person if necessary. You want to keep the guts and humor of the grotesque drawing but use design to make it more appealing. Think of Rod Scribner. He managed to be appealing and drastic at the same time.

Basil Wolverton is often sited as the ultimate grotesque artist. I don't see him in that light. He knew how to use design to make the gross elements more palitable. In the drawing above he balances out the grotesque face with straight, ordered hair. He lets plenty of airspace into the face which softens it. The drastic face is integrated with the whole, sedate grey and red graphic surrounding it.

A FEW MORE WORM DRAWINGS!

A commenter said there was a big difference between the colored Sally (above) and the black and white layout drawing (below). Boy, there sure is! The color drawing feels a lot more psychological, a lot more like it's embedded in a story. The color also puts less emphasis on the armpit, which is not a bad thing.


Here's the Worm (above) preparing to apologize to the human. He's drawn three different ways here and it all still seems like the same character, at least it does to me. I'm amazed at how forgiving animation is! At other places in the story he's drawn differently than anything you see here!

Apparently the audience will accept differences like this as long as you occassionally return to a model and as long as you show differences up front, at the beginning, so people know what kind of cartoon they can expect. Model sheets should be a guide, not a pair of handcuffs.


No more Worm drawings at hand so I'll throw in another of my ghost sketches (above). I love to draw ghosts. They do commonplace things in an uncommon way.