Tuesday, March 13, 2007
Animation Art: Alex Toth Model Sheets
This post is just the tip of the iceberg... see the bonus reason on our The Top Ten Reasons To Support The A-HAA for links to more great posts featuring animation art.
Alex Toth passed away last year at the age of 77. Along with Will Eisner and Jack Kirby, Toth is considered one of the giants of adventure comics. Today's post is just the first of several on this important artist. Toth began his career at age 15, creating illustrations for Heroic magazine. He graduated from the High School of Industrial Arts in 1947, and soon was working at DC Comics on The Flash, Green Lantern and The Atom. He left DC in 1952 and was drafted into the Army in 1954.
After his stint in the service, he moved to Los Angeles, where he worked for Dell on the highly regarded Zorro comics. In 1960, he joined Hanna-Barbera as a designer and storyboard artist on Space Angel, Jonny Quest, Herculoids and Super Friends. His designs for these shows are masterful and imaginative.The pity is that the actual animation on these shows isn't even close to being in the same league. Realistic designs like these are very difficult to animate, and require a draftsman of Toth's calibre to be able to pull off convincingly. But the late 60s was the wrong time for such a challenge. Hanna Barbera was in a mad race with Filmation to see who could put out the cheapest factory-made programming on the tightest schedule. Toth's imagination and skill were left behind in the dust. Instead of respecting what could have been, Toth's designs are now taken completely out of context and subjected to ridicule in current TV programs.
Archive supporter, Kent Butterworth brought us a few original Toth drawings to digitize, and I've supplemented them with some xeroxes belonging to the family of Carlo Vinci.
If you found this post to be interesting, see also... Gene Byrnes' Complete Guide To Cartooning, Maxfield Parrish's Arabian Nights, Lotte Reineger's Prince Achmed Part One and Part Two and The Wan Brothers.
Thanks
Stephen Worth
Director
ASIFA-Hollywood
Animation Archive
1.22.09
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Labels: Alex Toth, comics, hanna barbera, jonny quest
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posted by Stephen Worth @ 8:55 PM
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15 Comments:
BRILLIANT!! I've always beens a big fan of Toth's designs for the 60s action series, and this post really hit teh nail rihgt on the head! Thanks, Steve and Kent!
I saw a storyboard for SUPERFRIENDS, the worst show HB ever made, by Alex Toth and it was dramaically lit and had great angles and stuff and it was very well drawn. Shame it never translated.
My dream is that they make a Space Ghost show witj animation like Fleischer's Superman cartoons, except with Alex's original designs.
I love Mr. Toth's art, and have fond (though a bit fuzzy) memories of watching Space Ghost, Herculoids et al. as a kid. I'm grateful that you've posted these sheets, and would like to see more, but I feel that your comments that the Cartoon Network shows "ridicule" Toth's characters may be a bit out of line. I don't detect any malice or ridicule in the tone of the Cartoon Network shows- in fact I see it as an homage to the great cartoons of yesteryear. In fact, after Toth's death last year, Cartoon Network devoted airtime to his passing. On another note, I'd like to direct your readers to Alex Ross's 2004 Space Ghost comic for another excellent re-imagining of a classic character.
It's hard to imagine describing late 60s Hanna Barbera shows as "great cartoons of yesteryear". The problem is that they were so cheaply produced in the first place. Toth's designs were bulldozed over by sloppy animation.
Respect for Toth would involve going back to his original designs and storyboards and animating them with the production value that they deserve. Cutting characters out and turning them into video puppets to mouth "snappy dialogue" written by stand up comics isn't paying homage to Toth's vision. It's exploiting it to make it look foolish.
See ya
Steve
Thanks for the post Stephen. As a fan of Toth I appreciate seeing these model sheets and the homage to a fine illustrator, designer, and draftsman. With that in mind I'll not judge you on your rather limited view of the world of animation. Personally, I grew up on the cheap HB along with classic WB, and I love them all. The world of animation needs variety. There can be a certain accidental charm to cartoon's made with cheapness.
And, as a designer and animator who has worked on many of those "video puppet" shows such as SGC2C and The Brak Show, I choose not to get offended at your offhanded remarks and instead pity your lack of understanding that there is more than one type of humor in animation. I also sincerely disagree that we have EVER made Toth's designs look foolish. In fact, I would say that these shows have helped to keep Toth's legacy alive and kept enough interest in the designs for the artist and estate to continue printing anthologies of his older work. Would you rather they be gone forever and forgotten? Not to mention the fact the I and other animators worked really hard to stay true to his models. One thing your grumpy rant does remind me of is Alex Toth himself, a notorious curmudgeon.
Steve, I also have to disagree about Cartoon Network disrespecting Toth's designs.
While they didn't go back and re-do the original cartoons with Toth's original vision, they did take what was best about the cartoons that were made and re-invigorated them, while also reflecting on the genuine nostalgia people have for the original awful cartoons.
You may consider the original Space Ghost mere video puppets, but I see Williams Street taking inspiration from what was great about those cartoons.
In any case, it's wonderful to see Toth's original art -- thank you!
Toth, I think has, at least in the broader media arts, about as much respect as an single artist can have. He really is probably amongst one of the 4 or 5 best character designers of the 20th Century. Mark Davis, Shigeru Miyamoto, Jack Kirby, Alex Toth, sounds like the right group when I think of my top four.
Of that group I almost feel sorry for Toth, incredible draftsmanship and vision, second to none in visual story telling, yet, less than awe inspiring production values to back up his incredible work. Still he made so many great, if kind of bad, cartoons. I still just love to look at old Johnny Quest.
I think that really even if you don't like what adult swim has done with the more direct samplings of his work (e.g. Space Ghost Coast to Coast), Toth stills cast a long shadow over of there productions. Venture Brothers may be the finest American Cartoon in production (as much as any cartoon is American) and Toth looms heavy over that entire production. I don't think that you could describe what they are doing there as anything less than reverential really.
Toth is dead, long live Toth.
Put yourself in Toth's place...
Imagine that you are an artist who sweated and toiled over your designs to make them the best you could. The shows you designed got shipped overseas and they were butchered in a country you probably have never even heard of before. Years later, the only thing people remember about the shows you designed was how funny the lousy animation was. They make fun of them by cutting still frames of your drawings out of the context you created them for, and put funny words in the mouths that have nothing to do with anything you ever created in your entire career. Then they have the cojones to call that an "homage".
You don't have to be a curmudgeon to imagine how an artist who has passion for his work would feel about that. Toth wasn't a grumpy old man. He was a disrespected artist dismayed at how far his artform had sunk.
Have you read the Chuck Jones article two posts down? If you want to hear some really blistering curmudgeonry, check it out.
The way to respect great cartoonists like Jones and Toth is to build on what they created, and try to do better yourself... not disassemble their work into sprites to fit dialogue that would have made them throw their drawing boards at you.
See ya
Steve
Greg, how exactly is making drug jokes and gay jokes about Birdman and Spaceghost an homage?
I enjoy Space Ghost and The Herculoids out of nostalgia, they were some of my favourite cartoons as a kid when Cartoon Network actually showed them early in the morning, but they weren't in any way great series. Fun, but very conservative and. The sound effects are neato!
In every department, they were miles ahead inof Superfriends, Toth's 1970s series, and as wiht all things Hanna-Barbera, the earlier, the better.
As for that Spce Ghost re-imagining, here is its synopsis from wikipedia:
"Space Ghost's real name is revealed to be Thaddeus Bach. Bach, an interplanetary peacekeeper, is betrayed by corrupt officers, who [b]kill his pregnant wife[/b] and abandon him on a desolate planet."
Here are Toth's words on modern "edgy" comics:
"The ugly, mean, vile, banal, twisted, sick, bloody celebration of torture, rape, cruelty, filth, demonic and socio-political psycho-babble -- and death -- is disgusting stuff to me -- and it's our youngest writers/cartoonists/editors cranking out this garbage! Which is sub-anti-human drek, devoid of original thought or of moral, ethical values -- it is hopeless fatalism, nihilism, anarchy, pointy-headed anti-everything gibberish -- and most of it dares to label itself 'adult' -- 'for mature readers' -- etc, ect -- which is nonsense!"
I first saw Alex Toth's art when I was a kid, although I didn't know who it was or anything about him at the time. He was a contributor to Pete Millar's Drag Cartoons comic in the 60's and I regularly bought that at the local shop when I was 10 or 11 years old. If you were or are a fan of cars and drag racing toons of the 60's, a great book out is Toth - "One For The Road" by Michael Auad Publishing, featuring his comics that he wrote and drew for Drag cartoons.
Well no one seems t mention that while yes maybe HB produced a large amount of low budget work that didn't keep the detail and feel of Toth's work... there is Johnny Quest.
Johnny Quest was done with high quality throughout its run and keeps the feel Toth gave to it. Give HB some credit at last for that.
Makes my work look silly.
Thanks for the informative and lovely art. Keep up the work you guys are doing, it's noble.
Man, I love Alex Toth's work. It's so natural and smooth, so hard to imitate (and I've tried!). Space Ghost and Space Angel were my faves of his designs.
Beautiful! I am a hardcore Alex Toth fan... and I see at least one model sheet there by him, but didn't Doug Wildey do more for "Jonny Quest?" Wildey's the co-creator of that show.
I'd love to see some Wildey designs.
I think H-B's animators were really unable to do justice to Toth's work. I agree that it'd take a draftsman of his caliber to really animate that stuff successfully and unfortunately, there was only one Alex Toth. I hate that he's associated with bad animation when his actual artwork was so superior to most in the field. He's there with Jack Kirby and Al Williamson as far as I'm concerned... right there at the top.
And I'm pretty sure he would've been incredibly pissed at the stuff Cartoon Network's doing with his designs. They're not making them valid for a new generation, they're desecrating the man's creations. It's a smarmy repurposing full of fart jokes (and most damningly, UNfunny fart jokes) that's anathema to what Alex Toth stood for.
Post-ironic, post-modern hipster bullshit.
Anyway, thanks for putting these up here so we can see the real thing in its natural state!
Holy excellent draftsmanship, these are excellent drawings by a master. If only Hanna-Barbera had respected Alex Toth and his art, we could have had greater versions of all those action/adventure cartoons like "Space Ghost".
I love Toth mostly from his work in the early, mid-sixties Warrens, when Archie Goodwin was chief writer and editor of Creepy and Eerie. I also have a fondness for his Hanna-Barbera work, though the animation was amazingly stiff.
I like Harvey Birdman a great deal, as a gag-oriented show. It's just consistently funny. It's hard to imagine fawning over the original Birdman cartoon so humorlessly, but to each their own.
If you're trying to describe The Venture Brothers as 'post-modern hipster fart jokes' you're just not getting it. It's an amazingly complex, character-driven black comedy. They started with the Johnny Quest, and other Toth designs, mixed in some Dan Clowes, and just used all that as a springboard. They have created a rich, cinematic world that greatly exceeds any of the HB cartoons it's parodying. If they put out a coffee table book about that show, I'd buy it the day it came out!
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