ASIFA-Hollywood Animation Archive

Biography: Al Capp 2- A CAPPital Offense

2008-05-08T14:22:00.000-07:00

This post is just the tip of the iceberg... see reason number 2 on our The Top Ten Reasons To Support The A-HAA for links to more great posts about print cartoonists.

"They always want me to say who is the best writer in America today, and I can't think of any name but Al Capp... One of the symptoms or diagnostics of literature should be that it is read, that it amuses, moves, instructs, changes and criticizes people. And who in the world does that more than Capp? I think Capp may very possibly be the best writer in the world today." -John Steinbeck, 1953

PLAYBOY: John Steinbeck once described you as "possibly the best writer in the world today". What's your reaction to that?

CAPP: I revere John Steinbeck far too deeply to question his literary judgment!" --Playboy Interview, 1965

"Not many people know that I worked with Al Capp for a year at Terry-Toons on a cartoon adaptation of Fearless Fosdick. Capp is one of the great unsung heroes of comics. I've never heard anyone mention this, but Capp is 100% responsible for inspiring Harvey Kurtzman to create Mad magazine.

Just look at Fearless Fosdick- a brilliant parody of Dick Tracy with all those bullet holes and stuff. Then look at Mad's "Teddy and the Pirates", "Superduperman" or even "Little Annie Fanny". Forget about it. Slam dunk. Not taking anything away from Kurtzman who was brilliant himself, but Capp was the source for that whole sense of satire in comics. Kurtzman carried that forward and passed it down to a whole new crop of cartoonists, myself included.

Capp was a genius. You wanna argue about it? I'll fight ya, and I'll win." -Ralph Bakshi, 2008

Li'l Abner's "ideel"- Fearless Fosdick- first made his bullet-riddled debut in 1942. As everyone knows, Capp's famous strip-within-a-strip began as a direct parody of Chester Gould's classic newspaper comic, Dick Tracy. But like all of Capp's creations, it soon developed into a multi-leveled satire of contemporary American society at large.

Fearless Fosdick provided a running commentary on, among other things, the lowly lives of policemen, the capriciousness of the general public, and the thankless role of society's "heroes". With Capp, as with Chaplin, there's always a social subtext to the fun, which in my opinion, separates the men from the boys in comedy. These themes are very much in evidence in our first Fosdick story pick, "The Poisoned Bean Case"...

"The Poisoned Bean Case" is, simply put, one of Capp's masterpieces. It seems to be a special favorite with fans too, both for its astronomical body count and its sheer outrageousness. Believe it or not, this blood-drenched parody ran in family newspapers in the fifties, in Eisenhower's America, on Sundays, no less!

In the following brilliantly demented pages, no one is spared Capp's merciless needle. From the venality of the justice system to the crookedness of the media; from the corruption of big business to the fickleness and stupidity of a complacent populace. The diabolical plot, which concerns product tampering, presages the 1982 Tylenol case by some 30 years.

As a cautionary note to readers encountering this story for the first time: you are hereby warned. It's impossible not to get swept up in the maelstrom of fury that's about to be unleashed. "The Poisoned Bean Case" doesn't so much unfold, as simply detonate! For comics fans who like their irony dark, raw and relentless- we proudly present Al Capp at or near the peak of his powers...

Fearless Fosdick in...
THE POISONED BEAN CASE

TO BE CONTINUED...

Let me know what you think of this article in the comments.
-Mike Fontanelli, 2008

For more on Al Capp, see... Al Capp Part One: Li'l Abner Without Apologies, Gene Byrnes' Complete Guide To Cartooning: Part One- Newspaper Comics and People On Paper (MGM/1945)

See also, Boodie Rogers' Babe Comics Part One, Part Two, and Part Three; Basil Wolverton On Cartoon Sounds Part One and Part Two; Jack Davis in Mad magazine, Jack Kirby in Not Brand Echh Number One, Marie Severn in Not Brand Echh Number Two, Forbush Man in Not Brand Echh Number Five, Parody: Whack Comics Part One and Part Two; Basil Wolverton's Powerhouse Pepper; Milt Stein's Supermouse Comics No. 4; Virgil Partch's Wild, Wild Women; Here We Go Again and Man The Beast; George Lichty's Grin and Bear It; Milt Gross Sunday Pages Part One, Part Two and Part Three; and Jim Tyer Funny Animal Comics

Stephen Worth
ASIFA-Hollywood
Animation Archive
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Caricature: Arthur Szyk The New Order

2008-05-03T09:29:00.000-07:00

This post is just the tip of the iceberg... see reason number 6 on our The Top Ten Reasons To Support The A-HAA for links to more great posts about golden age illustration.

Arthur Szyk was born in Poland and began painting at the age of four. He studied art in Paris until the outbreak of World War I, when he travelled East to study Mohammedan art. In 1914, he joined the Russian army, and later served as an officer in a guerrilla regiment in the Polish army. He married in 1921 and moved back to Paris, where he lived and painted until 1931. Szyk received many important commissions during this time... He illuminated the Covenant of the League of Nations, painted a series of miniatures dealing with the American Revolution that hangs in the White House, and spent three years working on an illumination of the Haggadah, the story of the Jews' flight from Egypt which was dedicated to the King of England.

In 1940, Szyk relocated to Canada, eventually settling in New York City in 1941. Szyk's political cartoons, which were published in the newspaper PM, were described by art critic, Thomas Craven as being "as compact as a bomb, extraordinarily lucid in statement, firm and incisive of line, and deadly in their characterizations." The illustrations we scanned today are from a collection of Szyk's political cartoons called "The New Order"..

Caricature is the foundation of cartooning. It involves the exaggeration of features to highlight and focus personality traits. Szyk was a master of caricature. His ability to clearly express the arrogance, irony and evil behind the trumped up facade of civilized behavior spoke louder than words. "The New Order" is a rare book. It was ahead of its time when it was published in 1941, before the United States entered the Second World War. ASIFA-Hollywood was fortunate to locate a clean copy to digitize.

Thanks
Stephen Worth
ASIFA-Hollywood
Animation Archive
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Donation: David Apatoff's Boyhood Collection of Newspaper Comics

2008-05-01T15:02:00.000-07:00

There was a time when heroes arrived on your doorstep each and every morning... Flash Gordon, Prince Valiant, Tarzan, Terry and the Pirates, and dozens of others... every day without fail. On Sundays, they were in COLOR.

It was a great time to be a kid. For a nickle, you could travel to Dogpatch or Mars or Shanghai. Kids across the country commandeered the comics page at the breakfast table and carefully clipped their favorite stories. They filled scrapbooks, pinned them up on their walls, stashed them in neat little piles under their bed until their mothers complained of the fire hazard.

Moms never understood... they'd use most amazing image of a pterodactyl attacking a sabre toothed tiger to line the birdcage and not even see the irony. Moms are like that. But kids knew that the funny papers were a treasure trove for people with the imagination to appreciate them. Especially kids who loved to draw.

Newspaper comics were an encyclopedia of cartooning styles, and the heroes weren't just the characters in the strips... there were heroes on the other side of the pen too. We've profiled a few here in the past... Milt Gross, Alex Raymond, Milton Caniff, George McManus, Al Capp, Rube Goldberg and Walt Kelly, to name just a few. These men were the direct descendants of Thomas Nast. Their drawings had power.

Some of those kids grew up and never forgot the power of cartooning. David Apatoff is one of them. His blog, Illustration Art is a terrific resource for cartoonists and illustrators interested in all aspects of the artform. David was one of those kids who carefully collected the work of his heroes. And he just donated his boyhood collection of comic strips to the ASIFA-Hollywood Animation Archive.

The collection includes hundreds of comic pages, mostly from the late 30s and early 40s. David collected complete Sunday sections, as well as prime examples from his favorite comic strips... Prince Valiant, Flash Gordon and Tarzan. There are also special poster size pages that ran as specials in the 60s featuring Pogo, Dick Tracy, Peanuts and Dennis the Menace.

If you'll excuse me, I have a little digression to make at this point. I want to tell you a story about something that happened to me a couple of weeks ago...

There's a boy who's a big fan of the archive. He saw the article on us in the L.A. Times and made his mom bring him in for a visit. He lives in San Francisco, but he has family in Los Angeles and visits several times a year. He's only eight or nine, but he can discuss the differences in directoral style between Freleng and Jones, he knows the true story of the creation of Bugs Bunny, and he's interested in the Ub Iwerks Mickey Mouse cartoons. On his first visit, I gave him a copy of Leonard Maltin's Of Mice and Magic as a gift. He devoured it from cover to cover, and sent me a copy of the book report he did on it for class. On his visits he never fails to impress me with his enthusiasm for animation.

Last time he was here, he asked me if we could sit down and talk. He said he had an important question to ask me, and he had asked his family and teacher, but he wasn't satisfied with their answers. He wanted my opinion. He looked me straight in the eye and asked me, "Mr. Worth, was I born too late?"

I was stunned.

That's a question that every cartoonist I've ever met has asked. That same realization hit me like a ton of bricks when I was in college. Ralph Bakshi called me the next day, and I told him what this nine year old had asked me, and all he could say was "Oh my God."

The kid was waiting for my answer. I sat quietly for a second to gather my wits. I looked back at him squarely in his eyes. "I'm not going to lie to you." I said. "The short answer to your question is 'yes'. We were both born too late. The 20th century was one of the most interesting times to live in all history. The world will never be the way it was ever again. I just got a taste of the very end of that golden age myself."

"But that doesn't mean that you can't do great things. You've got a whole life ahead of you. Study hard. Work hard. Always try to improve yourself. Learn from the past and apply it to your own work. Try to be better than the rest, and leave the world a little better than you found it. With any luck, you and people like you will build a new golden age."

That answer satisfied him. He knew it was the truth.

OK. I'm speaking to all you cartoonists out there now... Look at these amazing comics that David Apatoff so generously donated. I'll be scanning them for this blog very soon. While you study them, never forget that the dreams of a million kids resided in those yellowed pages. Compare these comics to the comics in your newspaper. What happened? Why are we cheating our audience so shamefully? Cartoonists have an obligation to go out there and give kids today new dreams that are just as great as the old ones.

Many thanks to David Apatoff for this incredibly generous and thoughtful gift. I'm sure it will inspire great things.

Stephen Worth
Director
ASIFA-Hollywood
Animation Archive
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Pinups: Al Moore Girls From Esquire

2008-04-30T18:18:00.000-07:00

This post is just the tip of the iceberg... see reason number 9 on our The Top Ten Reasons To Support The A-HAA for links to more great pinup art.

Esquire magazine was one of the top publications of its time. It was to the first half of the 20th century what Playboy was to the last half. The pinups of George Petty and Alberto Vargas made the magazine famous. Al Moore painted the Esquire girls and the annual calendar in the late 40s and early 50s. I'm sorry to say, I don't know much about him. His fame has been eclipsed by his predecessors. But his wide eyed blondes have a lot of charm. Here are a couple of fold-outs from the pages of Esquire and the 1950 Esquire calendar...

And here as an added bonus is the 1946 Esquire Pocket Calendar by Alberto Varga (Before he got the "s" at the end of his name...)

If you enjoyed this post, see... Alberto Vargas in Playboy, George Petty's Ridgid Tools Calendars, Petty Girls 1947, Jack O'Brien and Milo Kinn Girlie Cartoons, Eldon Dedini Part One, Part Two (video interview!) and Part Three, Jack Cole And Other Great 50s Playboy Cartoonists, Jack Cole Valentine, Little Annie Fanny Takes A Trip, Kurtzman & Elder's Little Annie Fanny, More Little Annie Fannie, Biography: Jack Davis, Early Erich Sokol Cartoons, A Passel Of Sokol, and More Sokol, Doug Sneyd and Phil Interlandi, Early Interlandi Playboy Cartoons and Meet Doug Sneyd.

Thanks
Stephen Worth
Director
ASIFA-Hollywood
Animation Archive
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Illustration: Huckleberry Hound Builds A House

2008-04-29T21:47:00.000-07:00

This post is just the tip of the iceberg... see reason number 3 on our The Top Ten Reasons To Support The A-HAA for links to more great posts about Golden Book illustrators.

We scanned another Golden Book today... Huckleberry Hound Builds A House. Published in 1959, this was one of the earliest Hanna Barbera books, and it's one of the best. The early H-B characters were beautifully designed and perfectly suited to the TV medium. This book was illustrated by Harvey Eisenberg and Al White.

If you found this to be useful, see also... Harvey Eisenberg's Foxy Fagan Comics, Bozo And His Rocket Ship, Rojankovsky's Frog Went A Courting, Tibor Gergely's A Day In The Jungle, Gustaf Tenggren's The Little Trapper, Uncle Remus Stories Part One and Part Two, Little Verses Part One, Part Two and The New Golden Song Book Part One, Part Two and Part Three.

Thanks
Stephen Worth
Director
ASIFA-Hollywood
Animation Archive

04.30.08
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Event: May 17- Animation Book Look

2008-04-29T09:36:00.001-07:00

The 2nd annual Animation Book Look is the place to be. Creative Talent Network and Van Eaton Galleries present appearances by well-known visual and literary artists, as well as several "undiscovered" animation authors. This years' event will bring a large number of artists/authors representing over seventy-five books, ranging from children's books to artist's sketchbooks, from illustration to fine-art, and from How Tos to History Ofs. Join The ASIFA-Hollywood Animation Archive at the Book Look along with Jerry Beck, Martha Sigall, Tom Sito, Rik Maki, Tony White, Willie Ito, Jim Smith, Amanda Visell, Stephen Silver, Maureen Furniss, Jon Gibson, Mike Kunkel and dozens more on Saturday May 17th, 2008 from 1:00pm-6:00pm.

VAN EATON GALLERIES
13613 Ventura Blvd.
Sherman Oaks, CA 91423
818-788-2357

Animation Book Look is FREE and open to the public. For a List of Authors and Books visit the website. You may pre-order signed and dedicated books online starting May 1st. If you have any questions, please call Van Eaton Galleries at 818-788-2357.

(via Cartoon Brew)

Caricature: Ernesto Garcia Cabral (aka Chango)

2008-04-28T21:17:00.000-07:00

This post is just the tip of the iceberg... see reason number 6 on our The Top Ten Reasons To Support The A-HAA for links to more great posts about golden age illustration.

Ernesto Garcia Cabral (nicknamed Chango) was one of Mexico's greatest political cartoonists and illustrators. He studied art in Paris just before WWI, and became well known there as a cartoonist. He returned to Mexico in 1918 and quickly became one of the country's premiere illustrators. He was known for his expressive caricatures, which illustrated the posters for Mexican film comedies throughout the forties and fifties.

Cabral is almost unknown outside of Mexico, but that is changing. A recent book, Cine Mexicano: Posters from the Golden Age 1936-1956 featured some of his best work.

For more Mexican lobby card see... Cabral Gallery Two, our SciFi and Adventure Gallery, and Mexican Lobby Card Fiesta.

Enjoy!
Stephen Worth
Director
ASIFA-Hollywood
Animation Archive

04.29.08
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Story: Writing Cartoons Pt 3- Structure

2008-04-25T20:16:00.000-07:00

This post is the third in a series on Cartoon Writing. For the first two installments, see... Writing Cartoons: Part One- The Gag Session and Part Two- A Continuity Emerges

When we left off in our series of posts on cartoon writing last time, the initial "No No Session" had generated a pile of unrelated thumbnail gags on a basic premise which were starting to lead to the beginnings of a rudimentary plotline. Today, we'll explore how the cartoon writers brought structure to the story and began to flesh out the continuity in preparation for the storyboard artist to begin work.

In the mid-1930s, the notes from Disney story sessions were widely distributed among the staff. All of the employees, from the directors all the way down to the janitors, were invited to submit gags to the cartoon being developed. The only stipulation was that the gags had to be drawn- not written down. Walt and the story men sifted through the doodles and stick figure drawings to find inspiration for little bits of business that they might not have thought of themselves. If the gag was usable, the employee was given a dollar bonus. If the gag led to a sequence of gags, they were paid five dollars. Here's a typical "dollar gag" from Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs...

In an interview many years later, Ward Kimball recalled that he would supplement his income by generating "dollar gags" in his spare time... His ideas were almost always used, but he soon discovered that he could get five times as much by simply attaching a "butt joke" to the end as a payoff. Inevitably, the "fanny gag" would appeal to Walt's unique sense of humor, and he would choose Kimball's gag as one that might lead to a sequence of gags- Bam! Five bucks!

Kimball wasn't the only artist who knew Walt's preferences when it came to gag ideas... Here is a short sequence of story doodles by Les Clark. This "butt joke" was created for a sequence that was eventually cut from Mickey's Grand Opera (1936)...

Clark is beginning to see an individual gag as a series of actions that relate to each other. His thumbnail sketches suggest enough for a storyboard artist to begin to tighten up his poses, focus the action and define the staging.

THE OUTLINE
As soon as the gags started to come into focus as a basic plotline, the story supervisor would begin arranging them into a logical progression, formatting the embryonic scenario as a written document in outline form. The outline was the equivalent of the "first draft script" for an animated film. But it didn't include dialogue and descriptions of actions the way live action scripts do. Instead, it defined the structure, continuity and intent of the action.

STRUCTURE

In preparing the notes for the storyboard artist to work from, the story supervisor began by establishing a structure to the gags. It was important to clearly define how the story broke down into sequences and how each sequence broke down into individual gags, because the storyboard artist most likely would not be boarding it in chronological order. The artist often drew up the payoffs to the storyline first- it was easier to create a strong setup when he knew where he was going to end up. The outline helped determine the breaks in the story, so the artist could work in an order that made sense for him.

Here we have an outline from Altruists prepared by Ren & Stimpy story man, Richard Pursel. John Kricfalusi's director's notes and doodles for the main setups appear in the margins...

Notice that the document begins with the statement of the premise, and is broken into sections defining the beginning, middle and end, as well as the sequences which fall within those sections. The structural detail goes all the way down to individual gags.

The line breaks make it easy for the storyboard artist to cut up the outline with scissors and pin the individual story beats up on his cork board as a placeholder for action he hadn't boarded yet.

John K recently shared this outline for Stimpy's Invention on his blog, All Kinds Of Stuff...

Read John K's detailed explanation of this outline.
CONTINUITY

The second element that the outline defined was the continuity- the basic flow and logical order of the action. The storyboard artist would receive the doodles from the "No No Session" to work from, so there was no need for detailed descriptions of action. As the old saying goes... "A picture is worth a thousand words" and nowhere was that adage any truer than in cartoon writing. Story artists were accustomed to working from thumbnail sketches, and they could extrapolate the essense of a gag better from a quick sketch than a whole script full of fancy prose.

Here we have an outline for The Return Of Duck Dodgers In The 24 1/2 Century by Mike Maltese, one of the greatest cartoon writers who ever lived. Although this document is from very late in Maltese's career, it clearly shows his creative process. This particular draft is a transitional document. Maltese had already begun boarding when this document was drafted. The first eight sequences and sequences 18, 19 and 20 appear to include dialogue transcribed from the board. The middle section, however is in raw outline form, with very basic descriptions only intended to remind him of which thumbnail gag drawing went where in the continuity. As the storyboard developed, these notes would be updated with dialogue, transforming the outline from being a structural document to being a dialogue script, ready for the voice actors to perform.

If one looked at notes like these out of context, without the knowledge of the visual devolopment that preceded it and the purpose this document serves to the steps that follow, one might mistakenly assume that the story is being written in words. But nothing could be further from the truth. The words merely serve to organize the drawings. The storytelling is all being devised visually.

INTENT

The third, and perhaps most important thing that a storyboard artist required from the notes prepared by the story supervisor was the intent of the action. The cartoon had a purpose, which was stated in the premise. The beginning, middle and end of the story all had purposes as well. If an event in the beginning set up a payoff later in the story, the storyboard artist would need to be made aware of that.

The stories for cartoon short subjects generally broke down into a beginning, (which first established the characters and then the situation they found themselves in) variations on the theme of the premise in the middle of the cartoon, (referred to at Warner Bros as "blackouts") and the "topper gag" and resolution to the situation which formed the end. Every individual gag had to serve the purposes of the sequence it was a part of- all of the parts worked together to tell the story.

In our next installment on cartoon writing, the stage has been set for the storyboard artist to begin blocking out the action and establishing the cinematics...

You won't want to miss the amazing examples of thumbnail boards that I've unearthed in the collection of the ASIFA-Hollywood Animation Archive!

A SIDE NOTE: I've recommended it before, but if you haven't seen the DVD of The Unknown Chaplin, you owe it to yourself to pick up a copy. The process of writing for animated cartoons grew out of the way slapstick comedy shorts were written. In fact, several animators and cartoonists served as gag writers for famous comedians in their younger days. This DVD breaks down Chaplin's creative process and shows you exactly how his films were written. The program that deals with Chaplin's masterpiece, City Lights should be required viewing for storyboard students at every animation school.

For more on cartoon writing see... Writing Cartoons: Part One- The Gag Session and Part Two- A Continuity Emerges

See also... The Greatest Cartoon Writer of All Time, Alvin Show Pilot Board, Alvin Show: The Whistler Storyboard, Clair Weeks' Banyan Deer Storyboard, Louise Zingarelli's Cool World Board, Ren & Stimpy Big House Blues Board Part One, Part Two and Part Three, Stimpy's Invention Board Part One and Part Two.

Stephen Worth
Director
ASIFA-Hollywood
Animation Archive
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Illustration: Artzybasheff's Neurotica

2008-04-25T09:37:00.000-07:00

This post is just the tip of the iceberg... see reason number 6 on our The Top Ten Reasons To Support The A-HAA for links to more great posts about golden age illustration.

Naught so sweet as Melancholy
One of the key concepts that an animator deals with every day is anthropomorphism... In most cases, this is applied to animals or teapots, but this aspect of caricature has barely been explored in mainstream animated films. Boris Artzybasheff was a master of anthropomorphism. He was able to give life and personality not only to animals and objects, but to ideas.

Artzybasheff had a long career as an illustrator, beginning in the late 1920s with art deco style illustrations for books like Creatures, extending all the way through the 1950s. His most notable achievements are his cover illustrations for Time magazine, depicting a wide range of contemporary people in the news; and also his arresting images for magazine ads promoting Shell Oil, Xerox and Parker Pens.

ASIFA-Hollywood is lucky to have a friend like Mike Fontanelli. His library of books on cartooning is one of the best in the country. Mike has agreed to share his collection with ASIFA-Hollywood's Archive. The first book he selected to loan us to be digitized is one of the rarest books in his collection... Artzybasheff's "As I See". The first section of this book is titled "Neurotica" and it is a visual depiction of extreme states of mind.

Anxiety

Frustration

Timidity

Repressed Hostility

Indecision

Infantalism

Paranoia

Schizophrenia

Inferiority

So pure, and so relaxing

Hypochondria

Manic-Depressive

For more amazing images from "As I See", see Artzybasheff's Machinalia and Diablerie

Stephen Worth
Director
ASIFA-Hollywood
Animation Archive

04.25.08
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Meta: Meet David Chai's Students

2008-04-23T15:24:00.000-07:00

Today I got a letter from a group of students from the San Jose State School of Art and Design. They've been following our progress on the website, and stopped by on a recent trip to LA to see what we were up to...

These kids are on fire for the artform and they've got a great instructor pointing them in the right direction. They're going places.

Thanks
Stephen Worth
Director
ASIFA-Hollywood
Animation Archive

P.S. Also in the photo on the left of me are Assistant Archivists Kelsey Sorge-Toomey and Alex Vassilev, and over my shoulder on the right is my right hand man, JoJo Baptista. They're from the Animation program at Woodbury and they're going places too!
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Meta: Beyond The Blog- Need Your Input

2008-04-22T14:51:00.000-07:00

Normally, this is the time of year when we take a week to do our bi-annual fundraising drive.We still might do that at a later date, but we're facing some new challenges and I want to get the input of our regular readers regarding the best way to address them. There are no pictures in this post, but if you value what we provide here, you'll read every word. This may be the most important post I've ever written.

From the very beginning, the Animation Archive project has been navigating uncharted territory. In the past, collections were organized in physical warehouses and history was published in books... But new technology demands new approaches. Today, we aim to organize large amounts of information in databases, and our commentary and analysis is presented in a blog, not a published physical book or magazine. We need to continue to think on our feet to be able to make this new process work.

Currently, there are two challenges to be addressed... The first one is purely practical. How do we insure that our progress continues to expand the way it has over the past two and a half years? Our rate of growth is governed by three things: the archival material contributed for digitization, the "sweat equity" provided by our volunteers, and cash flow. Thanks to great people like Mike Fontanelli, Marc Schimeister, Kent Butterworth and John Kricfalusi, we have more material in for digitization than we can keep up with. Dedicated volunteers like Gemma Ross, Kelsey Sorge-Toomey, JoJo Baptista and Alex Camarillo have made tremendous contributions in building out the structure of the collection. The chief problem we face is the same challenge many organizations face... How do we finance growth?

At this point, 95% of the sustaining budget for the Archive comes from contributors to our physical location... the Archive office in Burbank. The Walter Lantz Foundation, Sony Pictures Imageworks and Dreamworks Animation have provided grants and equipment to keep the doors open. We also receive funding from the thousands of general members of ASIFA-Hollywood, most of whom reside in Southern California. But although the contributions we have received through the PayPal link on the website are greatly appreciated, they don't come close to supporting the large amount of material we provide on the internet. We receive very little in the way of digitized contributions, volunteer help or funding from our internet readers- most of our support comes from people who have an interest the Archive facilities in Burbank. But I spend nearly half my time preparing material for the blog. That imbalanced division of resources just isn't fair.

The second challenge is conceptual... We're moving towards providing something entirely different on the internet than what we originally envisioned. When I first started this blog, my intent was simply to report on the progress of the project. But the postings here in the last year or so have gone far beyond that. The blog has become an important tool for distributing the information we are collecting. As the focus has shifted, my posts have become more in depth. The series of posts on Grim Natwick, Gustaf Tenggren and Milt Gross essentially constituted books, written "straight ahead" chapter by chapter as blog posts. I'm currently working on two more series that will prove to be just as comprehensive... Writing For Cartoons and a reappraisal of the art of Al Capp.

The other day, I went back and looked at the first post on Al Capp, and I realized that to fully absorb all the information there, it would take the better part of an hour. Most blogs, like Cartoon Brew and Boing-Boing are broken into bite sized chunks designed to take no longer than three minutes to read. What I'm creating here is evolving beyond being just another animation blog. I need your help to define what you want that to be.

Our primary purpose at the Archive is the creation of the Animation Database. Currently, our database contains over 3,000 animated cartoons and 40,000 high resolution scans. It would be ideal to be able to provide all of that material online, but the database currently measures in the terabytes. Serving all of that would require technical and financial resources that aren't even on the horizon yet. We need to come up with an achievable plan to work towards that goal.

The question to be answered is simple...

How do we increase the level of participation of the internet community through contributions of digitized material, volunteer labor and monetary donations?

I'm going to throw out a few ideas as suggestions. I would like to hear your opinions on these options. If you have any ideas, please feel free to offer them in the comments below.

1.) SUBSCRIPTION MODEL

Shane Glines' excellent Cartoon Retro site provides lots of material to subscribers behind a password gate. Users pay a monthly fee for access. This blog could shift to providing short teasers for larger scale content behind the subscriber wall. If the subscriber base and subscription cost was high enough, we could eventually serve up significant chunks of the Archive Database.

2.) SALES BASED SUPPORT

We recently offered an eBook of Zim's Cartoons and Caricatures. The proceeds funded the purchase of a 1.5 TB hard drive, which was pretty good for a start. Every month, we could have a different digital product for sale, or provide subscriptions to packages of products, delivered over the course of a year.

3.) ADVERTISING BASED FUNDING

We've been struggling with this option for some time without a great deal of success. Currently, we receive about $100 a month from our banner advertising- not nearly enough to be able to fund content creation. In fact, when the banners were installed, traffic fell 10% and continues to be sluggish. I believe the advertising is an annoyance to many viewers.

4.) SOLICITATION OF DIRECT DONATIONS

We have been struggling with this model for the past couple of years as well. Every six months we do a "pledge drive" where we outline our accomplishments and ask for support. Response has been below the level we need to continue to grow the project. I've avoided doing more than two pledge drives a year to keep the focus on the project, not fundraising. I doubt if we could increase that without alienating our readers.

5.) REPURPOSING CONTENT

We currently have over 500 articles in our archive of posts. Although we provide related links at the bottom of each post and maintain a jump page with links to every post organized by subject, I don't think many readers are using them. If I reduced the number of new posts I do each week and filled in with "reruns", I could continue the blog pretty much the same as it is now.

6.) DIGITAL VOLUNTEERS

I have been trying to encourage readers to help build out the biographies in our Cartoon Hall of Fame. However the lion's share of the biographies there have been written by local animation students from ASIFA-Hollywood Board member, Larry Loc's classes. I would welcome ideas for how to get more volunteer support from the internet readers.

7.) DIGITIZED CONTRIBUTIONS

Every day, I see posts around the "blogosphere" with wonderful scans of articles, illustrations and artwork that would be terrific additions to our collection. I have contacted many of these bloggers asking that they scan at archival resolutions and contribute their images to the Animation Database. Very few of them do this. I would welcome ideas for how to encourage more digital contributions.

Those are the ideas that have been bouncing around in my head lately. I would appreciate your suggestions. If you consider this blog to be a valuable resource, please take the time to add your own thoughts to the comments below.

Thank you
Stephen Worth
Director
ASIFA-Hollywood
Animation Archive
.

Biography: Capps Off- Li'l Abner Without Apologies

2008-04-17T20:39:00.000-07:00

This post is just the tip of the iceberg... see reason number 2 on our The Top Ten Reasons To Support The A-HAA for links to more great posts about print cartoonists.

Some comic artists are appreciated because of their antiquated charm, the musty perfume they carry from another age. But Capp strikes us more and more as timeless, priceless and ageless. -Richard Marschall, NEMO Magazine, April 1986

Today, we're happy to be able to introduce a series of posts on one of the greatest cartoonists ever to grace the funny papers with his presence... Al Capp. Mike Fontanelli has been a fan of Li'l Abner since he was very small. He's grown up to be a fine cartoonist and an authority on Capp's life and work. He's digging into his personal collection of "Cappiana" to illustrate these posts. Thanks, Mike!

CAPPS OFF!
Li'l Abner Without Apologies
Al Capp was an individual of no small complexity, and his intricate personality could be off-putting to say the least- or even downright contradictory. Two books on the artist published recently, The Enigma Of Al Capp (by Alexander Theroux) and Capp's autobiographic book, My Well-Balanced Life On A Wooden Leg tell polar opposite stories.

Capp's star seems to have fallen recently. Contemporary critics seem inclined to recall only his controversial later years, which were marked by divisive anger and a bitterness of the kind to which satirists seem particularly susceptible. Unfortunately, this oversimplification of Capp's complicated persona has overshadowed his creation, invalidating his real legacy. The body of work Capp left behind tells another story, one that's been neglected- or worse, suppressed- in recent years. Those who are aware of Capp's true importance to the history of cartooning can't help but feel a critical reassessment is long overdue.

Revisiting the pages of Li'l Abner in 2008, modern readers will be aghast at the still astonishing plotlines, highly original concepts, and vivid, hilariously ludicrous characterizations. As you'll see in the examples we'll be presenting over the next couple of months, Li'l Abner went where no other comic strip has ever dared to go before or since.

By any modern standard, Li'l Abner must be reckoned an American masterpiece of cartoon satire. The best of Capp's great body of work could arguably hold its own against any classic work of satire, from Candide to Gulliver's Travels, from The Pirates Of Penzance to CATCH-22. While no less an authority than John Steinbeck once recommended Capp for the Nobel Prize in literature, (and he duly deserved a Pulitzer Prize before Gary Trudeau was even born) Capp's rightful place as a modern American equal to Jonathan Swift has still to be recognized.

"With Li'l Abner," writes Richard Marschall, "Capp was calling society absurd, not just silly; human nature not simply misguided, but irredeemably and irreducibly corrupt. Unlike any other strip, and indeed unlike many other pieces of literature, Li'l Abner was more than a satire of the human condition. It was a commentary on human nature itself."

While Al Capp presented himself to the world "warts and all", there's been an effort of late to portray only the warts. We at the ASIFA Hollywood Animation Archive are grateful for this opportunity to present the rest of the story.

To start out, here is one of the finest stories in the history of the strip, "Loverboynik, or Ketch A Critic By The Toe". It's a timely spoof of two diametrically opposed pillars of mid-20th century manhood: Charles Atlas and Liberace. According to Capp, Liberace was "cut to the quick" when this story first appeared in 1956, and even threatened legal action.

This superb example of Capp's masterfully controlled plotting technique, breathlessly combines humor and suspense into a seamless whole. The tension doesn't let up until the hilarious and characteristically bizarre resolution. It also showcases some of the most memorably harrowing aspects of the strip (gulp!) Sadie Hawkins Day, (gasp!) Nightmare Alice, and (shudder!) The Scraggs...

TO BE CONTINUED...
Mike Fontanelli, 2008

Let Mike know in the comments what you think of his article!

For more on Al Capp, see... Gene Byrnes' Complete Guide To Cartooning: Part One- Newspaper Comics and People On Paper (MGM/1945)

See also, Boodie Rogers' Babe Comics Part One, Part Two, and Part Three; Basil Wolverton On Cartoon Sounds Part One and Part Two; Jack Davis in Mad magazine, Jack Kirby in Not Brand Echh Number One, Marie Severn in Not Brand Echh Number Two, Forbush Man in Not Brand Echh Number Five, Parody: Whack Comics Part One and Part Two; Basil Wolverton's Powerhouse Pepper; Milt Stein's Supermouse Comics No. 4; Virgil Partch's Wild, Wild Women; Here We Go Again and Man The Beast; George Lichty's Grin and Bear It; Milt Gross Sunday Pages Part One, Part Two and Part Three; and Jim Tyer Funny Animal Comics

Stephen Worth
ASIFA-Hollywood
Animation Archive
..