Thanks to Anime Los Angeles

Thanks to our friends at Anime Los Angeles the ASIFA-Hollywood Animation Archive now has a terrific podcasting setup. Danny Young and Michael Woodside, the team behind the fantastic coverage of this year's Annie Awards have agreed to host and compile the podcasts. They have some wonderful plans. Look for the launch of the A-HAA Podcast later this Spring.
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Two New Archive Heroes... Thanks!

ASIFA-Hollywood members, Wes Archer and Kevin Dooley contributed to become "Archive Heroes" when they renewed their membership this month. We appreciate your support! I'm using their donations to purchase a very exciting addition for our library. More on that soon...


Stephen Worth
ASIFA-Hollywood
Animation Archive
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Education: The Zim Course in Cartooning, Comic Art and Caricature

This post is just the tip of the iceberg... see reason number 8 on our The Top Ten Reasons To Support The A-HAA for links to more great info on the history of animation told through the careers of great cartoonists.


A few months ago, I stumbled across a "how to" book on cartooning by Eugene "Zim" Zimmerman. It was titled Cartoons and Caricatures, or Making the World Laugh. I happened to be speaking on the phone to Ralph Bakshi, and I mentioned the book. "Ooooohh! So you've discovered ZIM now! He's one of my secrets..."

In 1967, right after he had resigned as the head of the Paramount cartoon studio, Ralph and his wife Liz were walking through Brooklyn when they saw a sign on an old house advertising an estate sale. They went inside, but it was late in the day and there wasn't much left. Ralph glanced up at a tall bookcase and saw a pile of pamphlets stacked up on a high shelf. It was too high to reach, so he didn't bother to look at them. As they were walking out the door, he got the feeling that he needed to go back and look at the pamphlets. It was a good hunch. The stack contained a nearly complete set of Zim's correspondence course in cartooning. He asked the estate agent how much they cost, and was told $50. That was more than he and his wife had in their pockets, so Liz volunteered to run home and get the money. The Zim books were on his desk every day throughout the production of Fritz the Cat, Heavy Traffic and especially Coonskin. This set is Ralph's most prized possession, and now he is sharing them with the ASIFA-Hollywood Animation Archive.


Zim's correspondence course was the most highly regarded cartooning course of its day. Spanning 20 volumes, it covered a wide range of subjects, from practical homespun advice to lofty philosophy. Here are some examples of Zim's genius from the pages of the four volumes we completed digitizing today...


The course originally ran in 20 volumes. We have been able to find an earlier edition of the course to supplement and complete Ralph Bakshi's set. There aren't chapters or specific assignments. The books consist of page after page of individual nuggets of wisdom. Each book and each page stands on its own.



Zim's course is much more than just a "how to draw" course. In short anecdotal paragraphs, Zim succeeds in conveying what it means to be a cartoonist... the history behind the artform... how to deal with everyday problems and setbacks... and how to live the life of an artist.


There's plenty of drawing lessons too. Zim's masterful expressive line fills every page with perfect examples of the principles he is discussing.


Zim was the founder of the "grotesque" school of caricature, which formed the basis of what we now call "cartoony drawing". He provides lots of examples of caricatures drawn from life, with photos of his subjects alongside his caricature of the person.


Zim's technical skill was unmatched. Just look at the amazing precision and expressiveness of this drawing as he takes it from rough sketch to ink to watercolor.


The book is full of amusing contrasts. A tip on not thinning your ink too much leads into a speculation on what Rembrandt would be doing if he lived in modern times.


If you aren't convinced yet that Zim is a drop dead genius, just click on this image!


The most impressive illustrations in the course are the examples of Zim's rough sketches. He had an uncanny knack for being able to express every nuance of his subject with a free flowing and loose pencil technique.


He was capable of extreme exaggeration that captured the essence of the unique qualities of the personalities he chose to caricature.


But the most amazing thing about Zim's artistry was his ability to draw the viewer into his world and make them feel the way the characters in the drawings feel. Look at these sketches of dogs... They make you feel like a flea bitten hound!

If you would like to see more from the Zim course, let me know in the comments.

If you found this post to be interesting, see more great educational material by Zim... Cartoons and Caricatures and How To Draw Funny Pictures.

Also see... W. L. Evans Cartooning and Caricature Course Brochure, Lesson One and Lesson Two, Preston Blair and John K's $100K Animation Drawing Course, Gene Byrnes' Complete Guide To Cartooning Part One: The Men Behind The Newspaper Comics, Part Two: How To Get Ideas / Studies of Comic Strips, Part Three: Single Panel and Sports Cartoonists, Part Four: Editorial Cartoons & Comic Books, Part Five: Sketching, Part Six: Magazine Cartooning and Part Seven: Magazine Cartooning (continued); Nat Falk's "How To Make Animated Cartoons" Part One: The History of Animation, Part Two: The Cartoon Studios, Part Three: How Cartoons Are Made, Part Four: How To Draw Cartoons and Part Five: How To Animate, Willard Mullin on Animals.

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

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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Cartooning: How To Draw Funny Pictures

This post is just the tip of the iceberg... see reason number 8 on our The Top Ten Reasons To Support The A-HAA for links to more great info on the history of animation told through the careers of great cartoonists.


Last week, I discussed Zim's Cartoons and Caricatures. Here are some more examples of the genius of Zim from another vintage "how to" book... How To Draw Funny Pictures by E.C. Matthews. This chapter deals with a topic that is widely discussed today, racial stereotyping.

Ethnic humor was Zim's stock-in-trade. He once joked that he and his fellow cartoonists at Puck magazine treated the various races and creeds that made up America with gloves... the kind boxers wear. Perhaps this is why he is virtually unknown today. But it's unfair to sit like an armchair quarterback a century later judging an entirely different time by our own standards. Zim approached every person as a peer. He made fun of all of them equally.

Stereotypes are still part and parcel of caricature and cartooning. Pirates have eye patches and parrots on their shoulders. Surfer dudes wear baggy shorts and have long blonde hair. These are the generally understood symbols that represent specific types of people. How does a cartoonist utilize these common perceptions to communicate clearly while still remaining honest? Here is an important first-hand document of how Zim himself explained the purpose and limits of ethnic caricature in the "melting pot" of the early 1920s.















Take note of this advice from the conclusion of this chapter...

Greatness makes one tolerant. Great men are not ashamed to stop on the street and talk to the man in overalls. They recognize the bond of friendship between the common people and themselves. The social sheik who feels above talking to a mere laborer is fooling only himself.

Take this little sermon to heart and treat every man as your equal; it will help you get ahead. How truly the Bible says, "The greatest among you shall be the servant of all."

If you found this post to be interesting, see the... W. L. Evans Cartooning and Caricature Course Brochure, Lesson One and Lesson Two, Preston Blair and John K's $100K Animation Drawing Course, Gene Byrnes' Complete Guide To Cartooning Part One: The Men Behind The Newspaper Comics, Part Two: How To Get Ideas / Studies of Comic Strips, Part Three: Single Panel and Sports Cartoonists, Part Four: Editorial Cartoons & Comic Books, Part Five: Sketching, Part Six: Magazine Cartooning and Part Seven: Magazine Cartooning (continued); Nat Falk's "How To Make Animated Cartoons" Part One: The History of Animation, Part Two: The Cartoon Studios, Part Three: How Cartoons Are Made, Part Four: How To Draw Cartoons and Part Five: How To Animate, Willard Mullin on Animals.

Stephen Worth
Director
ASIFA-Hollywood
Animation Archive
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Cartooning: Zim's Cartoons and Caricatures

This post is just the tip of the iceberg... see reason number 8 on our The Top Ten Reasons To Support The A-HAA for links to more great info on the history of animation told through the careers of great cartoonists.



Eugene "Zim" Zimmerman was born in 1862 in Switzerland, and his family emigrated to the United States when he was seven. As a poor immigrant, Zim witnessed the "melting pot" of American culture first hand. His depictions of ethnic minorities were pointed, but honest and well observed. Although he is pretty much forgotten today, he was very well known in his time, and his humor captured the essence of turn-of-the-century America.


Zim was the founder of the so-called "Grotesque" school of caricature, and was the first caricaturist to incorporate exaggerated cartooniness not only in the faces of his subjects, but in the bodies as well. Zim worked for Puck and Judge, the two top humor magazines of their day. Along with caricatures by George McManus and Frederick Burr Opper, Zim's caricature of a moon faced grinning kid (an example of which appears on page 3 of this book) was said to be one of the earliest inspirations for Mad magazine's mascot character, Alfred E. Neuman.


Zim was a prolific artist, with more than 40,000 illustrations published in his lifetime. He retired from Judge in 1897 and founded the American Association of Cartoonists and Caricaturists. He was also a writer and teacher. His columns ran in Cartoons magazine during the early years of the century, as did ads for his correspondence course in cartooning.


Archive supporter Marc Schirmeister has been searching high and low for a copy of Zim's early educational materials with no luck. But recently this 1910 book, packed with tips for the aspiring cartoonist, turned up in a used bookstore in Arizona...


It's worth noting that the price tag on the cover is an important clue to the value of these lessons to contemporary artists. According to the Consumer Price Index, $5 in 1910 is equivalent to $116 today. Five dollars represented a full day's labor to many of the cartoonists who bought this book. Zim's name in gold letters on the cover was the selling point that made so many aspiring cartoonists part with the "five plunks (in real Money)" as Zim so colorfully puts it in his introduction.


These 100 pages are packed with great cartoons, helpful drawing tips, technical information and business advice for the aspiring cartoonist. Most importantly, Zim passes along his unique philosophy of life, and offers a shining example of how an artistic career as a caricaturist can be incorporated into a person's lifestyle. At the time this book was written, Zim had thirty years of experience under his belt, and had attained the highest level in his field.

Here are just a few choice snippets from this great book...





Guess who?
If you are a fan of caricature, check out Will Finn's latest post and the blog of my favorite caricaturist, Marlo Meekins.

If you found this post to be interesting, see the... W. L. Evans Cartooning and Caricature Course Brochure, Lesson One and Lesson Two, Preston Blair and John K's $100K Animation Drawing Course, Gene Byrnes' Complete Guide To Cartooning Part One: The Men Behind The Newspaper Comics, Part Two: How To Get Ideas / Studies of Comic Strips, Part Three: Single Panel and Sports Cartoonists, Part Four: Editorial Cartoons & Comic Books, Part Five: Sketching, Part Six: Magazine Cartooning and Part Seven: Magazine Cartooning (continued); Nat Falk's "How To Make Animated Cartoons" Part One: The History of Animation, Part Two: The Cartoon Studios, Part Three: How Cartoons Are Made, Part Four: How To Draw Cartoons and Part Five: How To Animate, Willard Mullin on Animals.

Stephen Worth
Director
ASIFA-Hollywood
Animation Archive
.

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