Cartooning: Byrnes' Complete Guide To Cartooning Part Seven

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 cartooning told through the careers of great artists.

Magazine Illustration by Jan Balet (See Lief Peng's Flickr set for more images by Jan Balet.)

We continue our series of posts on Gene Byrnes' Complete Guide To Cartooning with the second part of the section dealing with Magazine Cartooning... I'm afraid I don't have much information on these artists. If you can contribute a fact or two, please post them to the comments below.

MICHAEL BERRY
Michael Berry contributed pretty girl cartoons to Pictorial Review, Esquire, Liberty and The New Yorker.






JOHN RUGE
John Ruge's elegant girl drawings appeared in Colliers in the late 40s and Playboy in the early 50s. His comic about an Irish Setter named Clancy was also popular.




RALPH STEIN & STAN HUNT
Ralph Stein was the author of a collection of pinup girl art titled The Pinup From 1852 to Now. He wrote the Popeye newspaper comic in the 1950s, and was an avid classic car enthuiast. Stan Hunt was a regular contributor to The New Yorker. He attended the New York School of Art and apprenticed under Willard Mullin. He passed away in 2006 at the age of 77.




RICHARD SARGENT
Richard Sargent contributed images to Pictorial Review and The Saturday Evening Post.




JAN BELET
Jan Belet was a childrens book illustrator who also did artwork for several women's magazines.




RICHARD TAYLOR & FRANK OWEN
Richard Taylor was a cartoonist for The New Yorker and Playboy. Frank Owen was a cartoonist for The Saturday Evening Post He was the one who came up with the original story idea for the Disney's cartoon, Morris, the Midget Moose.



THE IMPORTANCE OF CARTOONS IN ADVERTISING
By Don Herold


A STUDY IN LAUGHS



ROY DOTY

Over the past half century, Roy Doty has been a cartoonist and illustrator with over 60 children's books to his credit. He was awarded a Reuben by the National Cartoonist Society in 2006. See RoyDoty.com to see what he's up to lately.




Many thanks to Marc Crisafulli and David King for sharing this great book with us.

If you found this post to be interesting, see... Gene Byrnes' Complete Guide To Cartooning Part One: The Men Behind The Newspaper Comics, Part Two: How To Get Ideas / Studies of Comic Strips and Part Three: Single Panel and Sports Cartoonists, Part Four: Editorial Cartoons & Comic Books, Part Five: Sketching, and Part Six: Magazine Illustration

Also see... 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. Also, see... Willard Mullin on Animals.

Thanks
Stephen Worth
Director
ASIFA-Hollywood
Animation Archive

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Life Drawing: Pogany's Sketchbook

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 art instruction posts.


Drawing is a language, and it requires building a vocabulary to be eloquent. Students should carry a sketchbook with them wherever they go and draw everything they see- from people's heads in a late night coffee shop to fireplugs on the street. Everything you draw becomes part of your dictionary of imagery in the future.

Cartoons are about things that aren't real- pure imagination. But even here, it's important to have balance... A friend of mine, Louise Zingarelli once told me, "You can't draw crazy things until you can draw perfectly straight. Wonky perspective all over isn't weird or interesting- it's just ugly and dumb. You've got to have both, working right against wrong... just like working warms against cools in colors."

Recently, we featured the book, Willy Pogany's Drawing Lessons. Pogany was a children's book illustrator who specialized in fantasy subjects. At the end of the book, after the lessons, he presents a selection of his work sketches. Pogany was particularly eloquent, with a huge library of shapes and forms in his head. He also had an amazing sense of balance- making the fantastic seem real. This is truly great draftsmanship.


















This classic book is still in print. Pick up a copy at Amazon for your reference library.


If you found this post to be useful, see Willy Pogany's Drawing Lessons Part One

For more art instruction posts, see The $100K Animation Drawing Course, Fundamentals of Composition Part One and Part Two, Chad's Design for Television, Willard Mullin on Animals, Incorporating Natural Forms- Haeckel's Artforms in Nature, and Originality vs Imitation: Chaplin's Shadow.

Thanks
Stephen Worth
Director
ASIFA-Hollywood
Animation Archive
.

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Life Drawing: Willy Pogany's Drawing Lessons

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 art instruction posts.


Willy Pogany was one of the most important book illustrators and designers of the first half of the 20th century. His Rime of the Ancient Mariner and books based on Wagnerian opera are masterpieces, to say nothing of his editions of Mother Goose, Alice in Wonderland and Faust. While other illustrators were confining themselves to an occasional tipped in plate buried among page after page of identical text blocks, Pogany broke the mold, designing elaborate pen and ink illustrations that surrounded the text, ornate capitals for the beginning of each page and calligraphy that turned the words into art. He is probably the artist most responsible for establishing what we think of as modern children's book illustration.


He was also an author and teacher, with three books covering drawing, oil painting and watercolor. Today, I am presenting a section from his book Willy Pogany's Drawing Lessons titled...

FIGURE SKETCHING

One of the most fascinating subjects to draw is the human figure.

The fine proportions, beautiful modeling and delicate balance, and the infinite variations in movement and repose are such that there is no other living thing to compare with it.

Through countless ages artists of all races have drawn, painted and modeled the human form.


If you have never done any figure drawing, I would suggest that you start to draw the human figure in its simplest pose with little or no foreshortening. This is an upright standing position with arms close to the body and feet together.

Make up your mid before you begin, how large you want your drawing to be and mark on the paper the total length desired. Your drawing must be exactly the size that you have indicated on your paper.

Your next step is to draw a straight vertical line connecting the two marks. This will indicate the imaginary line of gravitation running from head to foot.

Now mark the center of the body by dividing the vertical line into two equal parts. Mark your proportions.

Draw in the oval of the head.


Measure the width of the shoulders compared to the length of the body. Draw in the shoulder line. Do the same with the hips.

To measure, use a pencil in your outstretched hand, first getting the width, then measuring vertically the number of times the width goes into the total length of the body. Now proceed to draw the masses of the chest, hips, legs, etc.


To check on your drawing, watch the shape of the background that surrounds the figure. See if these "left spaces" (or negative shapes) correspond with the outline of your drawing.

For instance, whatever the position of your subject, watch the shape and size of the space between the arms and the body; between the tilted head and the shoulder; between the two legs, etc, etc.

These will be your left spaces. Special attention to them will be of great help in making a correct drawing.














This classic book is still in print. Pick up a copy at Amazon for your reference library.


For more art instruction posts, see The $100K Animation Drawing Course, Fundamentals of Composition Part One and Part Two, Chad's Design for Television, Willard Mullin on Animals, Incorporating Natural Forms- Haeckel's Artforms in Nature, and Originality vs Imitation: Chaplin's Shadow.

Thanks
Stephen Worth
Director
ASIFA-Hollywood
Animation Archive

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Drawing: John K Advice Letter and Eddie's Boney Finger

Good drawing is more important than anything else in animation. More than ideas, style, stories. Everything starts with good drawing. -- John K

I remember when we were hot in production on the George Liquor web cartoons at Spumco in 1998, a package came in the mail from a kid who was a fan of the Spumco website. He sent some of his own comics and funny drawings, so I took them to John K to look over. John took time out to sit down and carefully compose a letter back to the kid, giving him many of the same tips he shares with you in the $100K Animation Drawing Course here at the Archive.

Almost a decade has passed and that kid has grown up and is attending Sheridan College studying to be an animator. His name is Amir Avni. Amir posted the letter that John sent him in the hopes that it can help others like it helped him.

Toonamir: Time to give a lil' sumpin' back

It's a good week for advice for animation students, cartoonist Eddie Fitzgerald throws his hat in the ring in his inimitable style...


Uncle Eddie: THE DIRTY OLD BONEY FINGER

Read the comments on Eddie's post too.

See also... The $100K Animation Drawing Course and Will Finn's Letter From Ward Kimball.

Stephen Worth
Director
ASIFA-Hollywood
Animation Archive
.

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Cartooning: Byrnes' Complete Guide To Cartooning Part Six

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 animators.


Thanks to Clarke Snyder for this great Hurst ad.
We continue our series of posts on Gene Byrnes' Complete Guide To Cartooning with the first part of the section dealing with...

MAGAZINE CARTOONING
Introduction by Charles D. Rice


PERRY BARLOW
Perry Barlow worked along side a star-studded group of cartoonists at The New Yorker which included, among others, James Thurber, Peter Arno, Gardner Rea, Charles Addams, Whitney Darrow Jr, Sam Cobean and William Steig. From its inception, The New Yorker was, as its founding editor Harold Ross described it, "a reflection in the word and picture of metropolitan life". The images were equal with the words, and this magazine contributed greatly to the development of cartooning. Here, Barlow discusses his ideating process for a Halloween cover.




WILLIAM VON RIEGEN
Von Riegen was featured in our previous post from this book, Part Four: Sketching. His gesture drawings were greatly admired.



EARL OLIVER HURST

Earl Oliver Hurst has been profiled extensively at Shane Glines' excellent Cartoon Retro site. Hurst was primarily a "pretty girl" cartoonist whose work appeared in Colliers, True and American Weekly. His ads for Jantzen are particularly popular among current cartoonists. If you would like to see more, there is a great book on Hurst at Amazon... The Art Of Earl Oliver Hurst







KURT STOESSEL
H. Kurt Stoessel was born in 1909 in Germany, and studied at the Art Institute of Chicago. He was an illustrator and art director for several national magazines including The Atlantic. He lived and worked in Boulder, Colorado his entire career, and passed away on this day in 1984.






FRED COOPER
You may not know the name of Fred Cooper but you certainly have seen his work. He was a letterer, poster designer, illustrator, cartoonist, writer and teacher. Leslie Cabarga describes him as the original "clip art" artist- his "big head" cartoon characters were seen in dozens of magazines of the teens and twenties, and continue to be in use to this day. For more on this influential cartoonist, see Allan Holtz's tribute in Strippers, and Cabarga's book The Lettering and Graphic Design of F.G. Cooper



GLUYAS WILLIAMS
We mentioned Gluyas Williams in an earlier post on Collier's Magazines From the 1930s. Williams was one of the most prolific and influential cartoonists of the 1920s. His work appeared in The New Yorker, Colliers and Life. Robert Benchley wrote, "I believe that Williams' drawings will be preserved for expert contemplation both as data on the manners and customs of our day, and as graceful and important examples of its art." For more great work by cartoonist Gluyas Williams, see David King's gluyaswilliams.com



ROBERT OSBORN
Robert Osborn was a cartoonist whose style influenced the UPA artists greatly. He worked with John Hubley on the film, Flat Hatting, which is available for download at Cartoon Brew Films.



BARTOLI
Bartoli's ink drawings appeared on the covers of quite a few issues of Holiday magazine in the late 40s and 50s. I haven't been able to find out much information about him. Perhaps someone out there knows and will post some biographic info on him to the comments below.




Many thanks to Marc Crisafulli and David King for sharing this great book with us.

If you found this post to be interesting, see... Gene Byrnes' Complete Guide To Cartooning Part One: The Men Behind The Newspaper Comics, Part Two: How To Get Ideas / Studies of Comic Strips and Part Three: Single Panel and Sports Cartoonists, Part Four: Editorial Cartoons & Comic Books, and Part Five: Sketching

Also see... 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. Also, see... Willard Mullen on Animals.

Thanks
Stephen Worth
Director
ASIFA-Hollywood
Animation Archive

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Auction: Jim Smith Ren and Stimpy Layout Drawings

This post is just the tip of the iceberg... see The Top Ten Reasons To Support The A-HAA for more amazing animation related articles.



The Remarkable Jim Smith
Jim Smith is one of the most talented artists I've ever had the pleasure of working with. Jim heard that the Archive was doing a fundraising drive, so he dug in his closet to find drawings for us to sell for him. These sketches were recently auctioned and a portion of the proceeds went to support the ASIFA-Hollywood Animation Archive. Thanks Jim!


























For more on Ren & Stimpy in the ASIFA-Hollywood Animation Archive blog, see... Big House Blues Seq. 1, Big House Blues Seq. 2 and Big House Blues Seq. 3. For more Ren & Stimpy stuff, see... John K's Stimpy's Invention and our profile of Vincent Waller

Thanks
Stephen Worth
Director
ASIFA-Hollywood
Animation Archive

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Cartooning: Byrnes' Complete Guide To Cartooning Part Five

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 animators.



We continue our series of posts on Gene Byrnes' Complete Guide To Cartooning with the section on the fundamental skill that at is the root of all pictorial art...

SKETCHING
Introduction by Gene Byrnes


WILLIAM VON RIEGEN
"William Von Riegen, with his studies of figure drawing, claims that this type of exercise gives him a looseness and freedom of line that he couldn't get in any other way. Von Riegen is an outstandingly talented young man in the field- an especially fine artist." -Gene Byrnes






FINE ARTISTS
In this section, Byrnes does a fine job of clearly showing the link between fine art and cartooning.




HEINRICH KLEY
"Heinrich Kley as a pen and ink artist is in a class by himself. I know of nobody who ever had the freedom of line with a pen that could compare with Kley's. Each of his drawings is a little masterpiece." -Gene Byrnes







ROGER VERNAM
"Roger Vernam's animals are good examples of on the spot sketching. In his book published by Harper, entitled Drawing People For Fun, he sketches people from all walks of life." -Gene Byrnes



GORDON GRANT
"Gordon Grant, the world renowned marine artist, whose work appears in dozens of art museums, works in oil, watercolor, and pen and ink. Whenever he has any spare time, he uses it to sketch. His sketches on the following pages were taken from his private sketchbooks and were done on a trip through Brittany. They were accomplished with a fountain pen and no preliminary pencil work." -Gene Byrnes






HOWARD BRODIE
"Howard Brodie's portrait sketches were done in Germany when he was an artist correspondent with the United States Army. His drawings of the G,I. the battle scenes, and the action that he portrayed while he was in the Army have made him famous." -Gene Byrnes



FURTHER READING
In his blog, Temple of the Seven Camels, Mark Kennedy has been offering sage advice to beginning animators about the value of carrying a sketchbook with you wherever you go. Make sure to read the whole series...

Carrying A Sketchbook Part One, Part Two, Part Three and Part Four


...And don't miss his posts on Ronald Searle's Secret Sketchbook Part One and Part Two; and Ken Anderson's Africa Sketchbook

If you don't have The Drawings of Heinrich Kley in your library, get over to Amazon right away and order it. As Gene Byrnes says, no cartoonist should be without this book!

Many thanks to Marc Crisafulli and David King for sharing this great book with us.

If you found this post to be interesting, see... Gene Byrnes' Complete Guide To Cartooning Part One: The Men Behind The Newspaper Comics, Part Two: How To Get Ideas / Studies of Comic Strips and Part Three: Single Panel and Sports Cartoonists, and Part Four: Editorial Cartoons & Comic Books

Also see... 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. Also, see... Willard Mullen on Animals.

Thanks
Stephen Worth
Director
ASIFA-Hollywood
Animation Archive

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Instruction: A Drawing Lesson From Walter Lantz

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 art instruction posts.


Walter Lantz was one of animation's pioneers. His career in animation went all the way back to 1917, when he was an assistant working at the Hearst cartoon studio under the supervision of Gregory LaCava. He became a director for Bray, creating the Dinky Doodle series, where he appeared in live action alongside the animated title character.

He moved to Hollywood in 1927 and worked for a time as a gag man for Mack Sennett and Hal Roach. A friendship with Universal studio chief, Carl Laemmle led to Lantz heading up his own studio at Universal. For the nearly half a century, Lantz produced great cartoons starring Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, Andy Panda, Woody Woodpecker and Chilly Willy. He won ASIFA-Hollywood's highest honor, the Winsor McCay Award in 1973.

Archive supporter, Rich Borowy has been hard at work digitizing vintage television tapes from his personal collection for the Archive Database. Here is an example of the treasures he is contributing. This is an episode of the prime-time Woody Woodpecker Show from 1964. In this episode, Walter Lantz gives the kids in the audience a basic drawing lesson by showing a few of his staff artists at work. Included in this clip are Paul J. Smith and one of the few female animators from the golden age of animation, LaVerne Harding.




The best part about this program is that it includes the original commercials... and they are all animated! There are Kellogg's spots by Lantz's own studio starring Woody, as well as examples from Hanna-Barbera and Jay Ward.





Click on the link below to see a clip from this great TV program. Many thanks to Rich Borowy for sharing this with us!


Woody Woodpecker Show (Lantz/1964)
(Quicktime 7 / 13.8 megs)

PLEASE NOTE The text and media files on the ASIFA-Hollywood Animation Archive Blog are not to be duplicated, redistributed or hosted on other websites without the prior written permission of the Board of Directors of ASIFA-Hollywood.

If you are interested in vintage drawing lessons, don't miss Nat Falk's "How To Make Animated Cartoons" Part One: History of Animation, Part Two: The Cartoon Studios, Part Three: How Cartoons Are Made, Part Four: Drawing For Animation and Part Five: How To Animate.

For more drawing lessons, see The $100,000 Cartoon Drawing Course, Bill Nolan's Cartooning Self Taught and Willard Mullin On How To Draw Animals.

Stephen Worth
Director
ASIFA-Hollywood
Animation Archive

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School: A Comment

I occasionally search blogs for new students starting the $100,000 Cartoon Drawing Course and to check out the progress students are making. Today, I ran across this post...

John K is a great teacher with charisma dripping from every word in his blog. This charisma is great for inspiration. He speaks of how great the old "golden age" of animation was, and of the decline in artistic skill in the animation trade today. My interpretation of his blogs intentions is that it is an aid in rebuilding animation as an artistic trade. What I mean by 'artistic trade' is a line of skilled manual artistic work.

To be a 'real' animator you do need a well developed skill set. Fortunately, for people like me, these skill sets (techniques/methods/practices/principles whatever you want to call them) have already been developed and refined.

Read the rest at Sam Howie's Animation Submarine

Sam "gets it". The $100,000 Cartoon Drawing Course is a lot tougher than it looks on the surface. But if you dig in and learn the fundamentals, you'll be well rewarded for your effort.

Get to work!

Stephen Worth
Director
ASIFA-Hollywood
Animation Archive

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Education: $100,000 Drawing Course Update

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 art instruction posts.


Kevin Langley's Screwy Sketchblog has pictures of how he printed out and bound the instructional texts we've posted.

It's been about nine months since we started the $100,000 Cartoon Drawing Course. That's long enough that you should be seeing a night and day improvement in your work.

Link to a few of your "Before and After" pictures in the comments below, and let's see how you're doing...

Thanks
Stephen Worth
Director
ASIFA-Hollywood Animation Archive

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Meta: The $100,000 Animation Drawing Course- Functional Drawing

NOTE: Do not move on to this lesson unless you have completed Lesson One, Lesson Two, Lesson Three, Lesson Four, Lesson Five, Lesson Six, Lesson Seven, Lesson Eight, Lesson Nine, and Lesson Ten

FUNCTIONAL DRAWING

Read John Kricfalusi's lesson at...
Functional Drawing Part One: Layout & Posing



I will add links to the further lessons in this topic as John posts them.

Stephen Worth
Director
ASIFA-Hollywood
Animation Archive