BOOO TOOONS BLOOOG

Stuck on You

2009-11-30T11:59:00.001-08:00

New Popeye Studies

2009-11-13T15:09:00.000-08:00

CLICK HERE TO SEE THE FIRST POPEYE STUDIES

Kaspar The Unfriendly Bear Studies

2009-11-07T16:02:00.001-08:00

My feeling is that both of these are too conservative, especially the one at the top. The line of action is wrong, and the pose itself is too lax. Also, the one at the bottom.... for some reason I gave his left big meaty paws a dainty little British finger. Don't know where that came from, I like chicks.

Popeye Turnaround Studies #1

2009-11-04T08:22:00.001-08:00

Over at John K.'s blog, there are some new photos of an old Popeye toy. John suggests drawing these from different angles to learn construction and solid drawing techniques for your cartoons.

Below are the two pics I copied, and further down are my first two attempts complete with my notes.

Please leave critiques in the comments. Any criticism, good or bad, is welcome and encouraged. Thanks for looking in!

New scanner!

2009-11-02T22:15:00.001-08:00

I've been without a working scanner for too long. I don't have time to post all of the drawings I've done in the last five months ( anymore than you have time to look at all of them ), so here's a small smattering.

The first two drawings are for my Dad's birthday which was back in April. There's some problems with them ( as Vincent Waller was kind enough to point out ), especially Manx's right hand.... eeesh!

If I can find them, and if it's okay with Vince, I'll post his notes. Valuable stuff, for sure. I can find them, but boy... I need to learn the value of labeling things properly. Thanks to Lili for cleaning up these drawings in Photoshop.... a lot of un-erasable pencil mess.

Speaking of Vince, he told me about the brush pens he uses on those awesome doodles he posts at his blog. When I bought them, I immediately drew Mike Peters' Grimmy. I grew up having Mike around, and he kind of is the reason I love thick lines so much.

Alright... now the construction studies.... ::: sigh :::

The first sketch is from two fan art Tinkerbell drawings. Here are the drawings I'm copying..

I started doing the construction for both at lunch on one sheet, and when I got home I couldn't find the same drawings again so I had to do finish the drawing from memory.

I completely got the line of action wrong on both of them... which I should have noticed from the onset.... of course, this drawing is three months old. Hopefully, I got better when I got to this one...

Here's mine.

And here's the comparison.

Finally, here's one I did two weeks ago. I wanted to practice construction, but also wanted to fill a page and see how many studies I could fit on it. I don't know why.

I'll post the original drawings for this a bit later.... but it's late.

Also? This is for Katie. I tried drawing Neil Patrick Harris once.... here it is.

COMING UP: THE SCRIBNER FACE

Animatic for Theme Song

2009-10-27T10:10:00.000-07:00

So, we've been away for a while here at the Blooog, but a lot's been happening for us in the real world.

I had a birthday ( 31 ) and we successfully cast the role of Twinklebelly. Also, I have finished the first pass on the animatic for the theme song ( "Technocolored Ballad of the Rocketship Rangers" ), and while I will be making several more edits to get the timing right, I thought I'd share with you, flawed as it is, the first animatic.

Please leave thoughts and criticisms in the comment section.

ALSO, I KNOW THE SYNC IS OFF ON ONE OF THE DIALOGUE TRACKS. THIS WILL BE FIXED IN THE SECOND AND SUBSEQUENT VERSIONS OF THE ANIMATIC. FEAR NOT.

Here are some of the drawings used in it. Please let us know what you think, good or bad.

I made the mistake of trying to board this with thumbnail sketches first. I think it was a mistake because I was still getting the ideas out. The more finished drawings are re-do's of very very quick notebook sketches.

These thumbnail storyboard sketches show I spent too much time with them. I should've just stuck with the very quick notebook sketches for getting the ideas out and then jumped straight into "layout".

COMING UP NEXT: THE SCRIBNER FACE

Another Peek Behind The Curtain...

2009-09-23T08:11:00.000-07:00

Developmental Death 2: Electric Boogaloo

2009-09-17T23:35:00.000-07:00

by Trevor Thompson

So, a long time ago when I still had time to post somewhat interesting things on this blooog, I did a theory post about developmental sketches. It's theoretical because I myself have never worked professionally in the industry, so my opinion isn't really valid. Think of this as just me thinking aloud.

If you really want to read it for reference purposes, then click here.

The post basically pontificates about why it is that in most cases, aesthetically speaking, the 'developmental sketches' are usually some of the best work to come out of any given project. I used two otherwise bland shows as my example: the long-running Aqua Teen Hunger Force...

and the cancelled-after-two-episodes Clerks.

Anyway, the best drawings from that post were all done for Aqua Teen by Clay Croker, who in addition to doing animation and design work for a lot of early [adult swim] programs also voiced several of the characters. Zorak, Moltar, Steve, Dr. Weird and a bunch of one shot characters for The Brak Show and Perfect Hair Forever all owe Clay's tonsils a debt.

So, here's what Clay has to say about the development artwork he did for Aqua Teen Hunger Force. I apologize if one or two of these aren't yours, Clay. I'm going based on guesses and signatures. :)

FROM CLAY CROKER:

Thanks for the comments, Trevor - I tell ya why the funnier drawings... 

Part of it, as was suggested, is we knew the characters would never ultimately come off as cool as we could draw them up front with the budget we had to work with - but we wanted to see how far we could push it anyway... 

The other part is that there's always the chance that if you can provide something that the client "can't live without" then you might be able to push the project down a cooler path than had been originally envisioned.

(That route has worked for me time and again by the way)
 
A lot of the drawings I did were done over a 3 or 4 hour period when I met show creators Dave and Matt over at the Highland Tap one rainy Sunday afternoon in April 1999.

We drank pitcher after pitcher - they told me what they wanted and I drew about 10-12 pages of designs while we talked.

(Some of those drawings were actually incorrectly referred to as Wild Hare Studios art in this article -- But they ain't.)

So alcohol no doubt enhanced the overall "carefree" drawing approach to some of those.

But I ask ya - doesn't every animator wanna work on a show that's fun to draw? (and closer to their own style?)

I guess this answers the question about what you need to make a good looking cartoon: a bit of beer and a bit of budget.

Thanks Clay for taking the time to tell us about these fun sketches! Go visit Clay at his blog:

http://arglebarglin.blogspot.com/

COMING UP NEXT: THE SCRIBNER FACE

Scribner Face is next!

2009-08-06T21:23:00.000-07:00

COMING SOON.... No, we really mean it this time!

Happy Father's Day!

2009-06-21T00:49:00.000-07:00

My dad loves Bogey, and I love my dad!

Peter Thompson is the reason I'm a cartoonist. When I was six, my father, who through no fault of his own is English, went across the pond on a business trip and returned to American soil with a book. You may have heard of it.

He couldn't have picked a better book. And what's more? I owe my love of Warner Bros. Cartoons, the best cartoons ever made, and Monty Python, the best sketch comedy ever made, to my father.

We should all be so lucky to have a father like mine. The man gave so much to me and my sister, and hasn't stopped. Look what a happy family he made!

When I was little, my creative endeavors were, let's be fair, unrealistic for a first grader. I wanted to make movies and cartoons, and as difficult as it must have been in the early 80's my father managed to find a way to create an environment that I could do so in. The value of that is immeasurable and neither words, funny drawings or years and years of thanks would ever accurately get that across. But it's sure worth trying.

Also, today is the first Father's Day for Booo Tooon Marooon M.G. Nunnery. Matthew is going to be a great father, as proven by the fact that he already is.

We need more good dads out there, and I'm delighted that I've gotten to know two of the best.

Another Reason To Love Bill Watterson

2009-05-31T08:05:00.001-07:00

I've been very busy lately working on the Secret Manx and Itchy Project, as have the other Booo Tooon Marooons. Our latest member to the family, by the way, is Lili, who is making Manx and Itchy into puppets, and rocking everywhere else she can be utilized. Say hi to Lili everybody!

But, to keep inspired, I've started re-reading all my old Calvin and Hobbes books, one of which included the obligatory Tenth Anniversary Treasury.

In it, Watterson talks about the two sabbaticals he took from the strip and his fights with Universal Press Syndicate, partly about licensing rights and also about graphic freedom ( though that was more of a fight with newspaper editors in general ).

The stuff about licensing is worth a read. It makes you realize how non-artistic executives exist in almost every form of entertainment. Bill lectured about this once at Ohio State University and made cartoons to accent his points.

Here they are. Enjoy!

COMING UP NEXT: THE SCRIBNER FACE

Coming up... The Scribner Face

2009-03-28T13:54:00.002-07:00

COMING SOON.... No, we really mean it this time!

Slab N Ernie Construction Lessons

2009-03-04T17:39:00.000-08:00

I did this today at work during lunch very quickly, but it gave me a chance to break the drawing down.

I'm doing a few more now that I'm home, and I'll post the best one later on.

STAY TUNED!!!

UPDATE!!!

I haven't gotten a chance to hook the scanner up since the move, so wait. I'll have to upload the finished drawing which is much better.... but I'll get to it later. I have green screen testing to do. Sue me.

Latest Construction Attempts...

2009-02-07T15:32:00.000-08:00

Besides the obvious problems, I can't understand what I was doing with the crow's beak.

The shape of the beak is right, but the construction is all wrong. The lines on it suggest that you'd be able to see his other eye. If I wasn't copying, that might've been a problem.

The thing that is most wrong with this drawing, though, is the fact that Mickey's line of action is completely wrong. This leads to everything else being wrong.

I'm positive that if I had gotten it right, this drawing would've been much better.

I suck at construction

2009-01-08T04:31:00.000-08:00

UPDATES BELOW!!!
JohnK says:

So far none of your drawings show that you use construction to draw with.

I'm not going to argue this point that John made yesterday. I know that I draw circles and lines before attempting details, but that doesn't mean I'm doing construction right. As John says, there's only one way to tell if it's right or not. But what am I doing wrong?

I looked at some older copies I did and the one recurring issue is that when I put the transparency over the original drawing ( I'm using PhotoStudio, not Photoshop ) one part will be more or less correct, and then everything else is off, but mathematically by about the same amount and in a different direction.

CLICK HERE TO SEE TREVOR'S COPIES
I figure this means that I'm not getting the distances from one form to another right. And if there's one mistake made, there are several because they all bloom out of the original.

So I decided I would start a drawing and not finish it until I KNOW the forms are in the right place. As you can see below, I've started breaking down the Porky comic cover, and once again, one character has roughly the right forms, but the others are off.

Counting the space with my pencil only seems to work when I'm making the drawing physically the same size, but the ones copied from the DVD player or these sized down comic pages....

The above drawing is ridiculously huge in file size compared to the comic cover. Scaling it down, this is how it compares:

I'm going to dedicate a few hours every night this week to getting this right, and then I'll move on to adding the larger forms. As you can clearly see, I need work and comments.

Maybe I'll join that Cartoon Critique blog.

UPDATES AS OF 01/09/09:
So, I took the drawing above and studied the transparency and made my changes in red. This is what I came up with:

And here's how it looks when resized over the original comic.

I had to resize this differently because the first scan of the drawing ( and first crack at it, pictured above ) had the paper favoring the top of the bed, the second the latter. I'm worried I may not have actually gotten the shapes right, but I'm going to start fresh rather than improve the same drawing. Hopefully, I've learned something. Be back tomorrow with more drawings!

Check back!

UPDATES AS OF 01/12/09:

New changes in blue.

Here's how it looks over the comic:

And now I'm going to do the remaining levels of construction. Hopefully, my theory that if I get the first level right then others will follow will soon be proved, right or wrong.

Please come back.

UPDATES AS OF 01/15/09:

Final changes in blue.

Black outline.

And the final check:

What do you think?

I Found Nemo!

2009-01-04T19:31:00.000-08:00

AKA... Crap!

2009-01-01T07:31:00.000-08:00

Though it may have previously been thought impossible to degrade the Hanna-Barbera show "Help!.... It's The Hair Bear Bunch", my direct ancestors the British managed to do it.

This is from a show in the late 90's on Cartoon Network UK called 'AKA Cult Toons', and it was a desperate ploy to give editors something fun to do.

The saddest part about this is you'll see a few good cartoons ( "Draftee Daffy", "Little Hiawatha" and "Cow and Chicken" ) play second fiddle to a bunch of rubbish. Though, the blaxploitation clips are cool.

I'll give you a dollar if you can get through both of these videos and not feel like you've been violated in some way.

Oh, and Happy New Year. We're back.

- THE BOOO TOOON MAROOONS

No connection, no shit!

2008-11-12T09:53:00.000-08:00

I have no internet connection, and due to the troubling construction of my new home, I may not have it for some time.

But don't worry! I haven't posted a thought-provoking and thorough article in seven months or more, so you should be used to this by now.

Keep checking in, we'll have more to say soon. Sweartagod.

- trevor.

Flintstones Forgery

2008-09-30T18:59:00.001-07:00

Weirdo #9 by R. Crumb

2008-09-27T17:15:00.000-07:00

From Some Remote Location...

2008-09-27T05:16:00.000-07:00

FROM SOME REMOTE LOCATION...

Warning: This post has no pictures.

Hello. You're probably wondering where the Booo Tooons have been lately, huh?

No? Well, I've been away from the internet because of Verizon's incompetence since September 9th, and still am. If you've seen me posting on other people's blogs, rest assured that it was because I was posting from phantom computers ( much like I am now ).

I have several fun posts scheduled, but haven't been able to post them for the reasons I've just explained. In the future, look for:

The Scribner Face

Inking Tablet Practices

Booo Tooons Interview #1:
A Discussion with Garret
Gilchrist about his
'The Thief and The Cobbler: Recobbled Cut'
in five parts.

More Drawings From The
Secret Manx and Itchy Project

Puppet Making

Booo Tooons Interview #2:
Having a Drink with Vincent Waller

The Complete History of Screaming:
Drawing Dylan Moran and Bill Bailey

Captain Capitalism

Booo Tooons Interview #3:
My Pal Mike Peters

Also, I should add that the other two Booo Tooon Marooons, Janine and Matthew, have given birth to their first son, my God son, Hendrix, and he is doing very well, but only sleeps a few hours at a time.

Lastly, I should mention that I didn't do the picture of Bush two posts below this one that you all love so much. It appeared in The Onion several weeks ago, and I knew people would like it.

Keep coming back, I promise we'll be back soon with more!

PS: I promise to have the links done before Halloween!

Bill Melendez, RIP

2008-09-04T09:58:00.000-07:00

BILL MELENDEZ, R.I.P.

We'll miss you, Bill!

Click here to read the full story.

One of the few still-living legends, Bill Melendez gives a rare candid interview where he talks about his begining at Disney, what he considers his 'step-up' to Warner Bros. and working in the Clampett unit in the 40's, to his experiences working at UPA and finally on the Peanuts specials he produced for television.

Bill was Rod Scribner's assistant in the Clampett unit, and is the only guy, other than Robert McKimson, who could be considered as being on Scribner's level.

He will be missed by the industry and by friends.

Thanks to whoever posted this interview initially.

2008-09-01T20:33:00.000-07:00

Fantasmagorie!

2008-08-18T20:59:00.000-07:00

FANTASMAGORIE

Yesterday was the 100th anniversary of the first ever animated film. Enjoy it!

In typical Americana fashion, they're making a CGI version of that, but me, being the snob I am, refuse to even acknowledge it beyound mentioning it in this sentence, hence no link to that.

Hmph!

Anyway, enjoy!

More Inking Practice

2008-08-11T21:03:00.000-07:00

Well, I'll be purchasing a tablet this Friday and getting my hands on a copy of Illustrator, but for now..... courage.

This is the pen I used, and it's that most basic of office supply pens, the Paper Mate black felt tip. I know a lot of artists who use this sucker instead of the three or four dollar sable brushes and ink pens you buy at the art supply store, but I'm not really sure why.

I guess you get what you pay for.

John K. is pitching the idea of wraparounds starring the old WB characters for a new show presenting the classic 40's cartoons, and asked some of us ( not me ) to ink the drawings he'd made. I need all the inking practice I can get, so I tried the drawing I liked best.

Here it is:

The first thing you're likely to notice that's wrong is the fact that the lines on Bugs' chest and feet are not drawn. This came from me noticing as a kid that these lines were never black but grey, and the fact that it was drawn in the coloring books I had really bothered me. I WANTED TO COLOR THE LINE MYSELF!!! Bastards.

Another thing that's wrong is that I don't have a very steady hand yet. At several points the line thickness varies in unnatural ways, like on the top of Bugs' ears or the wheels on Daffy's chair for instance.

I tried to straighten the lines on the desk and monitor with a ruler, but now I think it looks TOO straight and as a result, too unnatural.

Bugs' hand holding the carrot is wrong too, because I couldn't see what John was going for and tried to fix it, but now I think it's far too evenly spaced, making it look wonky.

I'm also not happy with the way Daffy's lower beak came out, but as near as I can tell, that's what John had in mind. As near as I can tell.

Please leave comments with critiques because I see a lot wrong, and I'd like to see what you see.

Thanks, gang!

- trevor.

Ralph Bakshi says, "Just do it!

2008-08-07T15:25:00.000-07:00

Thanks to Stephen Worth at the Animation Archive for allowing us to post this and to second Ralph's frank encouragement.

Make sure to visit Ralph's website and tell him how much you want to see his new film The Last Days of Coney Island.

Thank you very much, Ralph!

Funny Batman!

2008-08-03T14:04:00.001-07:00

Finished Manx layouts

2008-07-18T04:34:00.001-07:00

These are finished layout poses from the cartoon "A Little Fairy Tail", and to make them extra special, I colored them in for you.

These are from the scene where Manx lays eyes on Twinklebelly for the first time.

BTW, you may have noticed the rectangular nature of these pictures. That's because the cartoon's gonna be shot in the 16:9 aspect ratio. Cinematic, baby!

UPDATE:

This next layout drawing is the one I'm most proud of. Mainly because it is a collaborative effort between me and Booo Tooon Marooon Matthew Nunnery. This is a gag from a scene where Itchy decides to ask Twink out, but he's nervous so gets the farts.

Manx, being the encouraging big brother that he is, decides to help Itchy by pulling his colon out and playing it like a bagpipe to get the farts out.

This is a gag Matthew and I dreamed up while on the phone. He was doodling the whole time, and then emailed me what he drew. This is it:

He didn't like the head he drew of Manx, and asked me to draw a better one where his mouth was open. I took it and drew what I thought it should look like, including a number of other changes.

Shortly after the drawing was done, we realized we hadn't decided definitively what the characters' colors were gonna be, so Matthew and I sat down and picked the schemes on the mice. Then Matthew painted my interpretation, and here's the result:

Matthew is a great artist who doesn't post enough. You can see his art, tattoo designs, and animations in motion and for sale, at his website. He's also an amazingly talented musician. You can hear his music at the site too.

MGNUNNERY.COM

Check it out, be amazed, then come back here and tell him you want to see more of his awesome art here on the Blooog.

- trevor.

I done a bad drawing!

2008-07-14T19:48:00.000-07:00

Actual size....

Behind the scenes...

2008-07-10T13:56:00.001-07:00

Storyboard

2008-07-04T13:10:00.000-07:00

Okay, the following is the begining of a storyboard I created for George. I would put up the rest, but my scanner's acting funky.
I also stole old Spumco storyboard sheets to do it.

Also, here's a few tries at getting George right. Some drawings I made up, others I copied. For example, Rex Hackleberg's awesome storyboard sketches at the bottom.

- trevor.

Get A Job!

2008-07-04T12:14:00.001-07:00

So, being that the economy's in the shitter and business owners are now less concerned with honoring loyal, hard working people than they are with inflating the next quarterly dividend, all three of the Booo Tooon Marooons ( Trevor, Matthew and Janine ) are now officially out of work.

Chances are you probably are too, and if not, may soon be.

So in an effort to boost morale and inspire the masses, here is Brad Caslor's 1985 industrial film "Get A Job!"

It is a how-to film lovingly reminiscent of Clampett and Scribner's cartoony 40's execution.

Enjoy!

George Carlin RIP

2008-06-30T20:14:00.000-07:00

Thanks to: PETE EMSLIE

Vincent Waller

2008-06-11T14:57:00.000-07:00

Holy shit! Look at these awesome Spongebob drawings!

I was at Vincent Waller's awesome blog Incoherent Thought when I saw these two and I had to steal them. Visit his blog and tell him how much you appreciate his awesome drawings!

These two Spongebobs were drawn by animator/designer Robertryan Cory and I hope we see more like this. I'll certainly be looking for his name on things in the future.

Thanks to Rogelio T., here's an animation Cory did for the Atlantis SquarePantis Special.

Find more videos like this on Channel Frederator RAW

VINCENT'S AWESOME DOODLES

It's because I've been going to Vincent's blog that I'm even watching Spongebob now, let alone a fan of it.

Notice how there aren't any pencil lines underneath or forms roughly sketched underneath theses drawings. Vincent's like Robert McKimson, in that he does what we all wish we could do: just put pen to paper and draw without any pre-thought or planning. Incredible!

You want proof that executives know nothing of real talent and art? It's in these drawings. If I were the producer of Spongebob, these drawings would be put up as an example as to the level of quality to maintain. And these are the drawings that are just drawn for fun. No one executive in television has seemed to make the connection: fun drawings equal fun show.

Vincent posts all sorts of fun and exciting drawings he does during his Spongebob story meetings, and lets us know to watch the show's inbetweens... which is where some of the most amazing drawings being done for television animation exist.

- trevor.

Inking!

2008-05-31T23:19:00.000-07:00

So, I'm still trying desperately to get hired by John Kricfalusi for his new project starring George Liquor.

But, he's said that the only position he can hire for that doesn't require you have some experience ( which I don't ) is inking.

So below are my inking attempts, done with PMOP ink pens.

The left side is John's original sketch, and the right is my ink.

I'm clearly not very good at this, so any and all advice is welcomed.

Thanks!

BY THE WAY, IF ANYONE KNOWS WHERE I CAN FIND A FREE COPY OF ILLUSTRATOR FOR MY MAC G-5, PLEASE LET ME KNOW IN THE COMMENTS, AND I WOULD GREATLY APPRECIATE IT!!

- trevor.

MUTO!

2008-05-21T10:02:00.000-07:00

Take a look at this, everyone!

MUTO is an animation by blu, on location in Buenos Aires and Baden. It takes you across walls and on the street and through abandoned buildings.

MUTO a wall-painted animation by BLU from blu on Vimeo.

This is the type of animation that requires talent, skill, timing, patience and I think, as you'll see, an understanding of visual poetry.

If more people worked this hard on animation, Pixar might actually worry about making money, whatwith such stiff competition.

Unfortunately, the video can't be embedded, so you'll have to click on this to view it. But at least it's free!

Thanks are due to Shawn McBee for bringing this to my attention. Kudos, Shawn!

Hope you all enjoyed this as much as I did!

- trevor.

Drawing George Liquor II

2008-05-15T20:27:00.000-07:00

Click here to read part one of "Drawing George Liquor"

So, I sketch at work if I have the time and the powers that be aren't paying attention. It's usually on the back of one of our yellow order sheets. I used this time at work to keep practicing drawing George Liquor.

So then, I went home and spent a good two hours sketching George from other drawings and some originals. Here's a smattering of the least embarrasing.

Then, when I felt a little more confident with the character, I took a stab at boarding him. Since John K. only has us learning George now, I didn't have any stories of him alone, so I wrote my own.

It's about how George is frying bacon one Sunday, and is out of lard.

Fortunately, Manx and Itchy come to his defense, selling CAN O' LARD door to door.

So, here's the first four pages of the storyboard for it. It's called FAT CHANCE.

My overall plan is to finish this storyboard and then do as much character layouts as possible. Then, since I can do George's voice, I'm going to cut it into an animatic with finished voices, sound FX, timing and temp. music.

DEADLINE: SUNDAY, JUNE 15th!

I'm an overachiever. And an American!

- trevor.

Coming soon....

2008-05-12T04:01:00.001-07:00

A peek behind the curtain.

Love,

Janine, Matthew and Trevor

- THE BOOO TOOONS MAROOONS

Drawing George Liquor

2008-05-01T20:55:00.000-07:00

So over at all kinds of stuff John K. has put the call out to artists for his new project. It stars the usual characters that he owns ( not Ren and Stimpy or The Ripping Friends ) and right now he needs storyboard and layout artists.

He wants us to practice drawing the characters ( if we're interested in the job, which I, of course, am ) and says the toughest to draw is George Liquor, so he's up first.

Below are two of the eleven pictures he put up on his blog for us to copy. Here they are:

He's also, thankfully, a stickler for accuracy, and has explained the best way to compare the drawings. He suggests putting the original drawing at an opacity on top of your version to make sure the forms are accurate. I've done that below, but first, here are my versions of the above drawings:

Now, the transparent comparisons:

So, I clearly need to work a lot harder. But, I think I captured the 'essence' of Liquor. In fact, if I draw any more tonight, I just might vote for McCain.

I'm going to put up more later on over the weekend, but I'm exhausted. I really tried hard for those crappy drawings and I really want the job, so I'll overcompensate because I want to impress Mr. K.

Yes, that's why I overcompensate. Surely it has nothing do with my nipple dick.

UPDATE:

John has put my transparent comparisons up on his blog, but hasn't commented on them, either here or in his blog's comments.

You know what that means? Back to the grind stone. Unfortunately, I have to go to work now for eight hours, but I'm going to try a few doodles of George whilst there for storyboard purposes and I'll put those up later, too.

- trevor.

Sunday Dox

2008-04-20T07:15:00.000-07:00

For the weekend, I thought I would share these two amazing documentaries I found about the two men who are probably most responsible for the modern ideals of what makes a cartoon or defines animiation in a lot of peoples' minds.

In truth, when you look back at both of these docs, you'll notice that there was kind of a 'Good Angel / Bad Angel' type of thing going on. Tex was good, Walt was evil. Or a better way to compare it is that Tex was the good kind of crazy, Walt the bad.

In this first documentary by John Needham, produced in 1988, we learn about this surprisingly shy man from many of his esteemed compatriots: Heck Allen, Mike Lah, Ed Love, Chuck Jones, Joe Adamson, Mark Kausler, and the legendary voice actress June Foray.

ENJOY!

So, did you know before this documentary that Tex loved cartoons so much that he suffered personal injury? Animators' horseplay lost him his eye, and attention to detail made him forget to pee!

There's a lot of good things to be said about Walt Disney the man, but the truth is, they've all been said a million times before, and even been exaggerated to some extent.

So if you like Walt as much as you like leaving nasty comments, I strongly urge you not to watch this documentary which has many people who worked with him vouching about the fact that he was:

A taskmaster

Racist

Chauvinistic

An extremely poor draftstman who after success only drew for the camera

And when the animators' strike went on during the production of DUMBO, he told members of the FBI that he suspected some of them of being communists and named names causing several good animators to get blacklisted.

And then there's that great story about the animation of Minnie and Mickey fucking. But I've said too much already. See for yourself:

See. SEE??? I've been saying it for years, Disney is EVIL!!!

And if you buy the argument that the man and the empire are seperate entites and that any Disney movie shouldn't be avoided by your children just because the man at the heart of it all was an uncertified wack job who was the Hitler of Hearts and Flowers, well then I guess I can't knock you.

After all, I don't try to fuck little boys but I have been known to enjoy a Michael Jackson tune here and there.

Anyway, I hope you've learned something this weekend. Because I sure did, Boy Howdy!

- trevor.

Ollie Johnston R.I.P.

2008-04-17T09:18:00.000-07:00

LOS ANGELES, California (AP) -- Ollie Johnston, the last of the "Nine Old Men" who animated "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs," "Fantasia," "Bambi" and other classic Walt Disney films, died Monday. He was 95.

In addition to being a legendary animator, Ollie Johnston was an avid train hobbyiist.

Johnston died of natural causes at a long-term care facility in Sequim, Washington, Walt Disney Studios Vice President Howard Green said Tuesday.

"Ollie was part of an amazing generation of artists, one of the real pioneers of our art, one of the major participants in the blossoming of animation into the art form we know today," Roy E. Disney, nephew of Walt Disney and director emeritus of the Walt Disney Co., said in a statement.

Walt Disney lightheartedly dubbed his team of crack animators his "Nine Old Men," borrowing the phrase from President Franklin D. Roosevelt's description of the U.S. Supreme Court's members, who had angered the president by quashing many of his Depression-era New Deal programs.

Although most of Disney's men were in their 20s at the time, the name stuck with them for the rest of their lives.

Perhaps the two most accomplished of the nine were Johnston and his close friend Frank Thomas, who died in 2004 at age 92. The pair, who met as art students at Stanford University in the 1930s, were hired by Disney for $17 a week at a time when he was expanding the studio to produce full-length feature films. Both worked on the first of those features, 1937's "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs."

Johnston and Thomas and their families became neighbors in the Los Angeles suburb of Flintridge, and during their 45-minute drive to the Disney Studios each day, they would devise fresh ideas for work.

Johnston worked as an assistant animator on "Snow White" and became an animation supervisor on "Fantasia" and "Bambi" and animator on "Pinocchio."

He was especially proud of his work on "Bambi" and its classic scenes, including one depicting the heartbreaking death of Bambi's mother at the hands of a hunter. That scene has brought tears to the eyes of generations of young and old viewers.

"The mother's death showed how convincing we could be at presenting really strong emotion," he remarked in 1999.

Johnston's other credits included "Cinderella," "Alice in Wonderland," "Peter Pan," "Lady and the Tramp," "Sleeping Beauty," "101 Dalmatians," "Mary Poppins," "The Jungle Book," "The Aristocats," "Robin Hood" and "The Rescuers."

"[People] know his work. They know his characters. They've seen him act without realizing it," film historian Leonard Maltin said. "He was one of the pillars, one of the key contributors to the golden age of Disney animation."

After Johnston and Thomas retired in 1978, they lectured at schools and film festivals in the United States and Europe. They also co-authored the books "Bambi: The Story and the Film," "Too Funny for Words," "The Disney Villains" and the epic "Disney Animation: The Illusion of Life." They were the subjects of the 1995 documentary "Frank and Ollie," produced by Thomas' son Ted.

The pair's guide to animation is considered "the bible" among animators, said John Lasseter, chief creative officer for Walt Disney and Pixar animation studios and Johnston's longtime friend.

Oliver Martin Johnston Jr. was born October 31, 1912, in Palo Alto, California, where his father was a professor at Stanford. He once noted that he and Thomas "were bound to be thrown together" at the university, as they were two of only six students in its art department at the time. When not in class, they painted landscapes and sold them at a local speakeasy for meal money.

Johnston had planned on becoming a magazine illustrator but fell in love with animation.

"I wanted to paint pictures full of emotion that would make people want to read the stories," he once said. "But I found that [in animation] was something that was full of life and movement and action, and it showed all those feelings."

Johnston was honored with a Disney Legends Award in 1989, and in 2005, he was the first animator honored with the National Medal of Arts at a White House ceremony.

He was also a major train enthusiast. The backyard of his Flintridge home boasted a hand-built miniature railroad, and Johnston restored and ran a full-size antique locomotive at a former vacation home in Julian, California.

Johnston's wife of 63 years, Marie Worthey, died in 2005. Johnston is survived by sons Ken and Rick and daughters-in-law Carolyn Johnston and Teya Priest Johnston. The Walt Disney Studios is planning a life celebration for Johnston. Funeral services will be private.

- THE BOOO TOOON MAROOONS

Matthew says READ THIS!!!

2008-04-14T19:31:00.000-07:00

NOTE: This article is now being displayed for reference. We now know this problem to be solved, and aritistic integrity and copyright is no longer an issue. This is being displayed purely for posterity and historic purposes.

- THE BOOO TOOON MAROOONS: Trevor Thompson, Matthew and Janine Nunnery.

This article was brought to my attention at the Database, check it out, Seriously!!!

April 10, 2008
By Mark Simon

As you know, I usually handle the subjects in my articles with a sense of humor. That is not the case this month. I find nothing funny about the new Orphan Works legislation that is before Congress.

In fact, it PISSES ME OFF!

As an artist, you have to read this article or you could lose everything you've ever created!

An Orphaned Work is any creative work of art where the artist or copyright owner has released their copyright, whether on purpose, by passage of time, or by lack of proper registration. In the same way that an orphaned child loses the protection of his or her parents, your creative work can become an orphan for others to use without your permission.

If you don't like to read long articles, you will miss incredibly important information that will affect the rest of your career as an artist. You should at least skip to the end to find the link for a fantastic interview with the Illustrators' Partnership about how you are about to lose ownership of your own artwork.

Currently, you don't have to register your artwork to own the copyright. You own a copyright as soon as you create something. International law also supports this. Right now, registration allows you to sue for damages, in addition to fair value.

What makes me so MAD about this new legislation is that it legalizes THEFT! The only people who benefit from this are those who want to make use of our creative works without paying for them and large companies who will run the new private copyright registries.

These registries are companies that you would be forced to pay in order to register every single image, photo, sketch or creative work.

It is currently against international law to coerce people to register their work for copyright because there are so many inherent problems with it. But because big business can push through laws in the United States, our country is about to break with the rest of the world, again, and take your rights away.

With the tens of millions of photos and pieces of artwork created each year, the bounty for forcing everyone to pay a registration fee would be enormous. We lose our rights and our creations, and someone else makes money at our expense.

This includes every sketch, painting, photo, sculpture, drawing, video, song and every other type of creative endeavor.

All of it is at risk!

If the Orphan Works legislation passes, you and I and all creatives will lose virtually all the rights to not only our future work but to everything we've created over the past 34 years, unless we register it with the new, untested and privately run (by the friends and cronies of the U.S. government) registries. Even then, there is no guarantee that someone wishing to steal your personal creations won't successfully call your work an orphan work, and then legally use it for free.

That means writing letters to our congressmen and representatives. That means voicing your opinion about how we need copyright protection, as we've had since 1976, that protects everything we create from the moment we create it. This is the case around the world.

However, an Orphan Works bill is also in the works in Europe. I was speaking recently with Roger Dean, the famed artist of the Yes album covers, and he is greatly concerned with what will happen if Orphan Works bills become law.

"This will devastate the livelihood of artists, photographers and designers in a number of ways," Dean says. "That at the behest of a few hugely rich corporations who got rich by selling art that they played no part in the making of, the U.S. and U.K. governments are changing the copyright laws to protect the infringer instead of the creator. This is unjust, culturally destructive and commercial lunacy. This will not just hurt millions of artists around the world.

"On the other side of the coin, what argument will a U.S. court have with a Chinese company that insists it did its research in China and found nothing? If the cost of this is onerous for a U.S.

-based artist, what will it be like for artists and small businesses in emergent economies?"

If an artist whose work is as famous as Roger Dean's is concerned with this legislation, it should be of great concern for all of us.

The people, associations and companies behind the Orphan Works bill state that orphaned works have no value. If that were true, no one would want them. However, these same companies DO WANT your work, they just don't want to pay for it. If someone wants something, IT HAS VALUE. It's pretty simple.

Some major art and photography associations, or I should say, the managers of the associations, support this bill. The reason they support it is that they will operate some of the registries and stand to make a lot of money. Some have already been given millions of dollars by the Library of Congress. Follow the money and you will see why some groups support this bill of legalized theft of everything you have ever created.

Two proponents of this new legislation are Corbis and Getty Images. They are large stock photo and stock art companies. They sell art and photos inexpensively and are trying to build giant royalty-free databases.

Do you see how they could benefit from considering most works of art in the world orphans?
Do you know who owns Corbis? Bill Gates. He doesn't do anything unless it can make a huge amount of money. Helping you lose the copyright to your art is big business for Gates.

For years we've heard of Hollywood fighting with China to protect copyrights and stop the pirating of DVDs. Our government has worked with the studios to protect their investment.

Our government is NOW WORKING AGAINST US by allowing our own fellow citizens TO STEAL OUR CREATIVE WORKS.

It will be easy for them to get away with it unless we make ourselves heard.

Your calls and letters do work. I've seen many instances in which a single letter made a difference in public policy. Tens of thousands of calls and letters help even more.

This is not empty talk. I have written letters to my congressmen and I will do so again. I do what I can to let every creator know about terrible legislation like this... thus you are reading articles like this one and you can listen to interviews I've posted online.

CONTACT YOUR LEGISLATOR:
Go to http://www. usa. gov/Contact/Elected. shtml to quickly find the phone number, address and e-mail of every U.S. senator, U.S. representative, governor and state legislator.

Forward this article to every creator you know and urge them to take a moment to protect their very livelihood. I am giving everyone the right to reprint this article in any form to help spread the word to protect our creative rights.

Instead of sitting around watching TV tonight, TiVo that show, write a letter and make yourself heard.

Letters to our government officials don't have to be long, but they should be heartfelt. A good story helps. Tell them who you are, how this legislation negatively affects you and that you want them to vote against the Orphan Works legislation.

It's that easy!

If you don't, you will have only yourself to blame when you see other people making money from your art and you don't see a dime.

Spider-Man comic artist Alex Saviuk is also concerned about the loss of copyright protection. "When I found out all the negative aspects of the new legislation, it would almost behoove us to want to do something else for a living," says Saviuk. "If we would have to register with all the different companies, we would never be able to make a living.

"

"It would be impossible for me to register all my art," continues Saviuk. "It would put me out of business.

"

You can listen to my complete interview with Alex online.

Think this doesn't apply to you? Maybe you don't license your artwork? How about this?

Photos on the internet could be orphaned. With tens of millions of photos shared online with services like Flickr, Shutterfly and Snapfish, there is a huge opportunity for unauthorized use of your photos... legally.

You could see photos you take of your family and kids, or of a family vacation, used in a magazine or newspaper without your permission or payment to you. You would have to pay to register your photos, all of them, in every new registry in order to protect them. Say the average person takes 300 photos per year (I take a lot more than that). If a registry only charges $5 per image, that is a whopping $1,500 to protect your photos that are protected automatically under the current laws. If there are three registries, protecting your images could cost an amazing $4,500. Not to mention the time it would take to register every photo you take. Plus, you will also have to place your copyright sign on every photo.

That's not including all your art, sketches, paintings, 3D models, animations, etc. Do you really have all that extra time and money? Plus, even if you do register, the people stealing your work can still claim it was orphaned and, unless you fight them, they win. Even if you win, you may not make back your legal fees.

It gets even better. Anyone can submit images, including your images. They would then be excused from any liability for infringement (also known as THEFT) unless the legitimate rights owner (you) responds within a certain period of time to grant or deny permission to use your work.

That means you will also have to look through every image in every registry all the time to make sure someone is not stealing and registering your art. You could actually end up illegally using your own artwork if someone else registers it.

DOES ANYONE SEE A PROBLEM WITH THIS?

Do you think the U.S. Copyright Office is here to protect you from this legislation? Think again.

Brad Holland of the Illustrators' Partnership shares his notes from a recent meeting with David O.

Carson, general counsel of the Copyright Office

Brad Holland: If a user can't find a registered work at the Copyright Office, hasn't the Copyright Office facilitated the creation of an orphaned work?
David O. Carson: Copyright owners will have to register their images with private registries.

BH: But what if I exercise my exclusive right of copyright and choose not to register?

DOC: If you want to go ahead and create an orphan work, be my guest!

This cavalier and disrespectful dialogue should have you seeing red.

Who the hell does he think he is? Carson should be fired and RUN OUT OF WASHINGTON!

None of this could happen with our current laws. Our current laws work and they protect us and our creations.

The only people who will benefit from the copyright law change are those who can't create work on their own or companies who stand to make a lot of money from using our works of art. They make contributions to congressmen, which is why they get what they want. We need to stand up and be heard. Every one of you need to write your senators and representatives. We have to protect our livelihoods. It's that serious.

Plus, the technologies being developed for locating visual art don't work well enough.

On March 13, 2008, PicScout, the creators of one of the software applications used in the registries, stated to the House IP subcommittee:

"Our technology can match images, or partial information of an image, with 99% success.

"

A 1% margin of error is huge when you consider the millions of searches performed for art every day. That means for every million searches, 10,000 images could be orphaned.

Plus, this only takes into account images registered on their system. If you have registered all your work on another system, they won't be searched here and, even though you may have spent thousands of dollars registering your creations, a new or unused directory could orphan everything you've ever created.

This is just one of the many reasons why INTERNATIONAL LAW FORBIDS COERCED REGISTRATION as a condition of protecting your copyright. The United States is about to break international law by making us register our works. The people behind the bill say it's not forced registration, but you won't have any rights unless you register.

THIS IS SEMANTICS! Of course, this is forced registration and we can't stand for it!

There are many, many other problems with the Orphan Works legislation. As a creator, YOU MUST understand what is going on.

For additional information on Orphan Works developments, go to the IPA Orphan Works Resource Page for Artists.

This is not something that is going to go away easily.

We need to be vocal NOW!

This legislation has been beaten or delayed for the past two years and they will keep trying until it passes. This is no time to be quiet and see what happens. What will happen depends on you. Send e-mails and call your congressmen. Ownership of your own creations depends on it.

Roger Dean sums this up well.

"Where are the colleges and universities in all this? Has the whole world gone to sleep?"

GET ON ORPHAN WORKS E-MAIL LIST
To be notified of the latest information on the Orphan Works bill and when to contact your legislators, send an e-mail and ask to be added to the Orphan Works list.

AUDIO INTERVIEW LINK
I have recorded a fantastic interview with Brad Holland of the Illustrators' Partnership regarding this bill and what it means to us as artists. Please listen and learn more about how you may lose ownership of all your art and photos. This article and the recorded interview are available for anyone to use in print or online. Please forward this information to every person and group you know so that we can work together and protect our creations and livelihoods.

Mark Simon is an award-winning animation producer/director and speaker. He speaks around the world on subjects about art, animation and TV production.
His copyrighted companies may be found online at www. SellYourTvConceptNow. com and www. Storyboards-East. com.
He may be reached at marksimonbooks@yahoo.com

Get on that Orphan Works List and find your legislator and start emailing them now or whenever you are given info from the Orphan works list that says to do so, I say fuck it and bug them at least once a day, send them peanuts, I don't give a shit, just do something!

- M.G.

Thief Part 3: Ken and Dick Convo part 2

2008-04-02T19:19:00.000-07:00

When THE THIEF had been in production for a few years Richard Williams hired Art Babbit and Ken Harris, two amazing animators from Disney and Warner Bros. to not only work on the film but to also instruct Williams and his animators on how to do it right.

Below is part two of a recorded interview between Ken Harris and Richard, circa 1975. To read part one, click here.

PART TWO:

DICK: Since we don’t have a real assistant system going here, the guys just don't get trained…

KEN: I don't know how you get animators without them being assistants first. The average animator is an assistant for 4 to 5 years - unless he's an unusually adaptable guy. I was an assistant from June 20th 1935 to September 1st 1936: I was an assistant in-betweener and then the Assistant Animator, but, I worked nights, and animated. I probably did about 400 or 500 feet of animation in that year and a half. I got filmed tests of it; Some of it they used and some they didn't. But I was no kid you know; I was married, and had to make a living. I couldn’t horse around like the young guys did. They’d just go into it and say "Well, I'm working here in this studio, and some day I’ll be an animator." They didn't care about how quick, and they didn't seem to worry much about it.

DICK: I'm the only one I know of in this country who did systematic tests like you did on the wolves' run. They would do a test of the entire scene and if the scene worked, they’d leave it. But no one ever took a run and shot it six different ways, with six different drawings. I did empirical tests, with slates on the front telling you which test was which - to see what would work. I always did that, because in the beginning hardly any of my stuff worked.

KEN: That's right. You've got to do that; I still do that; After 35 years of experience, making all kinds of swaggering walks and strolling walks, and fairy walks and sneak walks and everything else - if I have a guy that is just on a little walk cycle that is going to mean something in a scene - maybe the body is on a cycle while he's walking, and his head’s got to move around while he's talking - now that walk has got to be right or I’ve wasted all of my time. I may use 16, 18 or 20 drawings, or whatever number of drawings it takes to get that walk cycle; I'd get that walk cycle right before I go ahead and put heads and dialogue on top of it. Even now.

DICK: Few here do that…

KEN: You've got to do that. Now I have worked at studios where you never had pencil tests at all. At Ray Patten, we never did a pencil test - it just had to work or else! They didn't have a test camera, and he didn't like to spend.

DICK: But you can't learn, you can't see your mistakes…

KEN: No, you can't. But the men Patten hired were all pretty experienced. I'd been animating for 18 years before I went there for six months, and I knew pretty much how it was. We seldom did re-takes. You know what your director wants. For instance, working for Chuck Jones, I know what Chuck wants, and I do it the way he wants it, and usually it is all right. But it pays to get tests. I don't know how these young fellows can do it without getting tests.

DICK: I found that they have about four formula walks, and they keep to that for safety.

KEN: Yes. Now, like Pat with that bird flapping - I told him, "Why don't you just do a 4-drawing test? We had a camera just for shooting tests, and we could develop the test in 20 minutes. I would draw maybe 4 or 5 different wing flaps on just one sheet of paper, and I'd shoot them all together. When they came on t'he screen you'd see them all flapping together at once, and you'd be able to pick the one you wanted - or the one that worked best. The way Pat is doing it now should work, and if you do it 3 or 4 other ways it will all work, but if he's not sure it's going to work, he should get a test or show it to someone who would know.

DICK: And save 3 weeks’ effort which in the end doesn't work!

KEN: Yes, because if you go ahead and shoot it, flying the bird into the scene around the tree and back out again - maybe you're using 100 drawings there, and if the basic flap isn't right, you'd have to do them all over again.

DICK: How would you start to teach someone?

KEN: There is a system of teaching anything; The best way to teach is to have him do it.

DICK: I like tracing off other people's work; When I traced off your work, I learned an enormous amount.

KEN: I learned a lot of stuff from Disney and from live-action. Chuck used to get us live-action dance film and we would pick out the 'extreme' positions and just outline them. Disney traced a lot from live action; Snow White herself was all rotoscoped: They had the girl act it out, filmed it, and traced it off. I don't like to work that way, and most animators don't. The best of them put the live-action on the moviola and turn it over frame by frame and study it. I did a dance with Gene Kelly - matching him dancing with a little mouse; I did another one of Bugs Bunny matching Jack Carson, one time.

DICK: Since dancing is one of your specialties, do you dance it yourself?

KEN: I can animate anything I can do or see somebody do. Mike Maltese used to do these dances; He could do any type of jig step, and he would do it slow, kick this toe here and move it out, and down and out, and then add them up, and you could do it. One of the girls in the studio was a dancer - she danced in the Salome picture. We could get her, and she would dance, do it, and show me the steps and everything. But the quickest way is to go over to a morgue and get a film; We'd get something that Warners had in stock, with real live people, and get the guy jumping up into the air, and see how fast he turns; They're looking at you like this - and they turn their heads right back again, zoop-zoop-zoop, and they do these spins, and all that stuff and the timing. You don't know how to do it unless you see somebody that does know how to do it, do it. Of course, you exaggerate it a lot in animation.

DICK: Did you ever get much out of that Muybridge book? You know, with the still life photos of people in stages of movement?

KEN: We used it quite a bit for runs, to get an accurate run on animals especially. I never used it for humans at all. I didn't even buy the human book. The animals I did in action were an elephant walk and run, and a giraffe run, and things that you don't see very often. It showed that a horse run is very different than lots of people imagine; They used to run horses like a dog, you know; Horses in the first old rubbery Mickey Mouse run like dogs, but it doesn't look right. Horses run just about the opposite to a dog; With horses, all four feet are right together here when they are off the ground, and the dog's is pretty much out like this. The horse almost always has one foot on the ground. There's just a little space in there where it isn't. Muybridge proved that. That was one reason he got his book out. He bet that the horses' foot did leave the ground and some people said they didn't; So, he took these photographs and they gave him the idea to do all these things for a book. He did that about 100 years ago, and it turned out it is a good book to use right up to today on animal action.

DICK: No one has ever done it since.

KEN: Nobody could do it any better. You couldn't do it any better.

DICK: Except using real movie film.

KEN: Yes, you could take film, but what I mean is a book with all the necessary stages of movement on one page to do something. It is actually clearer than the book that Preston Blair, the MGM man, did. You know, everybody's got it.

DICK: But a lot of it doesn't work. I mean, if you trace it, it doesn't work.

KEN: No.

DICK: Yet, everybody uses it, even professional guys because people believe anything that is in black and white.

KEN: I only used one thing out of it and it didn't work - a little girl skipping. She just floated through the air and [missing]. But the general idea is there for kids to pick up.

DICK: This is the only book though.

KEN: Yes, somebody ought to make a book, and if he [missing] , it ought to work, you know. Maybe have lots of drawings on the side, so you could flip it; You could do it that way. Muybridge had something pretty good though - he had these little squares behind [missing], so that you know how much up and down it goes. I [missing] from a lot of Disney model sheets that the guys gave me off [missing] certain takes and speed runs and things.

DICK: Did they put them on the model sheets?

KEN: Yes. They put a guy in one - just one drawing on h [missing]; One drawing tells you a whole story. That's the reason [missing] pretty good animation; He does the drawing, but it’s got a [missing] n in it. It's got a feeling of just about what he wants. He's [missing] at that. You could take that one drawing and say, Gee, I can [missing],e wants here; He wants this guy to run with his knees up to [missing] ust churning away. You can feel what he wants just by [missing] that drawing. Sometimes, he'll have a guy rearing way ba [missing] g like this, and you'll know he wants that kind of feeling to [missing]

DICK: Is there any advice you can give to anybody?

KEN: The only advice I know is to think it all out in your mind and then visualize it the best you can; Then, draw it out the best you can, and then test it and see if it's right; Unless you have somebody here who can say, “Oh, throw this drawing out,” and “You need to speed it up here, and put in a couple of in-betweens to slow it down here.”

Timing is just something you can't tell a guy how to do. He's gotta feel that himself. It's obvious that when you hit something from here in anticipation and all you want is some kind of a path over to the hit. I don't know - the only thing I can tell a guy to do is just to animate. What's this author, he says, “If you're gonna learn to write, write.” That's the only way to write - he says, “I can't tell you how to write - you just gotta write.”

To animate, you take a sheet, and then you write down what you want to do and so forth and so on, which is a good way to do it. You just get a stop-watch and time the action and yourself. Act it out, and time it and put it down here and then draw it so it fits those marks, so it fits those things.

But that comes after experience. The first thing to do for anybody, to learn to animate, is to practice making walks. Do walks of all kinds, 'cause that's about the most important and hardest thing to do. All this hand action and personality and dialogue and expressions, that's from learning to act, watching guys like Barrymore, or any good actor.

It’s funny that nobody's done a good book, though.

BUY DICK'S BOOK 'THE ANIMATOR'S SURVIVAL KIT' ON AMAZON!

To learn more about Ken, visit this website, devoted entirely to him: Ken Harris, Master Animator.

- THE BOOO TOOON MAROOONS

COMING NEXT: JANINE, TREVOR AND MATTHEW WATCH AND PROVIDE COMMENTARY FOR THE THIEF AND THE COBBLER.

Janine and Matthew Get Married Today!

2008-03-29T20:54:00.000-07:00

And I get to not only film it and be there, but also get to drink myself silly. Well, not silly. I have to drive.

Anyway, get a load of this:

It's the first picture of Hendrix, Janine and Matthew's son (my god son). He's appropriately named, because he truly will be born with a guitar in his hands.

So today's very special for all of us, especially because it marks the union of two people who's artistry is only slightly tempered by their insanities. It was the first time, eleven years ago, that I said Janine should keep this one, and it was the last time she's ever taken my advice.

Here's my present to them: another cornerstone in our growth.

- trevor.

John K. Teaches Us About Negative Space Using Rocky and Bullwinkle

2008-03-23T17:18:00.001-07:00

Over at his blog, all kinds of stuff, John Kricfalusi recently broke down the construction of two well-known characters, that of Rocky and Bullwinkle. He talks about how their simplicity is deceptive, and shows how construction is used even with UPA's simple style, but he also points out how negative space has an effect on the staging of a drawing.

When he put this drawing up, it was cited as an example of mushy construction. This is what John said about it specifically:

"Here is a picture made by someone not conscious of the usefulness and appeal of negative shapes."

I saw what he was talking about, but wondered what it would have looked like if the drawing had been drawn more, as John puts it, 'consciously'. Since I am trying very hard to learn from this man, I did what I believe he wants us all to do: try to evaluate the drawing yourself.

I immediately thought that, what I would call 'the staging', was jumbly and unnatural and I noticed that if Natasha was positioned slightly further back from the light and Boris were in the lower right, it would read better, plus there would be more negative shapes.

I very quickly sketched the basic shapes of the drawing ( and didn't get the proportions of the table right, ) though I don't know what John would say, but I felt it read better. Am I wrong?

Again, these are just my theories based on what John's been teaching. Sometimes stuff being 'too even' can get boring, but I felt that the original drawing was too jarring, so I went the opposite way. Tell me what you think, friends.

- trevor.

The Thief and The Cobbler Part Two: A Conversation with Richard Williams and Master Animator Ken Harris

2008-03-22T14:13:00.000-07:00

When THE THIEF had been in production for a few years Richard Williams hired Art Babbit and Ken Harris, two amazing animators from Disney and Warner Bros. to not only work on the film but to also instruct Williams and his animators on how to do it right.

Below is part one of a recorded interview between Ken Harris and Richard, circa 1975.

KEN: Ask the average guy to do an animation test, and he'll try to make a big production of it. He'll want to do a whole scene of a guy coming in and causing a fight, picking another guy up and throwing him out and all that sort of thing - instead of just doing a walk, or something simple. And then they get all lost in the timing and everything else. Then they get discouraged when you criticize them.

DICK: So they should just concentrate on walks?

KEN: Well, a walk is the first thing to do; I'll do other things too, but I wouldn't make a great production out of anything until you get pretty good at animating; Walks are about the toughest thing to do right. Don't try to do dancing and all this theatrical stuff until they get the basic thing down right; It's not easy; After you've flipped a fellow's drawings to see what's going on - then it's easy to tell him what to do; But it's pretty hard to come right out and say how to start animation. You've got to know what's in your mind; You've got to be an actor, really, because that's what you're doing - you're sort of acting with a pencil. You've got to learn to draw well enough to draw them - which is the hard part.

DICK: What if you already draw well?

KEN: There are a lot of terrific artists who'll never be animators, because they just don't know how to do it.

DICK: How do you learn to time the actions? If you're acting it out in your mind, how do you time it?

KEN: That takes experience. You just time it by timing it. You get to know how long it takes to do a thing the way you want to do it.

DICK: When you started, did you have stop-watches?

KEN: We had metronomes; You could set a metronome on 6's or 8’s or 10's if you wanted a walk or anything like that. We had Carl Stalling, the musician Disney first brought to Hollywood. Carl used to give us a lot of pointers on music timing. We would ask Carl about what music phrase or number of bars that he wanted to do a thing in. Also, the Director would time it out himself - the way he wanted to do it, and we would also confer with Carl in getting the music timing. Oh, learning timing comes so gradually; It's like Benny Washam's 12-frame yawn.

When you first start out animating something, it takes so long to make those drawings that you think, "Gee, whizz, this will take up a lot of screen time. It's taken me half a day to make 12 drawings, and that must make a long, slow yawn." Well, half a second for a yawn isn't very long, is it? It just takes experience in timing, and doing things, and tapping it out with a pencil - beating it out per foot, 'till you get to know.

DICK: You time things out way in advance, don't you? I notice that you put the numbers for your main drawings on the exposure sheet way in advance of where you are actually drawing.

KEN: Oh, yes. I time things out way ahead: I time things about 5 feet ahead sometimes. If I want a guy to do something, and I want him to land 'over there', 5 feet later, I'll number the drawings, and put the drawings down, and number the end one; Then I'll work up to it.

Say, it takes about 4 feet to do something; So I'd put drawing number 33 here; I need about 33 drawings in between there - on twos - that will make about 4 feet.

DICK: When you time ahead, I notice you even write down the exact numbers on the X-sheet - working in twos. You put the numbers down before you draw it?

KEN: If I figure it's going to be on twos all the way, I do. But if it's the kind of animation that needs some fast wallops or fast action in between there and here, well, you're going to have to use ones in there to do it. Normally, I work four drawings ahead - on normal animation; I make drawing number 1, and my next extreme will be number 5, then number 9. And maybe if it's faster, I'll put 5 closer to 1 and maybe I'd want the action to slow down, and I'd put 9 a long way from 5, and 13 a long way - then maybe 17 and 21 right close together as part of the speed.

That's for 'progressive' animation.

DICK: How do you learn to work that way? How do you learn to do just the extreme positions while working out what you want the in-betweener, or assistant to do?

KEN: Well, you know the timing. You know how long three in-betweens on twos is. If you make drawings 1 and 5, that's eight frames - so for animation, if you make a '1' here and '5' there, and you've got 3 here, that's going to be slow. And if this guy here comes forward really fast, I'd make 1 and 5 close together, and maybe 7 would be well over there, with maybe a 'long-headed' inbetween to zoom over here, and then he shouts or something there, and maybe I'll make that in five drawings. I figure, if he's talking, his head ought to go out, so I would draw that out there, then I might just draw the mouths in between, and nothing else - and let my assistant draw the in-betweens of the head going out. No use me wasting my time, you know.

If you had to do a lot of animation, and had to get out 35, 40, 50 feet a week - you could do it that way, with a good assistant.

Now, for instance, if you've got a 'progressive' scene where you want a guy coming in and maybe walking over and picking up something and carrying it over and putting it down and then coming back and getting…[missing]

I work about 4 drawings apart. 1 to 5 to 9 and so forth. Then, if the in-between (or breakdown drawing) looks too involved for the assistant to do, I will just make 3 or 7, and maybe make some ones some place.

But timing is just experience; That's the only way you can get it. You've got to get a feel for it - the way it ought to be. Like hand actions: Hold it out here for a certain length of time, bring it in, then it goes out, and then he brings it in again, or something; That's acting. You get that by studying guys like John Barrymore. In personality dialogue, that's very important.

DICK : So you get to know the length of time of a second. It’s completely set in your mind; You know exactly what you're going to do?

KEN: Yes, I know pretty much. And I know how many frames I need to accent something, and I know how many frames I need to slow out of it; A guy says something like, "Get going!", well, "get" would be this picture here, and here, and an in-between, and that's the accent, and when the head is up here you slow out of it. You don't just bang it back down again - you use maybe 6 to 8 drawings to get back to where you started it. But that's all timing that you've gotten by experience which you've had. You know how fast the film goes through. A stop-watch is good to time the length of scenes and such, but the stop-watch doesn't cut it down to a point where you can get a quick accent.

It’s like that guy where you made him shoot himself. You took some frames out of where his head went back when the bullet hits his head. You even could take all the frames out. If his head was here and he pulled the trigger, and his head went clear over to here without any in-between, it would work.

It works well the way it is - but if you want it to bang harder, and if it was a bigger bore gun, and you wanted a real blast you could just leave out the in-betweens.

Lots of times, we will take a little fish, or a humming bird going from one rose to another…this humming bird will flutter here and then, bang! - he's over there with maybe just one elongated blur on ones, and then a 'cushion'.

You can do almost anything by just starting something here and cushioning it way over here. You don't need any in-betweens.

DICK: When I was 23 and I traced off your animation in 'Broomstick Bunny', I was surprised that where the witch went up in the air, you had her do an anticipation on the floor, for which you had 2 or 3 drawings, then POW! - you just cut to her way up in the air when she was laughing.

KEN: There's a lot of that in there.

DICK: You used 3 or 4 drawings of her getting ready to leave and then suddenly she was in the air, or just 'gone' entirely.

KEN: Yes, and instead of making a blur, or something we used to just leave hairpins where she was - and that gives you the effect of her leaving. We learned that from Disney, in a fish picture: He'd have these little fish swimming around and something would scare them, and they were gone - that's all - with just a few bubbles for the path they took.

But that just takes experience. A guy should gain that experience while he's an assistant, if he really bears down and watches animators.

COMING SOON: PART TWO OF THIS CONVERSATION

To learn more about Ken, visit this website, devoted entirely to him: Ken Harris, Master Animator.

- trevor.

An Interview with Bill Melendez

2008-03-22T09:07:00.000-07:00

One of the few still-living legends, Bill Melendez gives a rare candid interview where he talks about his begining at Disney, what he considers his 'step-up' to Warner Bros. and working in the Clampett unit in the 40's, to his experiences working at UPA and finally on the Peanuts specials he produced for television.

Bill was Rod Scribner's assistant in the Clampett unit, and is the only guy, other than Robert McKimson, who could be considered as being on Scribner's level.

Thanks to whoever posted this interview initially.

- trevor.

The Thief and The Cobbler Part One: An Introduction

2008-03-18T17:29:00.000-07:00

Many people have presented the argument that animation and money can sometimes be perceived as natural enemies. The theory being that how good the quality of the animation is depends on how much money can be spent.

There are also those that have worked for years in animation who have suggested that television and motion picture executives are the bane of animation's purity, stating that, because the movers and shakers of the industry don't understand animation and only dollar signs, too many corners are cut on projects in an effort for product to appear quicker.

Arguments for AND against this ideal can be made for the story behind animator Richard Williams' would-be epic THE THIEF AND THE COBBLER.

Here's a piece from a documentary they did about him after doing 'Who Framed Roger Rabbit' that focuses on THE THIEF for a bit.

Here's the only known scene on YouTube that I could find that's animated almost completely by Richard himself. Zig Zag voiced by Vincent Price.

STAY TUNED! THERE'S PLENTY MORE THIEF AND THE COBBLER POSTS COMING!

Copycat Doodlings, plus Betty Boop Gets Flirty and Dirty

2008-03-16T10:36:00.001-07:00

Been busy here at the Booo, so here's some doodles by our artists of other people's cartoons:

"Hep Cat Work Doodle" by Trevor.

"New Adventures of Mighty Mouse" by Trevor.

This was drawn to test some new colored pencils.

"Bimbo The Devil" by M.G.

Matthew made this design for a tattoo. He also suggested putting up some information about Bimbo and Betty Boop. Since time does not permit, check out this info page about them from the book 'Cartoon Stars'.

Some have said that it's perverted to have our character Twinklebelly appearing pantsless.

But we argue that a perverted cartoonist is in good company with his forefathers. Tex knew it. Max and Dave knew it. Click below to see where it started.

Love and kisses,

- THE BOOO TOOON MAROOONS

Booo Tooons Commentary #1

2008-02-03T15:33:00.000-08:00

The first of many, here is a commentary from Trevor for the Bob Clampett classic "Buckaroo Bugs", which showcases such fun things as carrot thievery, spelunking, horse back riding, frontal male nudity, and the lost communication tool of telegrams.

It's also funny as fuck. Watch on.

- THE BOOO TOOON MAROOONS.

Manx and Itchy Are Eighteen and Loving It!

2008-01-27T02:45:00.000-08:00

So, now that you've been introduced to the characters of A Little Fairy Tail, make way for a little history lesson. All of the characters are brand new, created solely for this cartoon. That is, all except two: The Brothers Mice.

When I was eight, I felt that I wasn't ever going to be a good enough animator to make it on my own ( a feeling which lasted until about nine months ago ), and since the only way of getting an audience at that time ( making movies for my critical classmates ) was unsatisfactory, the only thing I knew I had left was the newspaper comic.

I had a couple of different influences then, and Charles Schulz's 'Peanuts' and Bill Watterson's 'Calvin and Hobbes' were among the top. I had all of their books, and could somewhat approximate both of their art styles.

It was with this idea in mind that I took all of my cartoons that I had been doing about my cat Tootsie ( the strip was named after her; it seems in retrospect that my compatriots and I share a fondness for our cats ) and I made a portfolio. I called the local paper and asked to speak to the editor. Eight years old, asking to speak to the editor. What chrome-plated balls on that kid.

I made a date with the editor to show her my 'Tootsie' cartoons on the basis that they would publish it weekly in their 'Letters To The Editor' section.

I didn't stay with the strip for much longer than a summer. But I did start creating new strips and characters, and by 1990 had decided that the only characters I had in my 'stable' were these two mice who I later decided where brothers. At first they were just bachelor mice sharing a hole in the wall of some unseen suburban family.

Since that was the only one that wasn't derivative as hell ( 'Tootsie' had become a yucky mix of Bill Melendez's animated version of the 'Peanuts' characters, and another strip, name lost to memory, was about a blonde white boy named Al who looked a lot like Calvin and lived with a fox named Krentz who stood upright, had puffy cheeks, and often beat up poor Al )...

....I named the mice comic 'View From The Mousehole' and never looked back.

I seemed to be interested in mice then, particularly because there was this amazing cartoon I used to watch that they had cancelled, 'Mighty Mouse (The New Adventures)' that I started watching on Saturday mornings to my dad's confusion.

I taped as many episodes as I could and watched them well into the 90's. This time around, Mighty was a very cool, modern looking version of a classic cartoon character, and I kept watching to see if I could approximate this exciting and fun art style.

The other influence came from that of Walt. I had somehow gotten my hands on a videotape that had Walt Disney sketching different versions of Mickey, and I noticed that he didn't follow logic regarding the placement of Mickey's ears. He just put them where he felt they looked best.

That was an early "rule" that I established for these guys: the ears go where they look best. They're not any real shape. At some point in '92, I decided I liked a left angle triangle for Manx's ears, and that I liked it best on a drawing of him in side-profile.

I hope I haven't offended any of you.

There's a great many things that I drew with these guys that looked relatively good, and I noticed about five years ago that every time I worked on a piece in an effort to spend time getting better at cartoon drawing, I usually drew the brothers, or more usually, Manx. And he became a star of many doodles at many boring jobs. There's cartoons in CVS's and whatnot, that show TBM* quitting their jobs and killing everyone on staff.

And now that I've finally found not only the confidence but also the right combination of people to help with finally doing a cartoon, I'm very proud that my boys get to star, front and center.

They may be bright, new and shiny to you, dear reader, but they're very old ( eighteen as of summer ) and indeed very special to me. Be nice to them.

Or I'll draw them raping your daughter and de-balling your cat with a kitchen knife.

- Trevor Thompson.

*The Brothers Mice

Developmental Death

2008-01-26T17:51:00.000-08:00

Development. Let's talk about it. For some, it's that uncomfortable time in one's life when there are changes physically. Your voice drops down low, you develop breasts, etc. Well, I feel confident that I can talk about this, because my voice dropped down low right around the time I developed breasts, so development is my thing.

And it's the same for cartoons in the television world.

When you get an idea, the best thing to do is to let it grow organically. This is where Clampett's 'no-no' session ( later to be re-dubbed by Chuck Jones as a 'yes' session ) came from. The idea is simple. If you say 'yes' to an idea in it's infancy, it can and will grow if you guide it. But if you say 'no' to an idea without allowing it to bear fruit, you're cutting yourself off from a garden of possibilities.

A Concrete No can kill a Light Stringy Yes instantly.

Now, modern animation is sometimes criticized for being bland. This is particularly true of television animation, which is under constant scrutiny by a brave band of Yes Men who spend all day saying No. For any number of bland-looking cartoons out there ( we won't talk about the story or joke subject matter; another post, perhaps ), at least a third of them took a journey where several animators and designers made fun sketches that were slapped with the 'too stylish' edict and ended up having all the fun and originality snipped off them like a pair of nuts from a pup.

No doubt, this is a lofty and critical opinion, but I wish to present it as fact. Case studies: CLERKS THE CARTOON and AQUA TEEN HUNGER FORCE.

Before we get into the dissection of these shows visually, in an effort to curtail the comments a little bit, I should say that I am a fan of both shows, solely as 'funny shows'. In fact, I think written as they are, they'd be funnier if they were live action. To see these guys playing hockey on the roof every week? Golly. And I'd love to see a costumed Master Shake. But I digress...

Both of these shows look pretty bland and inconsistent in the case of AQUA TEEN, although I like the color scheme on CLERKS. But if you look at the development sketches for both of these shows, you feel cheated. Honest, you would. I did. Look, I'll show you.

CLERKS:

First, let's meet the cast. We'll avoid the additional characters created just for the show and focus solely on the main four from the movie: Dante, Randal, Jay and Silent Bob.

Well, the first thing to remember, I guess, is that this was a movie that was successful to a unique audience, and the only people who would watch it deliberately would be said audience ( an audience to which I am an unabashed member.... I mean, fuck, Kevin Smith's on my Myspace friends page for chrissakes ). Bearing that fact in mind plays a heavy role in the amount of fun you can have with the cartoon.

But because it's a movie, there's a frame of reference that the core audience is loyal to; namely, the actors who portray the main characters...

Brian O'Halloran as Dante.

Jeff Anderson as Randal.

Jason Mewes as Jay.

Kevin Smith as Silent Bob ( who actually had some dialogue, true to form and despite the name ).

But as we're all aware, that's no excuse for making bland-looking characters. If you want interesting looking characters based on real people, one need look no further than...

For the look of the production, Kevin and his producers hired Chris Bailey who submitted, along with a slew of other animators and designers, a series of sketches suggesting looks for the characters. These went from looking sweet to the final bland.

We're going to examine the characters one at a time, and I'll start by showing you the finished look of the character first. First up, Dante.

So his head's basically a rectangle and his body is fundamentally a monolith. But below are some great attempts to make him look cartoony and fun. They weren't picked because Bailey said he needed it to be easy to draw... whatever that's about.

Before we move on to the rest of the characters, let's talk about simplicity of design. Simple has never meant easy, and a simple design, some think, should be easy to approximate on paper. Now, I guess in today's 'everybody with a PC can be an artist' mentality, ( not demeaning the idea; Matthew's an amazing artist who works on a crappy PC.... the only difference, he'd still be able to wow you without it ) having the design be something that a skater can draw on the back of his notebook has something to do with the selling of the idea to executives.

But when you're talking about REAL cartoons and cartoony principles, you take that approach and it's considered severely lowering the grade curve.... some would say.

In fact, when an animator designs something an exec could draw, the animator becomes the exec. Don't believe me? Two words: Seth McFarlane.

Anyway, back to the character development of CLERKS. Here's some great sketches by artists being artists before the execs start making notes to suggest a different direction ( Matthew accurately calls this 'playing guessing games' and it's one of his biggest pet peeves..... I know, because he yelled at me about it once ).

Alright, next up: Randal.

You'll notice on some of these drawings ( AQUA TEEN too ) there will be notes that say things like "you're on the right track" or "this is the right idea" and they're attached to drawings that look NOTHING like the final product. Executives aren't creative, remember, they just work in a creative industry.

The executive notes ( which included notes from my boys Kevin and Mos ) for Randal are similar, but one thing they hit on that was a good character trait was the posture of a slacker, yet one with a high upper chest which somehow evokes confidence..... even if it's stupid confidence.

But all these pictures are great, and you can see the individual artists' style coming through. It's basically the same with Jay and Bob, as it was with Dante, there's a lot of good ideas not being explored and said 'no' to here.

Every one of the following sketches is different than the one before it, except that it is either of Jay and Bob, or Dante and Randal. Oh, that and they're all imaginative and evidence of lost talent.

Now, the thing I don't understand about the next example, AQUA TEEN HUNGER FORCE, is that it is and always was going to be an [adult swim] production, produced in a few of the spare offices ( Williams Street ) at Turner Broadcasting's Cartoon Network wing.

No one ever thought for a second there'd be a budget for the show worthy of real animation.... so why all this innovation in the sketches?

FRYLOCK

This is what Frylock looks like now, but it wasn't always so. Consider:

MASTER SHAKE

Once the creativity is sucked out in consideration of the miniscule budget, this is the Shake we are left with. Look where he came from:

MEATWAD

Here's a character that you would think would be an animator's dream, in that he can morph into any shape and be anything. Well, the animators saw that and drew these drawings which were, for the most part, ignored.

Wild Hare Animation Studios ( named, presumably, after Tex Avery's definitive hunter and rabbit picture ) are the guys that drew all of these.

Clay Martin Croker ( does the voice of Zorak in the new Space Ghost shows ) designed the most playful, free and fun designs. He signs the drawings CMC, and I enjoy his drawings the best.

But again, what I don't understand is, since everyone involved, Clay included, knew the cartoon wasn't going to have the budget to support those designs, why submit them in the first place ( besides the fact that drawing those was probably a lot of fun )?

Any of you animators out there have an idea as to why?

- Trevor Thompson.

My Conversation With Chuck Jones

2008-01-26T01:18:00.000-08:00

I knew who Chuck Jones was before I knew the planet was circular. In fact, when I was told that Earth wasn't flat, and that it was a circle which allowed people on the opposite side the ability to not fly off into space, I said it was absurd ( I was five ) and that the concept sounded like 'a Chuck Jones cartoon'. The better part of my childhood was spent studying the Warners cartoons, and Chuck for many years was hands down my favorite animation director of any form animation took.

What led to me actually getting to talk to him came from my love of the newspaper comics and my own geographical good fortune.

When I was twelve my family moved to Sarasota, a town which, among other things, was the habitat for many of the newspaper comics you know. This was attributed to the fact that Jim Davis of "Garfield" fame moved here when he retired from his exhaustive practice of inking heads.*

Soon after, several others followed such as Chris Browne ( "Hagar The Horrible" )

and Brooke McEldowney ( "Nine Chickweed Lane"... Brooke draws great naked chicks )

and the irreverent, living, breathing cartoon of a cartoonist: Mike Peters ( "Mother Goose and Grimm" ).

Mike's wife Marian played tennis with my mother, and so I had an enormous teacher and friend in Mike. There's actually a few features in Manx that were taken from Grimmy. One or two little Mike-isms thrown into the design adopted over the years.

Mike's style was strongly influenced by the same classic cartoon principles that Preston Blair teaches, and I assume this has something to do with how he knew Chuck.

When I graduated the eighth grade Mike and Marian had gotten me a wonderful pair of gifts: a hard cover copy of Chuck's book 'Chuck Amuck' and a sericel from 'Rabbit of Seville', both of which had personalized autographs from Chuck.

This was when I learned that Mike knew Chuck and for many years would be entertained by wonderful tales of Chuck calling Mike up randomly to tell him trivial facts about trivial things he'd discovered, such as extrapolated theories as to how the eye works, perhaps ( eye, works, Iwerks, that's a joke, son! ).

Mike tells me Chuck would be so enthusiastic and amazed by things, like a little kid; an observer, to be sure, like all good animators are.

Several years later, Warner Bros. decided to take their characters and fist fuck them with no Vaseline.

They called this anal rape SPACE JAM, and the worst part is, they only did it to sell basketball shoes. My distaste of the film was heard by all, but Mike seemed to hear it the loudest.

Chuck, in his later years, had made and sold oil painting recreations of some famous works of art featuring the Warner characters, several of which were on display at the Peters' residence.

One day, after enjoying the many Chuck original works hanging in Mike's house ( complete with a Sharpie©-penned mural starring Wile E. Coyote and the Roadrunner in the guest house ) he started a conversation about 'South Park'. Mike and Marian had just been to the 1998 Aspen Comedy Festival and met Trey Parker and Matt Stone, and so we were discussing that when the conversation, invariably, went back to Chuck.

Apparently, Matt and Trey didn't confuse what they were doing with the talents of the Warner originals ( or Monty Python ), unlike Warner Bros. today. SPACE JAM came up again, and in the middle of the conversation, Mike just gets up and walks out of the room.

This may seem unusual to you, the casual reader, but it was even more so to me, because I know Mike. Mike is excitable and enthusiastic to the point of unbelievability ( we used to tease him about this, impersonating him: "Wow, look guys! Carpet lint! Wow! And all-over-the-carpet-like!" ) so for him to just get up and walk out of the room in the middle of an animation discussion was unusual to say the least.

But it didn't stop the conversation; Marian and I kept talking about animation and the sorry state of it today and how SPACE JAM was an example of it, when all of a sudden Mike hollers at us from across the house in his studio: "Hey guys! Get in here now!"

We run in there, and Mike's cradling the phone, covering up the receiver: "I called one of our friends!" I knew exactly who it was, and it sure as Susan wasn't Trey Parker.

After the initial shock, which was complete with a kneeled phone-worship a la WAYNE'S WORLD, the first thing I had to ask was Chuck's opinion of the JAM. The reason is, Chuck had a way with words which he used very well. If he had something to say regarding a project, why, he was delicate and eloquent.

When he was awarded the Lifetime of Achievement Academy Award in 1998, the sequence they played before he came onstage consisted of his cartoons for Warners and MGM, but it strongly featured 'The Dot And The Line', a cartoon Chuck wasn't very satisfied with creatively.

Instead of saying something discrediting towards the picture, he said this:

"Well, what can I say in the face of such humiliating evidence? I stand guilty before the world. and directing over 300 cartoons in the last fifty or sixty years," he continued and then gestured with his Oscar,

"hopefully, this means you've forgiven me."

To my knowledge, Chuck hadn't said anything publicly about the movie, so I asked him myself.

"Chuck, I just wanted to know, first of all, what did you think of SPACE JAM?"

"Oh, I thought it was terrible."

He went on to say that, as someone who worked with these characters for upwards of forty years, the story was deeply flawed: "I can tell you, with the utmost confidence," he said, "Porky Pig would never say 'I think I wet myself'".

On the off-chance that Bugs were to be faced with the situation of a basketball game standing between freedom and extraterrestrial domination, he would most certainly not have incorporated the help of the other Looney Tunes characters, least of all Michael Jordan.

He added that Bugs wouldn't have needed anyone's help, and moreover, it wouldn't have taken him an hour and a half. Those aliens, whether they were tiny or colossal, would've been dealt with in short order come the seven minute mark.

Even though Chuck's understandable negative outlook toward SPACE JAM would, if it were publicly stated, be evasive, that still wasn't enough for the humorless worry-wort lawyers that now run Warner Brothers.

While speaking with his holy Chuck-ness I learned that there was a dinner on the lot within a few weeks prior to the talk we were having, and they thought it would be great for Chuck to give a congratulatory speech to the Warner Bros. animators for 'reanimating' their characters and starting a new life for them. Chuck said what any sane person would in that situation, and these cocksuckers actually had the temerity to not only ask him to leave, but they ESCORTED HIM OFF THE LOT!!

The very same lot, by the way, where Chuck, along with his compatriots created the legacies that Warner Bros. were currently ruining.

Once we had moved on from the monstrosity that was the JAM, Chuck asked me if I drew, and Mike confirmed that he had seen and enjoyed my drawings of Manx. Chuck said we could trade, one of my drawings for one of his, which made me feel very talented indeed.

We reminisced about favorite cartoons ( some of which weren't his ), the difference between his Schlesinger cartoons and the post-48 cartoons when Leon sold the studio and the characters to the brothers Warner and the fun of background artists' sight gags ( such as the sign in 'Super Rabbit' that read "Now entering Deepinahearta, Texas ). He also taught me I ought to read up on Mark Twain, his favorite author.

Incidentally, this was the first time that I learned of the connection between Bob Clampett and John Kricfalusi. We were talking about some of the great directors at Schlesinger's when Bob got brought up, and I wondered aloud how much the original directors at Warners were an influence on the new cartoons, that of "Tiny Toons" and "Animaniacs" and Marian said that Clampett was a much bigger influence on cartoons like "Bakshi's Mighty Mouse", "Ren & Stimpy" and anything else J.K. worked on.

There was also a little bit of talk of the apprenticeship John got from Clampett and Ralph Bakshi.

John had a good reputation of tracking down the cartoonists that inspired him, and interviewing them, thereby making friends with them, and Mike suggested I was following form by doing that with him and now Chuck.

The funny thing was, as excited as I remember feeling, the whole time I had a lump in my throat. I couldn't believe it. It was the closest I would ever come to talking to Bugs Bunny, and although Chuck 'ruefully acknowledges' that he's more the duck than the rabbit, you could absolutely hear Bugs' personality in his voice.... and he was talking directly to me.

The man and the rabbit directly responsible for any semblance of confidence I had ever exuded was talking with me, and it wasn't formal like at a book signing or anything, it was completely personal. Today, the desire for decent cartoons grows, and, pun intended, I am often Jonesing for quality.

And I owe a personal debt of gratitude to the incomparably talented and friendly Mike Peters and the late, great Chuck Jones. Good cartoonists have a responsibility to pass the torch and influence other potentially good cartoonists, and we at Booo Tooons have no intention of letting them down.

To quote Chuck: "In that sense, if only in that sense, I am at one with all great comedians." And for a brief moment, so was I and it was a dream come true.

- Trevor Thompson

ASTERISK:

*This is in reference to the fact that Davis, after a certain point, no longer had any direct involvement with the production of the Garfield strip, instead handing production over to his company, PAWS INC. Chris Browne later confessed to me that sometimes Jim would ink the heads, but that was it. This type of cartooning was sometimes frowned upon, particularly by the likes of Bill Watterson ( "Calvin and Hobbes" ) who foresaw all aspects of production concerning his strip and drew everything, even for promotions, entirely by himself.

Watterson himself chastized Davis and this type of 'factory foreman cartooning' in an interview:

This is also why Watterson retired after fifteen years and why Davis is still, literally, churning out strips.

Meet The Gang!

2008-01-25T19:11:00.000-08:00

So yeah, like we said earlier, we're working on a cartoon. It's called A LITTLE FAIRY TAIL and the pun-tastic nature of that title will become apparent in a moment.

Currently, it's in storyboard and layout, so there's not much to showcase yet, but we can introduce you to the characters and give some hints to the story as well.

I should first remind everyone that we are, literally, three people...

...two of whom are expecting, which means we'll be moving slowly. We don't have any funding ( although donations through Paypal are rewarded with an original drawing sent to your home ) and we all are working other jobs now. So it'll be a little while before we have anything to show you from the FAIRY TAIL short for a while. But, you'll literally get to see us make this thing step by step over the course of a year or two. Neat, huh?

We'll talk more about other Booo Tooons animations in later posts. There's "Highland Ave" and some other things, but again... later with that.

The first characters we encounter in 'A LITTLE FAIRY TAIL' are two robbers and a six year old insomniac.

Butch and Cassidy hijack a snowman and wait til dark one snowy winter's night to break into a house.

Their break-in is choreographed to Tchaikovski's 'Dance of The Sugarplum Fairy' ( mostly because it's royalty-free ), and the Christmas motif is complete when Bedhead, wide awake and suffering from that bitch A.D.D and too much Ridalyn, begins asking questions. They convince him they're elves surveying the area since it's a new neighborhood.

Cassidy ends up reading him a story to lull him to sleep. It's called 'The Brothers' Mice and The Fairy That Wore No Pants'.

THE BROTHERS' MICE: Manx and Itchy

...and their pal, RINGO the friendly presumed-neutered man-tabby. An American Tabby, at that.

Ringo is a cat who, like all cats, is larger than a pair of mice, or more specifically, Manx and Itchy. And it is for this reason that he services well as a vehicle of transport.

The mice ride him to the park today. Manx is there reluctantly because he'd rather be at home downloading porn or watching television.

Itchy is trying to teach his older brother that there's a life beyond agoraphobia and lusting for sex. Manx states that if he could see pussy in the park he'd drop by more often.

Enter Twinklebelly.

They don't know it, but Twink, the heckler of this picture, has been spying on them, deciding how to spend her afternoon. There's nothing she loves more than wallowing in some good old fashioned male ignorance and using her body to torment them. She does this kind of stuff to them all through the picture.

Two characters who don't get much attention ( they're stars of a gag within a gag ) are Helen and Harold, a married cockroach and ladybug.

We don't learn much about them specifically, except that the two of them are high school sweethearts who went to the Pupae High Prom together. They also apparently enjoyed riding the Tunnel of Love at the fair, and mistake Manx's tongue and drool as an opportunity to relive those halcyon days of their youth.

Lastly, there's a hooded figure. He's aloof, and telling you about him would ruin the end of the cartoon, so the less said the better.

Incidentally, I'm a sensitive artist, but I'm putting this shit up here ( I am speaking personally on this, not on behalf of the other two Booo Tooon Marooons ) because I want criticism. I welcome all comments, but ask that you be constructive. The way I look at it, Blogspot has an enormous animation elite among it's denizens, starting with ASIFA Animation Archive, and ending with the likes of amazing students coming up the ranks, and I just want to be allowed in the club.

I also hope Matthew and Janine put some pictures up.

Matthew is an amazing digital and traditional artist, and Janine shits out awesome photographs almost as if it's easy for her. I'd also like to see some pictures of the characters for 'Highland Ave.' because Matthew has his own art style, and it shows.

Anyway, those are the characters in our current project. It should also be mentioned that we are trying to work out a puppet version of the characters working in a kind of Bozo, Cap't Kangaroo, Beany and Cecil, etc. style show, where we cut to cartoons of the characters, and the art style we do the cartoon in depends on the most popular style depending what "year" the cartoon was made in. We could do UPA style versions of the characters selling breakfast cereal, B&W cycle-heavy timed-to-music cartoons of Manx and Itchy fighting over the girl again, whatever.

Don't think I'm serious? I have a professional puppet maker looking at drawings of the characters now. HA!

To quote Michael Stipe: Oh no, I've said too much.....

- Trevor Thompson.

Sorry for the delay, folks

2007-12-18T06:38:00.001-08:00

We at the Booo have been working hard on several projects, and currently, researching several subjects to discuss later.

Expect to see a lot more activity from the Booo Tooons Marooons after the new year, including more drawings, and also some which are in response to construction lessons from John Kricfalusi's amazingly cheap ( in price, not quality ) animation school blog.

If you haven't been there yet, check it out, bookmark it, and learn something.

More from us soon. We promise!

- THE BOOO TOOONS MAROOONS

Booo Tooons Are For Your Face

2007-10-12T15:39:00.000-07:00

That pussy represents comedy, which is why we named our cartoon studio after her, folks.

Booo Tooons is a cartoon studio of modest means set on the east coast, and we're putting up this blog in an effort to add to what could be a new renaissance of animation. And if it's true what they say, that a new one should come every ten or twenty years, than that means only one thing: it's long overdue.

So raise your wine glasses of grape Kool-Aid in mute testimony to the begining of a new animation era!

- THE BOOO TOOONS MAROOONS