Uncle Jeffy's Sketchbook! - 8-3-12

Last peek at my sketchbook for the week.  I flipped back to the beginning (from before I put it away, not getting how sketchbooks work, probably back in 2008-9)

I think my concept here on page 1, was to make the sketchbook an anthropological notebook written in the 1920's and 30's by the worlds dumbest explorer.  See here the hilarity as he discovers an elephant (not knowing that they'd already been discovered) and miscategorizes it as an insect.  Hilarity ensues?

Then I think I got the concept of doing a strip featuring EVERY comic and cartoon character EVER created.  Not thinking about the logistical nightmare of telling an understandable story with 8 million characters, I just thought it would be cool to see.  I kind of did that any way (and will again) with my "A 'Slight' History of Golden Age Comic Book Super Heroes" thingy I do here from time to time.

Here's me attempting (and liking) my take on the Duck's (Donald and Daffy) and then being thwarted by that dang hard-to-draw-for-me-anyway, Mickey Mouse.

My horrible Mickey meeting Daffy Duck, Superman and Ko-Ko the Clown at what ever event I imagined them all meeting at.  Batman and The Yellow Kid look on.

You see, I'd never really drawn other peoples characters before.  I have always (from a very young age) known that it's the cartoonists style that makes the feature cool, the character comes second.  Jack Cole's Plastic Man is awesome.  Joe Staton (who is extremely talented in his own rigth) doing Plastic Man was a bad take on a character and missed the point.  So at 45-6 years old, I was trying to see if I could even draw them, and have them be recognized.

Here's a sketch of me looking bad-ass with my posse:  Goofy, Donald, Mickey, A horrible Bugs Bunny, the Golden Age Green Lantern and being evesdropped on by a very Bob Clampett-y Tweety Pie and a sloppy Sylvester.  Over all a decent Mickey there.

Which brings us back to the present as I doodle myself some more.

Sketching trying to find a new avatar for facebook and Twitter and the like.

Not the way Van Gogh spent his time...but I am a cartoonist...and that's a wonderful thing.

Thanks for sifting through this with me this week.

Talk to you soon.

Bob Clampett - Animation, Television, Comedy Pioneer

Born May 8, 1913, Bob Clampett would be 97 years old today!

One of the young pups who stepped up to directing at Leon Schlesinger's 'Looney Tunes/Merrie Melodies" studio after Tex Avery departed, Bob had worked for years as an animator for both Avery and Friz Freleng where he honed his chops.

Clampett's lunacy and pure "cartoon"-ism in his work is truly inspired. Always forsaking the drudgery of storytelling if a good gag could be had, made his cartoons some of the best.

I always felt, that while Avery's zaniness was a natural, Bob's was learned and reached for. Over the years my opinion has changed somewhat and I really love the haphazard style which achieved true cartooning brilliance.

Here's a couple of Bob's great cartoons. Over the last 11 months of doing this blog I'm sometimes frustrated when I embed a video from YouTube and then somewhere down the line it gets removed because of copyright fears by YT or worse, embedding is suddenly denied by the poster. If you ever happen to see a broken link to a video on my blog, please drop me an e-mail and I'll find a replacement for it.

Now for the cartoons...it IS Saturday morning after all!







Somewhere during his time at "Termite Terrace" Bob worked with the estate of Edgar Rice Burroughs on nights and weekends, and he was working on a proposed series of theatrical cartoons based on Burroughs' character John Carter, Warlord of Mars.

An ambitious undertaking for sure. Other than a few characters in Disney features (Snow White) and the Fleischer Bros. "Superman" shorts for Paramount, realistic anatomical characters were not really done. A cartoon figure is much easy to animate than one that appears like you or I.

I'm a big fan of the John Carter books and was surprised to learn of these on a "Beany & Cecil" DVD a few years back...these tests look pretty damn good. I would have liked to see them completed.

After leaving Warner Bros., Bob moved his attention to a new medium, television.

Understanding that animation would be too time consuming and cost-prohibitive for a medium that was in it's infancy and cranked out product so quickly (if Bob knew this in 1949...why haven't producer's learned this in 2010?????????) he turned to another love of his, puppetry.

Creating a cast of characters as puppets and assembling voice talents he had worked with in theatrical animation (Daws Butler and Stan Freberg) they set out to do a daily show on Los Angeles station KTLA. Writing over-the-top horrible puns and sometimes adult oriented humor, this kiddie show smash became just as big a hit with the parents.

Albert Einstein once got up from a Harvard staff meeting and announced he had to go..."It's Time for Beany"...

In the 1960's Bob had seen the success that Hanna-Barbera and others had doing limited animation for TV and produced a syndicated cartoon version of the show.

But remember...we only talk about GOOD things on this blog.

Thanks Bob! For being one of the real pioneers, learning the limits of and stretching every medium you dipped your foot into!

"I'll Git You, Yuh Long Eared Galloot"

Born in 1906, Isadore "Friz" Freleng would have been 103 years old today.


Born in Kansas City, Missouri, Friz grew up with a penchant for drawing. One day in the mid-1920's he answered an ad for an errand boy/guy Friday in a beginning cartoon studio downtown. Errand boy meant they wanted cheap artists, and Friz knew it. That studio was "Laugh-O-Grams", Walt Disney's new company.


Friz got there not long before the studio picked up and moved itself to Hollywood. Fellow animators Ub Iwerks, Rudoph Ising and Hugh Harman coaxed Friz to go along, but he thought he'd wait it out close to home until he saw how it panned out. It panned out pretty good, the studio was producing it's "Alice in Cartoonland" shorts and Friz eventually moved west and joined up.

Pictured above are (left to right) Friz Freleng, Walker Harman, Walt Disney, Lois Hardwick (the last of 4 girls to play "Alice"), Rudolph Ising, Ub Iwerks, Hugh Harman and Roy Disney.


At one point a lot of Walt's artists defected. There were lots of different reasons, we won't go into them all here. Hugh Harman and Rudolph Ising borrowed some money to make a pilot film for their own series of cartoons, Friz came along to help. That pilot was "Bosko, the Talk-Ink Kid", and when it was completed Harman and Ising shopped it around to producers and a film contract. It was eventually sold to Warner Brothers and proposed as the character to launch it's animated short subject department. A new film was made, once again Friz on board, and "Looney Tunes" was born.

Above is a still from the very first "Looney Tune", "Sinking in the Bathtub".


Friz stayed on as an animator at Warner's for a couple years, then accepted a raise in pay at a position at MGM as Fred Quimby started up their animation division. His time at MGM was an unhappy one though, and he was coaxed back to Warner's as Harman & Ising were let go over financial differences and Leon Schlesinger took over production of Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies. He was asked to finish and fix an unfinished cartoon left behind and proved so good, he was promoted to director. And there he stayed for 30 more years.


He (along with Chuck Jones, Tex Avery and Bob Clampett) was one of the directors to develop the character of Bugs Bunny, as well as Daffy Duck and Porky Pig.

Friz had a musical background and even timed his cartoons on music sheets using the bars to time out the gags in his cartoons, instead of the standard filmmakers exposure sheets. Watch a Friz cartoon and every action, reaction, pause, expression, etc., works in rhythmic sync with Carl Stallings orchestrations.


He also was the one to team up Tweety Pie and Sylvester for the first time. Both were existing characters who had appeared solo, and Friz saw the magic of pairing the two.


Friz didn't much care for the character of Elmer Fudd. He saw this dim bulb as no match against the quick wit of Bugs, so he created Yosemite Sam. In my opinion, one of the great cartoon characters of all time. He also bears a slight resemblance to Friz himself, with his short stature and red hair...and from folks who knew him, the temper was about the same as Friz's too.

Friz in later years, paired Sylvester with Speedy Gonzales, and even created Speedy's cousin Slowpoke Rodriguez.


After Warners closed their cartoon studio in 1963, producer David Depatie partnered up with Friz to form Depatie-Freleng. One of their first commissions was to create an opening animation sequence for a Peter Sellers movie coming out.



Friz won an academy award for the opening. One of four won throughout his career.

Thanks Friz. We wish that wasn't all folks.