Saturday Morning Cartoons!

Saturday Morning and finally a respite to a 2 week period of obligations!  I still have a couple of errands to run, but no all-day or 1/2 da commitments involved, and you know what makes me feel like I'm at the beginning of 2 days of liberation?

Saturday morning cartoons!  Mmmmmmmmm.

Dig in, everyone...Monday's just around the corner, but for now...we are free.

Talk to you soon.

Saturday Morning Cartoons - again!

As I said last week, Saturday Morning Cartoon-time (yes...I think that SHOULD be capitalized!) Was once a special time.  That's been lost.

Don't get me wrong, if there were cartoons available to me 24/7 back in my day via cable, home video, internet et al, I would have been in hog heaven.  But looking back, it was nice that it was this isolated little thing.

Now by the time I happened along (I was born in 1963, so my formative Saturday morning years were late 60's/early-mid 70's) they (television producers/network executives) had learned (Hi, Filmation!..How's the crapfest going?!?) to do cartoons for TV on the extreme cheap.  Not the late 50's/early 60's cheap where they learned to creatively cut corners in a way that added an aesthetic of it's own, but to plain old "F" it up! 

But we still had some Looney Tunes sneak through.  And some Woody Woodpecker and his pals.

My generation learned of great theatrical cartoons from the golden age through TV, just as so many of us only know films from the golden age of Hollywood.

A weird mix of things that all ended up in Technicolor glory on that little box in my living room.  And even before in black and white. 

And in YOUR living room, too.

Talk to you soon.

Independence Day!

Happy Independence Day everone.  Be Safe.  Be Happy.  Be Free.

Talk to you soon.

"The Art of Cartooning" 2 of 2

Part 2 of Jack Sidebotham and Lester Rossin's "The Art of Cartooning".

This stuff makes me happy.

Talk to you soon.

"The Art of Cartooning" 1 of 2

Time for more Cartoon instruction, kiddoes!  This time, NOT from a hand-me-down from big brother David's collection, but from a book that was one of me own back in the mid-1970's.  Grumbacher Library's "The Art of Cartooning" designed by Lester Rossin and illustrated by Jack Sidebotham

You may recognize Sidebotham's work (as I instantly did as a kid) from his work on the "Schoolhouse Rock" cartoons.  With the understanding that YouTube will yank these in a matter of weeks, days or even minutes...here's a blast from the past

and another...

Now dig into the lessons!

Talk to you soon!

The Business of the Cartoon?

In the beginning there was a cartoonist, a mammoth-hair brush and a cave wall in France.  The cartoon was born.

Then there were cartoonists, a chisel and the wall of a pyramid in Egypt.  The hieroglyphic/sequential art/a comic strip was born.

Then came the industrial revolution and mass media in America in the late 19th-early 20th centuries.  Daring and imaginative young men who told stories and designed fantastic worlds and delighted us all.

Then came the homogeneous decades of the mid-20th century when advertising draftsmen wrote books about the "business" of cartooning and sucked the life out of all of us.

But in retrospect...they're kind of cool to see.  The tools they teach are all valid.  And whether it be a mammoth-hair brush, a chisel or a rapidograph...cartoons is cool.

More tomorrow.

Beyond the Pleasure Principle, Comic Quotation in Contemporary American Painting!

Final chapter and index for the companion magazine to the Whiteny Museum of Art's comic art exhibition back in the 1980's.

Art appreciation on a subject I hold dear.

Enjoy!

And a checklist of the exhibition.

I wish I could have seen it.

Talk to you soon.

Milt Gross - Yinglish is WAYYYYYYYYY Cooler than Spanglish!

Backwards/Out-of-Order Birthday Week continues! Yesterday, March 4, was the 115th anniversary of the birth of Milt Gross in 1895!

Milt Gross was a cartoonist who dabbled in 3 different mediums and had an impact on them all. Comic Strips, Comic Books and Animation all felt his zaniness and were left the better for it.

Zaniness is a word I seldom use, but no other applies to this guy. His cartoons were downright wacky in their appearance and execution. Milt's goal was nothing more than to make the audience laugh.

I would say he aimed for nothing weightier...but really, making people laugh is about as important a thing as you should ever want to do.

I'll come back at a future date to talk more about Milt's wonderful work. I'm going to leave you with just a few examples for now.

Technical difficulties here at "Jeffy's Head" central require that I do a little maintenance and is the reason today's post is a little late. I wanted to get a little something up here for my readers though...and Milt Gross' work is awfully fun to look at and read.

Enjoy, I'll see ya all tomorrow!

Thanks Milt...for never diluting the "funny"!