I don't normally do many caricatures of political figures, as my preference is for showbiz entertainers. However, over on the National Caricaturists Network (NCN), our esteemed senior member, Jan Op De Beeck, has come up with a daily challenge for us to draw a celebrity he has chosen who is celebrating his or her birthday that day. That's what led to my recent caricatures of Lee Marvin and Ellen Page, by the way. This past Sunday was Senator Ted Kennedy's birthday and, since he's a politician I quite admire and respect, I thought I should do a caricature tribute to him. (Don't forget - we have him to thank for being one of the major players to endorse Barack Obama in the presidential race!)
Admittedly, I have somewhat mixed feelings about Senator Joe Lieberman, who celebrates his birthday on Tuesday. Though a Democrat, Joe also seems to have one foot firmly planted in the Republican camp, being somewhat hawkish in matters of defense and foreign policy. Still, I do respect him for speaking his mind and voting accordingly, as I don't believe anybody should slavishly adhere to the party line on every issue.
Incidentally, I have to share this funny YouTube clip I came across, as it turns out that somebody else agrees with me in noticing the similarities between Joe and the "son" of Stimpy in an episode of John Kricfalusi's "Ren and Stimpy":
In just a short time from now the Academy Awards is about to begin. I'll be tuning in as is my annual ritual, of course! Though I'm afraid I have no caricatures of any of this year's nominees to post, I will instead offer up this one I did of last year's nominee for Best Actress, Ellen Page as "Juno". This was drawn just a couple days ago in honour of Miss Page's birthday which was yesterday. Such a cute kid!
Anyway, I have to go now and get ready for the Oscars. Here's the trailer for "Juno":
Yep, today I hit 49, and so now the countdown is on to the big five-0 next year. I must admit that's a scary thought indeed. On the brighter side, however, Barack Obama has made the journey up here to Canada today to help me celebrate my birthday. In fact, here's a photo of me and Barack just taken this morning before he headed off to Ottawa for a dull discussion with our Prime Minister Harper. Oh, the other fellow in the photo is John McCain, whom you may recall lost out to Barack in the recent U.S. election. John's been kind of down in the dumps since then, so Barack graciously invited him along to join in my birthday celebration. Sorry for the photo being so small, but it was taken on John's Polaroid One Step.
By the way, I should acknowledge some other people who are celebrating their birthday today. Prince Andrew for one, who coincidentally was born on the exact same day as me in 1960. Personally I've always suspected that the cradles were switched at birth and that I should currently be enjoying a life of luxury in the British Monarchy. Ah well...
And it also happens to be the birthday of actor, Lee Marvin, who would have celebrated turning 85 this year if it weren't for the sad fact he left us a few years ago due to his celebrating maybe a little too hard all his life! But in honour of this crazy rascal, here is my caricature of Lee Marvin in his Oscar winning role as the drunken, washed up gunfighter, "Kid Shelleen", from the 1965 film, "Cat Ballou". Actually, I just watched "Cat Ballou" again a couple of nights ago so I could draw this, and it really is a fun film. Jane Fonda is just so young and pretty as the title character, and it also features a rare bigscreen appearance by one of my favourite singers, Nat King Cole, playing one of two wandering minstrels (along with Stubby Kaye) who narrate parts of the story in song.
Here is a montage of scenes that somebody had cobbled together on YouTube that pay tribute to Lee Marvin as Kid Shelleen. The shot of the drunken Shelleen leaning up against the wall astride his equally drunken horse is priceless!
John Kricfalusi has just posted an interesting piece on the use of dog-nosed faces on otherwise very human cartoon characters. This is a phenomenon mostly found in Disney's "Uncle Scrooge" and Donald Duck" comics illustrated by Carl Barks, although it's been seen in animation as well, like Nelvana's "Rock and Rule", for example. I agree with John that this type of character is rather off-putting, as it is neither distinctly human nor typical of the "Funny Animal" type of cartoons so prevalent in animation and comics. Though the Carl Barks dog-nosed characters are rather benign, this trend also begat the "Furry" movement, which usually also seems to have a sexual bent to it in the art of its many practitioners.
At this very point in time, I am coincidentally covering the topic of "Anthropomorphism" in my Character Design course at Sheridan College, so I'd like to take this opportunity to address the distinction between "Funny Animals" and "Furries". Some time ago, I'd posted this piece on "Four Degrees of Anthropomorphism" that covers most of the main approaches to creating animals with human traits and personalities in various animated shorts and features. By breaking it down into these four common approaches, I hope to teach my students how to create a set of rules to apply to the way they handle animal characters in their film stories, so that there's a certain logic and plausibility that is maintained in what they're trying to communicate to their audience. And from a purely visual standpoint, I'm also trying to impress upon them where to draw the line between an anthropomorphic animal that possesses human traits, before crossing that line and instead ending up with a "Furry", being essentially an animal's head stuck on top of a fur covered human body.
Ideally, an anthropomorphic animal should maintain something of the actual animal's physique, even when walking around on two legs and wearing clothes. If you look at this still from Disney's "Robin Hood", you will note that Robin himself is still very much a fox on two legs, and that if placed back down on all fours without his costume, he would be very much at home in a film like "Lady and the Tramp" as a caricature of a real fox but with a human personality. Same thing with Little John the bear. When done really well, an anthropomorphic animal character should be initially visualized as a "Human Type", then translating those human physical traits and reinterpreting them in the animal design. I discussed this topic here.
For those of you familiar with "The Country Bear Jamboree" at Walt Disney World, the Disney artists were very successful in creating a cast of bear characters that looked like caricatures of the type of performers one would see on the stage at Nashville's "Grand Ol' Opry". Here is a picture of "Big Al", as an example of what I'm talking about. The facial design and physical body type are very much based on the character's human equivalent, yet never losing sight of the physical design of the actual animal either. For many students, this seems to be rather confusing and a challenge to pull off, while for others it seems to be a very natural, intuitive process.
For the uninitiated, just so you have a clear idea of the distinction between what I'm describing here and the aforementioned, dreaded "Furries", here is a link to some Google images of the latter. As you can see, they are more mutant than animal. As a general rule of thumb: If it is embarrassing to look at your animal character when he or she is naked, chances are you've drawn a "Furry"!!
Just to solidify the distinction, here is a clip from Disney's "Bedknobs and Broomsticks" that shows how to successfully translate animals into two-legged anthropomorphic characters while still maintaining the animal's physique. I really love this clip, as all of the gags are based on the traits of the actual animals, yet every one of them also conjures up a "Human Type" equivalent as well. Wouldn't you agree that the big ugly rhino puts one in mind of some thuggish, skinhead footballer? Of course, the sleek and agile cheetah is more of the David Beckham type.
I was going through some boxes of stuff the other day and ran across some relics from my years in the art department at Walt Disney World. This is the illustration I did for the folder cover that held the 1992 Silver Pass that all Disney cast members (employees) at a certain level would have received. The banner would have been printed in bronze and gold on the passes for other levels. The name of the individual cast member would have also been printed on the banner so that the folder artwork itself was a nice little personalized souvenir for them.
Incidentally, these passes enabled the cast members to sign up to three guests into the park, as a nice side benefit of working for Disney. I believe there was some restriction on how often you could do this during the year, however, as some cast members had abused their privileges in the past. Anyway, I thought it was wonderful to be able to treat my family and friends to a day in the parks when they traveled down to visit me in Florida.
The original illustration itself was probably about twice the dimensions of this printed piece, and I painted it in gouache on illustration board. Modeling on the characters was all done in a dry brush technique, while the shadows underneath the characters and Tink's pixie dust trail were done with an airbrush - something I used sparingly, as I found it rather unwieldy! This was long before I started using Photoshop, which I find so much easier for creating highly controlled airbrush effects. Mind you, I still far prefer the look of the character art done with real paint.
I recall that the most fun part of this particular assignment was getting to draw and paint Henry Bear, the master of ceremonies in "The Country Bear Jamboree", my favourite WDW attraction. Though he may have been a 3-dimensional audio-animatronic character, I wanted to treat him as pure cartoon, like he could have easily existed in a 1940s/1950s Disney animated short, as a close cousin to Humphrey Bear. In fact, I was always disappointed that these bears from that attraction had never been utilized much on Disney merchandise through the years, and had never been portrayed in pure animated cartoon form, especially since the design concept art had all been done by legendary Disney animator and Imagineer, Marc Davis. It's also too bad that Disney didn't adapt them to animation and use that as the basis for the "Country Bears" movie they did some years back, instead of the godawful live-action/costumed crap that they churned out. A traditionally animated feature keeping the characters intact in their cartoon design would have been infinitely more satisfying to we longtime Disney fans.
My goodness, how ever did this Disney Classic slip by me until now? It's Disney's "The Secret of the Magic Gourd", now available on DVD!! This film marks Disney's first film produced in China and hopefully it will lead to many more films about native Chinese delicacies. Gosh, he's just so cute and enchanting and, yes, he's actually voiced by none other than High School Musical's Corbin Bleu! (Son of Cordon?)
I do think the little rascal could use some clothes though, so he doesn't get cold. Maybe some nice red shorts like I'm suggesting in the sketch below. One minor criticism of the character, by the way: He does seem to be all squash and no stretch...
(Thanks to Animated News for the link to this item.)
*Addendum*
Yes, as someone asked me in the comments section, I was being quite sarcastic with the above post. However, my objection to the film is primarily in context of it being a Disney release, with the typical American "hip attitude" in the gourd's english dubbed dialogue for the domestic market. Listen to the ridiculous sitcom dialogue spoken with plenty of 'tude by tween idol, Corbin Bleu, then compare it to the Chinese dialogue in the original. I must admit, there is a certain charm in the original, as the magic gourd comes across like an older and wiser little forest sprite, similar in tone to Yoda or Dr. Seuss's "The Lorax". In the redubbed version, however, the gourd is an obnoxious little hipster with an annoying teen persona, like a young Jim Carrey type. (And I personally can't stand Jim Carrey!) My guess is that the marketing idiots at Disney can't bear the thought of any lead character talking like a real adult. Here are both versions for you to compare:
I wrote about legendary Disney animator Ollie Johnston back in April of this year at the time of his passing. Though Ollie lived to a ripe old age, as well as outliving all of his fellow members of "The Nine Old Men", it was still a very sad occasion for me. Even though I had only met with both Ollie Johnston and Frank Thomas on less than a dozen occasions, these two wonderful artists had kept in touch with me through the exchange of Christmas cards each year. I actually ended up on Ollie's list several years earlier than Frank's, so my cards from he and his wife Marie date back to the year 1985, just a year after I had started my own Disney career up here in the Canadian office before later relocating down to Florida's Walt Disney World.
These earlier ones in my collection are my favourites. (Click on them to see them MUCH bigger!) Ollie was in his 70's and there's still a real vitality in his drawings, similar to his rough animation in his years at Disney. There's also a running gag in these about poor Marie having to wear the mouse ears. I've only included some of the cards which feature Ollie's sketches by the way, as there are several later on where he instead printed humourous photos of he and Marie, where Marie still had to pose in the mouse ears! There are two (of three) cards here that show Ollie transforming into a deer while he and Frank were putting a great deal of labour into writing their book on "Bambi".
The 1993 card shows Ollie as he and Frank were working on their next book about "The Disney Villains", which is an overview of all of the villains that were developed for the films, not all of which Frank or Ollie had necessarily worked on so it's not as in-depth as their previous books. This also was their final publication, as they had now both hit 80 and were starting to feel their age. Ollie in particular was suffering from arthritic hands and therefore finding drawing a more painful task too, and you can see that his line is a little less sure than it had been, yet there still remains that vitality and feeling of inner life in these little sketches. 1995 marked the debut of Gypsy and Frisky, the two beloved dogs that Ollie and Marie had welcomed into their home. These two characters remained a fixture throughout most of Ollie's later Christmas cards.
The photo of Ollie at the top of this post is from his 2005 card - the year that he received the National Medal of Arts for his long artistic career, presented to him by President Bush at a ceremony at the White House in November. As you can imagine, this collection of Christmas cards from Ollie and Marie I cherish very much, especially now that this wonderful man has left us to be reunited with his beloved Marie. Ollie Johnston was one of my biggest artistic heroes and was extremely generous to me back when I was just a kid with a dream of working for Disney one day. I am grateful for the tremendous legacy he has left us, and my personal memories of having been fortunate enough to have known him as a friend.
Merry Christmas to you all, and thanks for continuing to drop by The Cave!
Yes, sad to say, but I tend to get a little Grinchy this time of year. Mostly it's due to the drudgery of Christmas shopping. It's not that I don't want to buy gifts for family and friends, mind you, it's just that I end up having a tough time trying to find stuff that I think they will like. In fact, it always seems that I see all sorts of books, CD's and DVD's that I'D like instead! So it does feel like I'm trekking through many a store over and over before I settle on the right gifts to buy for others.
But my main complaint about Christmas shopping is making my way through the overcrowded malls and having my ears assaulted by all of the crappy contemporary Christmas songs! I'm afraid that my tastes in music have always been a lot closer to my parents' generation than that of my own, and in fact as a teen I always preferred the records my Dad played around the house far more than what my peers were listening to at the time. As such, I never did develop a taste for the rock music of the day, although a lot of the pop/rock on the radio back then certainly was a lot more tuneful than what's on nowadays. Which brings me to my complaint.
Why do all of the untalented, similar sounding, young pop/rockers of today feel that they need to release their crap versions of Christmas songs? They all seem to sound the same, as their trilling crap voices meander around the notes without ever really hitting their target, adding in a lot of inane "Yeaaahhh"s to fill in any pauses between the lyrics. And then there are the mindless rappers who have cut melody out of the equation altogether, trying to force in ten times as many words (most of them unintelligible) than the original composers had written in the first place. And all of this tuneless, appalling crap is being blasted at high volume out of every clothing and electronics store that I am forced to pass by.
Now to be fair, there are a few stores and restaurants where I can hear old chestnuts from glorious Christmases past sung by the likes of Bing, Frank, Dino, Sammy, Ella, Peggy, and Nat, but even then there still seems to be a few contemporary crap songs thrown into the mix just to rankle my nerves. Incidentally, why is it only at Christmas that the great singers of the past are allowed to be heard in public at all before being placed in the box of mothballs again for another year? If one didn't know better, one might assume that Bing Crosby had recorded "White Christmas" and nothing else during his entire career!
So there you have it - the reasons for my annual Grinchy demeanor. Please let it be Sinatra singing as I sit down to a plate of roast beast...(sigh)
And speaking of Frank and Dino, here's some fun Christmas music by the all time kings of cool - a surefire remedy for curing Grinchiness:
Here's a salute to my favourite film reviewer and historian, Leonard Maltin. I was lucky enough to meet Leonard way back in 1982 when he was one of the attendees at The Ottawa International Animation Festival. He'd only recently started appearing on the newly created "Entertainment Tonight" (which was so much better in those days), so not many people were as familiar with him as they are today. However, I knew of Leonard Maltin primarily as a noted authority on animated films, through his two books, "The Disney Films" and "Of Mice and Magic". Anyway, I wasn't going to be shy about saying hi, so I went up and started chatting with him. He was such an affable fellow that, since he was going to be around the festival all week, I took the opportunity to do a caricature of him and presented it to him a few days later. He seemed quite genuinely delighted with it and was happy to sign my copies of his two books in return. He also extended an invitation to come visit him if I ever found myself in NYC, which I ended up taking him up on about a year later.
At that time, Leonard and his wife Alice were still living in Manhattan, even though Leonard was having to fly to LA for all of his Entertainment Tonight film reviews. Some time later they would relocate to LA in order to make that task more practical. When I saw him in New York he was in the middle of obtaining a second apartment in his building to set up as an office, as his film and cartoon collection had gotten too big for the one apartment they lived in. He and Alice were very gracious to me and Leonard took great delight in showing me his extensive collection of cartoon memorabilia. After an enjoyable visit, they strolled with me back to where I needed to catch a bus back to my hotel.
What I love best about Leonard is his obvious enthusiasm for movies and, even when he does offer up some criticism he is never mean spirited with it, always balancing out the bad with some good. Back when he wrote "The Disney Films" in 1973, it was long before it was fashionable to write about Disney and there were very few textbooks available on the subject. I think that the only two books on Disney I personally had at that time were his and "The Art of Walt Disney" by Christopher Finch. I found myself referring to his book often, as those were still the years of "The Wonderful World of Disney" on Sunday night TV, and I would read up on any of the live action Disney films that were about to show up on there for extra background on their production. What I didn't know at the time was that Leonard would have been only a young fellow of 23 when that incredible reference book was published!
In recent years, longtime Disney fans have Leonard Maltin to thank for his efforts in launching the "Walt Disney Treasures" series of boxed DVD sets devoted to vintage Disney animation, early television productions and Walt Disney, the man himself. Leonard also hosts these DVDs, providing a lot of historical background and supplemental interviews with legendary artists and performers. I have pretty much all of these sets, and find myself returning to them often to indulge in the warm nostalgia of that wonderful era of real entertainment.
Leonard currently has a website called "Leonard Maltin's Movie Crazy" as well as a quarterly publication that showcases vintage films of the early days of Hollywood, his real passion. And since Leonard has been such a loyal friend to animation and Disney over his many years as a film historian, I thought I'd give this new caricature of him an appropriate Disney cartoon-style, sunburst backdrop. By the way, I see from my list of celebrity birthdays that Leonard shares his birthday with Steven Spielberg, which I'm certain makes him happy. But he also shares his birthday with screen legend, Betty Grable, and I'll wager that makes him even happier! Happy Birthday Leonard!
Here's a shameless plug for a book series I've been connected with since the beginning, having illustrated all of the covers with my Disney caricatures. Didier Ghez, who runs the very informative blog, Disney History, now has the latest volume of "Walt's People" available for purchase. With Christmas coming up fast, you folks may want to buy a whole bunch of these wonderful compilations of historical Disney interviews for the Disney enthusiast in your family. Head on over to Amazon to purchase as many as you can possibly afford!!
Below are the caricatures that adorn the cover of Walt's People Volume 7: Clarence "Ducky" Nash, the voice of Donald Duck; X. Atencio, the Imagineer; and Jim Macdonald, the head of the Sound Effects dept.
I've worked as a cartoonist in the print medium for over 30 years, including 10 years as a Character Artist with the Disney Company. For 11 years I taught Character Design in the Animation program at Sheridan College. Currently, I freelance for various clients with my cartoon and caricature illustration.
Though my feet may be physically planted in this 21st century, my mind prefers to take up residence in the 1960's - a time when everything in commercial art and popular entertainment still made sense to me. It was Sinatra's world and I'm still livin' in it. Welcome to The Cartoon Cave...
I don't normally do many caricatures of political figures, as my preference is for showbiz entertainers. However, over on the National Caricaturists Network (NCN), our esteemed senior member, Jan Op De Beeck, has come up with a daily challenge for us to draw a celebrity he has chosen who is celebrating his or her birthday that day. That's what led to my recent caricatures of Lee Marvin and Ellen Page, by the way. This past Sunday was Senator Ted Kennedy's birthday and, since he's a politician I quite admire and respect, I thought I should do a caricature tribute to him. (Don't forget - we have him to thank for being one of the major players to endorse Barack Obama in the presidential race!)
Admittedly, I have somewhat mixed feelings about Senator Joe Lieberman, who celebrates his birthday on Tuesday. Though a Democrat, Joe also seems to have one foot firmly planted in the Republican camp, being somewhat hawkish in matters of defense and foreign policy. Still, I do respect him for speaking his mind and voting accordingly, as I don't believe anybody should slavishly adhere to the party line on every issue.
