Happy Birthday, Lynda Carter!

I just love 70's TV shows, and lately I've been watching the DVD first season of Wonder Woman that debuted back in 1975. So I thought I'd try doing a caricature of lovely Lynda Carter who played the title role, in honour of her birthday today. Like many fellows of a similar age who grew up with 70's TV shows, I must admit I had a big crush on Ms. Carter!

Lynda had only had a handful of small parts on TV and in film before being chosen to play Wonder Woman, but she turned out to be just perfect for the role. Having won Miss World USA pageant in 1972, Lynda was a statuesque beauty with a swanlike neck and big blue eyes. However, it was more than just her good looks that she brought to the role of Wonder Woman. Lynda was smart enough to know that the key to the character was in playing her with absolute sincerity (just like Christopher Reeve would do with Superman three years later). Despite there being an element of humour to the show, it was not what I would consider to be high camp, however. It tried to remain pretty true to its original comic book roots, including having an animated title sequence and text boxes to indicate where a new scene was taking place.

The character was an ageless Amazon, born and raised on the uncharted Paradise Island (set somewhere within the Bermuda Triangle, according to the pilot episode), and populated solely by females. So having made the journey from Paradise Island to America, Lynda Carter played the role as a wide-eyed innocent, not completely naive mind you, but initially unfamiliar with the ways of modern man in the outside world during World War II. Since the series was created in the 70's when the Women's Liberation movement was in full swing, there was some feminist leanings to the show. However, the feminism of Wonder Woman was of a gentle variety, as the character would often be aghast at the cruelty and warmongering of mankind, while extolling the virtues of her own female populated society that preached kindness and lived a harmonious and peaceful existence. It should be noted that Wonder Woman uses her powers only in the role of a peacekeeper, never becoming a fierce aggressor. Her desire to protect mankind is not unlike that of a mother doing all she can to protect her children. This is the aspect I appreciate about the show's particular brand of feminism - that compassion for others shows a greater strength of character than to wield force over them. How refreshingly different this is from today's female superheroes and forensic detectives etc, who all sneer cynically and aspire to be every bit as bad-ass as their male counterparts.

Incidentally, I'm happy to hear that Lynda Carter is still enjoying great success today in her other career as a singer, which is what she started out doing prior to pursuing acting. In fact, my caricaturist colleague, Sam Gorrie, who also does cosplay as Wonder Woman in Las Vegas, just recently got to see her idol in concert at the Suncoast Hotel, seen here. Pretty neat, huh?

So, once again, a very Happy Birthday to lovely Lynda Carter. I hope this classy and elegant woman continues to enjoy success while keeping her legion of fans entertained!

So Long, Ernie!

I heard the sad news that Ernest Borgnine died today at the ripe old age of 95. What with this and the passing of Andy Griffith last week, we've lost two major stars of the classic TV era. Of course, apart from his starring role on McHale's Navy, Ernie was even more well known as a veteran character actor from the movies, earning an Academy Award for his poignant portrayal of the lonely New York butcher in the heartbreaking Marty, scripted by the brilliant Paddy Chayefsky.

It was just two years ago that Ernest Borgnine was a special guest at the Toronto Fan Expo, where he was signing autographs and chatting with his fans. Though I am certainly an avid autograph collector, I've made it my policy to only seek out celebrities that I actually really admire, which is why I attended the event that year specifically to meet Ernie, as well as Julie Newmar (the Catwoman on TV's Batman). As is often the case at Fan Expo, the longest line-ups of fans are usually found at the tables with the current crop of young actors and actresses from various sci-fi/fantasy movies and TV series. I feel sorry for the veteran performers who don't usually get as much traffic at their tables, although it works out well for me, as these are the only performers that I truly wish to meet.

As there were only a handful of people in line before me, I was able to meet Ernie fairly quickly. He greeted all of his fans with that familiar big gap-toothed grin and he was just so warm and inviting with everyone who came up to meet with him. Whereas some of the stars were not permitting photos to be taken (due to paid for photo ops being organized later in the day), Ernie was only too happy to pose for photos with his fans. I always ink up two originals of my caricatures so that I can present one to the star as a gift and get them to sign the second one for me, so that is what you see here in these pics that accompany this post. Ernie seemed genuinely delighted with my caricature of him in his role of TV's Quinton McHale.

Later in the day I noticed that there was nobody currently in line to see Ernest Borgnine, so I decided to use the opportunity to go up and chat with him some more, as I wanted to ask him about his costarring alongside Frank Sinatra in From Here To Eternity. He was happy to chat about his role in the film, adding that he thought Frank had a lot of courage to work for scale in that pic, as his career at that time needed a boost. He and Frank became good friends on that film (despite the fact that Ernie's character, "Fatso" beats Sinatra's "Maggio" to death!), and he said he was overjoyed when Frank earned the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor that year.

I've been fortunate enough to meet many film personalities that I've admired over the years, but Ernest Borgnine will always stand out among the rest, as he was honestly such a joyful and sweet man. In his honour, I just watched him again in Marty this evening - such a touching performance from a truly wonderful human being.

Happy Birthday, Donald Duck!

I thought I'd acknowledge Donald Duck's 78th anniversary by posting some of the Disney merchandise that I had a hand in helping to create a few years back. Though most of my Disney work was in the form of traditional cartoon illustration, there were also many figural projects that required a series of rotational drawings in order to help the sculptor visualize it in three dimensions before going to work on it.

MMC Donald Duck Rotations

This piece was to celebrate The Mickey Mouse Club TV show from the 1950s, and I did rotations for both this Donald with the gong and a Mickey figure in bandleader costume, as the two were featured in the opening titles of that show. 

Mickey Mouse Club Donald Duck Figurine

I was quite happy with the way this figurine turned out, and the pic above was taken of the actual piece that I'd bought at The Disney Store at the time it was made available for purchase. I only wish I'd bought the one of Mickey as well!

Snow Globes Rotations

This was a commemorative snow globe that was created for the 65th Anniversary of Donald Duck in 1999, called "Donald Duck - 65 Feisty Years". I remember doing a lot of art for that merchandising programme featuring the duck in his various incarnations through the years.

Donald Duck Snow Globes Figurine

I must admit I was a bit disappointed in the sculpture of the large Donald Duck figure in the armchair, as I felt the face wasn't quite right and overall he looked a bit thick and lumpy. Still, it was likely due to the constraints of the mould-making process.

Three Caballeros Rotations

This was a fun project to work on, as the original concepts for these Big Figurines of The Three Caballeros were by the exceptionally talented Disney artists, Kevin Kidney and Jody Daily, and their poses were so expressive to translate into dimensional drawings.

Three Caballeros Big Figurines

Here's a pic of the finished sculpted figurines that I've borrowed from Kevin's site. As you can see, the poses were modified a bit from my drawings - Panchito's hands not on his hips with eyes straight ahead, and José's beak is closed, but otherwise are quite faithful to the way I'd drawn the rotations.

Anyway, I hope you enjoyed seeing the process behind creating these sculpted figurines of Donald Duck. I have other examples of my rotation drawings of various Disney characters that I'll continue to post from time to time.

Happy Birthday, Dino!

Yes, June 7th marks the 95th birthday of Dean Martin, one of the favourite performers here at The Cartoon Cave. Now that Time-Life are releasing some of The Dean Martin Variety Show on DVD sets, I've been itching to do another caricature of ol' Dino. Though the first two DVD sets have been a bit disappointing for the fans, as they're cut down and missing some of the music numbers due to licensing hassles, I gather that the 3rd set just released finally features complete shows. I sure hope that Time-Life now continue with this approach to keep us all happy.

The Dean Martin Variety Show was a great example of the long popular variety show format that has sadly been missing from network TV for too many years now. I personally feel that the variety show was an integral part of the TV schedule, as it brought together top entertainers from TV, movies, and the music business. The benefit was that it kept all popular entertainers of that era very much in the public eye, creating a shared culture for all viewers to enjoy together. We really don't have that today, what with the severe fragmentation of the television audience due to the "500 Channel Universe", where no single show gets much of a market share. Frankly, I was a lot happier back when there were no more than about two dozen TV channels and just the three big U.S. networks creating shows that were genuinely entertaining. Not so anymore, in my opinion.

While most of the variety shows were rehearsed laboriously every week until the day they were taped in front of a live audience, on Dean's show only the guests rehearsed all week. Dean's contract stipulated that he didn't have to show up until taping day if he didn't want to, as Dean liked to keep his image real loose, even stumbling over his reading of the cue cards to add to the comic effect and his on-screen image of being a bit tipsy with the booze. It was an individual approach that worked so well for Dean, as he knew that his natural charm would suffer if he had to adhere to a tightly scripted format.

It also helped when he had just the right chemistry with his guests, as I think is evident here in this clip alongside cute and adorable Goldie Hawn, who was then one of the stars on the very popular comedy review, Laugh-In:

Blonde Beach Bunny

Yes, it's been a long time since I last posted something. Anyway, here's something I've done as a result of playing with Photoshop CS5. Admittedly, I'm not likely to ever be a "digital painter" in the truest sense, as I find that my efforts to paint without benefit of a containing outline just don't seem to look very good. While it's frustrating to try and achieve the fully rendered approach that others do so well, I suspect that I'd never be totally happy with it even if I could do one to my satisfaction. I am a cartoonist who happens to love the power and graphic boldness of a line drawing, so I'm always going to prefer working like that.

It's for this very reason, actually, that I'll always prefer traditional hand drawn animation to CG, as I still believe that you can make a bolder visual statement through outline describing the illusion of solid form than you can with the fully rendered CG approach. While it's true that I'm adding in all the highlights and shadows in my drawing similar to the look of CG, I find that I really need that outline to hold it all together and make it pop. Anyway, I'll continue to experiment with CS5, since it does seem to give a huge improvement in the way the brush tool handles a controlled line compared to what I was achieving with CS3.

Sheridan College Open House 2012

On Saturday, April 28 2012, I once again participated in Sheridan College's Open House, drawing caricatures of the visitors to the event to help raise money for the Animation program, in which I teach 2nd Year Character Design. Here's most of the ones I drew that day:

Sheridan Animation Industry Day 2012

On Thursday, April 26th, Sheridan College held its annual Industry Day in support of the BAA Animation program, in which I am the instructor for 2nd Year Character Design. Here are pics of some of the 4th Year students who are graduating this year, photographed at the work stations that were set up in Sheridan's computer commons to showcase their films and artwork for the benefit of the industry reps who had just watched the 2 hour screening of their short films:

Ada Bratic ("Foxed") and Kirsten Whiteley ("Spectra").

Brad McLeod ("Doggy Dilemma") and Natalia Shevcun ("Breakfast Time").

Eva Zhou ("Yeti") and Darryl Kee ("Chewy!"). In the background, Dylan Glynn claws his way into the photo on the right, while my colleague, Mark Mayerson tries to look inconspicuous on the left.

Dean Heezen, creator of the brilliant dance animation in "Sax".

Evee Fex-chriszt, with the furry star of "The Terrible Bandit".

Justin Hartley ponders the mystery behind "Murder on the Docks".

Kathryn Durst with her delightful puppet family in "Doggy See, Doggy Do".

Leigh Anna Frostad ("Origin Story") shows off a sketch of her pet piggy.

Nichole Ter Horst ("Pillow Talk"), yours truly, and Kat Antonic ("Amare").

Crazy rascal, Noam Sussman ("Gum") and Nicole Ter Horst.

Seol-Ah Rim, with images from her film that seems to have no title!

Shen Ramu, with images from "Bygone Bounce".

I don't want to state what films I considered the "best", however, here is a list of the ones that were among my personal favourites, mostly from the standpoint of character/personality animation, which is what I'm always most interested in seeing each year. If you click on the student's name, it will link to their own blog or website where you can see more examples of their artwork:

Sax, by Dean Heezen - A beautifully crafted film designed around dancing to the jazz beat of a saxophone instrumental. Dean has an astounding feel for appealing character design and his animation is very fluid and fun.

The Terrible Bandit, by Evee Fex-chriszt - Evee is a truly brilliant character animator, and her film about a sly raccoon trying to pry a dish full of dogfood away from a sleeping doberman shows off her exceptional drawing talent so well.

Origin Story, by Leigh Anna Frostad - When in my 2nd Year Character Design class, Leigh Anna often cracked me up with assignments that showed off her funny and appealing cartoon style. Her film featuring anthropomorphic depictions of the moon, sun and earth was a lot of fun.

A film that seems to lack a title, by Seol-Ah Rim - Her film about 3 roly-poly hamsters (or mice?) helping a bear to bake a pie features such an appealing and original style that I found absolutely charming. If you click on her name, you can view the film in its entirety on her Tumblr site.

Bygone Bounce, by Shen Ramu - Somehow I had missed seeing this film in its early leica reel stage, so I was very pleasantly surprised to see it for the first time in final form. Shen's parable on life of a little girl bouncing on a trampoline and aging a year or more each time that she bounces up into our view is absolutely delightful. There are some gags that are so sweet and adorable along the way, with really well thought out personality animation. Definitely one of my favourites this year!

There are many others I could mention but I'll stop there, although I do have to give honourable mention to a really funny crowd pleaser, Gum, by the completely wacky Noam Sussman, a highly original talent who has provided us with much entertainment in his four years at Sheridan. It's always rather sad to see our grads leave the school, yet all of the faculty wish them the best as they head off to pursue their careers in the animation industry. We'll miss you all!