Category ArchiveBill Peckmann
Bill Peckmann &Books &Illustration 12 Aug 2010 07:38 am
David Levine’s Art – 1
- Of course, David Levine is one of the greatest of the modern caricaturists. His work appeared for years in the NY Review of Books, and actually became those cartoons became the figurehead for the paper.
Levine’s work has been collected in this big, beautiful book. I have Bill Peckmann (yet again) to thank for sending me some of these key pages with many great caricatures.
The juice of the book comes with some of the many and stunning paintings that are included alongside many of the B&W illustrations. Levine is a real artist and these color plates take him out of the world of illustration.
Here are some of the B&W illustrations. Tomorrow the color.
Aubrey Beardsley
(By the way, Elvis’ head was cut off in the printing.)
And then there are the paintings, which I’ll post tomorrow.
Bill Peckmann &Books &Illustration &Rowland B. Wilson 10 Aug 2010 08:14 am
Muggins Mouse – 3
- Muggins Mouse is a book, illustrated by Keith Ward. The copy I’m posting was a Xeroxed copy Rowland Wilson pulled for Bill Peckman. They selected some to copy in color and others, to save money, they made B&W copies. Consequently, we have this mix version of the book. Unfortunately, it’s a rare enough book that we don’t have access to the original. Regardless, there’s plenty to enjoy in Mr. Ward’s great illustrations.
Animation &Bill Peckmann &Commentary &Independent Animation &Layout & Design 07 Aug 2010 08:00 am
Leftover Bits & Pieces
- Here are some bits and pieces left over from the week.
Bill Peckmann sent me some beautiful art this week, and though the pieces have nothing in common, I still thought it’s worth showing the quality of the great art done in the 60s & 70s whether for spot cartoons or animated spots.
These are Bill’s comments from his email:
- “I thought you’d get a kick out of this, here’s RBW’s gag in the Dec. ’61 issue of Esguire and the next will be the same gag as it appeared in 2 colors in his book. You can see how much was lost.”
(Click any image to enlarge.)
Then on another post Bill sent me these treasures from Phil Kimmelman & Associates (PK&A).
Again, Bill’s words:
- “Thought you might have an interest in seeing these. They are 3 cel set ups from the days at PK&A in the ’70′s. Two I designed for Honeycomb Cereal, the third a Mexican spot for Eveready Batteries. The BG’s were also done with Cel Paint. Sadly the color reproduction never looked so good as it does now with scanning, remember those 16mm Answer Prints of yore, made for TV viewing, the original colors never came close to what we had in mind.
These set ups were made for “Studio” ads.”
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Greg Kelly and I have been exchanging emails for quite some time now. He’s done many short films and sends them for comment. His latest film is now posted on Vimeo, and I thought I’d like to commend you to take a look. He’s working hard at his animation, and I can only encourage him wholeheartedly. It isn’t easy to make a film, and he keeps doing it.
He wrote of this piece:
- “It is frame-by-frame, hand drawn in Flash and on twos with a lot of hand adjustments. It isn’t typical for what I do though it is another cartoon in an 8 year long series of shorts featuring one or both of these characters.”
- John Canemaker has another post up at the Print Magazine site. This month it’s a good piece about Chuck Jones at the MacDowell Colony. It tells of Jones winning the MacDowell Medal in 1997.
Canemaker, who led the advisory panel in selecting Jones, prints his introductory speech to Jones and includes links to several WB shorts by the Master. It’s worth checking out if you have any allegiance to Jones’ work.
I’m sure anyone who is interested has already read this, but Michael Barrier has his review of Toy Story 3 up at his site. Since I’m in total agreement with what he has to say, I can only direct you to the link.
Bill Peckmann &Books &Illustration &Rowland B. Wilson 05 Aug 2010 07:13 am
Muggins Mouse – 2
- Years ago, Rowland B. Wilson sent Bill Peckmann a lot of xeroxes of this book, illustrated by Keith Ward. Muggins Mouse is not an easy book to locate, and it’s a beauty. So let’s just take a look at part 2 of the book (which is all of about 60 pages.)
Bill Peckmann &Books &Illustration 30 Jul 2010 07:46 am
Keith Ward’s MUGGINS MOUSE – 1
- Yesterday, I received this note from Bill Peckmann about some old copies Rowland B. Wilson had sent him.:
- “I finally found Rowland’s copies of another Keith Ward book that he had sent me. It’s a 60 page book, half the copies are in color, half are B & W (not the best Xeroxes), why this is so, is unfortunately lost in the mists of time. The book is oversized, 9 1/2 by 12 1/2. . . . I haven’t looked at these pages in ages and the art is a lot better than I remember it.”
Such beautiful line work, fantastic cartooning. Very original.
So without further ado, I’m posting these great illustrations. This takes us up to the first chapter break. More pics to follow as soon as I get them.
Bill Peckmann &Illustration &Story & Storyboards 29 Jul 2010 05:40 am
Schoolhouse Rock
- Schoolhouse Rock became a reality when advertising exec, David McCall, realized his son, who was doing poorly in school, had memorized the lyrics to many a rock song. He produced a record with a couple of quickly written songs.
Tom Yohe illustrated some of the songs and presented it to McCall. They decided to put together an animated version, and the rest became history.
How it came about by Tom Yohe.
Here’s the storyboard and information, right out of the guide, on one particular episode of the show, Unpack Your Adjhectives.
(Click any image to enlarge.)
Here’s the storyboard from Phil Kimmelman & Associates.
Here’s the YouTube version:
All this material came to me from the collection of Bill Peckmann, and I couldn’t be more thankful.
Bill Peckmann &Books 24 Jul 2010 07:39 am
Rogue’s Gallery
- Bill Peckmann has sent me a few pages from the R.C. Harvey book, A Gallery of Rogues: Cartoonists’ Self-Caricatures. There are a lot of great people in this book, and Bill has selected carefully to focus on those we’ve featured on this blog. Take a look.
(Click any image to enlarge.)
Bill Peckmann &Comic Art &Daily post 22 Jul 2010 08:40 am
Gordo
- I’ve always had a lot of respect for Gordo, the comic strip by Gus Arriola. The artwork was always crisp and well drawn, and the strip had its own strong audience. However, I never quite sought it out;no doubt my loss.
It was with interest that I received this note from Bill Peckmann:
- In keeping with the original comic strip theme I am sending this original Gordo Sunday page. This is from the days when you could send a fan letter to one of your favorite cartoonists and they were kind enough to send you an original in return. It has some nice “animated” panels in it. I have RC Harvey’s Gus Arriola book somewhere, but it’s hiding on me right now. To me his style always had a nice California/Disney/Kelly feel about it.
I can’t argue with that, and I’m always excited to post original strip art. This is a large one, so I post it as is and offer a couple of tighter shots for more clarification.
(Click any image to enlarge.)
Bill Peckmann &Books &Illustration 17 Jul 2010 07:17 am
David Levine Lions
- Bill Peckmann sent me a parcel of lions and Aesop’s Fables from David Levine. These dawings are so brilliant that it’s impossible not to share them today. Enjoy.
Many thanks to Bill.
The cover ant the (enlarged) frontispiece from the book.
2
They don’t get any more gorgeous than this turtle and rabbit.
Bill Peckmann &Comic Art &Commentary &Disney &Illustration 10 Jul 2010 07:32 am
More on Give-aways
On the post about Give-aways, I had a little story I was going to add, and at the last moment, I decided not to include it,=. So, why not now?
Back in 1957, when the original Mickey Mouse Club was in full swing, in conjunction with Ipana toothpaste, there was a TV offer of a mail-in of a book which included puppets of Jiminy Cricket and Pinocchio. As a puppet fan, I raced through the tube of Ipana to get to the new packaging to send away for it. $.50 for postage and handling.
It took about a month to receive the book of cardboard pages. There, inside, were punch-out pieces of Jiminy and Pinocchio. By following the instructions, you could put together puppets of the two characters. It was rather complex, but I did it, and boy was I pleased with the end result. By manipulating tabs in the back you could operate the mouth (similar to a ventriloquists puppet) of Jiminy – he always was the talker.
Pinocchio was the marionette and was operated by string. I still remember this give-away gift as if it were yesterday, and I’ve searched the internet for pictures of the book, but haven’t found it. I’m sure I eventually will.
Mind you, I’d made my own marionettes and hand-puppets by the time I came upon this book. I was 10-12 at the time and, through a book I’d borrowed from the library, I found that I could cut and sew muslin, stuffed with more muslin, to make some fine puppets. They all looked a bit like Mr. Potato Head when they were finished, but I was proud of them just the same.
Likewise, there was a book once put out by Dover publishing. Called Motion Picture Toys. The cardboard pages included punch-out objects that, when assembled, produced early animation machines: Praxinoscope, anascope and especially an excellent Zoetrope with animated strips. I remember using this book as a guide and followed it closely to make my own zoetropes that I gave to my siblings one Christmas. Of course, I did my own animated strips that they could interchange.
I’ve searched for that booklet, too, but have had no luck. I’ve even written to the company hoping they’d have some back copies they’d sell me, but they’re not to be found. Of course, that book wasn’t free, but it was pretty cheap and reminded me of the Jiminy/Pinocchio giveaway.
- Michael Barrier left a comment on my Giveaways post, yesterday, and referenced a comic giveaway which was drawn by Walt Kelly featuring a circus milieu. Here’s that part of his comment reprinted:
- Kelly definitely did draw what I think is the most wonderful WDC&S subscription premium, a 10 x 14 (I think, without taking my framed copy down from the wall to measure it) sheet called “The Disney Gang at the Circus,†which shows about 30 Disney characters under the big top, doing all sorts of funny Kelly stuff.
Mike couldn’t illustrate that cover, but here is the ad for that giveaway, courtesy of Bill Peckmann.
To the right is the magazine cover of the issue that the ad appeared in.
Speaking of Mike, he has a brilliant post for all those interested in the history of Mickey Mouse. The old saw of Walt dreaming up Mickey Mouse on his train ride back from New York isn’t even considered when you read about the origins of the Mouse on Mike’s site. Stories about Ub hiding in closets aren’t even pulled out of the hat.
As a fan of silent animated films, I’ve seen my share of Mickey Mouse wannabes that raced after Farmer Alfalfa in all those Terry-Moser Aesop Fables. Likewise just about any other cartoon maker in the pre-Mickey world; you’d see more than your share of mice that could easily be stunt doubles for Mickey. I always assumed it was natural that Mickey just came out of these mice that all animators seemed to be drawing. But no.
Mike goes into the true origins of the mouse, and the evidence seems certain.
Of course, anyone seriously interested in animation history or writing looks into Mike’s site regularly enough that I’m not reporting anything new. But for those of you who haven’t come across this essay by Mike, go there.
- John Canemaker has a new, fine piece about acting in animation on his Print Magazine blog page. Take a look.