Michael Sporn Animation – Splog

- Bill lPeckmann has sent a stash of beautiful cartoons by Rowland B. Wilson from the pages of Playboy Magazine.

Before getting into this artwork, let me point to a brand new book on the market. Rowland B. Wilson’s Trade Secrets: Notes for Cartooning and Animation. This is a book that was put together by Suzanne Lemieux Wilson, and it looks to be as much about animation as about cartooning.

The book is available for pre-order from Amazon, and you should line up for a copy. You’ll remember that I posted lot of Mr. Wilson’s Disney and Bluth art for the animation art direction he did. I expect to repost a lot of that material again soon, perhaps when this book gets closer to hitting the market for real.

But, now we’re talking about Playboy. They did well by their artists and cartoonists; the printing was always first class and the amount of exposure was high. Rowland’s cartoons always jumped out at me as among the more sophisticated ideas, and the artwork was always top notch. I think you’ll enjoy these, and thank Bill for sharing his collection, yet again.

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You might check out some of these spot cartoons posted by Leif Peng.

- Fritz Baumgarten was a brilliant illustrator who drew many fantasy worlds in books populated with forest animals, elves, fairies, and birds. His style reminds me a bit of an illustrated version of early MGM Harman-Ising cartoons. There’s a charming innocence in his approach, and I have to say I love all of the books of his I’ve seen. It’s fortunate for me, because Bill Peckmann has a collection of them and delights me by sending scans.

Here is Hoppel und Poppel from Baumgarten, which unfortunately is not translated. But we’re here to look at the Baumgarten pictures, not read the Lena Hahn verse. So, I hope you enjoy.

The book’s cover

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- Picking up right where we left off last week, here are Rowland B. Wilson‘s TV Guide illustrations. In many cases it’s the rough drawings followed by scans of the color original artwork. The roughs came from Bill Peckmann‘s wonderful collection, the colored originals came from Suzanne Wilson. I couldn’t be more grateful to both of them and thank them profusely. (See part 1.)

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- W. Harrison Cady was a well-known illustrator for over 70 years. He illustrated for The Saturday Evening Post, Ladie’s Home Journal, Good Housekeeping, St. Nicholas Magazine and the Herald Tribune Syndicate. Cady was born in Gardner, Massachusetts and best known for his works in Bedtime Stories, a daily-newspaper created by book and magazine writer Thornton W. Burgess. Burgess conceived the character of Peter Rabbit (not to be confused with Beatrix Potters creation of the same name), and each of these Bedtime Stories was illustrated with a drawing by Cady, who had illustrated some of Burgess magazine stories as early as 1911.

Bill Peckmann has generously sent me an article on Cady and the illustrations from one of his books,

When I first came across Fritz Baumgarten, years ago, the first thing I thought was, that I was looking at the German Harrison Cady. Unfortunately, I only have this one book of Cady’s, it’s a reprint, but I also have a Cady article that appeared in Nemo magazine, together they’ll make a neat post.

Here are Harrison Cady’s illustrations from “Mother West Wind’s Neighbor’s”. There are eight color plates and the equal number of black and whites.

The book’s cover.

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What follows is an eight page Cady article by Richard Marshall;
it’s from Richard’s magazine, Nemo, No. 4, Dec. 1983.

A blow-up of one corner of the illustration to show the detailing.

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Finally, here is a CARTOONIST PROfiles article about Cady.

Cover

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- Bill Peckmann had sent me a number of rough sketches by Rowland Wilson which I posted last week. These were for TV Guide spot illustrations that Rowland had done back in the 70s and 80s. The only problem was that we didn’t have many of the finished spots to show against the ruffs.

Well, this week I got an email from Suzanne Wilson, the wife of the late Mr. Wilson. She offered to send copies of the original watercolor artwork to show what the finals look like. Wow! So . . . here we have a large number of scanned originals from Rowland, thanks to Suzanne’s addition.

Since there are 26 of them, and I’ve decided to post the ruffs again alongside the originals, the piece got a bit long, and I’ve decided to break it into two. Today I’ll post all the sports pieces, and tomorrow the others. Not all of the ruffs have originals that match, and not all of the finals have ruffs to show off. Believe me, it’s a great post, and I think you’ll like it.

Because these are from the originals, I suggest you take some time and blow them up. You can see a lot of the artist’s hand in these, certainly more than you can in a printed copy.

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I had planned to post more of these great illustrations tomorrow.
Because of the death of John Severin, I’ve decided to hold off part 2 of this TV Guide post until next Thursday and instead post something in memory of Mr. Severin tomorrow.
Many thanks to Suzanne Wilson and Bill Peckmann for their generous contribution.

- Back in May, 2010 I posted art from a German children’s book, Zwitschi. The book was loaned by Bill Peckmann and featured a group of birds in a beautiful little story. The drawings were gentle, humorus and exquisite. Since then I’ve meant to post another book by the author, Fritz Baumgarten. This also comes from Bill Peckmann’s collection, and I have to thank him for introducing me to the work of Mr. Baumgarten.

Again it features a cast of little birds operating out of a tree. The watercolors are delicate and I think you’ll enjoy seeing the book which dates back to 1900. It’s built on a famous German song written in the 18th Century.

Book’s cover

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Here’s a translation of the lyrics into English,

The Bird Wedding

A bird wanted to get married
In the green forest.
Vider-alla-la, vider-alla-la,
Vider-alla-la-la-la.

The blackbird was the groom,
The thrush was the bride.

The geese and the ducks
Were the musicians.

The eagle owl, the eagle owl,
Brings the bride her bridal shoe.

The cuckoo shrieks, the cuckoo shrieks,
It brings the bride her bridal dress.

The sparrow, the sparrow,
Brings the bride her ring.

The dove, the dove,
Brings the bride her headdress.

The lark, the lark,
Leads the bride to the church.

The black grouse, the black grouse,
Was the sacristan and the vicar.

The small bird, the small bird,
Brings the bride the dishes.

The peacock, with his colorful tail,
Dances with the bride the first dance.

Mrs. Shoescraper, Mrs. Shoescraper*,
Gives everybody a goodbye kiss.

The bride’s mother was the owl,
Takes her leave with hootings.

The eagle owl, the eagle owl,
Closes the window shutters.

The rooster horns “Good night!”
Now, the bedroom will be closed.

The bird wedding is now over,
All the birds fly home.

- The following are a collection of rough sketches that Rowland B. Wilson did in creating illustrations for TVGuide. These come from the extraordinary collection of Bill Peckmann. I’ve been searching for final, colored images to match these but haven’t successfully found any as yet. You’ll have to look at them for what they are: rough prep drawings for finals. In the past I’d posted a number of these with some of the final cartoons, so you can go there, if you like, to see how he built up from the initial sketches.

In all, I find it enormously informative to see the process from the beginning from such an artist as Rowland B. Wilson.

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Here is a self-caricature from 1987. (It’s from R.C. Harvey’s wonderful book
“A Gallery of Rogues: Cartoonists’ Self – Caricatures”

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This card shows a number of the TVGuide illustrations
that were done by Rowland B. Wilson. Notice #14
is the last one on thias card. Unfortunately, this
is the largest size I have of the color version.

To close it out, I have this image from Suzanne Wilson, from an original of a RBW TV Guide illustration:

Many thanks to Bill Peckmann for the hard work in putting this post together, and thanks to Suzanne Wilson for the final image.

Bill Peckmann continues to open up his collection of Rowland Wilson artwork. These are illustrations he did for a couple of magazines, predominantly, TV Guide. Bill’s comments follow with the images.

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This is a self caricature, circa 1970.

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When Rowland came back to NYC after his stint at Richard Williams in
1975, he did this mailer when he was at Phil Kimmelman & Associates.

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Here are the first of the TV Guide spreads

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Sadly, I should have craved/saved a lot more of Rowland’s TV Guide illustrations
than I did but alas, when you’re young and stupid you just assumed there would
always be a TV Guide and there would always be a RBW illustration in it.

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A slight break in the RBW action to give then TV Guide art director, Jerry Allen,
kudos for using the great illustration and great cartoon talent that he did.
(Applause, applause!)
Here are a few of them.

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First Charles Saxon. (After seeing this illo, you have to
wonder what a Sesame Street book would have looked like if Saxon had
illustrated it. The characters wouldn’t have been 100% on model, but that
book would have been one of the most beautiful on the bookstore shelves!)

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This is Bob Weber

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This is a Jack Davis spot.

The following are 8 of Rowland’s illustrations for the second New England Life campaign.

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This is for those of us old enough to remember -
Unfortunately with their second ad campaign New England Life switched from
selling life insurance to pushing financial planning and the gags lost a lot their edge.
Combine that with stifling “hands on” art direction they also lost a lot of Rowland’s
design sense. RBW didn’t have an easy time of it but he persevered.

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Even though Rowland did this New England Life illustration long before
he worked at Disney, I always felt it had a Disney charm about it, and
it was around this time that he was setting his sights to get a gig at
the mouse factory. It just didn’t happen right away.

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For Popular Mechanics Magazine.

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Logo design for animation studio.

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Tomorrow, a number of rough sketches for TV Guide spot illustrations.

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Many thanks to Bill Peckmann.

Gerald & Cullen Rapp were artists reps for a number of important cartoonists. Bill Peckmann sent me this excellent article from CARTOONIST PROfiles which details their work and some of their clients. Jack Davis is probably their biggest artist, and we follow the article with plenty of Jack’s work.

CARTOONIST PROfiles cover article about Gerald & Cullen Rapp

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The following are printed cards highlighting the work of
Jack Davis.

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Many thanks again to Bill Peckmann.

- Bill Peckmann sent another strong piece by Harvey Kurtzman.
Here’s Bill to introduce it:

I came across my stash of Harvey Kurtzman‘s HELP! magazines that I haven’t looked at in 45 years. Surprise, surprise, what a wonderful comic cornucopia is in those forgotten books. There’s all of our favorite cartoonists and then some. As always, Harvey was ahead of the curve in format and style, there wasn’t quite anything like HELP! when it came out those 50 years ago

Here’s Harvey Kurtzman’s and Bill Elder’s series “Goodman Beaver” from the magazine. The series started in 1961, towards the end of the run of HELP!.

This is the cover of the paperback that came out in 1962 which reprinted four of the “Goodman” stories. In it were also capsule bio’s of Harvey, Bill and Goodman.

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Bios

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Here are the “Goodman Beaver” stories as they appeared in HELP! magazine. (The paperback reprinted the stories in a one panel per page format, art was also added to fill out the page.) The pages are written an laid out by Harvey and finished off in black and white by Bill Elder. Bill’s finished art is beautifully done, especially his hand crafted grays. I believe Bill’s “engraving like” style was influenced by the terrific “antique/recycled” cartoons Harvey use to run in his early MAD magazine and in HELP! The combination of Harvey’s fluid, animated lay outs and Bill’s meticulous final art make for something quite unique.

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There are two more stories to follow:

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The last story is hilarious – especially if you’re an Archie fan.

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The back cover of the paperback

Many thanks to Bill Peckmann for sharing this great material.