THE LOVABLE SANKICHI THE MONKEY

Here's another 30s Japanese cartoon that puts combat on the same level as video games, supposedly to prepare children to live with a world war. Good transformations and explosions. The use of sound is imaginative; occasionally more live action than cartoon. And it's the only foreign cartoon I've seen with an "American-style" cartoon opening title! By Mitsuyo Seo.

(Click image to watch. Thanks to MAXIMUM GAME PLUS for posting.)

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Again I'll post DUCK BRIGADE, also by Mitsuyo Seo from 1940. Anti-war ending in this cartoon in the American style. A year later, forget it. Soon, Mitsuyo Seo would be directing his infamous Momotaro propaganda features.

(Click image to watch. Thanks to VULTURE GRAFFIX for posting.)

NEW DISCOVERY, OLD ANIMATION

THRIFT AND SAVING OF TASUKE SHIOBARA (1925) by Hakusan Timura.  Soundtrack added for 1941 release. In a rough, very personalized comic strip style owing nothing to "normal" techniques. The hero wears a mild smile throughout, but his emotions are remarkably expressed in his gestures. He endures considerable, completely gagless torment, and is ready to throw himself off a bridge before the resolution. The burning town sequence is like nothing I've seen before, period.
A belief held by movie makers then was that audiences would relate to and be heartened by seeing characters suffering similar hardships. Not now.

Press still for link.  Thanks to MAXIMUM GAME PLUS for posting this.

 

WARREN KREMER'S EARLY TEENS

Published by Ace Comics in the mid-to-late 1940s, Warren Kremer's HAP HAZARD comics (issues 15-24) were some of the most attractively drawn, tastefully colored comics on earth.


The style had touches of George McManus and Chic Young. Graceful figures, (mostly) good layouts, fine expressions, great action, attractive women, festivity. Life itself.

(Images from 1947-48.)

  
Scans of the complete series can be found at THE DIGITAL COMICS MUSEUM!

THE HANDSOMEST MEN IN OLD CARTOONS

Bluto in SHAVING MUGGS...acknowledging that this clean shaven Bluto was Brom Bones from Disney's LEGEND OF SLEEPY HOLLOW (1949). SHAVING MUGGS was released in 1953.

The Conductor in A CAR-TUNE PORTRAIT.

Mutt in DOG GONE.

Oil Can Harry in A SWISS MISS.

A close runner-up was Horace Horsecollar.

NEVER BET THE DEVIL

Some art from my newly colored Poe adaptation for an upcoming GRAPHIC CLASSICS.

COPYRIGHT 2017 BY MILTON KNIGHT

BACKGROUNDS

Just about finished: My backgrounds for a color reprint/remake of a black & white story for GRAPHIC CLASSICS. As there are balloons & characters filling most of the space, I'm not rendering as "finished" as I might.

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Screen grabs from the black & white "Milton Knight" Google search. I am overwhelmed, in senses good and bad!

COPYRIGHT 2016 BY MILTON KNIGHT 

THE "OLD GUYS"

In the 1990s, quite a few of the original animators were alive, and some of them working. But the new hotshots nor the studios gave a damn. Norman McCabe was at WB TV doing exposure sheets. The young Turks were threatened by him, or something; McCabe found himself on the receiving end of nasty office politics, and ended up leaving. It was the same case at the "new" WB for Maurice Noble, whose designs were paid lip service, but never followed. Friz Freleng was called in for one meeting planning the 1990s PINK PANTHER show, and actually donated a boxful of art from the original series for the new studio to follow, but his suggestions were ignored.

It's only been since these men died that animation became all about "studying" the old techniques. Now every animator (whatever that means now) wishes they could speak to an old timer.

SERVITUDE TO EQUALITY

I've posted my page of art (from an unpublished graphic bio of CLR James) before. I'm not sure that many people, even British ones, would have noticed that I swiped from a coffee label to make the point.

Pictured above are the three ages of the label: from servitude to equality.
Labels borrowed from this blog, whose poster states: "At this rate I may not live to see the Sikh and McDonald’s first kiss."

COPYRIGHT 2016 BY MILTON KNIGHT

SINCERE QUESTION

So what's positive about Trump aside from the "rape America great" platitudes? What has he actually offered besides crowd fever?

Asking "so what's Hilary got to offer?" is no answer, it's just a retort.

(Besides, I don't know.)

UB IWERKS' "OLD MAID"

Ub Iwerks' best character: The Old Maid.

If the studio had offered a series of Old Maid cartoons, they would have made for truly original novelties!  But it was customary to grasp at straw Mickey Mice.

Thanks to dustincropsboy for posting these cartoons.

SUNDAY IN THE PARK

Background detail from current project.

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Ted Weems & his Orchestra with Perry Como - Sunday in the Park (1938)

 COPYRIGHT 2016 BY MILTON KNIGHT

DRUNK MONKEYS

This Chinese cartoon is closer to the Fleischer spirit than any of the "retro" games or videos I've been seeing lately, especially after 6:15. The characters are rubbery, but there's still structure & draftsmanship, and the facial expressions aren't limited to toothy grins and frowns. Probably from the 70s-80s.

ANIGLIMPSES

Drawings from CAPRICE scanned & colored but out of order. (To be put in proper order later.)

I've got some more completed scenes on a disc...somewhere...

 COPYRIGHT 2016 BY MILTON KNIGHT 

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From the People's Republic of China, 1957: It's just fun to see what the fanciful characters will do next, as in the animation of Grim Natwick or even Jim Tyer. (Watch for the inflating bear!) Even the music is cool. Must have made a powerful big-screen experience for the youngsters. I love Eastern cartoons for the folk art traditions reflected in them. Artistic qualities unique to their countries. Now dying.

NO. I'm not sorry. I HATE CGI. FUCK IT, I *HATE* IT. (Tears in the eyes.)

REVELS

Page from my adaptation of Fitz-James O'Brien's THE MAN WITHOUT A SHADOW for GRAPHIC CLASSICS.

COPYRIGHT 2016 BY MILTON KNIGHT

I PREFER PAPER

 I just read my first e-book. I prefer paper.

One thing I dislike about e-books is that art must be viewed in pieces or relatively small in full. How much fun is that??

 
































A book of paper I can treasure. An e-book...well, it's on a thumb drive somewhere.

An ART BOOK.

 

CARLO VINCI

I wrote a little evaluation of Carlo Vinci's animation on my Facebook page. I'm repeating it here:

It's a matter of following his work since childhood, before knowing his name. Always hard to put an animator's specialty into words; Vinci's is largely the quick body motion into a slower, steady position before going into a quick move to the next slow. That timing. The body moves in reaction to the weight of the joint raised or moved. There's a grace to it, and a dimensionality.(He didn't spare three-quarter to profile views, etc.)

From PASTRY TOWN WEDDING: The little guy in this scene after 2:20 makes my timing thing clearer, I hope.

 Another quality of his I admire is that when Vinci drew a character, it appeared to have an intellect, rather than only an emotion. Even his early HB stuff. Making a character like Fred look aware of what's going on instead of just a dumb nut isn't all that easy.

 

NEW BLOGGEROO!!

Hello, Friends! I've uploaded a crude first edition of my art sale blog so you can see and buy! Tell your friends!

http://miltonknightartsale.blogspot.com/

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A commission just completed. Get yours now!

COPYRIGHT 2016 BY MILTON KNIGHT

TESTS TWO

Tests from CAPRICE, TEEN OF TOMORROW:

Caprice dodges flaming rocks shot by She-Monster.

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The She Monster runs in terror as Caprice shoots from above, eventually hitting the monster's tail. The final animation would look slightly less frantic, as a few "cycles" are meant to be repeated a few more times.

COPYRIGHT 2016 BY MILTON KNIGHT
 

TESTING...TESTING...PENCIL TESTING, THAT IS

Test for CAPRICE, TEEN OF TOMORROW. Caprice flies into air and looks down below. (Missing a few drawings.)

The She-Monster has propelled Caprice into her mouth, and swallows her.

Caprice mocks the She-Monster.

Caprice lands on her Bubble Cycle, is dizzy, realizes she must get home.

COPYRIGHT 2016 BY MILTON KNIGHT

THE JOY OF EDITING

Just now, I've been doing a little impromptu editing of my (completed) novel, THAT'S SHOW BIZ! after finding some in-progress notes. The original paragraph:

"At the other end of the room, Pa Flannery chopped away at a side of meat with a cleaver almost as big as he was. He was in his early forties, skinny, with a squirrelish, eager look. His apron was spotted with caked blood, and he wore the kind of beat up straw hat butchers wear in advertisements. The thick lenses of his glasses completely obscured his eyes. His teeth were noticeably immaculate. They didn’t match the rest of him."

Looking it over, I did a bit of revising:

"At the other end of the room, Pa Flannery chopped away at a side of meat with a cleaver almost as big as he was. He was a skinny man in his early forties. His eyes were completely obscured by the thick lenses of his glasses, and his eager, darting movements made him seem not unlike a mole scraping away at the earth. His apron was spotted with caked blood, and he wore a beat up straw hat butchers usually wear in advertisements. His teeth were ivory white and immaculate. They didn’t match the rest of him."

Then the final (presently):

"At the other end of the room, Pa Flannery quietly chipped away at a hunk of meat with a cleaver almost as big as he was. He was a skinny man in his early forties. His eyes were completely obscured by the thick lenses of his glasses, and his eager, darting movements made him seem not unlike a mole scraping away at the earth. He sported a beat up straw hat butchers usually wore only in advertisements, and his apron was spotted with caked blood. But his teeth were an immaculate ivory white. They didn’t match the rest of him."

I'm most pleased with the last version because, fortuitously, I introduced a simile (chipping away at meat & obscured eyes=a mole scraping at the earth), and a contrast ("sporting" a shoddy hat and bloody apron, but having immaculate teeth). And you saw it as it happened! That's right, all one of me.

COPYRIGHT 2016 BY MILTON KNIGHT  

MORE SETTINGS

...from my unfinished cartoon, CAPRICE, TEEN OF TOMORROW.

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Frames from a camera test.

COPYRIGHT 2016 BY MILTON KNIGHT

SKETCHES

COPYRIGHT 2016 BY MILTON KNIGHT