This is the official blog of Milton Knight, painter, cartoonist, writer, director, illustrator...This home page is my day-to-day blog. On the side bar, you'll find links to my galleries and stuff for sale!
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.
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.
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.)
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.
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.
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.
One can learn much about drawing womens' (not "cute girls'") faces by trying Marilyn Monroe's (at least I do). For a beauty, there are lots of interesting wrinkles & folds going on.
In truth, I'm not certain of the success of these likenesses. They are exercises; impressions.
Anti-war ending in this cartoon in the American style. A year later, forget it. Soon, Mitsuyo Seo was directing his infamous Momotaro features. (Posted by Vulture Graffix.)
From Soyuzmultfilm, THE FOX-BUILDER makes great use of American-style fox trot & jazz rhythms. Note the hints of "Old Man River" that start the climactic chase. Directed byAlexander Ivanov.
Out of closets and drawers, reviewing art from my abandoned animation project, CAPRICE. Sonofagun, I did a lot of work on this, including a great portion of the animation
& even the inks (w/o color). This project was started during a very
bad period, 1999. It was conceived as a 'show reel', to show everything
I could really do, as opposed to my limited input on the TV stuff.
It
went through a series of legit producers who offered to finish it. But
drawn animation was on its way out, and all the studios were closing. By
now, it's too old for my own interest, and as a 'show reel', it's not
in step. I'll be posting a few more tests, eventually. If I do try another film, it'll be on a much
smaller scale. Never try to approximate POPEYE MEETS ALADDIN all by
yourself.
Test scene. Walk needs work (I've learned since), but is OK enough to show here, I think.
The Popeye characters are best of all; but aside from them, I've thought of my four favorites. The Terrible Tempered Mr. Bang in TOONERVILLE PICNIC (1936)
I think Mr. Bang was the best character the Van Beuren studio ever used, even if
he wasn't in the best cartoons the studio made (and the studio didn't
create him). There is an effective absence of background music in the
set-up scene. This film is the last completed by the studio.
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Dogface in A SELF MADE MONGREL (1945)
If there is a single, solitary Famous Studios character I can relate to, it's DOGFACE!! Check out the cynical "cartoon blues" hidden by the heavy dialogue.
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Wally Walrus in CHEW CHEW BABY (1945)
I
can't praise the "concept" of Wally enough; a pompous, lovelorn,
gluttonous "solid citizen" who could probably dig in and enjoy his life
if it wasn't for the woodpecker. Gullible and dumb, but not as
grievously cretinous as Fudd. And an extreme case of the voice "being"
the character. Other actors were never as effective. Woody certainly had
a colorful gallery of adversaries. http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x2kw64c
I've
found quite a few works I'll be posting, since I am no longer posting work in development.
Yummi YumYumm and her Aunt Peg had some kind of S&M scene going. (Yummi was to have been a character in MIDNITE THE REBEL SKUNK, but that book was cancelled. Pages here are from the early 2000s, one story appeared in WILD KINGDOM.)
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Zoe is from a strip I drew for HIGH TIMES in the mid 1980s. (Drawings from late 2000s.)
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Song of the Day: I love hearing pseudo-Gospel pop songs sung by operatically trained singers who roll their 'R's.
Radio Melody Boys (Harry Hudson) - "River Stay 'Way From My Door" (1931)
