Bill and Crab Shanty

Yesterday Bill Peckmann sent me some really nice designs for t-shirts and a few ads he had made. I liked them and thought you would enjoy seeing some of them. Here are my favourites + a few words from Bill himself: 
"Back in the late '90's, instead of singing for my supper, I used to draw for it. A friend of mine had a seafood restaurant called the "Crab Shanty" and loved to give out T-Shirts as a form of advertising. He also loved cartoons and so in exchange for meals I was lucky enough to draw what I wanted."
Enjoy!

 

 

Anyone who can guess which year the drawing above was made? :)

Mickey Mouse - tall and wide

With the reprint boom of classic comic strips there has been some talking among enthusiasts about cut and uncut strips from the 40's. You might know that the strips back then were drawn so that they could be published in two different formats? One tall and one wide.
Unfortunately the most common version seems to be the wide versions. At least when it comes to surviving proofs. Meaning there's not much of an option on which version to use.

But in some cases the full versions exists. Should those be used as is or trimmed down to the wide version? Especially if proofs for the tall versions are available for only a number of weeks in a run of otherwise wide strips.

I've been looking at a lot of Floyd Gottfredson stuff lately and before I give you my personal opinion I'm asking you:
If you have two sets of Mickey Mouse proofs from the period where the strips were drawn for two formats, one tall and one wide, wich one would you go for and why?
I'd like to hear your thoughts on the subject. :)

A typical Micky Mouse strip from 1943.

[For more Gottfredson click HERE. ]

Russell Patterson original art - Part IV

Seems that I forgot to post one of the Russell Patterson pieces I bought earlier this year.
Well, here it is:

Wilbur Jenks never got his Patterson original either. (See previous Patterson posts.) You see, this drawing was still on an artboard with other drawings left to be cut up and sent out to some lucky Patterson fans back in the days.
Somehow, someone must have forgotten. This piece ended up with an editor who kept it for many, many years. It was later sold to a collector and then he sold them to me.
Here is the full piece, spliced togheter quick in photoshop. (The original is too large for my A3 scanner.) Just so you can see them all together.

For more of the stuff in my collection, please check out my CAF gallery.

Deja View

In case you have missed it, animator Andreas Deja has started a blog called Deja View. He has already posted a large quantity of great artwork by legendary animators and illustrators (Sullivant and Kley) that I havn't seen elsewhere.
If you haven't checked it out already, you should!
Just click HERE.

This also gives me an opportunity to show the nice drawing I got in Andreas sketchbook A different stripe. (Stil available from Stuart NG books!) Enjoy!

A new book on Walt Kelly

This book caught my eye on Amazon.com today:

Walt Kelly: The Life and Art of the Creator of Pogo

This should be interesting. "[...] essays by Walt Kelly scholars Tom Andrae, Carsten Laqua, and Mark Burstein together with an appreciation by Kelly's stepson, Scott Daley." 244 pages and July 27 as a release date. The only thing that makes me worried is the design. It screams "cheap fan publication" in capital letters. And if I may judge a book from it's cover, I'll stay away from it until I'm sure the repro quality on the inside is OK. 

[Edit: This seems to be the final cover:

And it's a stunner! Beautiful! Thanks to Germund who alerted me.]

Until then: check out the wonderful Walt Kelly blog Whirled of Kelly!

Heinrich Kley

Here's a nice piece of pen and ink work by Heinrich Kley.
It was sold on eBay in January 2007 and I still wish I had bought it. But if my memory serves me right it went for much more than I could afford at the time.
Still, these eBay images are better than nothing. Enjoy!

I have absolutely no idea about what's going on in this drawing, but that only adds to the beauty of Kleys work.  Much of his work will make you think twice before you can figure out what's going on. If you can at all. Still those lines are so full of life you just can't stop beeing fascinated by them.

Hmm... Thinking twice, those antlers and womans makes me think that the guy is having something dirty on his mind ...

For more Kley please click HERE to get to heinrich-kley.com.

Gaston and Elsje

Got some great stuff in the mail this week. I just have to share some snapshots and recommend these books, even though I can't read much french or dutch. (Well I struggle with it ... And dutch is easier to understand. At least for me. )

First out is a giant sized book on Gaston by Franquin. It contains a treasure trove of stuff, all reproduced from original art. Everything from comics to special illustrations and covers. This is a book that I will come back to for inspiration many, many times.

Then we have a smaller book with X-mas themed stories and illustrations by Franquin. Not a stunner as the Gaston book but still an attractive collection for Franquin fans.

You can get both of the above books here: http://www.franquin-collector.com/

Next we have two new Elsje books by Eric Hercules and Gerben Valkema! Again, my dutch is terrible but the strips I've managed to read are funny. :) And the strip seems to be a success in the Netherlands with lots of subscribing papers and several Elsje collections published. Anyway, if you are a fan of good artwork you should get the books even if you can't read them. :)

This is the fourth strip collection and the first collection of the full pages that has appeared in EPPO.

Sorry about the slightly blurred photos. Here are some strips taken from the Elsje website:

Click HERE for more and to visit the Elsje website.

/Joakim.

Johnny Hazard 1944-46

Just saw this on Amazon: 

 

280 pages, hardcover and covering 1944-46. 

The info text on Amazon says: "Reproduced entirely from original King Features press proofs." Well, after seeing the Rip Kirby books we all know that having access to proofs from KFS says nothing about the quality. Let's just hope they are better than the Rip Kirby proofs ...

Anyone involved in the project with access to the strips who can confirm the quality? Cut or uncut versions etc.

And while I'm at it: If the proofs are good it would be a shame to release them in a book with a cover design like this. If anyone at Hermes Press reads this, please check out other well designed books for some inspiration. The image above looks more like a "fan publication" than a book collecting a classic comic strip. (I'm not writing this to be mean, but I think a more classy design will help sales.)

Coloring the Woodpecker

Ever wondered how coloring was done back in the 60's?
A few years ago I stumbled over a set of proofs from Western Publishing, the company that published the Disney, MGM, Walter Lantz titles etc. But not only proofs for the black lines but in some cases for the colors too.
Let me run you through a few samples. In this case the proofs comes from Woody Woodpecker #122, a reprint of WW #65. Artwork is by Paul Murry. The writer and colorist are both unknown.

First we have the inked artwork.
While the original art was drawn large, the size of the proof is 100% of the printed comic book.

Then we have the proof for the Yellow color to the left. To the right we see what it looks like when the black proof for the yellow color has been scanned and placed in the yellow channel in Photoshop, together with the black lines in the black channel.

Then we have the proof for Red placed in the Magenta channel.

 

And then the Blue proof placed in the Cyan channel. 

 

Now, let's combine Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Black into one CMYK file.

What puzzles me are the big chunks color that doesn't belong to the page. Does anyone know why it's there?

With all the proofs combined it's easy to clean the page from that extra "mystery" color.

Bonus page: I guess most of you can see wich Carl Barks story that inspired the writer of this Woody story? :)

 

And finally a panel for those of you who thought this post was interesting and wants to see those screentones close up. ;)

/Joakim.

Coming up next:

 

Click to enlarge.

Three Lazy Mice

Edit: Story now removed. Hope you liked it.

The Three Lazy Mice by the great Harvey Eisenberg!
Just click HERE.

PS. Since I'm not sure about the copyright on this story it will only be up for a short time.
So if you like what you see, spread the word!