Here's some relief from all the dead 80s cartoon posts.

"Dead" is about the best way to describe the 80s. No matter whether a cartoon was in a "realistic" style or a cartoon style, what they all had in common was deadness. Something well beyond conservatism or even lack of skill.
Just compare the wide variety of lively cartoon styles that existed decades earlier.
All these look like humans with souls and life and individual personalities drew them.
Some cartoons like Jack Cole's were super wacky, some were stylish but still lively, like Chuck Jones below.
Nobody drew characters standing straight up and down in symmetrical poses with no expression -unless they had no talent or imagination. That was almost unheard of until the mid sixties and Saturday morning cartoons came along to make stiffness and lack of sincerity a requirement of cartooning.
All these old styles also had a feeling of fun, which was totally lacking and illegal in the 1970s and 80s.

Here's Owen Fitzgerald drawing in Hank Ketcham's style. This is conservative but elegant and sophisticated cartooning. The poses are full of attitude and subtle bends and angles. The result is stylish but very natural and organic.
Frank Frazetta is basically a "realistic" artist, but his poses are anything but stiff.
I got all these images just by surfing through one of Shane Glines' great sites.
You can see tons of great stuff at Cartoon Retro, including Shane's own stylish and appealing work.

I forgot about this artist until I found him at CR. Man, he's just great!

And of course, everyone's favorite Playboy cartoonist, Erich Sokol.
There is so much great cartoon art now available on blogs that it's amazing to me that I still hear people defending 80s cartoons, which the artists themselves will tell you stink in every way.

All the ingredients exist today for a truly Golden Age of cartooning. The business is full of talent (we have to unlearn some bad habits of drawing flat, stiff, formulaic and trying to be cool), the internet is an encyclopedia of fantastic and varied cartoon art from the early to mid 20th century - and there are some cartoonists who are willing to share their experiences and knowledge with everybody.

Now if there were only a studio that would take advantage of the situation and shed all the bad habits developed in the last 35 years or so.

Take a look through Shane's site and see if you're not inspired to shake off stiff deadness.

http://cartoonretro.blogspot.com/

Johnny Hart's drawings look simple on the surface but they are very clever, I think. He has a great natural sense of cartoon physics or cause and effect - how one event leads logically (or illogically) to another.
It looks like he could have been influenced by Roadrunner cartoons.
His drawings have a lot of tension and feeling in them too. Each drawing contains a lot of complex information. ...and the continuity of the successive drawings is brilliant. He only has a small number of panels to describe a lot of action. Making the decisions of what parts in between the action you can leave out and still get the idea and gag across is very brain-intensive. I have trouble with that. I want to show every tiny fraction of action in my continuity and it tends to drag out the cartoons longer than necessary.
On the other hand, Hart is one of my biggest influences and largely sub-consciously. My storyboard scribble style is much like his finished drawing style. Fast and just what is essential, without worrying about making a perfectly polished drawing.
This is how I see the function of storyboards-to convey the continuity and essential part of the gag, feelings and story.
What's really hard is hanging on to these essentials from department to department in an animation studio, where the successive polishers smooth out the finish, but sand down the guts.

Look how much information and feeling is packed in that middle panel of the Dinosaur smashing into the tree. You see the impact as the main action. The tree is being ripped out by the roots as a secondary action and the roots are dragging in the opposite direction of the tree. On top of that, all the dirt is flying off the roots. The leaves are being smashed against the top of the tree in heavy bunches and a few individual leaves for texture.

Then the tree impact is causing Peter to fly out of the leaves on a raft (why does he have a raft in a tree?)

Hart is conveying pacing in still drawings, without the luxury of animation and real time. Very impressive.

You have to be a very good editor to draw powerful comic strips like this.

When Disney animators and fans think of "appeal" they tend to think about this kind of stuff, cuteseypie sissypants smooth tasteless stuff that's aimed at infants, moms, Cal Arts animators and adults who choose alternative lifestyles.


This is the modern descendent of Disney "appeal". It's not at all based on any true human feelings or experiences. It's merely the autopilot way of designing characters that follow what animators think is the way cartoons are supposed to look - animators who love Disney and let hardly any other influences into the medium without painting over them with big round wet sad drippy eyes.

For some reason, no matter how hard they try, they can't seem to make any human characters cute or appealing at all. It's a mystery to me.
By the way, I'm not against this kind of cute. It's great for 5 year olds. But we could sure use some variety in mainstream animation. This isn't the only kind of "appeal".

Alternative Lifestyle Animation Fan Cute

Disney would roll in his grave if he knew who his most ardent fans were and what his style inevitably led to:Now just who do they aim these modern Disney characters at?




http://morgenfiles.blogspot.com/2008/02/thursday-13-disney-heroes.html


Anyway, there are many more ways to achieve "appeal" in cartoons without resorting to infantile or effeminate cuteness.


Sardonic Man Appeal

I like a lot of cartoon styles that have a more observant and honest outlook of humanity.
These cartoons by Virgil "VIP" Partch really portray humanity in its rawest and funniest forms.



VIP especially understands men in all their appealing hairy, brutish ugliness.
It's ironic that VIP started at Disney's as a storyboard artist. I can't imagine what they were thinking hiring someone whose whole outlook was the complete opposite of Disney's.
http://www.animationarchive.org/2005/12/media-virgil-vip-partch.html

Actual men in real life must have some appeal, even though most of us are nothing like what Disney cartoons consider appealing. We manage to get girls without looking like Bambi or Disney bland male leads. I think VIP captures exactly what it is about men that is appealing. I don't know why animated cartoons are so afraid to caricature life and true emotions and motivations. Instead they continue to slavishly copy one bizzare man's strange naive outlook of life - even decades after his death.



http://www.animationarchive.org/2006/01/media-virgil-vip-partch-man-beast.html


George Lichty is another great cartoonist whose outlook of life is more honest and observant than the general run of animated cartoons.


http://www.animationarchive.org/2007/07/comics-george-lichty-grin-and-bear-it.html

Don Martin also fits this cartoon outlook, as does Brant Parker. I wish I could find good examples of Parker's early Wizard Of Id Sunday pages to show you.


These kinds of cartoons appeal to more sophisticated and adventurous tastes than do Disney cartoons and their descendants.



When you are a little kid, you tend to like white bread and American cheese - anything without texture, contrast or strong individual flavors, but as you get older your taste buds get bored and crave spicier, more interesting and varied flavors. You start to like European salamis, pickles, sharp cheese, mushrooms and even crustaceans.
This stuff has more texture and may look rude, but it sure tastes better than baby food.



It's very odd to me that animated cartoons have stayed in the tasteless white bread stage for so long. Don't our retinas crave some more spicy varieties of visual flavors?

Like George Baker:




We have enough of a rich history of other types of cartoons to be inspired by - and lots of foods too.