Jim Tyer Comic

Mykal Posts a lot of great old comics and here're some previews of a story from "Ha Ha" featuring your favorite Jim Tyer character, Pete the Parrot.
I wonder how Tyer developed this drawing style?
It's so unique - and a more elaborate variation of his animation style.


This issue of "Ha Ha also features a black and white page of a Dan Gordon comic.
http://www.bigblogcomics.com/2011/01/ha-ha-comics-no-17-february-1945-w-jim.html

Rare Jim Tyer Storyboard

REALLY CRAZY DRAWINGS

The Non-Terrytoons Jim Tyer Style

Boy, they weren't kidding.
I like this other drawing style Tyer used in his early comics.
It'd sure be interesting to know how he came up with it.
Looks sort of like a combination of Milt Gross and Dr. Seuss.
The first couple Terrytoons he animated on look sort of like this. There's a Mighty Mouse story that takes place at a circus that has unbelievably cool detailed animation by Jim Tyer. -about 1947.



http://comicrazys.com/2010/09/12/skeeter-skunk-jim-tyer/

Jim Tyer Likes You

Boy, talk about "Man Cartoonists". Jim Tyer is the definition of one. This guy had the power to shoot his pure funny thoughts straight from his brain through his pencil to hit the paper unfiltered by preconceived rules, model sheets or second-guessing. He just drew what he felt - and he felt that kids deserved fun.
That's kind of how I draw storyboards, but I always intend to "fix" things later in layout. Then something about the translation process from storyboard through animation tends to soften everything. My own latent conservative ideas also fight the purity of the initial cartoon thought and I have to constantly counter those urges. Tyer doesn't seem to have that problem.
I think Jim Tyer should be written up in comic book history as one of the the very top storytellers. His comics are so funny and give kids just what they expect from cartoons.
Jim knew how much every red-blooded kid in short pants longs for a good suicide gag.
Who today has the generosity to animate funny bullets in the head?
Jim was a cartoon Santa.
He knows how much we love teeth and punches. Punching teeth delivers an exponential amount of cartoon nutrition.
Even Jim Tyer has some vanity - just to make sure you knew that he was going out of his way to please you, he added text describing his drawing of "ugly clawed feet", because after all - kids and cartoonists know instinctively which parts of the body are the ugliest-and therefore the most fun to laugh at.

Somehow when funny little human kids grow up, many of them forget this important fact; some of them turn around and become animation executives or go to Cal Arts and then actually go around erasing ugly clawed feet, cracked smelly teeth, stubbly armpits and the like from the drawings that honest and pure cartoonists are itching to give you. Can you imagine the heartlessness of purposely making cartoons uncartoony? I can't.
Aaaaah... another sensless violent assault. Terrytoons allowed Jim to show off the time tested fact, that more bullets are funnier than less. Ever see his animated gunfights? They are cartoon Heaven.
Jim also remembers to mix in a smidgeon of morality into his violent frenzies.
Tyer ends with a lesson on politics: Superheroes can afford to be communists.

Thanks to Chris Lopez for scanning so many great comics and cartoon drawings from lost heroes like Jim Tyer.

READ THE WHOLE HILARIOUS STORY HERE

Next

Jim Tyer is every kid's best friend...

you'll see.

"How Can I Get Life In My Drawings?" - Tell A Story

If you agree with my dead cartoon style theory and you yourself would like to draw with life rather than death, here's a tip: DRAW STORIES

Write a short simple story and draw your characters performing it. Either in a comic or a storyboard format.

This forces you to draw characters, poses and expressions in context, rather than in the abstract. Your poses have a reason to exist.
This is much better for you than drawing random doodles in a sketchbook. When you do that, your drawings are slaves to luck and the skill of your wrist flicks-but the drawings don't mean anything because they have no other purpose but to exist in an obscure sketchbook. Or on your blog or Deviantart.
There is a huge difference between being able to draw a character that looks sort of like a character - and actually telling a story with pictures. Huge. The second thing is much harder, more important, and infinitely more rewarding.
All these individual Jim Tyer drawings have attitude and life, but they are part of a story and that naturally inspires him to draw certain poses-not random ones, not only poses that he's already memorized, but specific poses that tell the story and are funny.
When you read the actual story in continuity, you can see the characters change attitude, poses and expressions from panel to panel.
Someone in the comments the other day sent me a link of some superhero teenagers from an old Hanna Barbera cartoon series-but drawn in a more modern angular style. His point was to show me that even though the original designs were bland, a talented artist could make them look cool and hip. I looked at the drawing and just saw the same characters standing straight up and down smiling, like they were right off a model sheet. They weren't doing anything. Characters who do things are much more fun than characters who stand around posing as if for a family photo.

That's what is so bad about the modern idea of staying "on-model". Most modern model sheets just show the characters standing, doing nothing. And if that's what staying "on-model" means, who needs it?

The best model sheets are the ones that are made after a cartoon is finished - not before. They used to take poses that the directors and animators drew and paste them onto a sheet so that other animators could see the characters alive, doing things and feeling things.

ALIVE

This doesn't mean you should steal these exact poses and use them in place of poses customized to your story. That's another problem we have in animation today. We use the same poses and expressions that we have seen in other cartoons - instead of treating each character and story as something new.

DEAD

I worked on stuff like this for years and it was torture to draw such deadness - or trace it, which is what they wanted me to do.

I know when I try to just draw a character for somebody, out of context - not part of a story, I tend to draw stiff. My most lively drawings are done when I'm thinking about what the characters are doing and why, instead of merely what they look like.

http://jkcartoonstories.blogspot.com/2009/12/slabs-first-fist.html

That's why "designers" should have less say in the total look of a cartoon than they do today. The designs should be allowed to constantly improve as the actual storytellers put the characters into action, rather than just tracing the model sheets.

READ THIS FUNNY JIM TYER STORY: The Brand New Penny

I have lots more to say on the subject of getting life into animation again, but I'll wait and see how this goes over.

Delightful Nonsense

Jim Tyer. What an enigma!
There is a rumor that he not only drew his own comics; he wrote them too, and it seems likely because his stories are so much weirder than the other Terrytoons comics.His drawings break just enough rules to make them look crazy. He doesn't break every rule though, as many cartoons today do.
As funny as his drawings look, the dialogue is almost as funny to me.

I think Jim Tyer comics are great entertainment for kids, because they are distilled silliness - exactly what kids expect from cartoons. ...and what everyone else used to expect, but have been trained against.

They aren't drawn as crazy as his animation, although you can find some pretty funny images now and again.
I think Tyer has 2 audiences.

1) kids: his comic books. You can actually see the individual drawings and read silly stories.

2) Cartoon connoisseurs - his animation is wacky in a way that the average person probably doesn't really notice, but hardened animation fans who look really close at everything do.

This makes some people hate him and accuse him of being wacky for wacky sake or having no control.

Others think he is a lovable rebel. I'm not sure he is rebelling on purpose, or if he is just oblivious to the stories he is animating for. By all accounts he was a very conservative Christian Republican in real life. They don't make Republicans like thy used to! Chester Gould is another perfect Repubican as Mike F and I were discussing last night.

It does seem like his animaton completely distracts from the stories, which at a controlled studio like Warner Bros. would be a fault.

But at Terrytoons, I think it's a plus because the stories and direction are so poor that you need someone to punch them up by not caring about them and who'll just make every scene crazy and fun to watch - regardless of the context.
He does have moments of control in his animation, where it looks like something is moving a certain way on purpose, rather than just being a string of random accidents.

If I had some Terrytoons on DVD, I could show you some of the stuff. I wish they would release them. It would be a service to humanity.

I do have a tape I made years ago of a few minutes of his wildest animation cut together, but don't know how to transfer it to digital. Anyone in the LA area want to help me?

http://comicrazys.com/2009/09/05/mighty-mouse-devil-of-the-deep-jim-tyer/

Thanks to Chris Lopez for his great site! He is reviving tons of great cartoon art and comics that should have been reprinted in books long ago.