For Yowp: Look For The Low Ear

There are many ways to spot a Walt Clinton character, but the easiest trait to look for is the low ear.
If you draw a line from the ear to the nose it will go up to the nose on a diagonal.
He likes to put the ear right at the back of the head touching the collar.
What I like about his style is that it feels like a middle aged man cartoonist's view of the world. Everyone is kinda dumpy, irritable and has bad posture. I think cartoons (including comics, magazine cartoons etc.) for the first 70 years were largely drawn by middle aged dumpy cigar smoking men - it's kind of our medium. Or at least it was. Now it's more like a medium for gays, nerds and emos.
Clinton drew some of the best 1st season Flintstone episodes. He really makes Fred look dumpy. Look for the episode where he becomes a rock star - "Hi-Fi". It's hilarious.
Clinton also likes triangles.Triangular heads, low ears and a triangular nose are dead giveaways.
COMPARE CLINTON TO ED BENEDICT
Here are some Quick Draw layouts by Ed. The human characters are very different than Clinton's.
Note the high ears.

Now compare Walt and Ed to that master of the primitive, Tony Rivera
Rivera must have been related to Bill Hanna or something because he ended up doing more shows than any of the professional layout artists. His stuff makes me crazy. It looks like a kid drew it.
I wonder what the animators thought getting layouts like these. This cartoon is animated by the great George Nicholas, but he is stuck using the stick figure poses that are given him.
Here's a nice hand by Rivera, predicting the 90s and everything that came afterMore on Clinton later...

Next: How To Tell A Walt Clinton Character Layout

This is Walt Clinton, one of the early layout artists/designers for H and B cartoons.
I like him a lot.
The main designers/layout artists in the earliest HB cartoons were Ed Benedict - the most stylish and inventive, Dick Bickenbach - good but somewhat blander and Walt Clinton.
Tony Rivera came later and was the worst of the bunch.
These frame grabs are all Clinton layouts from Quick Draw McGraw cartoons.



Walt Clinton's style is very distinct and I'll show you how to recognize his designs in the next post so you can be a hit with all the lonely wives at the Christmas party.

Papa Yogi: George Nicholas

Limited animation done right
Here's a good Yogi cartoon animated by George Nicholas and laid out by Walter Clinton.


The drawings and animation are cartoony and stylish at the same time. It show hows when you don't force (good) artists to trace model sheets you can get unique and funny cartoons - even when they only cost $3,000 for 6 minutes.

One thing I love about the earliest HB cartoons is that there are so many combinations of layout artist, animator and background painter. None of them are forced to a strict standardized look and the constant random mix of artists makes all the cartoons look different. Accidental experiments. This shaking up of the creative elements from cartoon to cartoon really works when you are using good artists- and especially when they came from different classic studios. George Nicholas was from Disney, Walt Clinton from MGM's Tex Avery cartoons and it's fun to see the mix. I'm not sure where BG painter Joe Montell came from, but his style is different than Lozzi and Monte's so that's neat too. I wish I could see Dan Gordon's storyboard drawings. I have xeroxes of a few of his HB board panels and they are really fun and lively. I'm sure he influenced the final look of Papa Yogi as well.

I think the people who hate HB might be thinking of the more standardized bland looking cartoons that came so shortly after this. There are a lot more of those than the few good ones that makes me like them.

Papa Yogi is a 2nd season cartoon- 1959-60, the year after the Huckleberry Hound Show came out. This season's cartoons are somewhat slicker than the first season. They actually have some animation in them. The first season used a lot of popping from still pose to still pose - like colored animatics. The year after this for some odd reason, everything fell apart in the HB kid cartoons. Yogi looks like hell all of a sudden. Maybe because they put their best people on The Flintstones, I'm not sure. Maybe the Yowp blog will explain it to us one day.

http://yowpyowp.blogspot.com/

Yowp is celebrating the great June Foray's birthday this week.

Ed Love upside down curly mouths and Clinton Oafs

Ed Love is one of my favorite animators. He had a varied career. He worked on 30s Disney cartoons (I just realized some of my favorite Disney cartoons have his animation in them), 40s Tex Avery and Lantz and TV Hanna Barbera cartoons. He really has his own style of movement.

When I was a kid I recognized his style 2 ways:
1) Upside down curly mouths
2) His movements were more fluid than the other animators. -he did fully animated HB commercials too! I'll show some later

Upside Down Curly Mouths

Mixing different animators with different layout artists

Here are two animation drawings by Ed Love. They have different proportions. The one on top is more even and tastefully on-model. The one below is more awkward and dumpy.

The one above is probably layed out by someone like Dick Bickenbach who drew everything with even pleasing gentle proportions. The one below is by Walter Clinton who always drew Fred (and other men) dumpy and oafish, which is funnier to me.Above: Bickenbach

Below: Clinton

There is a ton more to be said about Ed Love, and I will in further posts. This was just to give you a quick superficial clue to recognize his work from the drawings.

Some Clinton and Love oafs to admire