Appropriate Dress and Behavior: We have been asked by the management of the hotel to inform all patrons that shirts, pants/shorts, and shoes are required for safety reasons in all public areas of the hotel. Unnecessarily revealing clothing is the same as not wearing any at all. Once again, this is an area where common sense must be used, and convention security will be allowed to exercise discretion. A good measure would be to think: "Would I wear this in a public park?"
The furry community is known for its friendly hugging, scritching, and holding hands, all of which is entirely acceptable. However, please keep in mind that not all people may share the same view of what is acceptable in public, and that our behavior is representative of the fandom as a whole. Common sense should be a good measure in what behaviors are permissible in public. Regardless, if you feel the need to express deep, physical affection for another we ask that you kindly retire to your hotel room. PLEASE don't make the staff have to ask you - it's uncomfortable for us and embarrassing for you.
Chris Lopez has done us another great turn. I don't know where he gets these old comic strips, but it's generous of him to share them with the world. I loved these comics when I was a kid. I'm more critical of them now, but still enjoy looking at them. I wish I had them all. Most of the drawings are probably Gene Hazelton (according to Chris they might be Dick Bickenbach) but both had very pleasing, sedate but somewhat modern styles. Someone drew a good dead Fred. This looks like an Ed Benedict character. He told me he ghosted for awhile in the 60s. I love the great lettering in the comics. The title lettering was always a thrill. Unfortunately these are from truncated versions of the strips that leave out the title panels and possibly other panels. What a crime! I have been spoiled by widened tastes and discovering many more great cartoonists over the years. Harvey Eisenberg's careful compositions and perfectly balanced poses make me think of these comics as being kind of clumsy by comparison. Milt Gross' wild layouts and funny posing makes this stuff seem really tame to me now. I think the big difference between strips that catch on and strips that may be great, but not so popular is character. I'm of the opinion that a wide audience reacts best to cartoons about characters, rather than mere genius of execution - or even humor. They'll take mild humor with strong characters over hilarity with weak characters.
Milt Gross, Harvey Kurtzman, Geo. Herriman all did brilliant work, but never created strong characters that the public could latch on to. Segar, a lesser draftsman than all mentioned created Popeye, Olive Oyl, Wimpy, Bluto and a host of interesting characters who could carry long stories and many stories. That's the key. He has drawing skill for sure, but is not as adventurous visually as the other guys.
The Flintstones were such strong and distinct characters on TV, that they didn't need to be executed brilliantly in order to last 3 decades. A mere 6 seasons were played over and over again forever because the public got the characters. They seemed like real folks and people like to hang around with characters more than with geniuses. Same thing can probably be said about Peanuts. Or the Simpsons. I've never thought much of the meandering stories and weak gags in the Simpsons, but I sort of understand how the public got used to the characters through sheer exposure. It's on 12 times a day. It eventually became like visiting your neighbors and befriending them. Even if your neighbors are boring, they are easily accessible and recognizable, so you enjoy their company through familiarity and habit.
Tex Avery on the other hand is an obvious genius, an innovator and very funny, but he never achieved the popularity of the Warner Bros. characters or even Tom and Jerry, who are barely characters at all - but at least they never go away. People got used to T&J because it's all Bill and Joe made for almost 20 years. Tex never settled on any strong characters and it robbed him of the acclaim and riches his greater talent deserved.
The Flintstones comics weren't funny and didn't match the show concept exactly, but were stylish enough to look at and our already strong familiarity of the likeable TV characters made us enjoy the strip version - at least until it got too influenced by late 60s comic strip styles and no longer had any resemblance to the Flintstones. I love silhouette panels in comics and the odd time they do it in animated cartoons. It really tests an artists' skills to make something read clearly in silhouette. Familiar characters done reasonably well give us comfort. Genius makes us feel and think - or run away if we are kind of stupid. Some folks just want to relax and forget about the day's troubles.
I like Clampett because he gives us everything - fantastic characters and funny stories with great execution.
Hey do me a favor, willya? Type in "Clampett" in that Ligit search slot at the upper right of the blog and see what happens. I'm doing a test.
Observation and Imagination can be used separately or together in varying proportions to create art. Or entertainment.
But I want to dissect them somewhat to see what's different about the 2 concepts. I think this will help to understand character better.
Some arts are pure Imagination:
Music
A musician doesn't try to make his music sound like the real world. You don't buy a cd to listen to fake ducks, dogs, people walking around, talking, quacking, brushing teeth or taking a bath. (Unless it's a comedy album).You can occasionally evoke real things (Flight Of The Bumblebees) but you aren't trying to literally imitate them.
Music is meant almost purely to pleasure your ears. The sounds and all the technical mathematical rules and structures used have as their final purpose abstract auditory pleasure.
Talented musicians can make you feel emotions and moods that nothing in the real world can.
How many times have you listened to a symphony and said "Wow! I understand what he is saying!"...but you can't put it into words.
Music is probably the most purely imaginative and abstract art. No one has been able to achieve in the visual arts what musicians have. Cartoons have come the closest.
Yeah, you can add lyrics and tell a story about life to go with the music, but if the music sucks, who will listen? (Jorge excepted.)
Here listen to this song. It's a real Jim Dandy. I defy you to concentrate on the lyrics.
The girls sings the same verse twice in a row and makes it mean 2 completely different things. 2 different emotional messages. Then the guy comes in and scats it and creates a whole new feeling. Genius!
Dance
Dance is similar to music. When someone gets on stage and tap dances, they are aren't imitating the motions of anything in real life. They don't try to fool you by masquerading as reality. They are just making stuff up-or building on dances that were made up long ago and adding their own ideas to it. Dance relies on beauty, skill and style to make art.
Some Arts are Pure Observation.
Well, most people assume that all good art takes some imagination but I'm not yet sure of that. For now, I just want to make a point how some arts lean a lot more on observation than others.
Portrait Painting
A good portrait has to more than anything else, look like the subject. (Let's leave out Picasso and modern art for now.)
What makes one portrait artist better than another comes down to his skill in observation, and then his style.
I'm still trying to figure out what style actually is. Is it imagination? Maybe not. Let's wait for another post to think about it.
Landscape Painting
If you sit in front of a real scene, you have in mind that you want to paint something that resembles what is in front of you.
You aren't going to just make something up. Hopefully.
Still Life You have to see this painting in person. It's at the Getty. Your eyes will melt.
This is a combination of observation and imagination. A good caricature has to look like the subject, but that isn't enough. It has to be highly amusing and surprising and that takes leaps of imagination.
SAMMY DAVIS JUNIOR!
Here's a guy who has both observation and imagination in big dose. Watch him do celebrity impressions (observation) and then dance like a maniac (Abstract entertainment).
Realistic Characters (observation) VS Fantastic characters (Imagination)
These 2 artistic concepts relate directly to the creation of characters in stories and entertainment.
Realistic
These are characters and stories that could physically happen in real life. Of course, real life doesn't have as many coincidences as fictional stories, but the characters are usually recognizable and have believable emotions and motivations.
Detective Story-Psychological crime drama Soap Opera - bland realisticgeneral human types The Honeymooners - a brilliant insightful caricature of real human nauture in conflict
Fantastic
Superman Whoever came up with the first superhero must have had a wild imagination.
A human who wears colorful long underwear, is above the law, has fantastic powers and doesn't use them to satiate his lusts for women, money and power.
It's not only fantastic that he has super powers and dresses indecently, but his humanity is completely unrealistic. He has no normal human motivations.
Everything about Superman is preposterous. Not just the physics.
No one acts like real humans do in old superhero comics and they don't need to because that's not what kids bought them for. You wanna see them kick everyone's ass and do impossible things with as much primary color as you can stand.
I think classic Superheroes are a great American tradition. Mike Fontanelli collects all of them.
There is no logic in any Superhero comics. Superman puts glasses on and then no one recognizes him.
Nobody reacts to bizarre situations that happen in a realistic way.
Batman Batman is even more preposterous than Superman. He merely has the long underwear. No powers.
No criminal has good enough aim to shoot him dead. The police let him take the law into his own hands. No one recognizes his voice or jaw when he is Bruce Wayne.
He has a bare legged teenaged sidekick. He risks the kid's life every day and is not arrested for it.
Superhero comics are completely opposed to common observation of not only the physical world, but of how humans actually are.
Look at the gripping emotion in this so human comic:Many comic artists draw as if they have never actually witnessed human expressions. Observational skills are not really needed for purely fantastic characters. Wild imagination is.
Peter Pan (mildly fantastic)Peter Pan is less imaginative than Superman - or less preposterous, depending on how you wanna frame it. He can fly, so that's a bit fantastic, but his personality is non existent. He's slightly mischevious, but that's not enough to call a "realistic" personality, nor an "Imaginative" personality.
Combinations Of Fantastic and Observed
Dick Tracy Dick Tracy takes place in realistic cities, but the villains are fantastic caricatures and they are named after what kind of ugly they have.
Dick himself is a simple character, but many of the villains have weird psychoses and quirks. The strip is highly imaginative even thought it supposedly is serious and realistic.
WHERE TO FIND FANTASTIC CHARACTERS
Fantastic characters with preposterous or simplistic personalities generally belong in:
Horror Movies Comedy Science Fiction Musicals Comics Kiddie Fare
Because of the interesting fantasy settings we suspend our disbelief at the craziness of the characters.
Simple personalities usually don't work in bland settings, and they sure don't work in bland stories that beg you care about them.
To truly care about a character, it has to have more depth than Dracula, Wonder Woman or any mdoern feature animation character.
If you cry in one of those fake pathos scenes you are being tricked by the staging and the music, not the dialogue, story or character's charisma. Unsure Directors work the audience like puppets using cheap filmic tricks. Now they even have the characters tell you to care about them!
Spiderman and Marvel comics in general
After the first few Superheroes had mined every imaginable power, they ceased to be very imaginative. They just became endless clones and a whole formulaic mindset took over the industry. Artists and writers unquestioningly churned out mindless unimaginative fantasy with personality less characters. Superheroes had become cliches, just as Disney cartoons did.
Then in 1960, Stan Lee did what every kid who ever read a superhero comic did-questioned the preposterous nature of it. He and Kirby and Ditko started making costumed Superheroes that had the same powers that had already existed for 20 years, but now they gave their characters more normal-or realistic emotions and motivations.
This actually made the stories seem even more fantastic, because you believed the characters were like us. It invited the fans into the stories. Stan Lee is a huge influence on me (and I'm sure a million other artists). I took this idea and applied it to comedy cartoons. Realistic shaded characters in crazy situations. I also invited the audience into the fantastic stories and events in the same way Lee did. I used his homespun marketing style and made the fans feel like they were in on the gags and everyon else wasn't.
In the 60s, what Lee did was a revolution. We were so used to seeing nobody ever act like humans in comics that all of a sudden seeing these fantastic characters act like us..they were greedy, horny, torn between good and bad. The mere shock of semi realistic personalities wearing brightly colored underwear in public was a great novelty and it breathed new life into comics for about 10 years. Unfortunately this led to the utter ruination of comic books. Lesser men than Lee and Kirby came along in the 70s and put too much emphasis on the psychological problems of the superheroes. They also added current events, like war protests, the drug problem and homosexuality!!
The Hulk had a friend that was gay who die of AIDS! Holy crap! In a comic about a big green guy who goes around crushing everything in sight and saying things like "HULK SMASH!"
The underwear boys had become too serious and all the fun was gone.
THE MEN OF UNDERPANTS HAVE MATURED "TAKE ME SERIOUSLY OR I'LL RUB MY UTILITY PACKAGE ON YOU"
This is the same old affliction so many popular culture entertainers have- the need to be respected, to have their silly works be accepted on a higher level than just pure fun or sheer beauty.
Jerry Lewis syndrome.
This thinking leads to limbo art and limbo characters, characters who are neither fantastic nor realistic. They are simplistic cliches that beg to be compared to "real" fiction, like movies and novels. This is the kind of art that lesser talents with inferiority complexes make, or worse- executives.
To ME, and I know this an unpopular notion these days, is that you need to use observation, imagination or both and in heavy doses to make great art or entertainment.
At least if it's going to last.
Stay away from cliched blanded down versions of characters that have already been beaten to death a thousand times if you want to be remembered.
I hope I haven't given the impression that I think that characters have to be either/or abstract or realistic.
It's more important that they are specific and somewhat detailed characters, not just cliches. At least for the kinds of stories I like.
I still believe in the star system, whether we are talking about live action movies, television, short cartoons, feature animation, drama or comedy. James Cagney is specific and chock full of charisma and talent; Tom Hanks is Mr. Normal. Cary Grant VS Hugh Grant. Foghorn Leghorn VS the Family Guy Dad.
Stars have to have more extravagant qualities than your next door neighbor, but that concept is out of fashion these days.
3) Crossover Characters
These are characters that are partly realistic and partly preposterous. Every degree of mix of the two categories is possible-as long as the characters are engaging and SEEM real in their contradictions and charisma.
Let me adjust this definition. Interesting isn't good enough. A star has to be magnetic and specific. You need to recognize their basic attributes but they can't be totally predictable!
Olive Oyl
Ren
Well there are lots more characters that are combinations of abstract and realistic traits, but I'm worn out from my last few posts and need a break.
Maybe you can do my job for me and describe which of Olive or Ren's traits are based on observed traits in human nature and which are preposterous or impossible.
Chemistry is also important. The chemistry between characters is very important too. If you have a bland character and a cliche character together, there is no real chemistry. Or worse, 2 bland characters, like in a movie I saw lately.
You can have an underplayed character like Alice with an exaggerated character like Ralph, but they should both have specific and interesting characteristics if you are going to want to see them over and over again.
That's why I think animation and comedic characters have generally been more complex and charismatic in shorts and television than in features. Good short characters are easy to write lots of stories for. Many animated feature characters are basically throwaways, blank slates that you ride through the spectacle with.
How many animated feature characters could hold up in a series of shorts? That's the true test.
I'll get to more of that with the next character post about Disney style characters.
These fit neither the abstract, nor the realistic categories of characters.
They are their own strange inbred entities that exist in mutated form only in the cloistered world of Cal Arts animation.
Then there's Dreamworks, a whole other level of ....what?