Owen Fitzgerald Dennis Christmas trees

Level 1: Overall Tree Shape- Green bent triangle
Level 2: Tree trunk and branches structure, inside green shape
Level 3: Sub branches coming off horizontal branches
Level 4: Needles coming off sub-branches

Each of the levels is following the shape and direction - and line of action of the level above. Every detail fits within the overall scheme

Very artistically clever
These trees, as stylized as they are, appear real. You can just feel the itchiness of bringing home your own Christmas trees!

..and of course, Fitzgerald always draws great cars

...and beautiful action
See this and more great comics at Mykal's wonderful comics blog.
http://www.bigblogcomics.com/2010/06/dennis-menace-no-57-march-1962.html

Ron Ferdinand Interview 2

b) Who were all his ghosts?

The names I recall are Fitzgerald, Al Wiseman, Lee Holley, Bob Bugg and later Frank Hill….there were a few more that escape me at the moment. (Marcus Hamilton - jk)
http://www.dennisthemenace.com/marcushamilton.html

When did Ketcham start using assistants?
I think he did the whole enchilada for the first year or two.

Who did the Sunday pages in the 50s and sixties?

Y’know , here, I’m really not sure.
I know Fitzgerald was doing Sundays but there are some names I’m not sure of.
I think Lee Holley did Sundays for a while as well as the Golden Books.
And there was all the product stuff, too.

When did the comic books start up and was that a completely different team of people?

I think it was pretty much the same artists doing everything. Of course the dailies were always Hank’s baby.

You know I am a fan not only of Ketcham, but of Owen Fitzgerald too. I find it fascinating to see 2 of my favorite cartoonists working together.

Do you now anything about their working relationship?

Not really. Hank and Fred Toole always spoke very highly of him.

How they met?

Not sure.
Fred Toole said Owen developed some kind of nervous condition that caused his drawings to get looser and looser until they were no longer usable. He moved to LA and got treatment and went on to work in animation

How were the stories crafted? Was Ketcham involved?

Don’t think he was very involved with the comic book writing until we were doing the Marvel comic.
Fred Toole was the main writer for the earlier Fawcett comics.

I read his book and remember that he said he worked with a team of gag writers for the dailies.
Did you work with the same people? Were they the same writers for the comic book?

Nope. Different guys.

http://greatestape.blogspot.com/2006/03/how-to-be-cartoonist.html

Owen Fitzgerald Dennis Inks

Ron Ferdinand sent me these nice high rez scans of original Dennis pages, so I thought I'd share 'em.

Ron Ferdinand Interview 1

http://www.dennisthemenace.com/ronferdinand.html

Ron Ferdinand has been drawing Hank Ketcham's Dennis sunday pages for years and I asked him he would be willing to share some memories and their working process.

001 I had taken the family to Disneyland and this was on my drawing table when I returned to work.

a) Working with Ketcham

When did you first start working for Ketcham and what were the circumstances?

I read an interview with Hank in Cartoonist Profiles magazine in 1981. I was living in Queens, NY at the time. Hank mentioned in the interview that he had moved back to California from Geneva and was starting a training program. He gave his address so I did some sketches of the characters and mailed ‘em to him. He responded in a couple of weeks and asked for resume, photo, etc.

We corresponded for a couple of months. He sent me some single panel gags to rough out and he tissued ‘em and mailed them back. He brought me out to Monterey in August ’81 for 2 weeks for a trial run on the Marvel comic. I made it through and returned in September with my wife .

How did he familiarize you with his drawing style? Did give you tips right off the bat or did he wait till you drew something first and then make adjustments?

He’d done some model sheets , and there was plenty of reference material around . Basically, we’d do a pencil layout and he’d tissue it. In the beginning , we’d do the pencil/tissue stage several times before we’d attempt an ink finish.

SKETCHING DAYS

You mentioned that Ketcham used to take his staff on sketching days. Can you elaborate on that?

Actually, he’d send us out in the morning and we’d come back after lunch and he’d critique our sketchbooks.

How often?

It was probably once a month for a while in the beginning.
He signed us up for a drawing class after a couple of years that lasted a few months. It was kind of a layout/composition type deal at a local school in Carmel.

How long would a session be?

Just a few hours in the morning.

What types of things would he want you to sketch?

We’d sketch anything and everything. This was the Monterey Peninsula, so there was an abundance of material to choose from.

What would he say about the value of sketching?

Hank wanted us to use flairs and concentrate on the single line as opposed to lots of sketchy lines with a pencil . He wanted us think in terms of the single line.

HOW RON WORKED WITH HANK

How did you work with him? Can you explain the process?

I’d get the script, do a rough and he’d tissue it. I’d do another, he’d tissue it again…etc…etc….until it was ready to ink. Then he’d tissue the ink and we’d either fix it or re-ink it, depending on the amount of corrections.

As I said, it was GRUELING fun.2 This is a good example of Hank's tissue suggestions. He would always push the action as far as he could.

Have you any before and after or back and forth sketches of the process that we could show to the fans?

(I see the steps on your web page, but am a bit confused…


The thumbnail sketch there looks like it’s inked and it’s pretty finished looking. Is that really what your first sketches look like?

The way I work now with Marcus is, I do a thumbnail, tighten it up in pen, fax it to Marcus for his input, enlarge it and do a finished pencil, then ink it.

http://www.cagle.com/prolinks/library/artists/ferdinand/ferdinand.asp

more to come on meeting Preston Blair, Ed Benedict, Eldon Dedini...

Puppet Interlude

I wonder how it's possible to take something cute and do this to it:

Design Quirks: Contrasting Leg Theories

Many Harvey kids have "stubbies" like Canadian beer bottles.
Ketcham's kids tend to have bell-bottom legs.
The basic forms that make up both Harvey and Ketcham kids are very similar. They have the same stock cartoon kid head construction.
The 2 styles have some minor -but recognizable general differences - like the legs.Then each individual character has some specific accessory design element and that's what makes him or her iconic and identifiable.
Usually the hair is a specific design, as in Dennis', Joey's, Margaret's, Audrey's.
Another way to make a generic design identifiable is to have the clothes or some other surface detail be recognizable - Dot's dot dress, Margaret's glasses.

Dot and Audrey are the exact same designs-same body, same face, same dress. Dot's hair is generic. Audrey's is specific. What's the main difference? Dot has dots on her dress.
Underneath these indentifiable details which enable us to instantly recognize the character, the forms are pretty similar.

It's rare that a cartoon character truly has a specific design in its underlying forms. Cartoonists use the same handful of basic shapes over and over again and most are probably not even aware of it. Here's an exception.