It's 'Im. The life and times of Ken Reid.

Ken Reid was another one of those brilliant British comic artists of the middle twentieth century. Reid continues to astound me for the depth and quality of his comic illustrations. He had the ability to take even a mediocre script and turn it into something wonderful.

Reid, born in Manchester in 1919, turned out some of the best and funniest comic artwork ever seen here in Britain. Capable of capturing so much detail combined with a brilliant wit and a natural sense of the absurd.

He made his first appearance in the Manchester Evening News, where he created and drew the strip, Fudge the Elf. This series ran for 35 years from 1938 until 1963.

In the early 1950's Reid was on the lookout for more work. Via his brother in law, Ken Holyrod, Reid was introduced to DC Thompson and was asked to contribute a new character to the Beano, Roger The Dodger. Roger debuted in 1953.  Reid also drew Jinx for the Beano and Bing Bang Benny and ali Ha Ha for the Dandy. These sets would be followed up by an even more popular character and perhaps the one which would define Reid's work for many.

This creation was Jonah, a seagoing buffoon who has the uncanny ability to sink any vessel he touches. It was Reid's brilliant sense of humour coupled with his fine draughtsmanship (look at the detail on the ship) and the ability to show the look of absolute terror on all the poor unfortunate victims who happen to have the misfortune of Jonah crossing their path.

Like Leo Baxendale, Reid would quit DC Thompson - departing in 1964. Lured over by his old friend, Baxendale, to Odhams where the page rates were better than at DCT, Reid would go on to create further characters including FrankieStein, Queen Of The Seas and The Nervs (a set he took over from Leo). Later Reid would move to IPC where he created Faceache, a boy who could use a strange ability called Scrunging to change his appearance into a myriad number of horrific monstrous creatures.

It would be Faceache that Reid would finish up drawing. In 1987 while working on a Faceache set, Reid suffered a stroke and passed away.

His work influenced many artists over the years and he continues to be sited as a favourite of comic fans in the UK.

An absolute genius.

More info:

Books

The Best of British Comic Art - Alan Clark (1989) Boxtree - Excellent chapter on Reid's work

Web

Wikipedia - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ken_Reid_%28comics%29  - a useful primer with an outline of Reid's life.

Tribute to Dandy 75th.

A little bit more work that I've been developing recently. With the news that the Dandy is to close, I decided to do a small tribute. Rather than concentrate on Dan, Korky or co, I felt it would be more interesting to update an older character.

Jimmy and his Grockle was a strip that first appeared in Dandy number 1 back on the 4th December 1937. Drawn by James Clark, it featured a boy who is sent an egg by an uncle which then hatches out into an anthropomorphic dragon with fiery breath and an excellent right hook.

My modern interpretation keeps a similar premise but brings it up to date using a misadventure on an internet auction site. It's still a bit of a work in progress - I need to add some cuts and highlights to my work before it is ready.

Enjoy

Roy Wilson: Another British Comics Talent

I often complain that we in Britain fail to recognise our illustrators like they do on the continent. This is  true of cartoonists and in particular within that section of cartooning: children's comics.

There is a prevailing attitude that because comics are made for children, the work done by the various artists and writers is merely throwaway or inconsequental. Few realise how much time and effort is taken to create the stories and lay out the panels to combine the elements of humour or pathos within the story. Then there is the skill of inking and colouring, the latter in the days before Photoshop meant breaking out the tubes of watercolour or gouache.

It is why, as an aspiring comic artist myself, I am in awe of the guys who produced this work (and still do). And none more so than Roy Wilson, who has been rightly titled the Walt Kelly of Britain.

Now it's probable that you're saying "Who?" Well Roy, or to give his full name, Royston Warner Wilson (They don't give kids names like that anymore!) was a cartoonist who during his heyday in the 1930's and 1940's was probably one of the best in the industry.

Born in Kettering in 1900,  Roy studied at the Norwich School of Art. In 1920 he met fellow cartoonist Don Newhouse and worked as an apprentice to him. In the later 1920's Wilson branched out on his own, becoming one of Amalgamated Press' top cartoonists, a position he would retain right through to AP's decline at the end of the 1950's (when it essentially evolved into IPC). His death in 1965 was a great loss to the comics community.

Here's a selection of his works.

Roy was a master of watercolour and his covers contain so much detail. This is an adapted cover from a book on his life and work.

He was also a proficient inker. It's easy to see why his work is often compared to Walt Kelly. This is such a beautiful example.

Wilson's comic covers were a tour de force. It's hard to imagine this riot of colour was published back    
             in 1938,  just before the dark clouds of the Second World War would envelop Europe.

Wilson was a skilled draughtsman, but he also had that rare ability to show movement and life in his characters. These model sheets were produced for a comic strip in the 1950's called Smarty, about a black and white alley cat. Wilson went to a huge amount of trouble to get the look of the cat right, developing these wonderful model sheets. The strip only ran for a few months in TV Comic. These
                                            could almost be animators model sheets. Beautiful.

George the Jolly Gee Gee from Radio Fun. Just look at the horse's expression in panel 5 - Wilson would have made a fine animator as well as a cartoonist judging by his ability to capture expression.

Sources

The Comic Art of Roy Wilson by Alan Clark & David Ashford. Midas Books (1983). Long out of print but the definitive history of this wonderful artist.

Well that's all this week folks. Ken Reid will definitely follow next time.

T S Sullivant: A forgotten genius

Of all the comic artists I've discussed so far, most are well known. However, T S Sullivant seems to have been generally forgotten by most, perhaps with the exception of slightly geekier animators and illustrators like myself. I'm not too sure why this should be as the man was nothing short of a genius, possibly even an American equivalent of Tenniel or Grandville.

Sullivant lived from 1854 to 1926. An American, he was born in Columbus, Ohio. Some of his work would appear in the American satirical magazine, Puck, an equivalent of the British 'Punch' magazine. He was greatly influenced by AB Frost, a contemporary of his who worked in a similar style of using exaggerated forms. (I'll look at Frost in a future post, as his work is every bit as fine as Sullivant's). Like Frost, Sullivant was a master of pen and ink illustrations, using delicate cross hatching to render his figures and backgrounds.

Where Sullivant excelled was in his caricatures of animals. He was one of the first to really create a modern anthropomorphic look to his creatures - particularly his use of more rounded forms which would be emulated by animators at the Disney studio in particular in the 1920's and 1930's and later on by comic strip artists from Walt Kelly to Bill Watterson.

There's also a real attention to detail - despite the simplification of forms that Sullivant uses, the anatomy is still spot on. He also added a dynamism to his animals - compare this to a Tenniel from the 1870's which while competent seems staid and a little old fashioned (that isn't to degrade Tenniel - he too was a talented illustrator, just in a different way - I'll have a review of his work in a few weeks). He also seemed to pay close attention to movement, his animal characters seem animated - flowing with life and energy.

TS Sullivant

John Tenniel 

                                                                                                          From Alice In Wonderland

His human caricatures were also well observed, although perhaps some of the stereotypes are a little crude compared to today's more liberal minds.

Sullivant's work had a significant impact on many in the early American animation industry as well as on a number of comic artists, which makes his work all the more important to scholars of animation and comics history.

Until recently it was next to impossible to find any meaningful information on Sullivant, but through the dedication of a number of enthusiasts, a number of good articles have been written and many of his drawings have been reproduced on the web for future generations to enjoy. They're certainly going into my morgue file.

Biblography and further reading

http://animationresources.org/?p=718      - Good all round introduction to Sullivant's work with a number of links to blogs highlighting more of Sullivant's life.

http://andreasdeja.blogspot.co.uk/2011/06/t-s-sullivant.html  - Andreas Deja, an animator, who admits he's nuts about Sullivant and has posted a number of wonderful images, a few of which, I swiped for this article (sorry).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T._S._Sullivant  - Biography of Sullivant's life and some images.


Next along - Back to blighty - it's not 'Im.... but it is.... Ken Reid.

See you next week chums.

Farewell Dandy

So its true. After a few days of rumour and conjecture, DC Thompson have confirmed that the Dandy will close on its 75th anniversary, the 4th of December 2012. With sales having fallen to an average of 8,000 copies during the final six months of 2011 (the figures for the first half of 2012 are yet to be released, but I suspect that too will make for grim reading) it seems the writing is on the wall for this iconic comic.

The biggest blow is to all the writers, artists and designers who work on the comic - and in particular to the freelance contributors (who are not tied to DCT so if the work dries up - well that's one less client to work for). They may not number in the thousands or even the hundreds but its still a blow nonetheless to Britain's comic art community.

The greatest irony is that since it's 2010 relaunch, the publication has been one of the best things on the market with graphically brilliant strips, good gag writing and a real sense of anarchy - indeed it truly felt like a 2010's equivalent of the comic of the 1960s and 1970's, constantly pushing the boundaries of good taste and comic violence (which every children's comic should do in my view). It's a testament to the hard work that Editor, Craig Graham along with Jamie Smart and all the other writers, artists and designers, have put in to the comic to make it relevant and fresh for today's youth.

But sadly, it seems it's not to be. Low sales figures show that and despite what someone like me thinks, the vast majority of the public did not seem to agree and stopped buying the Dandy. It's not my nature to look for blame, it's likely a mixture of factors have combined over time from shop availability and presentation to the old evils of the TV, Computer Games and The Internet. It should be noted that the more conservative Beano still holds up with close to 40,000 copies sold every week, so perhaps kids prefer the older strips like Dennis The Menace after all.

The Dandy will move into a new realm in 2013, the digital domain. DCT promise some exciting things for the brand next year, but whether this translates into new strips and artwork or simply a Dandy portal with reprints and games, well we'll have to wait and see.

So for print at least, its Farewell Korky. Adios Dan, Goodbye Winker. Time to go to the great big press in the sky.

Anubis On The Road: Cover mock up

After a bit of planning, I've come up with the final idea for my cover for my small press comic, which I hope to have completed by the end of the summer. The intention is to create a sixteen page short story - so far eight pages down, eight to go. I decided to have a bit of a break from the main story and have a go at designing the cover. Rather than going down the road of inking and then colouring on a graphics program such as Photoshop, I felt it would be more interesting to try to hand colour and letter the cover to give it a bit more of a handmade look. This mock up should help in the positioning of elements as well as different line thickness to use to create a sense of depth to my work. I'm fairly happy with the result so I'll do some simple colour tests with markers and paints to judge what works best before working on the final cover.

That's all for now.
                                   

Animal Crackers at the Cartoon Museum

The Cartoon Museum in Bloomsbury, London has just opened a new exhibition looking at how cartoonists, animators and comic artists have depicted animals over the years. From greats such as Sir John Tenniel and Ronald Searle through to modern artists such as Steve Bell, Martin Rowson and Simon Tofield (of Simon's Cat fame), this is a fun filled exhibition for all the family with a veritable menagerie of animals and furry frolics.

The exhibition runs until the 21st October 2012 and entry is £5.50 for adults, £4 concessions, £3 for students and free to under 18s. Do come along.

More info

http://www.cartoonmuseum.org/


Bye for now.

George Herriman and Krazy Kat

George Herriman is one of the other great influences on my work. His Krazy Kat strip which began in 1913 in the William Randolph Hearst newspaper, The New York Evening Journal, is citied by many as one of the most iconic comic strip in American history.

Herriman's style is simple, often scratchily drawn, yet his layouts were revolutionary - particularly his Sunday pages, which were also wonderfully coloured in ink and watercolour washes. It's no surprise then that the legacy of this strip is great. It won many intellectual fans through its deeper love triangle between Krazy, Ignatz Mouse (who constantly engages in hurling bricks at Krazy's head, though in the most loving manner) and Officer Pupp, who tries to prevent harm coming to Krazy by arresting and jailing Ignatz.

The above is a good example of how Herriman used innovative page layouts to add more to the stories and create a sense of dynamism.  He also used the strip to explore deeper philosophical issues such as those around love and existence, unusual for the time.

 This painting was drawn for a close friend of Herriman's and shows the main characters discussing Agathelan in Monument Valley in Arizona. Much of this landscape featured heavily in Herriman's Krazy Kat strips.

 His daily strips were also rendered beautifully in pen and ink.  This shows Don Kiyote, one of the lesser characters in the Krazy Kat kanon (sorry canon)

Among the strips admirers over time have included poet E.E Cummings, Chuck Jones (who borrowed heavily the desert backgrounds of Road Runner and Wile.E.Coyote from Herriman's Coconino County, Arizona setting), Bill Watterson (Calvin and Hobbes) and Charles Schulz (Peanuts).

Sources

http://www.old-coconino.com/sites_auteurs/herriman/bio/bio.htm

Really nice website of Herriman's work including a wide range of Krazy Kat strips

McDonnell,P, O Connell, K, de Havenon,G.R (1986) Krazy Kat: The Comic Art of George Herriman. Abrams, New York, New York.

One of the best books on Krazy Kat - a nice overview of Herriman's work from start to finish.

Marschall, R (1997) America's Great Comic Strip Artists: From The Yellow Kid to Peanuts. Stewart, Tabori and Chang, New York, New York.

Good introduction to Herriman's work along with other classic comic strip artists from America's golden age.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Krazy_Kat

Standard reference on Herriman.

That's all for this week

Holiday diary: Anubis and Jack's view

Recently I returned from a relaxing ten day break in Looe, Cornwall. I decided this year to keep a visual diary of my exploits, reflecting on each day that we visited a particular sight. Being a bit of a comics nut, I decided that the best approach was to do this as a comic strip with my two current characters from my short Graphic Novel that I'm presently developing, Anubis and Jack, as stars.

Anyway, here's a few pages I've scanned in for you to enjoy.

See you soon.

Jus' an ever lovin' blue eyed possum

I've said quite a bit about some of my favourite British artists over the past few weeks and now I want to start to widen the scope of this blog to look at some other artists that have influenced me or made me smile.

So I've decided to look at one of my all time favourite artists: Walt Kelly. Kelly is best known as the creator of Pogo, the American comic strip which revolutionised the form in the 1950's and 1960's. Mixing whimsey and cute animals alongside biting satire and clever wordplay, there probably has never anything like it before or since.

I'm very lucky to have bought the first volume of Fantagraphics reprints of the Pogo series, which I purchased straight after release earlier this year.

Kelly originally started out as an animator for Walt Disney, joining in 1935. His credits included Bambi (1942) and Dumbo (1941) among others. He left during the 1941 strike. He would then hone his artistic skills working for Dell drawing many of the Disney characters. Later he would create an alligator named Albert and a possum named Pogo.

Pogo centres around the possum of the same name, who along with his friends such as Albert Alligator, Churchy La Femme (a turtle) and Miz Mam'selle Hepzibah (A french skunk).

He was also an accomplished satirist, mocking figures of the time such as the fiercely anti-communitst Senator, Joe McCarthy, showing him as the Wildcat, Simple J Malarkey. This was quite close to the bone for the time and Kelly took a significant risk in satirizing such a powerful figure.

For me, the magic of Kelly was in his inking. For me, there is no one better able to illustrate fine detail with a brush.

His animation training also showed through, particularly with regard to pose and expression. Not to mention his skill as a painter.

Walt Kelly died on October 18 1973.

For more information on Walt and his fine body o'work, head on to these great sites who really do him justice.

http://www.pogopossum.com/index.htm  - the official Walt Kelly website, still under construction but with an excellent biography.

http://whirledofkelly.blogspot.co.uk/  - the best blog on Kelly and Pogo - lots of strips and regular updates.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walt_Kelly - A useful biography of the man himself.

Next time - George Herriman and Krazy Kat.

CSM Degree show: An illustrator's point of view

I visited this today, as I reckoned this would be the quietest day. Saw lots of interesting pieces, some excellent, some good, a few rather pedestrian. I have to admit, most of my favourite things were in the illustration pathway of the Graphic Design area which is no surprise given my own specialism in this field.

Of all the artists I saw exhibiting, there were two who were of significant note.

The first was Jamie Coe, who had produced a thoughtful and touching graphic novel, House of Freaks, as part of his final project. The 24 page story revolves around two brothers in a Circus Freak show. I  thought this work was laid out well with good storytelling and pacing. Jamie is also a proficient draughtsman, which is becoming harder to find these days. I thought the cover was a good piece of artwork in its own right.

His sketchbook also shows a keen eye for detail, as well as a good sense of humour.

                               

Definitely a future Graphic novelist/illustrator to watch.

His website

www.jamiecoe.com

And blog

http://jamiecoe.wordpress.com/

The second artist I noticed was David Tolu Graham. Again, he's produced a fine body of illustrations and animations during his time at CSM.

Among my favourites was his Graphic Novel, Mr & Miss Translation in La Dolce Vita, a short slice of life story about a young couple trying to watch and understand a foreign language film without the subtitles.

                                           

The second were his character designs of angels from a imaginary faith, using the different signs of the zodiac as a starting point for their creation. There's some really lovely line work using a biro. This character is based on Gemini, the twins.

He also has a pretty cool blog at

http://davidtolugraham.blogspot.co.uk/

and his website

www.davidtolugraham.com

Be sure to check them out.

See you soon.


All illustrations shown are copyright of their respective creator/s

An effort at a comic book page

Those who have known me for some years now, will know that I've always been drawing little comic stories. None of these have been published, in fact most are unfinished, having never got much beyond the inking stage.

Anyway, with a bit more time on my hands of late, I felt it was time to step up to the plate and actually see a project through to its conclusion, particularly with colouring and lettering. So to ease me into it, I've started work on a serial - like comics of old (Flash Gordon, Terry and The Pirates, Send for Kelly etc). The aim is to draw and colour one comic book page a week (or two if i'm feeling really confident) and post it online. I'm hoping between late June and late September to have started off a story of about twelve to sixteen pages.

Lettering digitally was something I'd never tried before, but a friend of mine recommended Blambot - a website with specially designed fonts just for comics and cartoon strips. What's more, a number are free to download - provided you acknowledge Blambot (Thank You, Nate Piekos).  So after downloading a couple of free fonts, I was away.

Anyway, here's a preview - the story is a reworking of my final Foundation project, using the same Anubis character, but this time placing him into South Dakota and hitching him up with an English guy driving across America to San Diego. It isn't a final work - I still need to add highlights and clean up some of the bleed areas and I still want to play around with the lettering a bit more -  but it should give the gist of my work. It's a bit small - but that's partly due to the file size, so please forgive me.

That's all for this week.

The Blambot website is

www.blambot.com

Great British Comic artists 3: Leo Baxendale

This week, I want to look at the third of my three top British comic artists: Leo Baxendale.

Born in 1930, in Preston, Lancashire, Baxendale would help to redefine the look of British humour comics. Starting out in 1951 as a freelancer for the Beano, he would go on to create a number of characters for that comic, most of which still live on today. They included Little Plum (1953), The Bash Street Kids (1954) and The Three Bears (1959). Even today, more than sixty years since he picked up his pencil, Baxendale is still admired by comic artists and much imitated too. His style can clearly be seen in the modern versions of The Beano and Dandy.

What makes Baxendale shine to me is his wonderful ability to convey anarchy in his strips. Like Searle and Giles, Baxendale seems to enjoy creating anti-authoriarian characters. The Bash Street Kids are a fine example of this:

Once he hit his stride in the mid 1950's, Baxendale was no doubt one of the best humorous artists around. Perhaps his greatest ability was however was being able to pack so much detail into an image. Look at this, another one of his Bash Street Kids sets. There seems to be so much going on here, a real sense of anarchy. Note the precariously balanced Smiffy on the fly paper.

Baxendale was a skilled draughtsman who could pace a gag. Some of his best work, in my opinion being his work on Little Plum, particularly when Plum faced his greatest adversaries, the mischievous bears that plagued this version of the Wild West.

After Parting with DC Thompson (publishers of the Beano and Dandy) during 1962, Baxendale was given the opportunity to launch a new comic: Wham (1963) was the result. Characters here included Eagle Eye and Grimly Feendish*. Feendish was perhaps one of the best British comic villians created. A villian who engaged in naughtiness and badness - a sort of pantomime villain, dreaming up often complex plans for sometimes quite small gains. His appeal perhaps lay in his slightly gothic feel, a little unusual at the time, as the boom in monster comics would not arrive until the early 1970's - Feendish was assisted/hindered by his (rather doltish) minions consisting of various creepy crawlies and tentacled... er, things. Just imagine if this stuff had been animated.
*Feendish would be given his own strip in Smash, a companion paper to Wham

After a spell round at IPC, where he created Clever Dick, Baxendale decided, in 1975,  to quit weekly comics, instead concentrating on his Willy The Kid and Baby Basil characters which appeared in a number of hardback books in the late 1970's.

Today, Baxendale a spry 81 years old, is still going and long may he continue.

Sources and Further reading

Leo Baxendale website

http://www.reaper.co.uk/main.htm  -  Baxendale's own website

Wikipedia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leo_Baxendale

Images

Bash Street Kids and Little Plum images - extracts from Dandy/Beano Anniversary books - Copyright DC Thompson

Grimly Feendish image - Copyright Leo Baxendale/Odhams Press. Sourced from <<http://reprintthis.blogspot.co.uk/2009/09/reprint-this-grimly-feendish.html>>


Next: Across the pond to look at a couple of my favourite American comic strip artists - first up, my favourite artist of all time: Walt Kelly.

Emulating Ronald Searle

A bit more work.

Just a couple of pieces from last month to follow up the Ronald Searle post. I tried doing a couple of drawings using a dip pen and trying to emulate his style. It didn't really quite work, but it was a reasonable try. Most of all, I really enjoyed just going mad with a quill pen though.

Mmmm ink...

Enjoy.

My own work

I've not really gone through my own working process much, so I wanted to show some of the pieces I've been working on lately.

My current self generated project is centred around a group of anthropomorphic animals, a theme, I'll admit I enjoy drawing quite a lot. The premise is based around a lizard, a rat and a tasmanian wolf (thylacene) working together in a garage. A rival garage opens up next door, run by a weasel with a not too bright rhino and a less intelligent porcupine. The main focus is the interplay between the three main characters and the events in their life along with the rivalry with the garage next door. I've always enjoyed mixing up mundane elements with the extraordinary and this will feature heavily in the stories with outlandish cartoonish violence mixed with social observation.

The first stage has been to develop the character designs. The three principal characters have been knocking around for some time now, but I never felt that the character designs were particularly accomplished, being designed when I had less experience. Thus, in order to understand what makes a good character design, I've been looking at a number of books and websites - most notably gleaning advice from John Kricfalusi (the creator of Ren and Stimpy) who is something of an expert in this field as well as  looking at design work from such folks as Joe Murray (Rocko's Modern Life) and Genndy Tartakovsky (Dexter's Laboratory) as well as from earlier artists, notably Walt Kelly (Pogo) and Carl Barks (Uncle Scrooge/Donald Duck).

I'm preparing the seventh member of this ensemble - a secondary character: a somewhat nervous Armadillo accountant who will work alongside the rat, lizard and wolf. After looking at a lot of good anthropomorphic animal designs, I started to play around with shapes.

Then some sketches of armadillos just to get the feel of what these guys look like.

For me, I felt this character works best if he's small and insignificant. He needs to look like an accountant, and most of all we need to see his personality from first sight.

Combining props - the glasses, the tie and the safety helmet - and his pose - in this case, he seems to have picked up a minor injury - should tell us a lot about this guy.

Next I do some poses and head shots just to break in the character. I want to find the best and easiest way to draw him. This is particularly important if he's to be animated in the future. All the best pieces are pasted into a model sheet.

Then there's colour - not always easy. I experimented with more earthy colours, before deciding to go bold and making him blue. Hopefully, the form and the addition of armour plates on the snout should indicate that he is an armadillio.

A coloured Dillon

And that's about it for now. I'll put this guy away for a couple of weeks and come back to him with a fresh eye to see if anything needs tweaking.

Good night.