TOONFEST 2005 |
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| TOONFEST
TRAVELS 2007 (coming soon) 2006 2005 2002 SKETCHES |
Cartoonfest
was
awesome! First off, we went to the parade(your basic
parade with the marching band and Shriners, no floats, one horse at the
end... the only unique thing being that the 7 featured cartoonists were
grand marshals). That would be a weird experience for a cartoonist,
being featured in a parade in your honor! Things like that actually
happen in the boyhood home of Walt Disney, Marceline, a.k.a. "Mickey
Mouse Town". Oh yah, the other unique thing about the parade was that I dressed up as my fox character! The weather was PERFECT for walking around in a furry costume. Just cool enough to be comfortable. I worked the crowd with my dad right behind me. Surprisingly, almost everybody thought I was a skunk! Last Halloween when I added the long canine nose, that almost stopped the skunk guesses(only one last year, and that person wasn't sure). I guess that result was only temporary. For the first time ever, I wore sunglasses with the costume. Before, my eyes just showed through, but I eventually decided that was lousy, but I hadn't yet finished my plans for fake cartoon eyes. The sunglasses looked cool! I was worried about them fogging up, too, because that happens with fursuits. As my dad and I were walking there, they were already fogging up, but they cleared up as soon as I got to the parade route, quite surprisingly. I was using the sunglasses also to hold the mask on. With them wrapped around the front of the mask and the earpieces around my ears, my mask stayed on VERY well! After the parade finished up, dad and I worked the crowd at the park(bordering the parade route). I got pictures of me in the fox suit with Glenn and Gary McCoy(the twins who draw the comic "The Flying McCoys") and Tom Wilson Jr.(Ziggy). When I got the picture with the McCoys, one of them sang "One of these things is not like the other, one of these things is just not the same..." from Sesame Street, hehehehe. I loved that. I stayed in the suit for an entire one-and-a-half hours without it getting uncomfortable. I WAS uncomfortable at first, which got me slightly worried, but the suit became comfortable and working properly right as I got to the parade route. That was VERY fun. Goal #1, be very visible in my fox suit for a while: complete! Goal #2, have fun doing that: yes! Then we went home to eat. Had some leftovers from the barbecue from last night, which were good. I had taken a shower that morning, but another shower sounded good after fox suiting. It was mainly for refreshing myself after the suiting experience. Little ventilation, a tight undershirt, and impaired vision can make you feel uncomfortable. My suit had also left a black mark on my wrist and my face. The wrist mark would be from the rabbit fur I use for my arms, but I have no idea how the mask left a black mark on my face. They washed off easily. Then we rushed to the cartoon symposium, where the McCoys had already started, but I doubt we missed much. I figure it was just an introduction of sorts. We arrived right on time according to the schedule. Glenn and Gary McCoy were the hosts. The first artist up(besides the ones who were hosting) was Tony Baxter, the creator of Big Thunder Mountain Railroad, the Indiana Jones Adventure, and many other Disney theme park rides. He started his career scooping ice cream and sweeping at Disneyland, and eventually became one of their top ride designers. He had a lot to say about Disneyland and its many expansions. He also created Figment, the mascot of Figment's Journey Into Imagination at Epcot Center. Figment the dragon was originally green, little-known fact, but Kodak was sponsoring it, and even though Tony told them that dragons are green, they responded, "So is Fujifilm". So, purple it was, which works rather well for a symbol of imagination. Next up was Jim Borgman, co-creator of the "Zits" comic, which isn't in our newspaper. His friend, Jerry Scott, was having trouble coming up with the right art style for his comic, because he was used to working on Nancy and Baby Blues, which both feature short squatty characters. Zits was just a little idea that wasn't originally intended to be anything, but they kept playing with the idea and the comic premiered with the tall, lanky, teenage-proportioned characters that Jim created for him. Currently, Jerry writes the comics, faxes them, and Jim draws them. They only meet a few times a year. Jim Borgman also does political cartoons, and he drew George W. Bush and Bill Clinton for us. It was fun watching Jim draw those presidents, because he talked about the drawing as he drew, like Bob Ross. "And I suppose Bill should have a dab of lipstick on his jacket, right there..." You can find the George picture in my included gallery. Next up was Tom Richmond, a caricature artist who also draws several of the movie parodies for MAD magazine. We got to see the art for a lot of those parodies, without the titles. The speech boxes were included, however, because MAD Magazine sends the speech boxes already laid out and the artists have to draw around them(I found that rather interesting). So, there wouldn't be any art behind the boxes anyway. The most exciting piece of artwork he put on screen was the art for the upcoming Goblet Of Fire movie spoof. I've included this in the gallery(and submitted it to the Daily Snitch, but they never got back to me on that, and it hasn't been featured), along with various other pictures, all captioned for ya. He showed a few MAD parodies where he incorporated people he knew, because it's much easier to draw from real people than creating a whole new character by mixing-and-matching facial features. In the Trading Spaces parody(not pictured here), those are actually HIS neighbors that are decorating each others' homes. He invited them over, gave them free food and beer, and took pictures of them for reference. In the background, Alfred E. Newman is painting the inside of one of their windows yellow. Tom spends much of his time doing caricatures at Six Flags in St. Louis. I found him the most interesting speaker there, although all the rest were a very close second. Tom Richmond is an avid Batman fan, and he really had to fight for the job of drawing the parody of Batman Begins, which I just happened to have WITH me! At the break, I got to chat with him and he signed my issue of MAD on the title page of the comic he did the art for. I could have gotten a sketch or caricature, but I didn't have any characters in mind(considering he doesn't really HAVE characters), and I don't feel like having a caricature done of me. I had some questions typed up to ask him, and he does indeed take notes in the theater. He sometimes watches the movie 3 times before finishing the art for its spoof. $15-$24 investment there! He gets most of his info on the movies through Google before they come out. Good source. OH! I should have told him a few good sources for Goblet Of Fire news and images, since he's doing that spoof! I'm sure he's found them by now, though. I then got him to agree to go to the art show afterward so I can get a photo of him with the original art of the finished Battyman Begone comic which was in the MAD Magazine in my hands. The next guy up was Charles Solomon, who's an animation critic and historian. He talked about the evolution of female characters in cartoons. He showed a few cartoons which demonstrated how they got more real as they progressed. At the time, Betty Boop was the only actually feminine female cartoon character, while all other female characters were basically male characters with dresses. Take Minnie Mouse in Steamboat Willie, for instance. She looks EXACTLY like Mickey, except with a dress, top, and bow. Charles suggested the striking resemblance might be why Mickey was so in love with her. So, with all these drawbacks with the female characters, Walt Disney hired the creator of Betty Boop, and several other talented artists who actually had some art schooling. Then they practiced and practiced until they were prepared to animate Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. This was the ultimate goal, to do the very first animated MOVIE, which features a female lead. And finally we had Tom Wilson II. His presentation wasn't very interesting, surprisingly. I was most excited about seeing him, yet it was Tom Richmond that I found most interesting. He started with a little talk of Walt Disney, which kinda felt like a eulogy, unfortunately. He then talked about how he's been drawing the Ziggy comic for 20 years now, which his dad created. He didn't have a multimedia presentation like the others did, he's just low-tech that way(that's fine). He drew Ziggy on the huge drawing pad up there. I don't know what the artists did afterward with the drawings they did on stage. There wasn't any auction that I know about, and I doubt they'd just throw those pictures away. Anyway, probably the highlight of his presentation, besides drawing Ziggy, was his little story of how his dad would sometimes at the dinner table draw Ziggy on a placemat or napkin, put him in some very dangerous situation like a piano falling on him, then turn the picture over to Tom II and say, "Save Ziggy". It was a fun little game that focused on problem-solving skills, and Tom figured it may have been a way to prepare him for when he'd take over the comic strip. I'm not sure how Tom saved Ziggy, I think just drawing something in there to keep Ziggy from being splattered to pieces. Then the McCoys came on and just showed us a big bunch of their hilarious comics on the projector. Some, I suspect, were ones they did for Playboy(they said that they've done some comics for them). Some of them were rather raunchy, and rather excellent. I wish I had taken some pictures, although the reason I wasn't very shutter-happy was because I knew the text would be blurry from that distance. Some of it wasn't even very clear on screen. Next year, I plan on taking even MORE pictures, even if I don't think it'll be worth anything, and I want to take the voice recorder to the symposium so I can get even better records of the event, and quotes. I should also take notes. Most of it is just fun facts, but it makes the event even more memorable if you have notes. I can't remember which cartoonist drew the comics about how ideas are found, but it HAD to be Jim Borgman. I didn't record anything about those comics, but I don't believe it was any of the other speakers. He drew some comics where he portrayed an "idea" as a monster wearing a party hat, which looks somewhat like the monster on the job site Monster.com, except with a torso, and a party hat. His opening comic showed him(in comic form) looking all around the house for an "idea". The "idea" was hiding around the corner. There was one comic that demonstrated how sometimes you're at your drawing board, and you're just SURE there are ideas out there! The comic had him in a closed-in cubicle with his drawing board, and surrounding the cubicle it was PACKED with "ideas" partying, having fun and drinking from margarita glasses, all without him knowing. Sometimes, you just hope the idea will draw itself, like in another comic he put up. The caricature of him sleeping at the drawing board was rather funny, as was the "idea" drawing all over his drawing board. He mentioned that sometimes he'll hope that ideas will come to him at night, which they don't, and showed a comic of a bedroom with the window open and a butterfly net leaning against the wall, ready to be used to catch a stray idea flying by(all he'd likely get are mosquito bites, however, with that window open). For me, my ideas DO often come at night, which makes it hard to sleep a lot of times. And then, he showed a comic where there's a big line of "ideas" lined up at the door and in his drawing room, all trying to get him to draw them first. This is a situation that happens very rarely, he says. After the Q&A session(where no notable Q's and A's occurred), I got in the line to talk to Tom Wilson II. He was drawing Ziggy for whomever wanted a drawing, and it seemed to be basically the same picture over and over, only the words were different. After all, Ziggy got his start in the greeting card business. Then I got up there. I had a very weird request for a drawing. As he was drawing the picture, he kept commenting that he had never had anybody request anything like this before, heh heh heh. We had fun with this. Ziggy looks like he doesn't know what to think about it. You can see the image in the gallery, linked below. Don't worry, it's not sick. It's just.... weird. I had really wanted to think of something specific and different for Tom, because when I got Mike Peters to draw Grimmy for me two years before, I didn't have any idea how I wanted him drawn, so I got a basic pose, which is awesome, but generic. I swore I would think of something different and memorable for the both of us. Then I came across a specific band web page, and instantly knew what to submit to it. Goal #3, that weird picture: YAY! Getting it framed soon. After the symposium, dad and I rushed over to the art show, which, due to horrible planning, was closing at the same time the symposium was letting out. The art show and the symposium have the same target audience: cartoon geeks like me. The art show was from 9-5 and the symposium was from 12:30-5. I had enough to do that morning, with the foxsuiting and all, so I didn't get to go to the showing until after everything. Well, I got to see lots of original comic art, including a Bill Watterson piece in watercolor(pictured in the gallery). I also got a photo of me with my signed Batman spoof, the original ink drawing, AND THE ORIGINAL ARTIST! Goal #4, get cool photos and autographs from famous artists: better than expected! So, I danced around in my fox suit, I mingled with famous cartoonists like Tom Richmond, had some fun with Tom Wilson II, got introduced to the Zits comic via the co-creator, and spent some good quality time with my dad. I give this weekend two thumbs up and this: THE SUPER AWESOME GALLERY OF GREATNESS!!! |