Firebomb Fritz

I randomly happened upon a series of illustration art from WWII, available through the British National Archives, called "The Art of War." In particular, I was drawn to a poster series of 'Firebomb Fritz.'


"Fritz is awakened" by Reginald Mount, 1942. Ink, inkwash & gouache on board.

As quoted from the National Archives site:

Advertiser's Weekly, discussing the earlier poster in September 1941, describe the new campaign on behalf of the Ministry of Home Security, intended to impress upon ‘the-man-in-the-street' his responsibility for fighting fire bombs (which caused some of the most expensive damage of the war). The use of the cartoon element was a novelty, with an animated incendiary bomb whose expression – comic, rather than terrifying – was intended to reassure people of the harmlessness of incendiaries if tackled in time, and believed to more effective than any number of slogans.

If you go to this section of the website you can view a bunch of selected artwork from the period, and even zoom in on it. Look for the 'previous' and 'next' buttons at the bottom of the page.

*pinkEye*

The Greedy

I recently stumbled upon something amazing. Pure animation eye-candy at its most grotesque and bizarre! Keith, my partner in art at FableVision, called me over to watch a clip on Youtube. It's a snippet—or better yet, a musical number—from the animated film Raggedy Ann and Andy: A Musical Adventure (1977). It stars a hideous gooey taffy monster called the Greedy, who is looking for a sweetheart. Keith told me he watched this as a kid. I guess I missed out in my childhood, but boy do I want to get a copy of it now so I can see the drawings in better quality. I captured a handful spectacular animation stills. Run on over to Youtube immediately (I'm too lazy to embed). You can see the Greedy clip at both of the following URLs:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=q4QV4o_Qq2c
http://youtube.com/watch?v=r2H6L4MmPUo

Pick a slacker, any slacker!

This is a line-up of variations on basically the same character design. My favorite is (A), but the client liked (C), except they wanted him to have purple hair, a chin, and the same outfit as version (A). So I guess they weren't digging on his hairdo.

EEEeeeee!

This is another digitally inked page of the comic I previously posted about. Again, very heavy on the line until I have a chance to sprinkle in the color. It's kind of funny to see it out of context in it's current state, without the dialog. Another challenge of this particular comic is that I can't reveal the face of the main character (which is the main reason for the hood and raincoat). I should note that I don't really consider these in what I would loosely define as my style. I'm working with another artist's characters and in the style of the game we are developing. But I tend to think some of my line quality shows through.

Rain

These are a couple of nearly finished pages of a comic I'm working on at FableVision. I'm grappling with how to best represent rain. These pages are heavy on line right now (no color, and I haven't blocked in any blacks), so they won't be completely realized until color gets applied. The comic needs to be delivered in Flash, so these are all completely "inked" in digital vector. People familiar with the program will understand how tricky it is to draw consistently straight lines, so it has definitely been a challenge. I think the rain is working so far. My approach is to draw the characters, then the rain lines, and then the elements behind the rain. Note that these pages don't come right after each other, though you can probably fill in the blanks.

"Dine-in" or "Table for One"

Leave no napkin undoodled!

New Comic for ARGH!

After going nearly a year without making a single comic, this is truly an accomplishment for me. Félix Diaz and Jorge Parras were kind enough to invite me to contribute a 2-page comic to their new comic magazine, ARGH! A Spanish comic magazine, at that! I'll be part of Issue #2, along with a number of comic artists. Everyone worked in the same color palette, because the magazine is printed in a 2-color process of black and cyan. This also marks a first for having my comic translated into another language (thanks Félix, I don't know a shred of Spanish). Anyway, here it is!

Good Ole Days

This is a still frame from a short animation I made for a documentary film. Some producers came to FableVision with the goal of sprinkingly a bit of animation their film. It happens to be a period piece, so when they saw my Jinx the Monkey cartoon they loved the old-time vibe of it. It was a trip down memory lane making a 1920s style cartoon again. I'll try and post the whole thing when I know it's okay to show (a lot of this stuff is pretty hush-hush when it's in production).

UPDATE: Watch the full animation at this post: History, animated.

Elder Codswallop

"I say...curious weather we're having!"