Mykal Posts a lot of great old comics and here're some previews of a story from "Ha Ha" featuring your favorite Jim Tyer character, Pete the Parrot.
I wonder how Tyer developed this drawing style?
It's so unique - and a more elaborate variation of his animation style.


This issue of "Ha Ha also features a black and white page of a Dan Gordon comic.
http://www.bigblogcomics.com/2011/01/ha-ha-comics-no-17-february-1945-w-jim.html

I found a treasure trove of Dan Gordon comics at Greatest Ape.
What I like most about Gordon s that although he has an obvious animation background, he resists following exact inbred animation formula in his posing, design and composition.
His scenes exude raw energy and life. It reminds me of storyboards that were drawn for classic cartoons. It has a sort of coarse unfinished look to it - but only unfinished in the sense that it didn't go through 10 stages of toning down the ideas on the animation assembly line.
I can imagine animators wanting to put everything on model, and making the construction perfect, but that would only lesson the liveliness or originality of Gordon's style and storytelling.
Dan's scenes have a sense that all the characters are really there, they aren't mere generic cartoon characters mindlessly following animation principles.
I like his little human touches-like this dog laughing so hard that he's crying-and digging the tear out of his eye. It's not something you would expect to see in an animated cartoon.
His sense of cuteness is quirky too, not the generic 40s "animation-cute". True cuteness has an element of ignorance in it.
I like the combination of Mammy's angry expression with the cartoon symbolism of skulls in her eyes. Double the impact. Dan Gordon's comics are full of visual ideas.
He also has a kind of crude-elegance. His style pretends to be earthy and unpretentious, yet it's very thoughtful and principled at the same time. Check out the hierarchy in his grouping of the dogs. They together create a winding shaped form, rather than a scatter about as a chaotic crowd.


I love when real cartoonists try to draw realistic humans. Their heads are always too big, but I find that funny.
Gordon varies his camera angles of characters' points of view which adds dynamism and continuity to the emotions and stories.

You can't go wrong with Satan. He's a real a child pleaser in cartoons - right up there with Hitler.


I wonder who colored these comics? I think they really take advantage of the medium. I love the somber mood in these panels. Hard to pull off with basically primary and secondary colors.

Even though his characters are sort of awkward and crunchy, they still fit within well thought out compositions.

He's one of the top "happy-cartoonists", up there with Clampett, Gross and Wolverton.
His drawings are just plain fun. Not all cartoonists can achieve this.
Wolves covet pigs' arses. I wonder of that breaks their commandments?
Look how dynamic this simple scene of a bunch of happy ignorant animals simply walking is.

This comic cover is a work of cartoon art. It screams FUN INSIDE!





Here's Dan Gordon drawing in Milt Gross' style. Neat combination.
Here's a beautiful and dynamic page layout filled with a variety of angles.
Hair tubs are always funny.
You don't see a lot of over the shoulder shots in cartoons; they usually look really awkward. This does too but he pulls it off by making it funny.

Gordon's neighborhood world feels very real, gritty and inviting. It's full of nooks and crannies, sheds, basements, rickety stairs and things of that ilk that are usually disregarded in generic cartoons.
Even though Gordon's comics are mostly about talking animals, they have a lot of humanity to them.
http://greatestape.blogspot.com/search/label/dan%20gordon

If you agree with my dead cartoon style theory and you yourself would like to draw with life rather than death, here's a tip: DRAW STORIES

Write a short simple story and draw your characters performing it. Either in a comic or a storyboard format.

This forces you to draw characters, poses and expressions in context, rather than in the abstract. Your poses have a reason to exist.
This is much better for you than drawing random doodles in a sketchbook. When you do that, your drawings are slaves to luck and the skill of your wrist flicks-but the drawings don't mean anything because they have no other purpose but to exist in an obscure sketchbook. Or on your blog or Deviantart.
There is a huge difference between being able to draw a character that looks sort of like a character - and actually telling a story with pictures. Huge. The second thing is much harder, more important, and infinitely more rewarding.
All these individual Jim Tyer drawings have attitude and life, but they are part of a story and that naturally inspires him to draw certain poses-not random ones, not only poses that he's already memorized, but specific poses that tell the story and are funny.
When you read the actual story in continuity, you can see the characters change attitude, poses and expressions from panel to panel.
Someone in the comments the other day sent me a link of some superhero teenagers from an old Hanna Barbera cartoon series-but drawn in a more modern angular style. His point was to show me that even though the original designs were bland, a talented artist could make them look cool and hip. I looked at the drawing and just saw the same characters standing straight up and down smiling, like they were right off a model sheet. They weren't doing anything. Characters who do things are much more fun than characters who stand around posing as if for a family photo.

That's what is so bad about the modern idea of staying "on-model". Most modern model sheets just show the characters standing, doing nothing. And if that's what staying "on-model" means, who needs it?

The best model sheets are the ones that are made after a cartoon is finished - not before. They used to take poses that the directors and animators drew and paste them onto a sheet so that other animators could see the characters alive, doing things and feeling things.



I know when I try to just draw a character for somebody, out of context - not part of a story, I tend to draw stiff. My most lively drawings are done when I'm thinking about what the characters are doing and why, instead of merely what they look like.

http://jkcartoonstories.blogspot.com/2009/12/slabs-first-fist.html

That's why "designers" should have less say in the total look of a cartoon than they do today. The designs should be allowed to constantly improve as the actual storytellers put the characters into action, rather than just tracing the model sheets.

READ THIS FUNNY JIM TYER STORY: The Brand New Penny

I have lots more to say on the subject of getting life into animation again, but I'll wait and see how this goes over.