John K Stuff: fontanelli

Showing posts with label fontanelli. Show all posts

Wednesday, January 18, 2012

Wednesday, May 18, 2011

Rubber Buddies

There are some characters that have such an inherent iconic quality that regardless of whether their cartoons are hilarious or not, they just look good in rubber.

Doesn't this Peabody toy make you imagine it must be from a fantastic cartoon?

This Tom looks good too, but is not quite so distinct or iconic as the Jay Ward characters - even though the cartoons he's in are much more animated.

Some fans wonder why I make so many posts about toys and partly it's because I don't always have time to do anything elaborate so I just put up the stuff Mike Fontanelli sends me in his immature glee. But there is kind of a serious point in them: One of the most important qualities in a cartoon character is its inherent iconic appeal. Ionic characters make good toys. It's a quality that is completely non-existent today. Cartoonists used to aim for designs and personalities that had an instant appeal. Rather than this:

Somehow, about 40 years ago cartoon aims turned upside down and now characters seem to be designed to instantly depress you. Big time Hollywood producers think that if they make the audience puke, we will be curious enough to want to watch the cartoon to that makes our stomachs churn so.

Like I said, iconic quality is separate from whether the cartoon is fully animated or even funny. It's just a spark that some cartoon designers and creators had and others strove for but never achieved.

Here's the character who made for some of the best toys ever and the more off model and confused they were, the better.

I bet girls love Fred's iconic veiny club.

Sunday, March 20, 2011

Mighty Mouse Pitch circa 1994?

Here is some presentation art from a pitch we did at Spumco in the mid 90s. I wanted to get Paramount to let me revive the Terrytoons characters. I would have shown some of this stuff earlier but it had all suffered water damage. But now, thanks to Alex, Jojo and Tommy, some of it has been restored through the magic of insufferable digital technology.

These guys here are "The Catnip Gang" who appeared in at least 2 of the original TT Mighty Mouse gang. I think that was drawn by Mike Fontanelli. Possibly inked by Shane Glines and I don't remember who colored it. Looks like water colors?...Hey I bet it was Rick Altergott! Famous creator of "Doofus".

I added another character called "The Big Puss" (originally "The Big Pussy" but everyone talked me out of that). The Big Puss is the head of the crime syndicate in Catville. He is the Catnip Gang's boos and we never actually see all of him at once. Usually we just hear his gutteral grumbles from behind an imposing door in his office. Once in a while we will see just his face pressing against the frame of his open door. Jim Smith drew a hilarious storyboard about the Big Puss sending the Catnip gang on an impossible mission - to steal the shorts of Mighty Mouse. He figures that the shorts are magic and that is where Mighty Mouse gets his power from. I used this story idea later for "The Ripping Friends".

Richard Pursel had an especial fondness for these bedfellows and dubbed them "Gandy and Sourpuss: Wards Of The State". We wrote stories about them being on the dole and getting into tiffs with their unemployment officers and stuff.

Of course I included some of the characters we created for the Bakshi version of Mighty Mouse. Here's Petey Pate in his insane glory. In this story he steals all the eyebrows from the mice in mouseville and Mighty Mouse has to come save the day.

Here are his witless thugs who fear nothing - except insanity. The broken mind instills the fear of God in these poor crooked souls.

Here are my favorite characters from the Bakshi show.

These look like they also might be drawn by Mike Fontanelli.

I love the ignorant - and so did Rich. The original Deputy Dawg cartoons are pretty terrible, even for Terrytoons, but the characters are great.

Rich came up with a story about nearsighted Vincent Van Gofer marrying Deputy Dawg's pants. The set up was: Deputy, Musky and the gang are skinny dipping at the old swimming hole, when Vincent Van Gofer ambles up to the edge of the pond and sees Deputy's pants hanging over the branch of a tree. Through his blurry eyes he sees a beautiful apparition of female gofer loveliness and he whisks the pants away to the Sheriff's office for a quick wedding. Wedding bliss turns out to be less than he'd hoped for and the marriage soon sours. Meanwhile, Deputy Dawg has no pants and has to do his job while moving his hands back and forth really fast in front of himself to maintain the picture's family rating. That no-account egg-stealin' rascal, Musky takes advantage of the situation with zany-ass results.

I have lots more of this stuff if anyone else likes Terrytoons as much as I do.

Wednesday, November 10, 2010

Looney Health Issues

Does breaking your leg make you a cripple? I heard that we aren't allowed to say "cripple" anymore. We have to say "better off" or something.

I hope they bury me in this position.

I have never seen this condition before, but I like it. Does Daffy have the Shingles?

Saturday, June 05, 2010

Renowned Nuclear Physicist, Dagwood Splits The Atom, Part 1

If anyone can do it, it's Dagwood.

Culled from the archives of Professor Mike Fontanelli, curator of the Alexandrian Library of Cartoon art.

I wish Dagwood had been teaching when I was at school. Maybe I would have paid attention.

More exciting adventures in education to come...

Monday, May 24, 2010

Toy Drawing 10: How To Draw Porky

If you are trying to teach yourself classical cartoon construction, this is a gift from on high. From high up the stairs where Mike Fontanelli lives. It's a beautifully sculpted 3 fully dimensional Porky Figure.

Good sculptures of cartoon characters tell you what cartoon shapes really look like in perspective. Note in the 3/4 shot that his cranium is not stacked directly on top of his lower face and jaw. His brain extends behind his jaw.

Toys don't generally have a line of action. They need to stand up, so they are usually sculpted around a vertical straight line. This helps you isolate just the construction of the character too.

Note where the shadow falls in his eye. That tells you that his eye is sunk into his flesh around the edges and that the part of the eye at the right is farther away, because the shadow indicates we are seeing more of the edge of the sunken eye on that side.