Dark and Moody

Continuing with the superlative production art from Disney's Pinocchio, we look at layouts for a film that was dark and moody—suPERB effects for visual storytelling.

The first one below is a back alley panorama by the great Gustaf Tenggren, created to put the animators in the right mood. Holy cow, I love this piece — evoking the setting of dreams and nightmares that I've had over the years.

Below is a resulting layout of action through the alley.

Below is the foggy street where Geppetto looks for his boy.

Below is one of the attractions on Pleasure Island, a nightmarish place that I think I would enjoy, except that I don' wanna be turned inna no jack-ass donkey!!!

Below, did I say this film was dark? I meant it was DARK! Yay!

Fabulous Coats

Disney's Pinocchio was magnificent in its achievement of art, both in pre-production and final production. Of tremendous benefit to the film was the atmospheric background art of Claude Coats, a long-time Disney studio man. Much of the time he specialized in interiors and still-lifes. Here is some of his fabulous work for Pinocchio:

Yumpin' Yiminy

Speaking of books — yumpin' Yiminy Crickets, I'd love to own an edition of Pinocchio that looked like this:

Meanwhile, the Disney version of the story had some of the best production and pre-production art ever created for a film.

Volume of Treasures

Speaking of books, check out the hefty volume that this model is perusing in a watercolor by Sir William Russell Flint.

The book was an actual prop, at this size, in his studio. The model was holding a difficult pose and got interested in what she was gazing at, and wanted to turn the pages. But Flint wouldn't let her because that would disturb the pose. Now there's an advantage for using a camera, but Flint wouldn't hear of it.

Sir William Russell Flint — Janelle and the Volume of Treasures — 1960

A Message from 1927

An attractive consumer message for any Christmas season:

National Association of Book Publishers — 1927

Pathways

Susan Seddon-Boulet — Pathways

"But as for me,

if thou wouldst know

What I was;

In a word

I am the Word

who did dance all things

and was not shamed at all.

'Twas I who leapt and danced

. . . Amen"

—The Hymn of Jesus

(The Leucian Acts)

Thomas Wilmer Dewing — Gloria — 1884

Evelyn

My beloved sister-in-law of 44 years passed away Thanksgiving morning, unexpectedly and tragically of causes completely unrelated to the cancer that she survived and conquered.

Treasure each day of our precious lives, take nothing for granted.

A Day of Thanks

If ol' Ben Franklin woulda had his way:

We useta have wild turkeys come around where we lived. They looked a bit like this:

If only the turkeys had organized early on:

Turkeys are clueless, but so are we:

Yay for the vegetarians:

A time of goodwill and harmony:

A moment of silence for the turkey . . . now pass me a drumstick:

Oink:

Oh who knows how Saul Steinberg's mind worked?:

Yep, Christmas'll be here before ya know it:

There's that Steinberg mind at work again:

Family and friends is what it's all about:

This prediction is rapidly coming to pass. Now get off the computer and go hang out with your family:

The New Yorker looks at all the angles on holidays:

Even if they kinda nudge the angle over only an inch or two:

I don't watch TV. Do they still do the Macy's thing?

This is a sweet cover:

And a not so sweet cover:

And I just love William Joyce's covers:

Once again, Happy Thanksgiving!

'Cept you Canadians. Go about your business.

Thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

And special best wishes to starving artists everywhere!

J.C. Leyendecker — American Weekly — November 24, 1946

Published exactly 64 years ago today!

Of Time, And The River

When I tossed out years of comics, in the late '80s, to lighten the load of my heavy footprint on this earth, I at least had the decency to keep a few representative samples of various cartoonists. Li'l Abner was never a very favorite strip of mine, but the art was fun, and the drawings of women took on new life after Frazetta jazzed em up years before I started collecting.

Anyway, this particular strip seemed to be a good sample to keep, being representative of Abner's character, some satire, a beautiful Cleopatra, and wow! A time machine!

Anyway . . .

Tryin' T'Be a Nice, Upright Accommodating Fella

Hi — I'm Thom.

I'm a blogaholic.

Really, I'm addicted, I can't stay away. I'm hooked on scanning and sharing. I'm far from being done with my deadlines, but here I be—dragging out some old Alley Oops, cuz I've gotten some requests, asking for any I got.

Wull, here's the thing. I used to collect ol' Oop every Sunday from '64 or so 'til the late '70s. And then one day after I was married, I realized I just couldn't keep everything I ever owned, and out they went. But I couldn't toss my Pogo Sunday collection—and lo and behold, Oop was on the backside of a number of the Pogos. But not always. Editors kept switching Sunday Funny layouts. So I have a few here and a few there. Here's a few in a slightly consecutive run, with some missing. But the neat thing about the Oop strip is that not much really happens in the long run, and each strip is fun just by itself. In this run evidently someone thinks Oop is a ghost, cuz of the lightning, but not seeing that part doesn't really hurt the story line at all.

I've got some more Oops that I'll post some other day.

I just can't stay away from this bloggin' stuff. It kinda cheers my day.

Cheers to you!

Hey!

Thank y'all for tunin' in. See you sometime next week!

The Queen of Sheba

I am in awe of the beauty of this painting.

John Duncan — The Queen of Sheba —1923

John Duncan — The Queen of Sheba —preliminary drawing

John Duncan — The Queen of Sheba — detail

Happiness

John Duncan — Happiness

John Duncan — Happiness — detail