Mike Fontanelli says he hates superheroes because they don't make sense.
Unlike talking rabbits who walk upright - which makes perfect sense.
I disagree with Mike. To me superheroes are an American tradition and the more preposterous they are the more I like them. Superman has to be the most preposterous of them all and he deserves the most preposterous artist to bring him to life with absolute stiffness.
Wayne Boring is the best Superman artist in my opinion because he draws everything so wooden. The whole concept of a Superhero is crazy. Men with god-like powers who run around in long underwear taking the law into their own hands. - and normal people completely accept it!
The fact that you can't recognize the secret identity of a superhero just because he takes glasses on and off can only work if every character in the comics looks exactly the same - and you can't hear their voices. It helps if no one ever opens their mouths to talk and also never opens their eyes.
All emotions have to be treated exactly the same. Here is deep romantic love. Can you feel it?
One thing I love about Wayne Boring is that he draws the cranium smaller than the jaw.
I made a cartoon once that celebrated the stiffness of Wayne Boring's poses, and made these model sheets from his comics to inspire the animators for once to be stiff on purpose - but in a certain way.
Look how relaxed Superman is in repose.
I really love how thick Boring draws Superman's torso. Very appealing.
The flying poses kill me too.
I think that Superhero comics were ruined when the artists and writers started taking them seriously in the 70s. The drawings got really serious too. Some artists like Neal Adams even took the bold revolutionary step of opening Superman's mouth!
When you try to hard to explain preposterous ideas, they lose their charm - and it's even worse when you try to make silly things socially conscious. Didn't the Hulk have a gay friend in the 80s who died of Aids or something? Jesus, that's sure what the kids want to read about in their long underwear stories.
No, to me the art and stories and concepts have to be as insensible as possible to make Superhero comics work. Like I said, everything about Superman is unbelievably illogical and the writers in the 50s and 60s had their tasks cut out for them. They had to keep coming up with ways to get around the fact that you can't hurt Superman, because he can do everything. How do you find conflicts for that? They had to contradict all their own premises to be able to continue writing millions of stories about God and his friends. And they did it!
The only other comic character that comes close to the preposterousness of Superman is Batman - a character who can afford the colorful long underwear - BUT HAS NO SUPER POWERS AT ALL! And we're expected to believe that you can't kill him. Isn't he the most popular character too? It's because it makes no sense that he's so beloved.
I made a cartoon with a character based on Wayne Boring's Superman and I'll get a clip from it to show you soon. It was hard to make because I had spent all my previous time on the series trying to loosen up the animators' drawings. Now I had to tell them to draw stiff on purpose - but with style.
At the San Diego Comic Con, I'll show a cartoon I made that parodies Batman. Hope you will be there!
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.
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.
Learning to draw something rude in 3 D is especially important to the eager student of animation.
A nice down shot of his impressive braincase.
See how the cheeks and smile work? Together, they form a muscle of flesh that points towards just above the center of his snout (nose).
Bonus Pigs:
Boy am I nostalgic for bag characters.
or guns for babies promoted by cute cuddly cartoon friends
or celebrating Jesus's last days a million years before he's born
or any kind of cartoon thing in a bag. What is it about bags and cartoons that go together?
some characters are just made to be adapted to 3 dimensional form
Here are 2 of my candidates for the best of them
And then came the 70s
Mike Fontanelli says he hates superheroes because they don't make sense.
I disagree with Mike. To me superheroes are an American tradition and the more preposterous they are the more I like them. Superman has to be the most preposterous of them all and he deserves the most preposterous artist to bring him to life with absolute stiffness.
Wayne Boring is the best Superman artist in my opinion because he draws everything so wooden. The whole concept of a Superhero is crazy. Men with god-like powers who run around in long underwear taking the law into their own hands. - and normal people completely accept it!
The fact that you can't recognize the secret identity of a superhero just because he takes glasses on and off can only work if every character in the comics looks exactly the same - and you can't hear their voices. It helps if no one ever opens their mouths to talk and also never opens their eyes.
All emotions have to be treated exactly the same. Here is deep romantic love. Can you feel it?
One thing I love about Wayne Boring is that he draws the cranium smaller than the jaw.
I made a cartoon once that celebrated the stiffness of Wayne Boring's poses, and made these model sheets from his comics to inspire the animators for once to be stiff on purpose - but in a certain way.
Look how relaxed Superman is in repose.
I really love how thick Boring draws Superman's torso. Very appealing.
I think that Superhero comics were ruined when the artists and writers started taking them seriously in the 70s. The drawings got really serious too. Some artists like Neal Adams even took the bold revolutionary step of opening Superman's mouth!
When you try to hard to explain preposterous ideas, they lose their charm - and it's even worse when you try to make silly things socially conscious. Didn't the Hulk have a gay friend in the 80s who died of Aids or something? Jesus, that's sure what the kids want to read about in their long underwear stories.
