Stephen starts it - I just cut and paste it.
Wednesday, March 21, 2007
21 comments:
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Steve said...
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Hmm.
SFX: Crickets. -
March 21, 2007 at 8:35 PM
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Stephen Worth said...
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Warren Foster is the greatest cartoon writer of all time. Bob Clampett, Friz Freleng and Bill and Joe all thought so too.
Foster started as a writer on the Popeye cartoons in New York. Clampett was impressed with the quality of the gags in the series and hired Foster to come West in 1938. Foster was the story man on the best of Clampett's cartoons, including A Tale of Two Kitties (the first Tweety cartoon), Tin Pan Alley Cats (a surreal masterpiece), Coal Black and de Sebben Dwarfs (quite possibly the greatest cartoon of all time), The Great Piggy Bank Robbery (if Coal Black isn't the greatest, this one is), The Hep Cat (something new has been added!), The Henpecked Duck (which includes one of the dirtiest gags to ever get past the Hayes Office) and Tortoise Wins By A Hare (the cartoon that has the most lifelike characterization of Bugs Bunny ever).
When Clampett left Warners, Foster went to the McKimson unit, writing classics like Foghorn Leghorn, Gorilla My Dreams and Easter Yeggs. He also wrote for the Freleng unit. Friz said in an interview that Foster was the best writer he ever worked with.
In 1958, Foster joined Hanna Barbera, where he wrote on Huck Hound, Yogi Bear and Quick Draw McGraw shows.
Popeye, Bugs Bunny, Tweetie, Foghorn Leghorn, Huck Hound, Yogi Bear... There is a wide swath of top quality work right across the golden age of animation.
Other writers I admire a great deal are:
Bill Peet (Song of the South, Peter Pan, Sleeping Beauty, 101 Dalmatians, etc.)
Otto Englander (story man at Iwerks and at Disney- Snow White, Pinocchio, Fantasia and Dumbo)
Jack Mercer (not only the voice of Popeye, but the writer of hundreds of Popeye cartoons)
Leo Salkin (writer at Disney in the early 50s- Pigs Is Pigs, UPA- Mr Magoo and Format- Alvin Show)
Mike Maltese (Horton Hatches The Egg- first Seuss adaptation, Inki & the Lion, Baseball Bugs, Little Red Riding Rabbit, and most of the great Chuck Jones cartoons, as well as Huck Hound and The Flintstones)
Ted Sears (Swing You Sinners, Dizzy Dishes, Mysterious Mose- the best Fleischer cartoons ever, Snow White, Pinocchio, Three Caballeros, Wind in the Willows, Peter Pan, Sleeping Beauty)
Ben Hardaway (the writer who created Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck and Woody Woodpecker)
John Dunn (Mars and Beyond, Tazmanian Devil, Pink Panther, Speedy Gonzalez)
These guys are responsible for writing a huge chunk of the greatest cartoons ever made and creating characters that will be remembered forever. We owe our business to them. You can bet that John K knows who all these guys are. You should know all about them too.
Too many people in animation today just know today's scene. They have no clue about the people who paved the road for us back in the golden age, and they don't have any concept of the process used to make the cartoons they call "classics". They assume Mike Maltese sat at a typewriter. (He didn't.)
No cartoon prior to 1960 was written as a script. None. Zip. Nada. The cartoons most people think of as being the best cartoons ever made- the classic cartoons of the 20s, 30s, 40s and 50s were all written visually using a storyboard by cartoonist/story men. Walt Disney said it was the ONLY way his cartoons were to be written. So did every other animation studio of the golden age.
Today, almost all animation, particularly TV animation, is not written in words as scripts. Cartoons today are a pale echo of the greatness that existed back in the golden age. Why is that?
I claim that it's because the incredibly efficient production process that fostered creativity, and was refined over a period of years by trial and error at Disney, Warners and the other golden age studios, has been completely jettisonned and replaced by a backwards, wasteful and political system that flat out prevents truly great cartoons from being created.
It's cool if you enjoy watching South Park or Family Guy. But if you've seen Pinocchio, Popeye Meets Sinbad or Coal Black, you know what animation is really capable of. People like me, who have a wide view of the history of animation have a right to be angry about the sorry state of animation today. It really isn't "good enough". It's been trashed by people with no passion for it and no knowledge of its importance. The audience is being cheated of the entertainment value it deserves.
It is the responsibility of all of us in the business to give back to the muse. We owe it to our medium. If you really do care about the business you're working in, and you don't know what the heck I'm talking about here, you 're part of the problem. It's not about agreeing or disagreeing. It's being aware of where your craft came from and who sweat blood to build it for you.
See ya
Steve -
March 21, 2007 at 9:12 PM
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Stephen Worth said...
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Typo
Today, almost all animation, particularly TV animation, is not written in words as scripts.
should be
Today, almost all animation, particularly TV animation, is written in words as scripts. -
March 21, 2007 at 9:39 PM
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Sib said...
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Hi again, Steve...
I'm willing to bet that there are some fantastic young singers around who, if you showed them a picture of Bing Crosby or Billie Holiday, would stare at you like a dog being shown a card trick (thank you, Bill Hicks).
Likewise, some very funny comedy writers who couldn't wax poetic about Al Boasberg writing gags from a bathtub on the MGM lot.
There may be some hot guitarists who've never heard Django or are incapable of picking Les Paul (the man, not the instrument) out of a police lineup. Or a good rock drummer who has no idea who Earl Palmer is.
And it wouldn't surprise me if Ichiro had no idea who George Sisler was until until he broke his single season hit record.
By default, does this make them all talentless hacks?
Michael Stipe once commented that the Beatles were "elevator music" and meaningless to him. And yet, they're both in the Rock Hall of Fame. -
March 21, 2007 at 10:09 PM
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Steve said...
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*sighs*
I may have to post my post after all, because it seems your olive branch of "who do you like and what do you think" may very well be a trap.
What depresses me the most about this is that, as you say, you are compiling the history of animation. But you are doing that with an editorial slant. You're as much a columnist as you are a historian.
I respect the past, but am rooted in the present and excited about the future.
I need to hit the sack. Tomorrow, I have to voice direct a cartoon that I'm incredibly proud of, that I am sure you'll hate.
I will then have dinner with a talented director who was told he could go from outline to storyboard, but chose, instead, to write a script with a writing partner.
And all of us will be doing so, living in the present.
As ever...
- Steve -
March 21, 2007 at 10:21 PM
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Stephen Worth said...
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It's only natural to pattern yourself after someone. If I wanted to be a painter, I might think about trying to be like Van Gogh, or if I was an actor, act like Laurence Olivier. If I was an architect, there's Frank Gehry. But you can't just copy somebody. If you like someone's work, the important thing is to be exposed to everything that person has been exposed to. Anyone who wants to be a songwriter should listen to as much folk music as they can, study the form and structure of stuff that has been around for 100 years. I go back to Stephen Foster. -Bob Dylan
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March 21, 2007 at 11:40 PM
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Sib said...
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Morning, Stephen.
Touche. And, your general thesis is valid.
But...Bob Dylan goes back to Stephen Foster. What if some young gun only goes back as far as, say, Kurt Cobain...and couldn't give two shits about Cole Porter, or even Ray Davies?
And what if I, as a writer, draw my primary influences from people outside of the medium, such as George Kaufman, S.J. Perelman and Preston Sturges (though I do boast a proud affinity for Frank Tashlin and the recently departed Chris Hayward)?
Still legit?
P.S. This will be my last missive for a while, as I'm laying my father to rest tomorrow, and real life rules the rest of my weekend. But, I look forward to your answer. -
March 22, 2007 at 8:56 AM
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Stephen Worth said...
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And what if I, as a writer, draw my primary influences from people outside of the medium, such as George Kaufman, S.J. Perelman and Preston Sturges
That is an excellent idea. You should pair up with a performer like Groucho Marx who can create a character and a performance that makes your words come to life. Or write for the modern equivalent of publications like Colliers or Judge. Or write the great American novel or gripping short stories.
These guys didn't write dialogue for crappy puppet shows about ironic superheros and talking dogs. They wrote dialogue for great actors and wrote articles and books full of words and ideas. Great as they were, they weren't cartoonists any more than they were plumbers or brain surgeons. If these guys had written cartoons, they would have been just as bad as if Picasso tried to write a symphony.
Work within your medium. Understand it. Be the master of it.
Bob Dylan goes back to Stephen Foster. What if some young gun only goes back as far as, say, Kurt Cobain...and couldn't give two shits about Cole Porter, or even Ray Davies?
That's a person who has no sense of the medium he's working in. He might be able to create something that appears "good" on the surface, but not being aware of the possibilities and where his music comes from will limit his ability to create something truly great.
I'm not talking about "good enough to sell". I'm talking about the real deal. Ask Martin Scorcese about Alfred Hitchcock or Fritz Lang. He knows his stuff. You should know your stuff too.
"If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants." -Isaac Newton
That's an important quote, and few people really understand it. Newton elaborated on it by saying that one doesn't have to be a giant himself... all he needs to do is be a little man standing a little above everything that came before him.
Animation sometime seems like an artform with no sense of its past. You can see motion capture zombies on the screen 75 years after Max Fleischer learned the futility of straight roto. Most shows look like other shows. Everyone is rushing out lookalikes. You've got people making cartoons who don't really have any sense of how cartoons were made in the past, or who made them. Even your mom can look at Bugs Bunny and South Park and know that animation has gone to hell. It's painfully obvious.
But not all creators are ignorant of their past... People like John K have expended a great deal of energy researching their craft and sharing their expertise with the world. Other filmmakers are fully aware of their own history too. Last night, I had dinner with a college student who knows more about the history of animation than people who have worked in the business for 20 years.
I'm very discouraged about my generation of animators. I think we have sold out our muse and turned over the reins to people who are totally unqualified to create cartoons. I have a theory on the "animation boom" of the 80s... Animation was reinvigorated by two shows... Roger Rabbit and Mighty Mouse: The New Adventures. Both shows pointed to the past and reflected an appreciation and desire to reclaim the essense of animation that has been lost. But there was a fundamental difference between the two.
Roger Rabbit was a modern mega-movie in the entire bloated essence of the word. It did everything the hard way and dug a firebreak between the live action crew and the animators. While it celebrated characters and gag situations from the past, it wasn't made at all the same way. (With the exception of the opening cartoon sequence...)
Mighty Mouse was completely modern, with modern design and humor. The essence of the past that it emulated was the *process*... the unit system as it existed at Warner Bros in the golden age.
Both projects had their strengths and weaknesses... but ultimately Roger Rabbit led to more and more complicated movies that cost more and more and moved further and further away from the medium's strengths and honest entertainment. Mighty Mouse led to every single significant TV show on the air in the past twenty years. Now the groundswell that Mighty Mouse created is crumbling.
Everyone blames Ren & Stimpy for the imitators it spawned. But those imitators imitated surface details... extreme poses, old funny music, fart gags, mutt and jeff funny animal teams, etc. They didn't imitate the thing that made R&S what it was. The way it was made.
Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. -George Santayana
We're reliving the ignorance of the past ten years over and over and over and over... It's time to make way for creators who know their medium and are the masters of it. It's time to look at the golden age of animation, not as a quaint "once upon a time", but as an object lesson of a system that worked very, very well.
We aren't going to move an inch further by ignoring the past and making excuses for our own ignorance and limited skills. Mark Twain said "We are all ignorant, just on different subjects." Ignorance is curable. Making excuses for ignorance and remaining willfully ignorant crosses the line into stupidity. I completely understand why you're mad. I've pointed a spotlight on a major hole in your professional experience. If you're like me (or like John K), you'll leap on that and dig in to try to correct it. If you are too stupid to admit your own lack of experience, you'll let anger justify doing nothing about it.
Again... I've listed a bunch of names of great animation writers... Bill Peet, Warren Foster, Mike Maltese, etc. If you don't know who these guys are, you need to do some Googling, jot down some cartoon titles and learn about your craft.
See ya
Steve -
March 22, 2007 at 10:13 AM
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Kent B said...
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Totally tangential topic, but -
In the course of doing "Indy Movies" I've had some contact with the legal world and the issues of copyright and Intellectual Property.
It is very common for a studio to register the copyright for a script, and then copyright the motion picture based on this script. (This is done for TV shows as well as "movies") Then later, the finished "motion picture" is copyrighted "based on a pre-existing screenplay", and the "new material" which is added to the "work" is identified as "additional cinematographic material".
The existance of a "script" (which the writer has assigned all rights to the studio) ensures the studio's ownership of the picture before it is made.
If for no other reason, scripts will continue to be be an important part of the cartoon business! -
March 22, 2007 at 11:17 AM
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Anonymous said...
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Here's one of my favorite little ruminations on the writer/artist issue--
"As I help develop scripts for a New Show, parallel development is happening on the art side. Led by Chris Bailey and Alan Bodner (art director on the tragically ignored Iron Giant), a Leica reel (or "animatic") is being produced. This filmed storyboard, from a script by the producers, will be shown to focus groups next month.
Checking out the artists' work today, I am, as always, impressed by the talent on display. This is especially striking to me because, as my wife was deeply chagrined to discover the first—and last—time we played Pictionary together, my own drawing ability is shockingly limited. ("In what conceivable way does that resemble a waffle on a plate?!") The same sad lesson has been learned by my kids, who now understand that Daddy can't make a wombat any better than they can.
There are those who feel that this particular deficiency renders me unfit to work in animation. Unfortunately, this includes many of the artists who surround me. Nothing personal. They resent all writers.
The short version of why: In the pre-television "Golden Age" of animation, animators were largely left alone to produce what is unquestionably a great body of work. Then in the early '60s, The Flintstones ushered in an era of TV cartoons where the stories were longer, more plot-driven, and, most importantly, aired weekly. Producers turned to those who had experience feeding a voracious production machine—namely writers. Result? Animators felt like their medium was hijacked. Resentment ensued, which has only gotten worse as most cartoons have gotten less and less cartoony.
At a recent meeting of the Cartoonists' Union (animation writers don't belong to the Writers' Guild, another long story), it was like the Sharks versus the Jets as artists and writers faced off. I half-expected to see chairs kicked over and X-Acto knives brandished.
Artists also suspect that writers are slumming, and they may have a point. My guess is that if you root around in the drawers of a cartoon writer, what you'll find is a live action feature or spec script. (I plead guilty to a winsome little romantic comedy.) If you look in the drawers of artists, by contrast, once you get past the comics and the Star Wars collectibles, I'll bet you find designs for a cartoon that doesn't involve writers.
Of course, artists aren't the only ones with a low opinion of cartoon writers. In fact, if you analogize the old adage that "Those that can't do, teach; and those that can't teach, teach gym," cartoon writers are regarded as the P.E. teachers of the entertainment industry. It certainly doesn't help that so many cartoons are terribly written.
It's a tough one. On Nightmare Ned, one of the shows I'm proudest to have worked on, the storyboard artists freely changed the scripts. So much so that they shared writing credit in addition to their storyboard credit. But that show had a producer with a good story sense. There are numerous examples of artist-run shows that crashed. Delicately put—not all writers are Artists and not all artists are Writers. Frankly, not all artists are Artists, but now I'm nitpicking."
This was written by the late Gary Sperling. He was one of the most gentle, modest souls I've ever worked with in animation and he had a true respect for the artists he worked with.
Of course, as soon as this was published in Slate, Stephen Worth was there in the talkback with his boilerplate complaints, challenging his right to feed his family by being a literary interloper in his visual medium.
This was seven years ago. Points for stick-to-it-ivness at least on the part of Mister Worth.
I'm sure there's similar characters who feel like there hasn't been a decent film since John Ford or John Cassavettes, depending on the fixed point of their nostalgic yearning. There was a famous art critic at the New York Times in the early 60's who was so convinced that all modern art was crap he missed an entire seismic shift in the landscape of his expertise. History has not been kind to his smug dismissals of what are now accepted as masterpieces.
What's damaging here is that the persistant and influential insulting of writers in animation by John K. and his great internet defender, Mr. Worth, is that this bile is actually taken as gospel and sometimes internalized by young artists as fact. Rather than change how animation is made though, it just reinforces attitudes which make any attempts at writer/artist colloboration that much more difficult.
What's telling though, is that when presented by an actual artist driven cartoon of the Cartoon Network sort, this critical duo swoop in from thier other favorite flank - The "ugly calarts style" attack.
The fact that Pixar has been churning out artist driven features for years, and made some artists filthy rich in the process, doesn't seem to get noted in their world very much.
To my mind, this indicates their problem isn't that artists are never put in the driver's seat anymore, but rather that John K. has had the car taken away on account of crashing it one too many times. -
March 22, 2007 at 11:32 AM
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Anonymous said...
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jesus christ you people are verbose.
can't anyone make a point with some brevity?
it's mind-numbing, really. -
March 22, 2007 at 12:50 PM
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Steve Schnier said...
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Quoting Stephen Worth: "I am guessing that there are no cartoon writers out there who have any kind of sense at all of where they come from."
I graduated from Sheridan College's Classical Animation program in '81. I'm trained and worked for many years on the art side, but I find writing to be a more creative and successful outlet. -
March 22, 2007 at 1:03 PM
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Steve said...
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Anonymous said...
jesus christ you people are verbose.
can't anyone make a point with some brevity?
it's mind-numbing, really.
I reply:
Yeah, and those John K anti-writer rants are lean as hell.
:)
- Steve
- Steve -
March 22, 2007 at 1:33 PM
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Vincent Waller said...
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Gee Steve, I think he was talking to both camps.
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March 22, 2007 at 1:43 PM
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Anonymous said...
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Stephen made a point with the following example:
"I admit I don't know a lot of cartoon writers. The ones I worked with back at Bagdasarian and on Cool World weren't the sharpest knifes in the drawer and they almost never interacted with the artists. In fact, they didn't seem to care what happened after they turned in their script except to complain about how the animators "butchered it"."
I'd like to comment on the fact that neither of the writers of Cool World were animation writers, they were live action writers. Stephen's dealings with live action writers on a film (that was technically not an "animated feature" but rather a hybrid) should not be viewed as an example of behavior by animation writers.
Rarely are the writers of features or television around after a script is finished and production has begun... and it's not by choice. The studio's done with the writer(s), their contract's over, and the studio boots them out. Also, the studio usually keeps the artist & writers seperated - something that bugs me. But it's not the writer's fault, it's how the business is done. If that's viewed as "not caring" on the writer's part, then Stephen is ingorant of the process of production. -
March 22, 2007 at 2:01 PM
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Steve said...
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Vincent.
Good point.
But the smiley in that post was there to show that I wasn't too serious, either. -
March 22, 2007 at 2:12 PM
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Stephen Worth said...
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I'd like to comment on the fact that neither of the writers of Cool World were animation writers, they were live action writers. Stephen's dealings with live action writers on a film (that was technically not an "animated feature" but rather a hybrid) should not be viewed as an example of behavior by animation writers.
Well, I could tell you about the well known cartoon writer who submitted a script to Bagdasarian with a whole section of the story described for the storyboard artist simply as... "And hilarious hijinx ensue."
Or how about the other well known cartoon writer who admitted to a friend of mine that he wrote four half hour scripts for his show in an afternoon, and refused to fix the mess saying, "I've won Emmys. My scripts stand as they are. You guys fix it yourself if you think it doesn't work."
You don't have to ask me for my "bad writer stories". Just ask any storyboard artist you happen to see. "Bad writer stories" are almost as common as "stupid executive stories".
I have worked with a few really talented writers in my day. I worked with Joe Ranft on one show and he really impressed me. Andy Gaskill is no slouch when it comes to staging a scene. Louise Zingarelli was great at creating atmosphere. Vincent did a brilliant job on Ranger Smith with thumbnail postits. Jim Smith's storyboard for "Untamed World" is sitting here on my desk right now, and it is one of the best I've ever seen. And I watched John K and Aaron Springer work wonders visually in the Bjork video.
The thing is, all of these writers drew. They could come up with a basic outline of plot points as well as any scriptwriter. But they could do more than that. They could create something that precisely defined what the cartoon would end up being. They didn't always hit a home run. No one bats .1000. But when they connected, they REALLY connected and no one had to guess about how to lay out or stage a scene.
If you stop by the archive and look at the boards we have on display for Stimpy's Inventions or Sven Hoek, you will have the cartoon playing in your head as you read. Words just can't do that.
It's fine to start with a script if the story artist is free to rework it and throw anything out he wants. But that isn't the way scripts are used in the business. Scripts are "locked" and "network approved". All a storyboard really needs though is a tight outline of the structure of the story and the basic situations and a few funny lines. All the reams of paper in the average script are just glittering generalities to the guy who has to actually draw the story.
One final story... On Cool World, we spent months carefully blocking out all of our animated sequences in storyboard form. The first page of each sequence included the set design, and each panel indicated what was going to be blue screen as well as the composition of the shot, the dialogue for that scene and the description of the action. Ralph had me pin the first sequence up on boards and deliver it to the set, so his cinematographer, John Alonzo and his crew could break down and shoot each setup so the animation and live action would be able to be combined without undue expense.
The art department was building sets and the technicians were preparing the bluescreen at just the right angles for the shots we needed on the first day- the big sex scene.
Two days before principle photography, the assistant to the producer delivered a script to me and Ralph. "What's this?" I asked. "It's the new final script." I was told. I read through a few pages, and it didn't resemble the storyboard at all. A whole new animated sequence had been added, and the big sex scene which had been intended to be a "hard R" was edited down to PG-13.
I asked the assistant to the Producer to call him and let him know that the new script didn't relate to the storyboard we were planning to shoot from. There wasn't time to reboard the whole sequence. She went away and came back with a sheepish look on her face. "What did he say?" I asked. Embarassed, she said, "He told me to tell you 'Fuck the storyboard.'"
Ralph scrambled to salvage whatever he could out of the careful planning we had done, but the only thing he could do is get up at 3am each morning and sit with his DP and AD and figure out the technical aspects on the fly. All the superfluous added script pages ended up making the rough cut over four hours long.
If I knew how to put a happy face here, I'd do it. But there weren't many happy faces at Cool Productions back then.
See ya
Steve -
March 22, 2007 at 5:25 PM
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Anonymous said...
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But let's not forget that 'Cool World' was a horrible movie.
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March 22, 2007 at 5:29 PM
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Anonymous said...
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But let's not forget that 'Cool World' was a horrible movie.
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March 22, 2007 at 5:29 PM
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Anonymous said...
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Steve Worth said "Work within your medium".
So, Tashlin shouldn't have been allowed to make movies? -
March 22, 2007 at 5:38 PM
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Stephen Worth said...
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What medium did Tashlin work in that he wasn't a master of?
See ya
Steve -
March 22, 2007 at 7:43 PM
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I am guessing that there are no cartoon writers out there who have any kind of sense at all of where they come from.
When I visit with animators, the talk inevitably turns to discussions of classic cartoons and the animators who created them. Animators will argue at length about the relative strengths and weaknesses of Ward Kimball, Irv Spence or Robert McKimson.
I've thrown out over a dozen names of cartoon writers on this blog. These are the men who wrote the Mickey Mouse cartoons, the Disney features, Bugs Bunny cartoons and Huck Hound and Yogi Bear. They're the writers who built the industry we all work in.
I'm asking an honest question here...
Are there any cartoon writers who have any kind of interest in Bill Peet, Joe Grant, Warren Foster or Mike Maltese. Do you even know who these people are? If you don't, shame on you.
Animators can be no better about the history of their craft. I gave a speech at the Lion King reunion where I held up a picture of a man and asked if anyone knew who it was. There was an uncomfortable silence in the room. The picture I was holding up was of Ub Iwerks, the man who created Mickey Mouse. The inventor of the multiplane camera, animation xerography and process screen technology which is still used to combine live action and animation to this day. No one knew who he was. And the picture I was holding up was pulled from the trash can at Film Roman.
If I was standing in front of a group of jazz musicians and held up a picture of Louis Armstrong, they would know who it was. Directors would recognize a photo of Alfred Hitchcock. Painters would recognize Pablo Picasso or Salvador Dali.
Why do people in the animation business have such little regard for their own medium and its history? There are too many people in animation who just see it as a stepping stone to something else that they'd rather be doing.
If animation writers truly do have respect for their medium, let's hear about it. Lip service isn't good enough. Let's see some passion instead of studio politics and griping about not being loved.
Tell me about your favorite classic cartoon and the person who wrote it.
Wide shot of a quiet landscape at night.
SFX:
Crickets
See ya
Steve
Stephen;
You make a valid point, but here's my counter.
The things I like about cartoons are the writing. I can tell you about Matt and Trey, and if I sat and thought about it, probably name a lot of the people who wrote on their shows. I saw the first "Spirit of Christmas" short they made, and it made me laugh.
I can tell you about how Seth Macfarlane hand drew his pilot and sold a series.
I know who Matt Groenig is, AND I can name Simpson writers.
I can tell you how much I like Paul Dini and Alan Burnett's written work with super heroes, or how much I like Dwayne McDuffie, Stan Berkowitz and Rich Fogel's stuff now.
Batman the Animated Series, and Batman Beyond forever changed how super heroes were treated. Justice League and JLU forever washed the "ick" off Superfriends and as an avid comic book fan, I will be forever grateful.
I can tell you how much it meant to me to sit down with Mark Evanier when I first started getting involved in animation.
Moving further back, I can tell you how much I hated "Three Stooges The Animated Series" but how much I adore the old Bugs Bunny, Road Runner and classic warner brothers cartoons because it worked for adults and kids.
How I grew tired of the Flintstones and the Jetsons, but couldn't stop watching Jay Ward stuff.
I liked Super Chicken. Sue me. I liked Rocky and Bullwinkle and Roger Ramjet because there was subtext.
I know who Tex Avery is. I know who Chuck Jones is. Would I recognize a photo of Ub Iwerks? Probably not.
But I know Otto Messmer's creation, because there are things about that 1960s (ish) Felix the Cat cartoon that disturb me to this day.
You look to the artists, fair enough. I look to the writers more than artists, but that's my taste. And I'm not so ignorant as to say "Chuck Jones isn't a writer."
How about the other way around? What writers do you know and like?
- Steve