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

Writing For Character, rather than plugging characters into a generic plot

Write For Character I’ve always found that it’s much easier to write for characters that have strong distinct personalities – iconic characters. Some cartoon writers like to begin with a high concept, (“Let’s start the picture by shooting the protagonist’s mother and then the son goes on a magical adventure to search for a replacement mother figure, but then finds out through trials

Jinks Is Iconic - a Real Character

A lot of animation fans, particularly of my generation, were mad at Hanna Barbera's limited animation cartoons and blamed them for ruining animation. I admit they sure had a big part in that.But they also created some iconic characters, which is not an easy thing to do.When they started limiting their animation, they must have figured they had no choice but to find some new creative aspect of

Design Quirks: Contrasting Leg Theories

Many Harvey kids have "stubbies" like Canadian beer bottles.Ketcham's kids tend to have bell-bottom legs.The basic forms that make up both Harvey and Ketcham kids are very similar. They have the same stock cartoon kid head construction.The 2 styles have some minor -but recognizable general differences - like the legs.Then each individual character has some specific accessory design element and

Popeye Thrills

Popeye grew an extra eye.