Painting 2 Post 2

Beginning with what would presumably be the easiest set, "Avery and Those Crazy Birds", has nonetheless wrought a significant amount of surprise difficulties.

There are many ties to comics and cartoons from several genres and periods. The most obvious association being the name Avery with Tex Avery of Daffy Duck, Bugs Bunny, and Droopy fame (amongst others). Avery's trademark "cartoony-ness" set the pace for all animation, and his witty but often dry breaking of the fourth wall is represented in my cartoon, as Avery Wahn's (changed from Wann since last week) strip is a complete biopic.

Visual similarities are also struck, as the Crazy Birds (name drawing slight reference to Harvey Kurtzman's Krazy Kat) are dressed in jazz-era spats. Their hats are also reminiscent of the period, taking a slight formal nod from Goofy's hat. The "Crazy Birds'" eyeballs are stretched and curved versions of traditional "carroted" (so named for the tiny triangle in the middle signifying light) eyes popularized in Floyd Gottfredson's 1930's Mickey Mouse. The curve changes the natural cuteness to a more snake-like monstrous form, and the replacement of the carrot shape with that of a circle creates distinct "points" that detract additional cuteness.

Other formal elements drawing relation to Sunday funnies are the pupil-less glasses, akin to Dilbert's and the recurring horizontal line forming a "table" reminiscent of Jim Davis' Garfield.

The painting process itself involved a thing layer of acrylic, "Unbleached Titanium", to create a newsprint-esque appeal. The linework is laid on secondarily again with my Pentel Ink Brush. The difficulty here being that comics and cartoon strips are drawn at double or greater size then shrunk for printing. Working at "life size" with a paintbrush on a vertical textured surface is definitely a far cry from the original process.

Ironically, post-design I ran across a perfectly matched image from one of my heaviest inspirations in the "non-mainstream" comic realm, Tony Millionaire's Maakies. Again, there is far more detail in these images than I am able to replicate due to material circumstance, but I think the simplicity reflects the style and gestalt of more culturally-accepted strips.