A Halloween Cartoon List
Steve Stanchfield, via Cartoon Research, presents a list of seasonal animated cartoons:
Since it’s almost Halloween, I’ll continue the tradition of posting some favorite Halloween films. Here’s the ones that are on my must watch list (again) for this year. Some of these will very likely be projected for the kids on Halloween night.
The Fourth Wall
Most of the time, comic strip characters ignore the fourth wall by only interacting with each other, and their environment. Every once in a while, though, they take us by surprise and address the audience. But why does it tickle us so when our favorite comics take a wrecking ball and smash the fourth wall?
Thea Voutiritsas, (new?) at the GoComics blog, looks at the principle of the separation of strip and reader being violated.
What Makes It Funny?
“The most crucial part of it is coming up with the ideas,” he says. “Every cartoonist struggles with that, week in and week out. I need to have 10 to 15 ideas a week to submit to my editor. There’s a certain kind of meditation, where I let the ideas happen. And sometimes I get the ideas by starting with a drawing. And sometimes, something I hear on the news inspires me.”
Pem McNerney and Zip06 talk to David Sipress as to How Humor Happens.
Kurt Vonnegut Author Artist
I see hints of blueprints, tile work, leaded-glass windows, William Blake, Paul Klee, Saul Steinberg, Al Hirschfeld, Edward Gorey, my mother’s wasp waist, cats and dogs. I see my father, at age four, forty, and eighty-four, doodling his heart out.
—Nanette Vonnegut
Ayun Halliday, by way of Open Culture, reminds us that the Jim Carrey experience is not a new phenomena, cartooning has long appealed to creative types.
To that end, [Vonnegut] recommended that people practice art “no matter how badly because it’s known to make a soul grow.”
Y’know, I’ve got at least a dozen Vonnegut books on the shelf, most have been there for decades.
So it goes.
Maybe I’ll reread them someday.
But, speaking of favorite authors…
I recently left Barnes and Noble with a buy-two-get-one-free bargain.
A youngster in my life was tearing up his older siblings books, so I got him a few board books of his own.
That reminded me of an item that had gotten lost in the bookmarks:
A Bustling Year for Sandra Boynton
Board book virtuoso Sandra Boynton delivers a bounty of her trademark “serious silliness” in 2018, as Little Simon publishes a quartet of titles by the author, whose books have sold more than 70 million copies worldwide. This year’s releases include Here, George!, a collaboration with iconic New Yorker cartoonist George Booth; But Not the Armadillo, a follow-up to 1982’s But Not the Hippopotamus; and two new capers starring Boynton’s earnest and expressive porcine character, Merry Christmas, Little Pookie and I Love You, Little Pookie.
Sally Lodge tells Publishers Weekly readers about Sandra’s 2018 publishing schedule.