HARVEYTOONS

I just received my copy of the new HARVEYTOONS DVD set! This nice collection of Harvey cartoons includes CASPER, BABY HUEY, LITTLE AUDREY, HERMAN & KATNIP and the MODERN MADCAP cartoons! HARVEYTOONS was just released by Classic Media. The cartoons look great and Classic Media did a terrific job on the set's packaging! HARVEYTOONS is great TV cartoon fun! If you haven't already, pick up this DVD set today! Along with an image of Classic Media's HARVEYTOONS DVD set, I'm posting a few of my HARVEY cartoon art pieces. Here's the cover art for a DVD set of BABY HUEY public domain cartoons and CASPER being friendly with a Preston Blair-ish looking bird. All done for East West DVD of Brooklyn, NY and North Hollywood, CA. The CASPER art was done for a DVD cover of CASPER cartoons in public domain. The character art was done separately from the background.

QUICK DRAW McGRAW & WILMA FLINTSTONE

I recently received a nice e-mail from blog reader Dan Brady of Sheffield Lake, Ohio. Dan wrote, "I think that you do an amazing job of recreating the illustrative technique that corresponds with these cartoon classics -- you can tell that you have an affection for the look and feel that is important to give these characters the proper treatment they deserve." Thanks, Dan! It's nice to know that my affection for classic cartoons shows through in my work! On that note...here's a QUICK DRAW McGRAW and WILMA FLINTSTONE! I did this QUICK DRAW piece based on a color scheme of a 1960s QUICK DRAW McGRAW Soaky. I always loved the blue, orange and white combination used on that Soaky! The old off-model Hanna-Barbera dolls and toys with wrong colors were great! This WILMA FLINTSTONE piece is a combination of WILMA from the 1960s Little Golden Books and the Dell/Gold Key comic books. I thought the black lips looked great in the comic books!

CLASSIC CHICAGO KIDS TV FRIENDS

If any of my blog readers grew up in the Chicago area during the 1960s and 1970s, as I did, then these characters are very familiar! WGN-TV in Chicago produced some of the all-time great local kids TV shows throughout the 60s and 70s. WGN-TV Channel 9's BOZO's CIRCUS used to run the 1960s Larry Harmon BOZO cartoons which featured the great BOZO character design shown here. I'm told that legendary character designer, Ed Benedict (The Flintstones, Yogi Bear, Huckleberry Hound) designed this terrific BOZO. Also shown here is the puppet GARFIELD GOOSE from GARFIELD GOOSE AND FRIENDS. Hope you enjoy seeing these!

WALLY GATOR

Last year, I did this piece of Hanna-Barbera's WALLY GATOR for Rick Davidson, a big Hanna-Barbera fan in the San Diego area. He asked me to do the art as an homage to the painted-style art of the old 1960s Hanna-Barbera Little Golden Books. I love all of the early Hanna-Barbera characters and it's a lot of fun to illustrate those characters like this! Hope you enjoy WALLY GATOR!

DVD CARTOON COVER ART

Yesterday, in honor of Halloween, I posted a piece of art that I did for my pal, Steve Banes, the Art Director at East West DVD. I thought that I would post a few of the actual pieces that I have done for East West DVD covers. Among other various titles, East West DVD produces cartoon compilations of material that is public domain. It is a lot of fun to do, as I have been able to illustrate such classic characters as POPEYE, THE THREE STOOGES, HECKLE & JECKLE, BOZO THE CLOWN, CASPER THE FRIENDLY GHOST and more. Here's the cover art for a collection of COLONEL BLEEP cartoons, WOODY WOODPECKER & FRIENDS (including LITTLE AUDREY and BABY HUEY) and the detail of the cartoon art for a live-action Christmas-themed ABBOTT & COSTELLO TV SHOW. The ABBOTT & COSTELLO was fun because we decided to use the 1960s Hanna-Barbera TV cartoon versions of Bud and Lou. Notice that I added the moustache on Bud to make him appear as he did on their 1950s TV show. I'll post more DVD cartoon cover art again soon.

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

Here's a cartoon title card-style piece of Hanna-Barbera's J. EVIL SCIENTIST, his wife GOONDA and their son JUNIOR. Known as MR. and MRS. J. EVIL SCIENTIST, the spooky-fun family originally appeared in a 1961 SNAGGLEPUSS cartoon! The terrifying trio went on to star in their own comic book series published by Gold Key. I did this piece for Steve Banes, who is the Art Director at East West DVD of Brooklyn, NY and North Hollywood, CA. Steve's a big fan of Hanna-Barbera and Mr. and Mrs. J. Evil Scientist! I do quite a few DVD cartoon cover illustrations for Steve and East West. I appreciate all of the work, Steve! HAPPY HALLOWEEN EVERYBODY!

More HANNA-BARBERA TV MEN!

A couple of weeks ago, I posted a few of the HANNA-BARBERA TV MEN portrait-style pieces that I recently did for an upcoming book on classic Hanna-Barbera merchandise. As I mentioned in that post, the book is being put together by Funko President, Brian Mariotti. I thought that I'd post a few more here today...DICK DASTARDLY (from WACKY RACES), BARNEY RUBBLE (from THE FLINTSTONES) and RANGER SMITH (from YOGI BEAR). Hope you enjoy them!

BEWITCHED

It's almost Halloween and one of my favorite TV witches is SAMANTHA STEPHENS from BEWITCHED! I did these two BEWITCHED pieces based on the terrific animated opening to the 1960s TV series. The opening, animated by Hanna-Barbera, featured wonderful caricatures of stars ELIZABETH MONTGOMERY as the beautiful witch, SAMANTHA and DICK YORK as her mortal, advertising executive husband, DARRIN STEPHENS. SONY has been doing a great job with the season-by-season DVD releases of the BEWITCHED TV series. Season 4 was just released and I need to pick that up soon!

RIP from THE RIPPING FRIENDS - SPUMCO

Here's a couple of characters that I inked for John K. and Spumco back when they were putting together production art and model sheets for the animators of THE RIPPING FRIENDS. The show originally ran on Fox Kids in the Fall of 2001. I'm not sure which Spumco artist did the blue pencil drawings of RIP and SLAB. I inked (with a brush) a handful of character poses and expressions. Here's RIP, and if you scroll down, you'll see SLAB. I took liberties with the colors that I've given the characters here, but I think they turned out well. In addition to lending my inking skills to John K. and Spumco, I also hand-lettered a few of the JIMMY THE IDIOT BOY and GEORGE LIQUOR stories found in the sensational issues of SPUMCO COMIC BOOK that were published by Dark Horse Comics a few years back.

SLAB from THE RIPPING FRIENDS - SPUMCO

PETER POTAMUS & SO-SO

Here's an image of PETER POTAMUS & SO-SO drawn by legendary Hanna-Barbera Character Designer, Iwao Takamoto. I took his pencil art and inked it in with my brush, pen and ink. It's great fun to give such a nice cartoon drawing the lush, thick-to-thin lines with a brush! Here's a nice example of the "before and after" process from pencilling to inking. I thought I'd give the black and white inked art some color. The contrast of the solid black areas to the colors is always very visually appealing to me.

THE BEATLES - 1965 TV CARTOON

I'm a big fan of JOHN, PAUL, GEORGE and RINGO...THE BEATLES! Being a Cartoonist, I've always loved the 1965 ABC-TV cartoon versions of the Fab Four. I put together this set of color cartoon BEATLES art for a licensing proposal that never happened. Each BEATLE here looks as he did on an existing model sheet. What sensational caricatures and designs! I re-inked the model sheet art with a brush and gave the lads color. THE BEATLES logo and individual names are hand-lettered. There's been some really nice merchandise produced over the last few years, but I'd love to see more top-notch licensed product based on THE BEATLES 1965 TV cartoon!

PEBBLES

I originally did this image of PEBBLES FLINTSTONE as a black and white piece of art. I was just looking through some of my old FLINTSTONES Little Golden Books. A couple of the books that feature PEBBLES, made me want to throw some color on this image. I like how it turned out...with the colored pencil on the cheeks and elbow.

MAGILLA GORILLA & TOP CAT!

Here's a couple of pieces of Hanna-Barbera's, MAGILLA GORILLA and TOP CAT. I really enjoy looking at the old "painted-style" cartoon art that appeared in 1960s Little Golden Books, on Whitman coloring book covers, etc. Especially the Hanna-Barbera characters! I did this MAGILLA and TOP CAT art as an homage to the "painted-style" cartoon art. Little Golden Books Illustrator Mel Crawford was the best at painting the H-B characters!

HANNA-BARBERA TV MEN logo

Last week, I posted a few of the portrait-style illustrations that I did of various HANNA-BARBERA characters for a soon-to-be-released book on classic H-B merchandise by Funko President, Brian Mariotti. Brian wanted a name for the series of illustrations and we came up with HANNA-BARBERA TV MEN. Here's the logo that I designed. Of course, it needed to be cartoony. I know Brian will give the logo eye-catching cartoon colors! It's hand-lettered.

The RANKIN/BASS blog!

My good friend, RICK GOLDSCHMIDT, is the official historian of Rankin/Bass Productions. He's written a couple of books about the studio, The Enchanted World of Rankin/Bass: A Portfolio and Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer: The Making of the Rankin/Bass Holiday Classic. Rick also has a blog, http://www.enchantedworldofrankinbass.blogspot.com/, where he keeps Rankin/Bass fans informed of what's happening in the Rankin/Bass world. Rick also keeps us up-to-date with his music projects! Rankin/Bass Productions have given us the classic holiday TV specials RUDOLPH THE RED-NOSED REINDEER, FROSTY THE SNOWMAN, THE YEAR WITHOUT A SANTA CLAUS, SANTA CLAUS IS COMIN' TO TOWN, LITTLE DRUMMER BOY and the cult-classic feature film, MAD MONSTER PARTY! I'm posting a few pieces of Rankin/Bass character art that I've done over the last few years. The HEAT MISER and SNOW MISER from The Year Without a Santa Claus, SAM THE SNOWMAN from Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, and FELIX FLANKIN from Mad Monster Party. Be sure to check out Rick's blog!

TENNESSEE TUXEDO DVD COVER ART

The text for this post is below with the GO GO GOPHERS character art!

GO GO GOPHERS DVD COVER ART

I'm posting the character art that I did for the GO GO GOPHERS and TENNESSEE TUXEDO DVD covers. The DVDs were released earlier this year from Classic Media and Sony Wonder. Here's RUNNING BOARD, RUFFLED FEATHER, COLONEL KIT COYOTE, SERGEANT OKEY HOMA, TENNESSEE TUXEDO, CHUMLEY and MR. WHOOPEE. The finished art was submitted to Classic Media as black and white images. I colored the images here for posting on my blog. Both GO GO GOPHERS and TENNESSEE TUXEDO were components of THE UNDERDOG SHOW. I've posted scans of the DVD covers below. Being a huge fan of 1960s TV animation, this was a great project to do!

TENNESSEE TUXEDO and GO GO GOPHERS DVD COVERS

If you haven't already done so, pick up these DVDs of great 1960s TV animation! Both from Classic Media and Sony Wonder!

SNOOPER & BLABBER

Here's a couple of HANNA-BARBERA characters that I would love to see a licensee and Warner Bros. Consumer Products do new vintage-style merchandise of...SNOOPER & BLABBER! I understand that Warner Bros. Home Video is tentatively planning a 2007 release of the complete QUICK DRAW McGRAW SHOW on DVD. SNOOPER & BLABBER should be included on that set, as they were a component of the QUICK DRAW McGRAW SHOW. A SNOOPER & BLABBER fan approached me and asked me to do this color illustration of the SUPER SNOOPER DETECTIVE AGENCY detectives. It was fun to do!

MR. MAGOO

One of my clients is CLASSIC MEDIA in New York. CLASSIC MEDIA owns some of the all-time great classic cartoon characters. They are ROCKY & BULLWINKLE, UNDERDOG, CASPER THE FRIENDLY GHOST, GERALD McBOING BOING, ROGER RAMJET, MR. MAGOO and others! From time to time, I'll get a call from CLASSIC MEDIA's Creative Director, Tony Knight, to create an illustration of one of their sensational characters. Tony is a pleasure to work with! Here are a few of the MR. MAGOO pieces that I've done for Tony and CLASSIC MEDIA.