While still maintaining a bit of his usual visual flair, Chambers keeps things much more tightly controlled for telling a more coherent tale. (That he was able to do so may come as a small shock to some)
Let's take a look at the opening of the tale, shall we?
What does he see?
Well, you probably have a fair clue already, but join us later today for Pinocchio Visits A Puppet Show.
Toy Boy Bonus:
How to make your own Pinocchio puppet -
page art by Ellis Holly Chambers for World's Greatest Stories #2 (1949)
Always nice to get to see more Ellis Holly Chambers comics and I wonder if he's ever seen the well-known Disney movie of the same name? That Pinocchio model, while different from the one in the Disney film, still looks like a good design in it's own, more puppet-like way. Wonder why Ellis didn't do some work in animation, he did a better animated style in comics than most animators at their own game. I don't know if comics or animation paid more at the time but I suspect perhaps Ellis knew the animation buildings wouldn't want a guy doing drugs working in them, but man would his style be even more fantastic if animated.
ReplyDeleteGiven that this came out 9 years after the Disney adaptation, odds are good that Chambers had at least seen their character designs from posters and such - especially since he seems quite well versed in the animation styles of the time.
ReplyDeleteAnimation work can be tedious in the extreme. I couldn't do it for long,and i suspect that Ellis Chambers was too mentally restless to stick with it for long if he ever started.
But, yeah - i'd love to see animation with him doing key frame & design work. If my brain still functioned properly, it might be fun to try to adapt one of his old tales.
Perhaps several years from now I might see if I can do like a 3-second animation, a GIF, based off something Chambers did. I have a feeling Chambers was who I call a "born cartoonist" ala folks like Bob Clampett and George Herriman, and me *wink* *wink*. But yeah, perhaps his brain just had way too many things to draw to animate one thing but regardless, his style has a great animation potential.
ReplyDeleteI speculate Chambers may have gotten inspiration for his style by watching animated shorts in theaters and he probably did see the design of Pinocchio somewhere.
And what happened to your brain? Too many Chambers comics? But was that a joke or did something happen that's preventing you from being able to do something like that? Just curious, and I wish you luck and health if you suffer from a condition.
But anyways, Chambers's design looks more puppet-like but good in it's own way. I do wonder which comic of his I should eventually do a little GIF of, there's so many beautiful and wacky ones to choose from.
There's lots of great choices, but i think my first would be an easy one. I'd go with Daffy Dragon from Hi-Ho Comics. He's just so VERY Ellis Chambers and the animation could go crazy and seem natural to the character.
ReplyDeleteYeah- my retirement is an involuntary one. There have been problems developing since the late 90s and they reached a tipping point when i had a couple fun sessions with blood clots in the lungs savagely reducing oxygen flow in my system.
While the brain still works quite well, even at current deteriorated levels, it's ... got a mind of its own? I've always been wired a bit differently, which served me very well over the years. Think of it as having a team of different experts sitting in panel offering up data and suggestions at need. It's a lot easier to be 'quick' when you're just picking from a bunch of presorted options, y'know?
Now, think how well that system works when the Editor retires. We've developed something of an adversarial relationship at times. When it cooperates, great things can happen. But when it has other ideas, strange things or no things can, and will, happen. This makes reliably delivering work an impossibility.
The open ended nature of this blog allows us to reach a workable medium. I mostly ride herd and record some of what we find along the way. But when it suddenly decides change direction or do something else, getting it to go where i want can be an exercise in frustration. I may find it digs out endless distractions, or if i really push, i might just zone out for hours at a time.
Lately, it's been playing dirty. I disinclined to fight hard because it's been engaged in a major world building session, setting things up for comic book tales and computer games. While it's churning out a few thousand years of history and mythologies to build this nexus world and the dozens of races who dwell there - along with scores of heroes, galactic culture, flora & architecture, costume/fashions, hidden organizations, plots, secrets, and characters through which to view it all - i'm letting it do what it wants. With any luck, the structure will serve well for short tales acting as bricks to build a whole. That'll let it work in different styles and such as focus and whims shift.
We'll see...