Kirby Draws The Iliad -- Jack Kirby's Boy Commandos Fight the Trojan War!

From Boy Commandos #3 in the summer of 1943 comes this stunning Jack Kirby comic book epic featuring his Boy Commandos and the Siege of Troy!

seige-of-troy

Joe Simon and Jack Kirby must have realized how ridiculous this anachronism was, so right up from that ask the reader to...

"stretch your imagination...to imagine that Rip Carter and his gallant Boy Commandos were living in the days of other great crusaders for freedom...to imagine for example that they were fighting at The Siege of Troy!"

It may be a goofy idea, but what the heck...
it's Jack Kirby drawing the Iliad!
greek-warriors-on-the-march
There's lots of amazing battle scenes in this comic!
Greek soldiers prepare to sack Troy - drawings by Jack Kirby

This kind of epic battle of gods and men
is the stuff Kirby was best at!

trojan-war-battle-by-Kirby
You can tell Kirby's having a lot of fun drawing this one!
Here are the scans for the complete story:
Boy Commandos in The Seige of Troy by Joe Simon and Jack Kirby
Click on any thumbnail for a BIG Kirby comic book page!
Helen of Troy as drawn by Jack Kirby
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Menelaus and Odysseus make battle plans
Click on any thumbnail for a BIG Kirby comic book page!
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BoyC0325
Click on any thumbnail for a BIG Kirby comic book page!
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BoyC0327
BoyC0328
BoyC0329
And remember...
beware-of-greeks-bearing-gifts

This image burned my brain when I was a little kid...

This image burned my brain when I was a little kid...


I think it's one of the reasons I decided to become a cartoonist. I first saw this image in Jim Steranko's History of Comics book, and I remember begging my parents to buy the book for me at the Pickwick bookstore when I was about seven years old.
For full impact, you gotta see it BIG
at http://tinyurl.com/Submariner-Torch
This is just one of thirteen gorgeous comic book pin-ups specially commissioned for the Jim Steranko Calendar for 1971. See the whole thing in high-resolution at the Golden Age Comic Book Stories blog.

Alex Toth - Part 2: How a TV Cartoon is Created - Animating, Layout, Camera and Production

Welcome back to the second half of Alex Toth and Bob Foster's illustrated guide to how TV cartoons are made.
This ran as a bonus back-up feature in the 1976 Super Friends oversized Limited Collectors' Edition comic book. For more of the background on this feature and the artists who created it, check out the first part at http://cartoonsnap.blogspot.com/2008/11/tv-cartoon-is-created-by-alex-toth-and.html

The first five pages covered the earlier stages of cartoon production from development through storyboarding.

These last five pages cover stuff like...
Animation Layout Desk punched animation paper on a rotating disk
Studio setup and animation desk...
animating the human figure walking
Animation and Layout...
animation layout drawing - figure jumping over a gap
animation model sheets head turnaround
Character Design and Model Sheets...
animation background Pan
Background Layouts...
animation cel painting
Painting Animation Cels...
And right below are the full-page high-resolution scans
of the second part of Alex Toth and Bob Foster's
"How TV Cartoons Are Made."
 Toth-TV-Cartoons_06
Click on any page for a HUGE hi-res image
Toth-TV-Cartoons_07
Click on any page for a HUGE hi-res image
Toth-TV-Cartoons_08
Click on any page for a high-resolution comic scan
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Click on any page for a NICE BIG high-res image
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"How a TV Cartoon is Created" by Alex Toth and Bob Foster (Part 1 of 2)

How_to_Draw_TV_Cartoons_Alex_Toth
"How a TV Cartoon is Created"
by Alex Toth and Bob Foster is a great oversized 10-page illustrated essay that first appeared as a bonus in the 1976 treasury-sized Super-Friends Limited Collectors Edition comic book.

SuperFriends Limited Collectors' Edition
This is a classic guide to how Saturday morning cartoons were produced in the seventies by Hanna-Barbera studios. Most of what is talked about in this manifesto is still true to one degree or another...depends on the studio and how much outsourcing is being done. The biggest difference is in the camera work, as that is almost entirely being done digitally now.

Alex-Toth
If you've ever read any of Alex Toth's writing, it makes a lot of sense that he had help with the text. Toth was an amazing artist, but he rambles like crazy in his writings and letters. You gotta love that Alex Toth hand-lettering, though!
Bob Foster is listed as the co-creator along with Alex Toth -- and Bob Foster knows what he's talking about when it comes to cartoons.

Bob Foster is the creator of Myron Moose, he was a layout artist at Hanna Barbera and Depatie-Freling throughout the 1970's, wrote the Donald Duck comic strip during the 1980's, he was a writer-artist and editor for Disney comics in the U.S. and overseas at Egmont, and he's been a storyboard artist on dozens of shows since then. Whew!
Filmstrip by_Alex_Toth_and_Bob_Foster

Storyboard artist drawing animation storyboards from a script

As far as I know, "TV Cartoons" has only been reprinted once in recent years, so for all those animation fans and Alex Toth fans who have never had the pleasure, "here is the how and why of animated TV Cartoons...the comic strips that move."
The high-resolution scans are below.
Just click on any of the pages below to open up
a HUGE hi-res page of Alex Toth's TV Cartoons.
Alex Toth on TV Cartoons
Toth on TV Animation - Presentation Art and Storyboards
Toth on TV Animation - Production Storyboard and Voice Recording
Toth on TV Cartoons - Track Reading and Exposure Sheets


Toth on Saturday morning TV animation - Layout Department and Background art

Stay tuned for Part Two of "How a TV Cartoon is Created"
...the rest of this 10-pager is coming in a few days!

UPDATE: Part TWO of Alex Toth on TV Cartoons is HERE

How to Draw Cartoons - A New Set of High-Res Scans from 1940's Cartooning Book

A while ago I posted links to a terrific cartooning book prepared by Popular Mechanics for U.S. Armed Forces. Now that Stevphen Worth has scanned my own copy of the same book in high resolution, I wanted to point you all to it at http://animationresources.org/?p=686

Here's a little hint of what's inside:

How to Draw hands drawing cartoons
How to Draw Hands

How to Draw feet and cartoon shoes
How to Draw Cartoon Feet and Shoes

Other pages in the book cover How to Draw Heads, Expressions, Composition, How to Draw Clothes and Folds, Perspective, How to Draw Animals and Kids, and Inking Techniques for old-school ink-slingers.
If you want to see the rest of this classic how-to book on drawing cartoons, take a jump over to

How to Draw Hats - Men's Classic Fedora Hat

If you want to learn how to draw hats -- y'know...those 1940's detective-style fedoras that you see in the movies -- then take a look at these scans from a couple of old drawing books...

Old-school fedora hats can be kind of tricky to draw...and we have to draw a lot of them on Phineas and Ferb. Secret agent Perry the Platypus wears his fedora hat in every episode, so we end up having to draw hats from all kinds of angles a few dozen times in every storyboard.

Drawing the hat - How to Draw classic 1940's hats fedora

Click on the image above for FULL-SIZED page on How To Draw Hats


I recently found a couple pieces of excellent hat drawing reference that I shared with some other artists on Phineas & Ferb, and I thought I'd spread the wealth and share it with everybody else, too.

How to draw men's hats Drawing a fedora
"Draw the crown as if it fits directly over the skull, not the hair, no matter what angle is used for the hat. Some of the crown will not touch the skull because of the shape of the hat.
Center the hat on the face, using as your guide the imaginary line running from the center of the crown down to the chin."
Fedora How to Draw Hats tutorial - Taper of the crown
"Study the taper of the crown; Pay close attention to the correct angle of the taper of the crown as this is a style feature...The taper may vary with style changes."
How to Draw Fedora Hats - Brim and Face
One big reason that "how to draw hats" reference is so helpful is that you just don't see fedora hats very often these days. There's lots of great hat images in classic Bogart movies and other Film Noirs. I just watched The Big Heat a few weeks ago, and I couldn't stop looking at Glenn Ford's grey fedora (well, it was a black and white movie, so everything's grey...).
How to Draw the Hat on a Man's Head Fedora drawing lesson
How to Draw a Hat Fedora three quarter view
How to draw a Fedora Hat drawing tutorial reference drawings
Men wearing Fedora hats - Drawing reference classic film noir hats

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