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Tuesday, August 21, 2012

TAGS June 5, 1994

Sunday, 06/05: Jill’s not impressed.
Black and white: black India Ink on paper as originally published.

As I’ve probably said previously, I tended to use the expanded format of TAGS’ Sunday editions to explore storytelling with more pantomime and less dialogue. This is inspired by I don’t know what. It, I don’t think, was newspaper comic creator heroes, Charles’s Peanuts, Hank Ketcham’s Dennis the Menace or Bill Watterson’s Calvin and Hobbes. If I were to site any thing it would be the few story board examples I was exposed to in books like The Art of Walt Disney(1) and The Illusion of Life: Disney Animation(2).

Here Jill (reindeer, 4th appearance) and Vern (horse, 4) spend time in the Impressionists gallery of a fine art museum, and I go for the obvious joke of having Jill do impressions of the other gallery guests to keep herself occupied.

I would some times muse that I should just have made hoofed characters like Vern and Jill wear gloves a la Porky Pig. It would have and still would make little things like gestures easier to draw and be communicative.

In panel 1, I hope that even in this black and white rendition the painting is easily identifiable as a TAGS version of Georges Seurat’s “Sunday Afternoon on the Island La Grande Jatte”.

All of the ancillary characters were inspired by the crittatures that were featured in my defunct BackStage and Stagelights comics, the lunch period doodles I wrote and drew when I worked for Disneyland Restaurants.

(1) Finch, Christopher. Lasseter, John. The Art of Walt Disney: From Mickey Mouse to The Magic Kingdoms and Beyond. Harry N. Abrams, new edition 2011 hard cover ISBN: 9780810998148. Cover price $85.00

(2) Thomas, Frank. Johnston, Ollie. The Illusion of Life: Disney Animation. Hyperion Books, 1995 hard cover ISBN: 9789990080506. Cover price $60.00. 2000 soft cover ISBN: 9780786885060. Cover price $29.95.

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