Many "real world objects" have little flexibility, such as walls, doors, furniture, bricks, etc. However most "organic objects" (including LIVING ONES) have some level of flexibility to their shape!
The exaggeration-for-effect of that flexibility, on a character or object, is the technique of "Squash and Stretch" (...or so "The Internet" has explained to non-artist me!)
Now, all this is just a long and roundabout way of saying that "Squash and Stretch" can be an entertaining aspect of character design... like THIS!
Artist Fred Himes, whose work utilizes some nice "retro-character" designs, squashes Barney and stretches Betty, accentuating the difference in height between them in BARNEY AND BETTY RUBBLE # 15 (Charlton Comics, Cover Date: August, 1975)!
Yet, he keeps the overall room in what looks like a normal ratio, adding to the oddity.
Distortion, at least to me, is a strange and nebulous thing. Depending on the skills of the artist - and (most importantly) the DEGREE to which it is done - I either like it or hate it!
This, I Like!
...However...
These, I don't!
Jack Manning is another artist who, especially when he inked himself (as below), rather than let his pencils become softened or diffused by others' inks, was skilled at distortion!
Sure, it's not Chuck Jones... but it's still good in its own right!
As is Fred Himes, as seen in these great (especially for CHARLTON!) interior pages for the same issue...
(Click to Enlarge)
Fred Himes would work on the BARNEY AND BETTY RUBBLE title from Issue # 10 (November, 1974) thru Issue # 18 (February, 1976), and produced some of the BEST HANNA-BARBERA ART ever seen in Charlton Comics!
No, he's not Harvey Eisenberg...
But, then again... Who is?
"I'm Not an Artist, But..." ...I know what I like... and I'm glad I discovered the great Flintstones comic book work of Fred Himes... even if it took me until 2019 to do it!
Exit, "Squashing and Stretching" all the way, Stage Right!
(Oops, Wrong H-B Toon!)
4 comments:
I recently finished animating a little something, and don't worry, I used copious squashing and stretching (if you don't know what a Martian vampire-octopus trying not to sneeze looks like, you will once I post said cartoon).
Achille:
Not only do I “not know what a Martian vampire-octopus trying not to sneeze looks like”, I further cannot imagine WHAT would make such a creature sneeze in the first place!
Send us a link when it’s posted, and I’ll put it here!
For years I searched for my favorite artist of the early swedish Scooby Doo comic books until I found out that it probably was Fred Himes: https://www.seriesam.com/cgi-bin/guide?s=Scooby+Doo+(1973)
That’s interesting, because I’d never known Fred Himes to have worked on Scooby-Doo – at least on stories that originated in America.
Primarily, the Scooby artists of that era were:
Gold Key: Dan Spiegle, Jack Manning, and Warren Tufts.
Charlton: Bill Williams (doing a reasonable impression of Dan Spiegle)
Marvel: Dan Spiegle.
Perhaps Himes did some European originals that never appeared here. Such as the covers that are displayed in YOUR LINK!
I love learning stuff like this… Thank you!
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