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Thursday, April 25, 2013

Being Winsor McCay

So I'm currently doing some creative reconstructions of some partially-lost Winsor McCay strips from 1934, the year he died, which were never finished. It's for a book on McCay's Gertie (and other McCay dinosaurs) being put together by Ulrich Merkl, who was responsible for the fabulous Dreams of the Rarebit Fiend book a couple of years back.

I'll resist revealing any of the actual McCay artwork here – it's never been published before as far as I know, so that'll be a big selling point – but here's one panel I drew, taken from the pages I'm recreating from the fragments of existing artwork and various clues supplied in the surviving pages. I'll tell you one thing, being Winsor McCay was hard work – these things are taking me an age to draw!


4 comments:

  1. that is the coolest job ever... and you can totally do it!!!
    this looks awesome! :D

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thanks! It's challenging but loads of fun.

      Delete
  2. I don't know if you've ever seen a bit of self-promotional film McCay made to explain to the public how animation is made. Using a variable speed camera, he appears to be drawing every frame of an entire animated cartoon in minutes!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Oh yeah - and he probably wasn't exaggerating that much! He was incredibly fast - when he was drawing Little Nemo, he was doing, like, ten other strips every week at the same time. Superhumanly talented. A lot for us mere mortals to live up to!

      Delete

The spam filter is back on because it just goes berserk if I switch it off. Sorry - I'll get to your comments ASAP!

About Me

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London, United Kingdom
Eisner and Harvey Award-winning cartoonist responsible for The Muppet Show Comic Book, Thor the Mighty Avenger, Snarked! and Fred the Clown. Would like to save the world through comics.