Quality is never out of style

Another "republished" page. Admittedly, I went through kicks between being wanting to be a sequential artist or being a filmmaker, and because of that conflict, I would un-publish posts about what ever I wasn't into, trying to tailor my blog into what I wanted to reflect. In the end, sequential artist always seemed to win. Here's an older post that I had done talking about older newspaper strips. I was reading an article where Ham Fisher had so many assistants that he hardly drew much of his strip- which would account for the lack of consistency in his character designs.

These older strips were found through public domain, and had given me a real focus on how I want to approach my webcomic. -jfm

I've been trying to find other influences outside my traditional comfort zone. So, as you know I've discovered the Cisco Kid, but lately I've found some others whose artwork I really like:

Ham Fisher did a strip called "Joe Palooka" for 25 years. While there's not really any consistency in character design- I LOVE how many of the 'extras' are drawn in a semi-realistic/caricatured way- like the announcers in the second and third frame in this strip:

The brushwork is amazing!

Another old-timey newspaper comic was "Flyin' Jenny", done by Russell Keaton:

The paper-dolls are a bit much now-a-days, but I'm sure it was a great marketing gimmick!

I like the stylization of the character design, but I also like the attention to clean detail on the airplanes themselves. It's obvious that the best talent went to the newspaper strips back then.

It's gotten me thinking on my current influences as probably being influenced themselves by older sources. Quality draftsmanship never goes out of style... or rather, it shouldn't!