Barker's Cartoon Museum

Several years ago, I had wandered into Barker's Animation Gallery and was quite blown away by their collection of animation cels and artwork, and quite frankly, by the pricetags.  It was easy to get lost in this place for a couple hours.  Of course, I somehow thought that their gallery was the actual museum.  It wasn't, and it took me a few years to figure this out.

Two years ago, I separated from my previous employer, as my job, along with several hundred others, were being sent overseas.  Luckily I landed on my feet with a new place to call "job", but before I got started, I took a trip back to Cheshire, CT, to visit the infamous Barker's Cartoon Museum.  It's taken me this long to get around to posting about it.  I'm not sure why it took me so long, but I know what made me think back on it today... I've been reacquainting myself with Disney and Hanna Barberra, so I thought it would be a good fit since this is where my brain is presently at.

The museum is tucked away to the back of the property, and from what I'm told, is NOT the full collection.  If you didn't know any better, you would think you'd have wandered into an incredibly well-stocked flea market.  It seems that the Barkers have been collecting cartoon memorabilia for decades.  You name it, they have it:  toys, action figures, lunch boxes, drinking glasses, Pez containers, puzzles, games.  If they put a cartoon character on it, they had it, at least, if it was an American cartoon, it was probably in there.  Pokemon seemed to be one of the few Asian imports represented.  No Voltron, but you didn't need him to feel entertained here. 

I was especially taken by the age of some of the items in the collection, particularly the tin toys.  Disney was well represented, as were so many others.  Here are some photos... let's let them do some of the talking (I could have taken pictures all day... I took a lot; here are some of the better ones):

If you've seenthe Peanuts book by Chip Kidd I've discussed in this blog, these will look familiar.

Tinykins by Marx.  I'm currently hunting these down.

Just a few character glasses....

SpookyBear Weekend 2013 - Extended Bar Video

Now that SpookyBear Weekend has finally come and gone, I can finally post about some of the things that I had to keep under wraps for months leading up to the event.  We design an plan for months for every last detail of how the Paramount Nightclub will be transformed for the big party, and we keep it all top secret, so that the "big reveal" on Saturday night has the biggest impact.  This year's plan was to create the sense of stepping into a giant comic book.  The wall art, which I will describe in another post, accomplished this, but there had been a lingering desire to use the screen behind the big bar to bring the theme to life with light and motion.  The Event Coordinator, Chris Grasso, and I, plotted to what extent we would delve into the concept, listing out pages of shows and movies that needed some representation in our "Heroes & Villians" video.  At some point, the powers that be agreed that a 20ish minute video would be enough to give the crowd the sense that something new was on the screen every time they looked at it. 

After several weeks of research, and several near-sleepless nights, the video finally came together.  It included finished photography from PhotoBearNE, the original animation I produced as Hairyer Parts Comics, portions of the wall art set to motion, and lots of rapid-fire action shots of Superman, Batman, Avengers, and so much more.  If you were at the party and peered behind the bar, you probably didn't realize that the footage was all set to music so as to ensure a sense of timing.  I previewed the finished product a few hours before the party to the postcard models who made it to Provincetown.  They convinced me it needed to be seen online by the community at large.  Later in the evening, I wiggled my way to bar and noticed everyone waiting for their drinks were transfixed to the screen, which made my night. 

We wanted to create something that captured the spirit of the SpookyBear Weekend, that would be fun, sexy, and maybe even a little campy.  I think we succeeded in this.  So, here it is, the entire video.  Please enjoy.  And if you did, please share it, so that others can see it!


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SxBzoZLF7WU

Kellogg's PEP Comic Buttons

So I recently dusted off my old 1945  Superman radio show CD's and gave them a listen the other night.  They're delightfully goofy in all the right places, but the one part that sticks out in a rather odd way are the incessant ads for Kellogg's PEP, "that super-delicious cereal", which sponsored the show.  If you listen to the show and don't get the message that there's a free button in every package, then you must be deaf.  I decided to Google PEP and the buttons to see what they looked like.  They're actually kinda cool.  Most have white backgrounds, and they come in two general types.  The first few sets feature military insignia and war planes.  The second group feature pretty much every comic character featured in the press at the time... Superman, Popeye, Little Orphan Annie, and a lot of others that I don't know but probably should.  They're so simple but they make me want to mint my own buttons with my own characters on them!!  In any case, you can bet I'll be scouring the flea markets this spring for these little gems.  "They sure are a honey!"

1940's Superman Cartoons

I've been catching up on my superhero cartoons and have discovered some of the old 1940's Superman cartoons on Youtube.  These remind me of the old Looney Tunes cartoons that used to look grainy and have a big band soundtrack.  Somewhere in my collection, I have a hardbound book of the old Superman newspaper comic strips (I will have to do a bit on that for "Skeeter's Library"), and I also have a CD set of old Superman and Batman radio programs.  To find the animated cartoons from the 1940's is really great, because now I get to see that "3rd dimension" of video media that easily could have been lost to time.  I really need to find these on DVD... oh, and the 1970's Superfriends cartoons.  For your viewing enjoyment, click on the images below:

Lonesome Ghosts!!

So a very long time ago, I had one of these Fisher Price hand-held movie viewers.  It was waaaaay cooler than a GAF Viewmaster which could only show one frame at a time.  The movie viewer accepted a cartridge which contained a real, celluloid motion picture.  You aimed it at a light source and cranked it by hand.  The two cartridges I had were cartoons, one of which I do not remember... the other was Disney's "Lonesome Ghosts".  I used to watch this cartoon short over and over again.  I ran it at normal speed, fast, slow, forwards and backwards... I couldn't have been more than 4 years old at the time... and I was already studying how to make pictures move.  The only catch... there was no sound.  So I am sure I've watched it about 100x more without sound than with sound.  As this blog is turning into a creative archive of my work and inspirations, I couldn't not post about this favorite cartoon of mine... I guess the part of me that loves cartoons will never grow up.