Re: Stuff for Megakat City Salvage Yard...

From: chance <chance_at_unix.infoserve.net>
Date: Fri, 12 Apr 1996 19:57:05 -0700

>I once commented to someone at ConFurence 6 (I believe his name is Malachi
>Keller, who I assume worked on some part of the series since he *did* have
>some sort of artwork on display which looked VERY much on-model) about the
>quality of Mook's animation versus Hanho Heung-Up's.

Ah, yes...Malachi Keller. He went on a tour of Hanna-Barbera with another
friend courtesy of the Tremblay bros, and was trying to break in to the
animation business. Even at *that* time (just after the Northridge quake), he
had with him a marvelous portfolio of various anime beauties, and brought
some Kats pencil art to show Christian. The whole gang trouped around the
studio and met Davis Doi, Bodie Chandler, Alison Leopold etc, then went
over to (I think) Comicon. From what I saw of Mal's stuff, he's a damn fine
artist. Even Christian looked at his artwork and asked him why he wasn't *already*
working in the biz. Mal answered that he did test for Carl Macek at Streamline,
but really wanted to work on something he *liked* -- "SwatKats". At the time they'd
done everything but post on Kats season two, and there was nothing they could've
assigned Mal even if Christian pulled a string or two. I dunno what he's up to now.

 I thought HHU at the
>time did a much better job of drawing the Kats on-model than Mook (and
>we're talking only season 1 here), but I had not thought about how the
>characters themselves were initially drawn. Although I never saw a set of
>the *initial* drawings,

Those of us that have the "Animato!" article and the "Toon" one will have a ready
reference as to what the kitties started out H-B life as. On the first page of Mark's
article, you see a very funny looking Razor and T-Bone from about waist-up, and
posed in that kind of "ta-da!" pose that the marketeers adore. The "Toon" article
has a line drawing of the two Kat guys running towards our POV, and their
drawn in much the same fashion as the "Animato!" pic. T-Bone looks much
simplified and even sorta cutesified in my pre-HB promo poster - as does the
TK.

_____________________________________________________
"Dedicated to the indomitable spirit of the sled dogs that relayed
 antitoxin six hundred miles over rough ice, across treacherous waters,
 through Arctic blizzards from Nenana to the relief of stricken Nome in
 the winter of 1925. Endurance, Fidelity, Intelligence." -- "Balto"
_____________________________________________________

Received on Fri Apr 12 1996 - 23:04:49 PDT