Winsor McKay El Visionario

Esta nota se inspira en una nota surgida en una discusion con Antigonum Cajan relacionado a los periodicos y como cada dia estan peores.  Antigonum me recordaba a columnistas de El Imparcial y El Mundo.  Tambien de sus mordaces caricaturistas y las tirillas comicas.
Personalmente me gustaban mucho las del San Juan Star.  Las de El Nuevo Dia y las del Vocero fueron desapareciendo hasta ser la nada que son ahora.
A mi fenecido suegro siempre le gustaba Prince Valiant y los Jumble.  Mi abuelo Julio siempre tuvo los pies en la tierra, pero no se perdia los serials de Buck Rogers y Flash Gordon que daban los sabados al mediodia.  Asi, en blanco y negro, llenos de guayazos.  Y nosotros muchachos al fin de placemes.
Si han leido articulos previos de este blog sabran que me fascina el arte vintage, sobre todo en las publicaciones.  Incluso en algun momento habran visto que me gustan las tirillas clasicas, como en el caso de hoy que describo a Little Nemo in Slumberland, ilustrados por el magnifico Winsor McKay.
Sus tirillas se publicaban a todo color, de pagina completa en el New York Times, entre los a/nos 1905 y 1910.  Es increible el talento y la imaginacion de este ilustrador que a pocas palabras fue uno de los fundadores del comic moderno.  La caricatura de la izquierda presenta a Nemo so/nando que visita al Padre Tiempo y comienza a jugar con los calendarios.  Su pesadilla agarra de verdad cuando toca el a/no 1999 y envejece, sin poder encontrar al PadreTiempo rompe a llorar y la mama lo consuela.  Muchos mas de esos estan aqui (http://www.comicstriplibrary.org/browse/results?title=2).  Esta pagina tiene otras historietas mas (http://www.comicstriplibrary.org/).
Sobre la tira como tal, para que contarles, mejor lean el articulo de wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Nemo

Although a comic strip, it was far from a simple children's fantasy; it was often dark, surreal, threatening, and even violent. The strip related the dreams of a little boy: Nemo (meaning "nobody" in Latin), the hero. The last panel in each strip was always one of Nemo waking up, usually in or near his bed, and often being scolded (or comforted) by one of the grownups of the household after crying out in his sleep and waking them. In the earliest strips, the dream event that woke him up would always be some mishap or disaster that seemed about to lead to serious injury or death, such as being crushed by giant mushrooms, being turned into a monkey, falling from a bridge being held up by "slaves", or gaining 90 years in age. The adventures leading to these disasters all had a common purpose: to get to Slumberland, where he had been summoned by King Morpheus, to be the "playmate" of his daughter, the Princess.

Winsor McKay era realmente un visionario.  Miren este corto que hizo en 1910, donde pinto a color cada celda.  Son personajes de la tirilla:
http://www.oneparticularwave.com/2007/11/14/youtube-video-of-the-day-little-nemo-by-winsor-mccay/


Este blog tiene mucha informacion sobre Winsor McCay (http://springlakemccay.blogspot.com/)

Una razon adicional para escribir este articulo fue un hallazgo raro, de todos los sitios, de un Sears.  Consegui en la seccion de gangas del video una copia nueva de la version de 1989 de una pelicula de Little Nemo in Slumberland.  La pelicula nunca llego a Puerto Rico, no fue un exito de taquilla, y tuvo muchas manos trabajando en ella, incluyendo a Moebius, Ray Bradbury, Brad Bird y Tokyo Movie Shinsha.  Para muchos, fue de las primeras peliculas animadas japonesas a ser distribuido en America.  Algo del tema en el ariculo de wikipedia.  De vez tiene el trama de la pelicula:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Nemo:_Adventures_in_Slumberland
Production
Nemo was the brainchild of producer Yutaka Fujioka. His dream for years had been to make a full-animated film that would utilize the resources of his Tokyo Movie Shinsha studio. As the first step towards realizing this project, in 1977 he personally flew to Monterrey, CA to convince McCay's descendents to allow him to obtain the film rights to the comic strip. He originally approached George Lucas in a year later to help produce the film, but Lucas found problems with the storyline. Fujioka also approached Chuck Jones but also declined. The film was officially announced as a project in 1982. In February of that year, the company TMS/Kinetographics was formed in America to produce Nemo, and the best staff from around the world were gathered together to begin production. Gary Kurtz was appointed producer of the American production side and hired Ray Bradbury and later Edward Summer to write screenplays. Kurtz would eventually step down in the Fall of 1984. ^[1]
In the early 1980s, both Hayao Miyazaki and Isao Takahata were involved with the film, but they both left due to creative differences, essentially, Miyazaki was not interested in creating an animated film where everything was a dream, and Takahata was more interested in creating a story depicting Nemo's growth as a boy. ^[1] Miyazaki later described his involvement on the film as "the worst experience of his professional career."^[2] The directors who succeeded the duo were Andy Gaskill and Yoshifumi Kondo whom both exited production in March of 1985 after completing a 70mm pilot film.^[3] Osamu Dezaki was also brought into direct at a brief point and too completed a pilot film^[4], but left as well. A third pilot film was made by Sadao Tsukioka but has yet to become publicly available.^[1]
Brad Bird and Jerry Rees also worked on the film through the American department as animators for a month, while at the time were also working on an un-produced adaptation of Will Eisner's The Spirit with Gary Kurtz.^[5] During production, the two would regularly ask animators what they were doing, the response they were commonly given was "we're just illustrating what Bradbury is writing," upon meeting Bradbury in person and asking him about the story he was writing for the film, he replied "I'm just putting in writing what these wonderful artists are drawing." After their meeting with Bradbury, Bird and Rees looked at each other and both said "uh-ohhh."^[6]
When all of these people had left, Fujioka had drafts done by Chris Columbus, Moebius, John Canemaker and many others. He then re-hired Summer to do yet another screenplay. Subsequently, Richard Outten was hired to work from Chris Columbus' screenplay while Columbus was busy with his directorial debut, Adventures in Babysitting. Many Disney Studio animators including Ken Anderson and Leo Salkin worked on individual sequences, and Corny Cole, Brian Froud, and John Canemaker provided visual development. Frank Thomas, Ollie Johnston (credited as Oliver Johnston), and Paul Julian consulted to the production. The world famous Sherman Brothers (Richard M. Sherman and Robert B. Sherman) were hired to write the songs for Nemo. This was their first Anime film, though not their first animated film; the pair had previously worked on several projects for Disney, including The Jungle Book, and Hanna-Barbera's Charlotte's Web.
Little production progress was made until January 1988, when the many ideas pasted on the walls of the Los Angeles studio were whittled down in order to create the storyboard from which the film would be made. It was at this point that Masami Hata (a former Sanrio film director) was the appointed director at the TMS studio and Frank and Ollie recommended William T. Hurtz as the director of the American production side. Actual animation for the completed film was commenced in June 1988, as TMS was just completing another ambitious project: Akira.^[1] Even though it derived from an American comic strip, Little Nemo was animated by the Japanese company Tokyo Movie Shinsha and thus was considered anime. Because of this, it was also the first anime to receive a national release in the United States.

Ahi les deje la introduccion, que fue bien similar a las tirillas originales.  Cierro el tema aqui.