The more eagle-eyed, bored or sad among you may have noticed a new logo cropping up in some of my newer journals. This is to recognise the fact that many of the newest ones are concerned with history, whether it be the history of progressive rock, classical music or my own home country, and so I've decided to group all of these journals under one overarching theme, which I've called
Trollheart's History Project. Original, huh? Anyway, here's another.
As per usual, when I came up with this idea I had intended to run it within
The Couch Potato, but being a history it was and is going to demand a fair bit of attention and reasonably regular updates, and I didn't want to let the rest of that journal suffer while I concentrated on this, so hey ho! Here's yet another journal from me.
When I began this journal my intention was only to look at strictly cartoons (as distinguished from animation) and only those on TV. This, as anyone who has read on further than this post, did not last. Not only did I realise that it would be virtually impossible to talk about TV cartoons without exploring how they got there, but I also found that researching the origins of early animation was so much fun and so interesting that I just had to change my intentions.
So, (again, you'll know this if you've read up to the point that I've so far written) the history of cartoons becomes the history of animation. Everything is now on the table, and I'm going back as far as I realistically can, looking at the great innovators, the fathers of the form, the famous and the not-so-famous, the ones who led and the ones who got left behind. As someone who more or less believed animation began with a certain Mr. Disney I've been roundly disabused of this opinion through my research, and have come to see that there was so much more there before he even came on the scene.
So if you're just looking for the history of cartoons, well, you'll get it as we move along, but it will take longer than I had originally anticipated. If that bores you, fine, nobody's keeping you here. But if you come on this journey with me, you may find it as fascinating and informative as I continue to be as I read and watch the really old movies.
Like they say, it's a trip!
Print media is though an area I'll be steering clear of, except in the case of its transitioning to the screen, big or small –
Spiderman, Garfield, Batman, Charlie Brown etc – where I will cover those as and when they appeared on TV or in movies. Printed references seem to be hard to come by, so in general I'll be using what online resources I can find, and will welcome any input by anyone who is well versed in this sort of thing, particularly later, as we get into anime and the like.
Insofar as I can, I'll be following a timeline, and trying to avoid the trap of just featuring American cartoons. I know they led the field for a long time – even started the whole craze properly – but I do recall watching some weird and trippy cartoons as a kid from the likes of Poland and what was then known as Czechoslovakia, as well as other countries, and I'll be doing my best to track those down. Comments and debate is as ever very welcome.
So: who wants to watch some cartoons? How about some badly-drawn and crudely-animated paper figures? Yeah? Can I get a yeah? Pfft, suit yourselves.
