The Academy Award-winning director of "Duck Amuck," "What's Opera, Doc," "How The Grinch Stole Christmas" and other timeless classics, created dozens of cartoon characters throughout his decades-long career: Pepé Le Pew, Marvin the Martian, Road Runner and Wile E. Coyote... and Crawford, an accident prone, nine-year-old boy whose daily routine includes surviving his own boyhood.
Chuck Jones: The Dream That Never Was follows the twenty-seven year journey it took Jones to bring "Crawford" to the public, from conception to storyboard to newspaper strip. This incredible volume is loaded with never before seen sketches, drawings, storyboards and production notes, and the six-month run of the Crawford newspaper comic strip from 1978. Accompanying the artwork is a biography of Chuck Jones's career in the sixties and seventies and how it influenced the creation of Chuck's only foray into the world of comic strips.
Marian Jones, Chuck's widow had this to say about the project, "Kurtis Findlay, an admitted comics addict, is too young to have ever read Chuck Jones’ 1970s short-lived comic strip, “Crawford”, in the newspapers. But he came across some copies not too long ago and was hooked. He was also puzzled. “Crawford” was the least known of all of Chuck’s work; he thought that was a loss. He also wondered how it had started, what had become of it, and how Chuck had developed it.
"A query to CJCC [Chuck Jones Center for Creativity --ed.]led to Kurtis visiting us and proposing to write a book assembling all the original strips with any information he could ferret out. He and I spent several days in the archives, with Kurtis registering more and more amazement and excitement over Chuck’s drawings and historical source material.
"Even though I had worked with Chuck at that time, and was myself writing a comic strip (originated by someone else --Rick O’Shay and Hipshot) I had totally forgotten about some of the material that Kurtis discovered. His book traces a never before spelled out story of a character that chased around in Chuck’s head, and in various ways onto film, over the years, but never quite came to fulfillment."
Chuck Jones: The Dream That Never Was is a dream come true in that almost all the art is being reproduced from Chuck Jones's originals! It is a treasure trove of previously unknown artwork that is a must for all fans of animation and comics.
Visit the official Chuck Jones: The Dream That Never Was website. All-new, never before seen Chuck Jones art will be added in the coming weeks and months leading up to the book's release this holiday season. You can find them on Facebook as well.
Animation fan Kurtis Findlay uncovered a bit of comic strip history thanks to a natural curiosity and wound up sharing a treasure of long lost and forgotten cartoon and comic strip work by legendary Looney Tunes and three-time Academy Award winning director Chuck Jones. Hear all about his find in this original Mr. Media video interview. Watch it here: http://www.mrmedia.com/?p=4706
Posted by: Bob | May 14, 2012 at 02:12 PM