Anyone know who this guy is?
I seem to like almost every character I made that's condemned official. Ox Fisher is probably the only character I can ever think of that is easily inspired by an actor.
At first when I designed him, he was just the typical giant bulky dude like with Pete and Bluto, but after I discovered Laurel and Hardy's Music Box, I loved Billy Gilbert's scenes.
He definitely deserves more recognition since all he is ever credited for is his sneezing and his more popular roles. I love his meltdowns the best. My favorite being Pardon My Scotch.
I love this guy.
To be fair, a few months later I really liked how uniquely drawn my character was and decided to make him a real character instead of leaving him in the dust.
He had to have potential somehow.
Later I then experienced a Mickey Mouse short titled "Mickey's Gala Premiere" and at the start there were these odd and unusual looking celebrities as officers and the one in the middle I wanted to know who that was.
I couldn't tell if it was actually Billy Gilbert or not, but after researching it, it was a silent film era star named Mack Swain. After looking into it, I was immediately speechless and left off saying, "I made a character that felt like it was inspired by someone that I didn't even know when I first made him."
Anything similar?
(This was the first design of the character btw)
Back in the silent era of films especially in comedies, everyone was so unique and funny looking that they almost felt like cartoon characters before cartoons became a thing.
I don't watch alot of them because they don't really fit my style and I'm not a fan of dead-pan acting. I do like some silent characters like The Keystone Kops and The Fleischers crew.
I could understand why these were such hits back in the early 20th century, heck I would be pleased with it if I was born at that time. Sometimes the films can have distinct expressions and there is some narrative to be had. What I despised about 1900s films nowadays is that sometimes in like a old rigid copy or an almost lost print, the scenes would necessarily skip at times or whenever a person is lip-syncing, it doesn't actually show the words which always irritated me.
Back to Swain. Just look at how similar he is in vain to Ox Fisher. His short mustache, his cartoonish eyes, the bold menacing eyebrows, the size of the character, it's basically a coincidence.
Now all of you might be saying that "Ox Fisher is just a thing you created just for this post alone." But like I said earlier, he's confirmed to be a part of the artmania canon. I'm planning to do alot to this guy and so does others.
It's hard to say Ox Fisher is ripped off by a century old actor. Yet this is what he actually looks like in real life.
I love the color cards.
While making this post it also reminded me of another post I did where I reviewed a 1980s animated short called Real Inside.
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