Ox Fisher's Hidden Inspiration?

 

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. 

https://sngexplorationblog.blogspot.com/2024/11/where-has-this-animated-short-been-all.html?m=1

12th Grade School Doodles

Let's take a break on the oldies and focus on the newies.

First is the dancing sketches from a cartoon It's A Cat's Thing where it has inspiration from all sorts of classic cartoons I appreciate.

I would call them animation samples. Just like with music samples. These were inspired by Bugs's meltdown scenes in Tortoise Wins By A Hare. 

I made a bunch of doodles of Floppy. He's described as the old-fashioned trickster. Wouldn't say Bugs Bunny but more or so The Dodo from Porky In Wackyland with those dot eyes.

Assumingly, last autumn, I was experimenting more on what Dredd and Szac's personality would end up being. I sorta sketched them doing on-stage performances. 

Then I did another half where Dredd is portrayed as a medieval knight fighting for life hosted by Ox Fisher played as a Roman emperor.

I seen many versions of this done decently, but with Ox Fisher starring the role, it's like if Billy Gilbert came yelling aggressively to everyone in a gladiator arena. 

I still haven't thought about an actual name to give this clown besides something like Cluster but I don't know. I hate that name alot, apologies to anyone named Cluster, it just doesn't sound pleasing.

These are supposedly storyboards, but they don't have the squares to feel like their ordered correctly.

This is in fact in order and I managed to come up with my intro to the shorts I plan to make, I have a secret love for those smiley face heads, and the short is called Layin' Eggs. The main character, Henrietta Hen is Mr. Cockedee's wife. This has brief inspiration to Tex Avery and Clampett expressions. Y'know, what a classic cartoon should do.

Holy cow, I forgot I made this much duos even since I first drawn my first ones Dutcher and Ben Obvious.

I mean, I love Abbott And Costello, and Laurel and Hardy, so I was just all in it for the two pair cliche in cartoons. 

These are all scrapped ideas of a cat and kangaroo and what I think of just based on the drawings, is that the cat is friends with the kangaroo but wants to eat him. And here the cat is doing all of these Bugs Bunny Rod Scribner expressions.

This was me trying to copy several frames of the black cat in Kitty Kornered saying "Ah! I think I've got it!"

One of the few characters I managed to capture the Looney Tunes style is Ralph Cat. This was definitely made at the start of 12th grade, and just by looking at it, you can see a bunch of changes like the conservative stiff poses and him saying Bye-A like with my first few posts.

Kitty Kornered is one of the best cartoons of all time. When I was 16, I used to replay that beginning part where Porky kicks the cats out of his house and laughing every single time Porky says "four". It seriously gets me every time I hear it. And so does the designs of the characters, they are easy to draw. 

You see Wags Watson, Astro-Cat and Sly C from the Northern Alley Cats, basically the common household pets are all in one drawing. But I did manage to practice drawing those expressions from a Tex Avery cartoon Droopy's Double Trouble. 

Next I wanted to redesign a character I made back when I first designed Dredd and Szac, his name is Karl.

I always have time to revamp some of my characters to make them look original and simple as possible. Back then these guys looked abstract and crinkly as possible, so when I researched into more cartoon studios and Preston Blair I realized that, if you just make your characters look more detailed and full of form and life, people will find it much better to appreciate your work. 

I look into my old work from 2018-2019, and man I'm not happy. Good thing I have this blog so that everyone can freely appreciate how my artwork has improved nowadays.

11th Grade Sketchbook Drawings

 

I wanted to show you some of my doodles I did back in 11th grade. Yeah I know, not too epic to start the new year but it's something out of my mind. 

These are some drawings of Dumphrey Dog. I made him act like a greedy, self-controlled citizen who has a hot-tempered voice.

I doodled on what Szac's mother would look like and also Szac drawings.

Police cop drawings. I wanted my officers to be portrayed like how the classic comedies usually  used them back then. I see them on Abbott and Costello Show and The Three Stooges.

You can tell I did these when I struggled in school.

Ren and Stimpy drawings, made a mini comic of them.

Mike's internally outraged face

This was mostly inspired by that demonic face Spongebob transforms into in the game called Creature From The Krusty Krab. 

A Montreal Fox cartoon gag where Montreal uses his mind and then a light bulb appears with a realistic mouth almost Annoying Orange styled.

I made a dog I haven't used too much in a while but will still make it in. 

Lance The Bulldog. 

Ox Fisher's face closeup

I forgot I even made this. It's Szac in a 70s dance outfit. Pretty cool coming back to it. 

More Szac drawings

Here's a character you probably never heard of before. Blushes The Squirrel. I drew her alot by this time. She supposed to be the fashion model type. 

Finally to end things off, I made a full page advertisement plus comic strips. 

This drawing here was inspired by the reports from one of my best childhood channels Sprout most specifically The Sunny Side Up Show. 

I remember waking up almost every morning to watch this show on TV and would sometimes play with my toys or draw while the channel was still on later in the day.

 

Hopefully this was a good post for the start of 2025. I would boldly assume that this year will officially be the start of a new era for me becoming a early adult and this blog getting more fame outta people. 

Friday Fun With Art

 Wanna see some of my recent art?

This is the place!

I mostly do these type of posts every week or two weeks or so to give a taste on my drawings. 

Mostly paying tribute to classic animation.

 

I love warm colors and simple character designs. I also like editing my art and making the whole thing grainy and sweet.

Yo Gabba Gabba is a show that made my childhood. It had so much pizzazz, energy and taught good lessons to beginner viewers.

Not to mention the cameos were amazing and the songs were catchy and memorable.

Here's my sons.

The M&Ms crew and Master Shake were mind-blowing designs when I was little. I wasn't allowed to watch Aqua Teen for good reasons, but M&Ms were appropriate enough. I love eating the candies and I had toys of the aqua teen crew mostly bought for my parents since they loved the show.

More character designs.

If I post this on Facebook, will that mean it'll get a bunch of laughs? I seen so many AI posts and it's just so wrong. At least the minion memes were made by real people and it was showing some entertainment. 

Garfield and the other characters in the series are surprisingly difficult to draw. By far the easiest was Odie. I admire Jim Davis's work and some other comics I was influenced were Archie, Little Nemo, Funny Side Of The World, Krazy Kat etc. 

Have another Mania comic. I'm not doing these 24/7, I will do a new one sometime next week, mostly willing to make these if I feel like I want to.

Mostly took brief inspiration with a picture of Crash and Fake Crash in one of the Japanese ads back in the 90s.

A few other new characters, and one you probably have heard of before, Ox Fisher.

Well that's all I have for now. Hopefully you enjoyed every drawing I have made this past week. 👍