Cartoon Modern, free at last

November 2, 2021 6:47 AM

Animation Obsessive has released a high-quality PDF of Amid Amidi's out-of-print classic Cartoon Modern.
posted by overeducated_alligator (16 comments total)

Now I know where SUCK magazine borrowed their style. Very cool.
posted by mecran01 at 7:12 AM on November 2, 2021 [2 favorites]

This is a treasure, and it's wonderful that they've released it like this!
posted by deadaluspark at 7:26 AM on November 2, 2021

Thank for pointing that out. I took a storyboarding course with (UPA co-founder) Zack Schwartz where he screened a copy of an army training film called Battle Fear. It was intended to be shown to US infantry during the run up to the D Day invasion. It focused on the body's physical responses to fear; “normalizing” the sensations and telling them what to expect. I wish I could remember it more clearly beyond the tone starting deadly serious, working up to a few gags and then ending serious. It was heartening to see a relic from a moment when cartoons were recognized as an effective way to communicate life & death information about fighting nazis.
posted by brachiopod at 7:52 AM on November 2, 2021 [1 favorite]

brachiopod - I found one called A Few Quick Facts About Fear that Schwartz worked on, is that the one you remember? Grim stuff.
posted by Think_Long at 8:13 AM on November 2, 2021 [1 favorite]

Wow - this is AMAZING!

I've been wanting to study illustrators and their work more, and this is an incredible treasure. Just a quick glance is so intriguing - I can't wait to see what the book has about Martin and Alice Provensen, whose names I don't know but whose work is really familiar.

I love the blog post describing how they created the downloadable files and noting that the author explicitly encouraged them to make the book "readily available to all."

This is a wonderful treat. Thank you so much for sharing it with us, overeducated_alligator!
posted by kristi at 8:18 AM on November 2, 2021 [1 favorite]

Awesome Think-Long. That must be it. Maybe the dead serious tone I thought I remembered at the beginning was his introduction of it. Great to finally know the correct title. Thanks.
posted by brachiopod at 8:29 AM on November 2, 2021

It was heartening to see a relic from a moment when cartoons were recognized as an effective way to communicate life & death information about fighting nazis.

See also Will Eisner's PS magazine work for the US Army. It's post-war, so the advice offered is more routine, but it uses cartoons to equally useful effect.
posted by Paul Slade at 8:32 AM on November 2, 2021 [2 favorites]

Now I know where SUCK magazine borrowed their style.

And why you hear ravings about the UPA studio's 'Christmas Carol' every holiday season. Thanks for the link, overeducated_alligator!
posted by Rash at 11:16 AM on November 2, 2021

So, a legal question: Would the author's action of giving his blessing to free dispersion make the work Public Domain, Creative Commons or Door #3?
posted by AlonzoMosleyFBI at 11:18 AM on November 2, 2021

Door #3. The illustrations are still in copyright of the original artist/company.
posted by scruss at 11:43 AM on November 2, 2021 [3 favorites]

The author uploaded this scan to the Internet Archive, which makes it much easier to get a look.
posted by Pronoiac at 12:00 PM on November 2, 2021 [4 favorites]

Nice to see the high res scan in CBZ format.
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 3:29 PM on November 2, 2021 [1 favorite]

This is great!
posted by CCBC at 4:11 PM on November 2, 2021

→ Nice to see the high res scan in CBZ format.

CBZ is just a PDF without the searchability. You can create a PDF that's a lossless archive of images that's easier to access than a CBZ
posted by scruss at 3:54 PM on November 3, 2021

PDFs aren't inherently searchable. The one they provided isn't.

Unzip a CBZ and you have the individual scans. You can even OCR them if you want.
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 5:29 PM on November 3, 2021

run pdfimages on a PDF that contains scans, and you have them just as well as unzipping a CBZ. OCRmyPDF does exactly that.
posted by scruss at 10:31 AM on November 8, 2021