The Cobra and the Mongoose

Meet the cobra and mongoose, another (and the last) cartoon pair of mine. The series is a play on the predator-prey cartoon formula, but with a twist.

In short, the mongoose is a real jerk. He's extremely pugnacious and hard-headed, but easily wimps out if he winds up fighting something bigger, like a tiger or a python.
The cobra, on the other hand, is extremely timid. He's absolutely terrified of the mongoose and would rather run than fight. This more peaceful personality allows him to make easy friends with some other animals, though some are reluctant...

I got inspiration for these two after watching Animal Planet and saw a mongoose and a cobra fight in real life. Most of the time, the mongoose is the winner of these fights but here, the cobra actually has the winning streak.

The point of this series is to hopefully have people change their thoughts on snakes. In reality, most snakes are like this cobra - they don't want to fight or bite. They just want to be left in peace.

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I like to think of stories for characters, too. Here's my first example, "Pint-Sized Pachyderm". Here, two bums, Fred the crocodile and Lenny the hippo read an ad in the newspaper about a $50000 prize for catching the world's smallest elephant. So the two travel to Africa and try to make a catch, but fail with each attempt. When they finally catch the little elephant, they find out there's a smaller one they missed! For character analysis, Fred's the smarter one of the two. Fred usually has all the ideas, but they're never very good or successful. Lenny's a loyal lummox who acts as Fred's best friend and second banana. Lenny also has the habit of calling Fred "George". (let's see if you can catch the joke on that.) He's super strong but also not the shiniest apple on the tree...

Fred and Lenny

Meet Fred and Lenny, another cartoon pair of mine. Both of them are animal hunters whose jobs are to find the rarest animals and collect them for zoos so that kids around the world can see them in all their glory. However, they constantly screw up their chances with each hare-brained scheme Fred cooks up.

Fred is the dwarf crocodile. He's the smaller one of the two, but also the brains. Fred usually has all the ideas, but they're never very good or successful. Since his plans never work, poor Fred can get easily frustrated and sometimes gets angry to the point where he has to use anything he can find as a punching bag to cool down. Usually, it's Lenny. Fred also has a tough and pugnacious persona, refusing to give up.

Lenny's the hippopotamus and a loyal lummox who acts as Fred's best friend. He's has a gentle disposition until someone hurts his best friend. Lenny also has the habit of calling Fred "George". He's super strong but not the shiniest apple on the tree. Despite his intelligence level, whenever Lenny has an idea to catch their animal (and that's once in a blue moon) it always works!

Gordon

Meet Gordon, a curmudgeonous capuchin monkey. He's Benny's main adversary and, in some cartoons, his next door neighbor. He mostly acts as the innocent butt of all of Benny's jokes. He can be aggressive when he wants to be, but calm as long as the squirrel doesn't pester him. Gordon tries to even with the squirrel, but fails almost every time. Gordon also is very self centered, greedy, and loves money. He also has a strong Irish accent.

Here's Gordon's theme song. It's "Comic Walk" by Sidney Torch. You may recognize it as a theme for Squidward on SpongeBob SquarePants.

Bear and Eli

Meet Bear and Eli, a brother and sister team of two toy animals: one is a panda and the other an elephant. The two have marvelous adventures inside the world of imagination whenever their "mother", a little girl names Susie Wood, goes to school everyday.

Bear acts as Eli's big sister. She is a sweet, caring individual but isn't afraid to take on responsibilities. She doesn't mind baths and respects rules. She is authoritative and has a more realistic approach to things than her brother. It's her seriousness that can make her frustrated with Eli sometimes, but she still loves her brother all the same and will do anything to keep him happy and safe.

Eli is like Bear's little brother. He is all heart and extremely playful and child-like in temperament and it's because of this that he can get frustrated easily. He hates veggies and baths. Overall, he's a big bundle of love.

Back in high school, I had a friend, Vicki, who had these two pink stuffed animals named Bear and Eli. Respectively, they were a bear and an elephant. So after she made a short play script for our Children's Theater class based off of the two toys, I thought about what they would look like as cartoons. These drawings were the result.

Benny

Meet Benny, a devious little squirrel that's full of fun and energy. Benny has a usually happy, up-beat persona. He may be a wee bit nuts, but he has brains and uses them to an advantage. Benny has lots of energy and heckles other people if there's a good reason for it or just for fun. Benny's a little devil when he wants to be and has the ability to pull cartoon weaponry out of thin air. Either way, Benny's one of the funnest characters I ever made and he'll be loads of fun to animate in the future.

Welcome/Ralph

Welcome to A Few Brain Doodles, a blog made to show some of my own amateur cartoon drawings to the world. Here, you will get to meet some new characters of mine as well as see some stories to go along with the players. To start things off, here is a drawing of one of the my oldest characters, Ralph.


Ralph is like any mouse: quiet, timid, and curious. However, when in danger, Ralph has brains and wits on his side and uses them in a calm and cool fashion similar to Bugs Bunny. Ralph also is a cultured person, preferring the arts and classical music over today's standards. Since Ralph is very small, he has to use his brain instead of his brawn to get himself out of trouble, and that's just the way he like it. Ralph also has a very friendly persona, helping anyone out so long as they don't hurt him.



Ralph is a mix of Jerry from Tom and Jerry of the Chuck Jones era with the cool personality of Dean Martin, one of the members of the great Rat Pack. The tail design just came to me.

The Disney Family Album: Milt Kahl

I found this special feature about Milt Kahl from Youtube a while ago and I thought it's worth sharing with y'all. It's pretty cool as it focuses on his entire career at Disney, even though I think they skipped talking about Tigger. Oh well, it's still worth the watch.
Oh yeah, there's a small montage of some of the scenes he worked on at the end of part three which I thought was a nice touch.

More things have changed!

I've gone back and changed some posts as well as upload new videos to Blogger so that all of you faithful followers can watch the cartoons!

The Cat Above...
Tee for Two
Rabbit Transit

Dog Tax Dodgers

I'm really starting to get into Walter Lantz cartoons. It's probably because almost every one that I've seen has been very cartoony and also appealing to me, not only to look at but also because they're very funny. This cartoon is a good example of what I'm talking about. I thought it was funny just to see Andy Panda and Wally Walrus together in the same picture. They seem to work well together in this cartoon. I wonder if there's more like it?
Pat Matthews' animation is superb as usual and I really like how Andy looks in this era with Dick Lundy.

Andy Panda - Dog Tax Dodgers (1948)
by Cartoonzof2006

Drooler's Delight

This is one of my favorite Woody Woodpecker cartoons. No suprise, it also comes form my favorite director from Walter Lantz' studios, Dick Lundy. It's not just the jokes and the really loose animation from Pat Matthews that makes me like Lundy's cartoons. He really seemed to help put Woody at the peak of his cartoon career. I've noticed, not only does Woody look his best with Lundy, but also his voice has better acting to it. Before with people like Shamus Culhane, who also did some good Woody toons, his actor Ben Hardaway seemed to not have too much experience acting. Woody's voice with Culhane and before this cartoon seemed to lack emotion. Here and with other late Lundy cartoons, it's improving. Maybe Hardaway got lessons or something. Who knows?

Anyway, Drooler's Delight is a gem from this era of animation, and it's definitely worth the watch. After this, I think Woody gave a new meaning to "booby traps".


Here's a model sheet drawn by Fred Moore. (I think that's who drew this.)



EDIT: By the way, I've heard that Ed Love was the only one who animated this. He did a great job for being the only animator here!

Woody Woodpecker - Drooler's Delight (1949)
by Cartoonzof2006