The whole thing started as a comic strip which ran in magazines produced by Main Enterprises. Actually, the roots are found in a strip I had been doing for Main Enterprises PRESENTS by name of Betsy The Bookwriter. The strip used as a frame the efforts of a struggling authoress to come up with a book which she could sell. This allowed each episode to parody a different genre, though most of the gags were based in the movies rather than any literary source. One episode was going to be published in full color as opposed to black and white, so I and inker Jeff Austin figured the best possible idea for our color episode was to parody THE WIZARD OF OZ.
It was there my first "femanimal" saw print, as the pulchritudinous series needed a character to stand in for the Cowardly Lion. This resulted in Daisy Poise, billed there as The Milksop Mouse. I had no interest in drawing cheesecakey funny animals, but Daisy proved so much fun to draw that I developed another strip centered around Crissy Carrots. Only two episodes of Crissy Carrots were published, but I had mapped out a larger story arc concerning her relationship with love-sick Roger Ralphwit -a hungry wolf who had fallen madly in love with Crissy upon setting eyes on her. Cartoon Cuties issue 1 began life as a simple graphic novel for which I could use the story. And that really came about because I decided that I needed to learn to ink my own work (as I previously was only a pencil jockey).
I needed to develop my skills, but on a subject which would be easy to start with. Cartoon characters seemed an obvious choice, so I took my pencil sheets from the planned graphic novel and created ink sheets for the new project. When InDELLible picked up my book, the plan was changed from creating a one-shot graphic novel to producing a continuing series. This meant creating new characters and expanding a universe which I at first put little thought into. A re-designed Daisy, at first slated only for a cameo in acknowledgement of her being my first "annie" character, became one of the featured players and pushed into a short intro which more established the world of the book.
I hadn't originally figured the book to be a period piece, but it felt like the right move. That's why there are a few anachronisms in the main story of issue 1, as my first thought was that the universe depicted would be more timeless and mix aesthetics from the 50's and the 80's. This is why the bikini worn by Crissy is styled like one the later period would offer. Trying to explain this actually went a long way in establishing the universe of the franchise, as the solution was The Creek Bend Bikini Company, as explained in issue 2 (a much simplified summation of the situation mentioned in the prose story Questions And Answers posted right here on The Cartoon Cuties Log).
The world in which the series takes place fell together fairly quickly (I work in such a slapdash manner that any credit for cleverness or actual structure goes fully to the Holy Spirit). I settled on a period circa 1959. I developed the movie studio idea for the variety of story ideas it presented. I didn't want to lose the rural setting, however, so the idea of a small town bordered by a large movie studio came into being. This allowed for the perfect mixture of Hollywood glamor and Everytown USA sensibility. I knew I needed a word to call my cartoon characters for the sake of brevity, but I wanted to avoid "toons" as it was so closely connected to established franchises. It was Mark Holmes who helped me come up with the term Annie. The word has two connotations, reading as either a derivative of "animal" or "animation."
Of course, once I knew what to call the annies, I still had to figure out what exactly they are. Influenced mostly by old Warner Brothers cartoons, the first Crissy Carrots episode published by Jim Main saw the characters as far more a mixture of man and animal. I simply didn't put much thought into it, but was basically doing what so many who came before me had done. With Cartoon Cuties as a continuing series, I had to develop further what exactly Crissy was. The answer came partly from Disney newspaper strips published in the 1940's. There was presented a world populated by human beings, cartoon characters, and regular animals. That seemed a good starting point. Annies aren't quasi-animals, but human beings that have animal features (basically the way Donald Duck was portrayed in the comic books). Of course, no matter what they were drawn to resemble, most cartoon characters were but symbolic stand-ins for regular people. I basically took that idea and inverted it, so that the cartoon characters ARE regular people.
From there, just for basic story purposes, I had to figure out why the annies look the way they do if they're actually human beings no different from you or I aside from their obvious physical traits. That will be explored in the comic book series, God willing. Issue 4 will explain behavior issues which have been discussed in some of the prose stories, while issue 6 will finally explain the full origin of the annies.
Meanwhile, there's the basic look of the annies, which was largely made up as I went along. I knew I didn't think a girl with nice legs should be covered in fur, so I gave all the girls skin. Males look more traditionally cartoony, so many of them ARE covered in fur. Basically, I made the girls more human in appearance and let the males be the more familiar type of cartoon character. Whatever their appearance, they're presented as completely normal in their daily actions and motivations.
To explain why the girls look so different than cartoon characters always do, as well as to give C.B. International Pictures a bit of a hook, this prompted the notion that annies have almost always been presented on film only as comedy figures. Female annies were always placed in special make-up and bodysuits to make them look more animal-like. The fuzzy-face look was the standard for all cartoon studios until C.B.I.P. developed the glamor approach for annies during World War 2. (This is explored in issue 2. Happily, there's a certain logic to this which seems based in reality. One can imagine that had cartoons during the War featured characters that looked like Crissy and her peers, they would have been popular with G.I.'s.)
Amusingly, after I'd figured all this out, I used a more traditional aesthetic for a one-shot book I drew in tribute to animation legend Don Bluth (God willing, InDELLible will eventually be releasing that book as well). After drawing a book which used the typical fuzzy cheeks and hands with only four digits, I better understood why the look had caught on in the first place. It carries with it an enhanced sense of cuteness I'd been trying to capture while avoiding the traditional look completely. I actually found myself wishing I'd adopted a similar look for Cartoon Cuties, but the first issue had already been published and the aesthetic for the book established.
That more or less brings us to the point where you, the reader, is joining me as the first issue has been released. As of this writing, the second issue is in post-production and planned for release very soon.I do hope you'll join me for further adventures with Crissy, Roger, Minerva, Wendy, Daisy, and a host of new characters. There's probably two dozen featured players in the first 13 or so issues I've drawn so far. To those of you who check out the book, my extreme thanks. God bless you!
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