Artist draws entire yearbook
Cartoonist John "RobotJohnny" Martz drew his mom's entire 1968 high school yearbook. That's more than 1,000 faces. Martz says, "Good cartooning, to me, is all about simplification, and this was a fun experiment in distilling each person’s likeness down to a simple cartoon version and learning to draw efficiently, with both speed and as few details as possible." He posted all of the pages at Flickr and also made a book of the project. Link to RobotJohnny blog, Link to Flickr set (via Laughing Squid)
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Extremely clever. No doubt a first. His major problem was no doubt the fact that most kids try to look the same. Think of it: a thousand kids with two hair styles!
now that is a brilliant idea....
Staedtler, Ontario -- fictional town named after his preferred brand of writing instruments? (They're my favorite too.)
This is from 68? Where are the hippies?
Regardless, what a neat idea. Or should I say groovy?
Hippie hadn't really spread yet in '68. It was still mainly a Time/Life phenomenon. It took another year or two.
A friend graduated from high school a year or two after me and on the other side of the country. We compared yearbooks--from the early '80's--a while ago.
They had exactly the same people in them.
Same clothes. Same hair. Same looks. I could look at some guy in her yearbook and say, "Oh, yeah, that guy's name is Darren. He's a stoner jock with a funny nickname like 'Wingnut'. He's pretty full of himself and hangs out mostly with guys a year younger 'cause everyone his age thinks he's a loser," and she'd say, "Actually his name was Wayne."
I dunno if it's creepy that Canadian society was that homogeneous, or reassuring that despite the distance we all have something in common...
Tom 6: Creepy. Hands down.
A good friend of mine did a similar project to this from his high school. They were not particularly flattering.
Also, an artist in Boise found a 1940's or 50's yearbook and did large paintings of the pictures on the wall of the downtown record store. He included some of the inscriptions as well. They were pretty great.
this is such a great idea!
Wouldn't it be fun to have cartoons of just the senior class?
Tom6: weird!
#8, Any photos of that Boise wall available?