Ralph & Eugene Zimmerman

One of Bakshi's all time favorite and most impressionable cartoonists is Zimmerman. His passion falls short of a lifelong obsession. If you don't already...get to know Zim a little .....

Ralph Bakshi on Eugene Zimmerman:
"Eugene Zimmerman is one of the finest cartoon draftsman that ever held a pencil. His exaggerations and caricatures are always hysterically funny and true. Long before Mad comics - Zim was drawing better then Wally Wood and Jack Davis. His watercolors , black & white washes, Pen & Ink's work showed extraordinary facility in every medium. Along with Robert Frost, Kemble, and TS Sullivant, he is all pure American Cartooning. There is so much he could teach a cartoonist, it's endless."

From ASIFA:
"In 1967, right after he had resigned as the head of the Paramount cartoon studio, Ralph and his wife Liz were walking through Brooklyn when they saw a sign on an old house advertising an estate sale. They went inside, but it was late in the day and there wasn't much left. Ralph glanced up at a tall bookcase and saw a pile of pamphlets stacked up on a high shelf. It was too high to reach, so he didn't bother to look at them. As they were walking out the door, he got the feeling that he needed to go back and look at the pamphlets. It was a good hunch. The stack contained a nearly complete set of Zim's correspondence course in cartooning. He asked the estate agent how much they cost, and was told $50. That was more than he and his wife had in their pockets, so Liz volunteered to run home and get the money. The Zim books were on his desk every day throughout the production of Fritz the Cat, Heavy Traffic and especially Coonskin. This set is Ralph's most prized possession, and now he is sharing them with the ASIFA-Hollywood Animation Archive." Clipped from ASIFA Animation Archive - Thank You Steve!
Read More on Zim at ASIFA HERE

Posted by Victoria at December 29, 2008 02:06 PM