korks!: Those korking Korky komposites

If I am after an especially lush, polished look to any characters I draw, I always use composites, drawing the elements much larger, so I can zoom right in and get a photorealistic-looking effect.  It takes a good bit longer, but the results are always noticably better.


However, often when the artwork is all shrunken down and assembled together, I am quite disappointed to see that a lot of the detail is lost......still, I can easily just add these on here. for the inspection of my Millions of Followers....




    K.A.T.:   Korky Anecdote Time: Never revealed up until now!



Around 1982, David Torrie took over Editorship of Dandy, and his most significant contribution, was more than likely his decision to halt the endless Watkins Desperate Dan repeat printings ---it was beyond the joke by this time-----and commission all-new Dan artwork, by the hyper-talented Ken Harrison. Charlie Grigg also went into semi-retirement at this time, meaning he was only contributing occassional Korky covers: in other words, there was a position for a new KORKY artist, and this assignment went to David Gudgeon, who, after a pretty good start, failed to impress 'those upstairs' that his was the long-term version of the kat.

I am certainly not knocking David Gudgeon---I personally like his bold, quite aggressive style-------but Chaz Grigg was a very tough act to follow on this character, and by '85/'86 there was an opportunity for another new Korky artist. In this period, I commuted atween Edinburgh and Aberdeen, the DCT offices being somewhat stuck in the middle, bonnie Dundee being the basic hal-way point. I often stopped there and handed in Comic Library artwork during these travels. Hearing there was an opportunity for a new Korky artist by the Editors, I showed them a large sheet [two actually] of Korky poses I based very much on Griggs' vision.  ] I no longer have these sadly, and I regret not at least making photocopies].

The offices at DCT were always busy, with endless employees and secretaries popping in in perpetuity: a small gathering of employees, I don't really know who they were, commented on my efforts on Korky when I was still sitting there, and one tall, slim guy---he was smoking a fag, it was that long ago------commented:


I'd say \aye' to that.



This made me feel good, but his parting shot consisted of him pointing to one of my cat-poses and he uttered:



Mmm.........a bit GROTESQUE.


I can still picture this guy even now, all this time later.



So there you have it! I put in a bid for  the job of weekly Dandy  Korky artist and got a reasonable response. I lost out to...


------ROBERT NIXON,  one of the countrys' very top cartoonists of then-20 years' experience. Bobs' version of Korky was very different from Charlie Grigg--it was good stuff though.









Comments

Popular posts from this blog

IPC REDUX

Subverso-O-toons [2] : KOONG KING

Repeat Business [3]