cartooning

I got a nice e-mail from one of my 5th grade teachers, Mrs. Moulder, who had read the Chronicle article. Back in 5th grade Reading, we read about animator Bill Melendez, who has produced, directed, animated, barked and howled as Snoopy, and what all else for most of the Peanuts movies and animated specials. Those who knew me back then know that I was all about Snoopy and still have a rather substantial collection of Peanuts... stuff (which I am still in the process of putting into storage so I can make room for a drawing table).

In any case, Mrs. Moulder then had us create our own comic strip. This came easy to me, because I had already been working on one: the main character was a girl named Ann, who was sort of a mix of Lucy, Linus, Charlie Brown, and myself. (Yeah yeah, so three of those are males, which is why I eventually changed the lead to Brian Byrd; a lot easier to write an autobiographical character of the same gender... it was just easier to draw girls because of the hairstyles.) The similarities between the style of my drawing and Peanuts was pretty obvious, and understandable since it was Peanuts that got me into drawing in the first place.

I drew two comic strips with Ann, and Mrs. Moulder liked it and kept one -- and had me sign it so it would be valuable one day when I'm rich and famous. :) She's part of my motivation for wanting to be a cartoonist: I can't let Mrs. Moulder down!