Mark Mentzer — Artist • Animator
Designer • Historian

I’m a traditional animator, artist, graphic and web designer. Today I use Flash, Photoshop and After Effects to create animation. I’m also an Animation Historian. I majored in Media Arts/Animation at the School of Visual Arts in NYC.

I’ve had the pleasure to meet and work with many influential people. I worked at Hanna Barbera where Bill and Joe gave me my first break. I worked as an in-betweener for Ken Muse on the “Tom & Jerry Show”. I spoke with Dave Fleischer on the phone. When I moved to Hollywood I looked him up in the phone book. He was listed and I called him. We spoke for a half hour. I met Grim Natwick, creator of Betty Boop. I met Jay Ward, Chuck Jones, June Foray (Best known as the voice of Rocket J. Squirell), Bob Clampett and Walter Lantz. I took classes with Harvey Kurtzman (creator of Mad Magazine and Alfred E. Newman) and Will Eisner (creator of The Spirit and the granddaddy of the modern graphic novel).

In this blog we’ll discuss cartoon art, traditional animation and comics. I learned animation the old-fashioned way, drawing by hand. We will cover animation from the early devices/toys to classic movie shorts, to today’s CGI and Animé. We’ll also cover comic art from newspaper strips to comic books, underground comix and today’s graphic novels.