Rocky & Bullwinkle in Mexico

Frank Hursh, head of background dept at Gamma

If you grew up with Mr. Magoo's Christmas Carol, it's a good bet you watched Rocky &
Bullwinkle and all the rest of Jay Ward's series.  For the next few weeks, my Jay Ward blog takes you behind the scenes at the Mexican studio, Gamma Productions, that actually produced those series.  This week, meet the ex-pat American head of the background department, Frank Hursh, and in the ensuing posts see some more rare photos and art from that era. Take a gander here.  And if you need a guidebook for your tour, get one here.

Activities on the Art of Jay Ward blog

As you may have noticed, updates on this blog are few and far between.  As new information or artwork comes in, I will post on this blog but in the meantime, check out my sister blog, artofjayward.blogspot.com where I continue to post new info and art on the Jay Ward studio.  Lately, I've been posting regularly on Bill Scott's gag cartoons on life at Ward's and will continue to do so for the next few weeks.  Bill Scott, Jay's partner and head writer, producer and all around voice artist (Bullwinkle, Dudley Do-right, Super Chicken, George of the Jungle, etc) came up through the animation ranks and, as a cartoonist armed with biting wit, made humorous observations on their difficulties with ad agencies, networks, their status in the industry, and even each other.

This week, a series on ad agency shenanigans:

Check out this and previous postings at artofjayward.blogspot.com.  And if you haven't bought the book, The Art of Jay Ward Productions, a limited number of copies are available HERE for half off the cover price of $49.95.  For those of you without calculators, that means just $25.  Christmas is coming, I'm just saying...