Gilchrist draws Kermit and characters for elementary students

Phillip

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Author, illustrator dares students in Shelton to dream and draw
Courtesy of the New Haven Register

They say good guys wear white hats, and children's author and illustrator Guy Gilchrist proved the point Thursday when he arrived at Long Hill School wearing a white cowboy hat.

Gilchrist, whose accomplishments include 44 children's books, several syndicated comic strips and poetry, addressed students in the media center throughout the day. He captivated about 125 second-, fourth- and sixth-graders during an hour-long presentation.

"You're going to do what I do," said Gilchrist, 45, who lives in northern Connecticut. "It doesn't matter if you think you draw crummy or you think you draw good."

The pupils arrived with pencil and paper in hand, ready to draw.

Gilchrist stood before an easel, black marker in hand. "We're going to draw unbelievably fast today," Gilchrist said. "You're going to make unbelievable mistakes."

He drew two circles and a head and asked what they thought it was. "Mickey Mouse!" one boy yelled.

Although he said it was a good guess, the head he had started to draw belonged to Kermit the Frog, one of the many Muppets he and his brother, Brad Gilchrist, created for "The Muppets" comic strip for the late Jim Henson.

"The Muppets" strip was published worldwide in more than 660 newspapers from 1981 to 1986.

In 1996, the brothers returned the strip "Nancy" to its legendary style. The comic appears in more than 390 newspapers worldwide.

"We start with little shapes. It's the basis of everything we draw," Gilchrist said.

He used an oval to illustrate the concept and asked students to suggest oval-shaped things. They came up with head, mirror, egg, pool, trampoline and hot dog. Gilchrist deftly incorporated all of the elements into a drawing.

"Every single thing you would ever draw is made of shapes," he said.

Gilchrist reiterated the need to draw quickly without worrying about making an error. "I draw constantly and every time I move on to something that's tougher, I make mistakes," he said.

He said he started his career in third grade, when he drew Woody Woodpecker on his classmates' notebooks for a 5-cent fee.

He described a trip to a conference of writers and artists in Hartford that he took when he was a boy. At the event he was inspired to work at drawing and writing after hearing a talk by the late children's author Theodore Geisel, a.k.a. Dr. Seuss.

Gilchrist said Geisel told them if they merely dream a dream and don't do anything about it, "all you'll get is a sad old dream and a sore rump." Years later Gilchrist wrote a poem called "Dream It Then Do It."

Fourth-grader Danielle Iorfino, 8, enjoyed the lesson. "I learned you can do anything you dream of doing by practicing," she said.

Classmate Mark Murray, 9, said Gilchrist taught him "don't be afraid to try anything."

Gilchrist's two most recent books are "Night Lights & Pillow Fights: Comics featuring Mudpie," a collection of the earliest daily Mudpie cartoons; and "Night Lights & Pillow Fights Genius Club: Let's Draw Cartoons!" including drawing lessons from the syndicated "Night Lights & Pillow Fights" newspaper feature.

http://www.newhavenregister.com/site/news.cfm?BRD=1281&dept_id=7577&newsid=5830290&PAG=461&rfi=9
 

Drtooth

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Okay, am I the ONLY one who has never read any of the Muppet comics? I have seen some on Byron's site. They are pretty funny. I don't think my local paper carriued it, ever!

However, I get in the Boston Herald Guy's other comic, Mudpie. Great art, but not so funny!
 

tygerbug

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My father's best work is a color children's book called "Night Lights and Pillowfights" .... which he did ages ago. He just got it back into print himself.

www.gilchriststudios.com

He just stopped doing Mudpie I guess, which is weird as it was the only personal sort of thing he was doing lately. The art was pretty good, but the strip itself was just weird to me. His best comic strip work really was The Muppets way back when.

Here's a sampling of what I think are some of his favorites. I think he had a knack for Piggy.

http://WWW.GILCHRISTSTUDIOS.COM/bookstore/muppets/mupcomics.ASP
 

Janice & Mokey's Man

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Wait a minute...so, like, "tygerbug", Guy Gilchrist is your father?? Wow! How cool! :big_grin:

Thanks for your comments on my site, and I'm glad ya enjoyed it. The only Muppet comic book I had as a kid was "Froggy Mountain Breakdown", and I still remember the times I would relish readin' it from cover to cover. :smile: As the only Muppet comic book I had, it was pretty darn special to me---and still is.

Welcome to the forum, and may your dad still have many great things to come! And whatever path you're takin' in life, I hope you find great success, too.

Thanks for stoppin' in,

Byron

P.S. Love the drawings ya did at 2:48 in the mornin'! LOL!!
 

tygerbug

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Yeah, this site makes me feel nostalgic. =) I grew up in a very Muppety household watching Muppet tapes on Beta and my vision of who the Muppets were was colored by dad's take on them ... they just remind me of my childhood and I came back here a month ago and hadda post a couple things. It's taken me a while to separate myself from those childhood memories and see the genius behind what Jim Henson created ...

I also thought Janice should have something to say about your site, Byron. =)

Oh, and about the article that begins this thread --- he does that all the time, going to elementary schools. One of the nicer things he does. We talk little now, I see him at Christmas ... normally I'm in L.A., where I make movies, 8 features to date (see my website link). I also occasionally go to college.
 

Drtooth

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You know, with the Henson sale going on, I've gotta say, whoever owns them should get in contact with Gilchrist, so they can Re-release these comics into a collection of Muppet Comics Anthology. I think, from what I've seen, that these were hillarious and he drew the Muppet form great, while sticking to his style.

I want a Muppet comic anthology! I'd buy it!
 

murgatoad

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Well. Just expressing an opinion here. No-one here is required to agree.

I hated the Muppets strip. I'm not surprised it failed, and I'm not surprised the people behind it are now doing "Nancy".

That's that.
 

tygerbug

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All to their opinion. But I must note that the Muppets strip did not "fail" and ran for a long time, longer than the actual Muppets continued to make films (the original ones before Jim's death, which ended with MTM.)

I too hate Nancy and was very surprised when dad took the job. But I was fond of his work on the Muppets and still am, and anyone who's seen his books of poems, especially the gorgeously-illustrated Night Lights and Pillowfights, knows that he is definitely not without great talent. Wish he was doing more of that nowadays.

I doubt the Muppets strips would be reissued, but it would be nice! I can't even find them on ebay.
 

murgatoad

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Originally posted by tygerbug
All to their opinion. But I must note that the Muppets strip did not "fail" and ran for a long time, longer than the actual Muppets continued to make films (the original ones before Jim's death, which ended with MTM.)

I too hate Nancy and was very surprised when dad took the job. But I was fond of his work on the Muppets and still am, and anyone who's seen his books of poems, especially the gorgeously-illustrated Night Lights and Pillowfights, knows that he is definitely not without great talent. Wish he was doing more of that nowadays.

I doubt the Muppets strips would be reissued, but it would be nice! I can't even find them on ebay.

A friend of mine is a newspaper editor. It was he who told me the strip failed. In his view, any strip that doesn't last a cartoonist's lifetime is a failure - unless it's purposely ended ("Bloom County", "The Far Side", "Calvin and Hobbes"). He told me the Muppets strip suffered a long slow decline. That's all I know.

FWIW, I thought the art in the strip wasn't bad at all. It was the writing. The cartoonists didn't understand the Muppet characters, certainly didn't understand the secret of their appeal, and most definitely didn't understand what Muppet fans at the time wanted from the strip. What fans DIDN'T want, BTW, were one stupid, ancient joke after the other day after day. What the Muppets needed at that time was a Carl Barks who would expand their personalities and endeavor to make the characters work on paper. What I remember is that I and friends of mine were disappointed not only in the strip but in Jim Henson, who seemed to regard himself as above the usual merchandizing crap so many popular icons get sunk by. It seems he wasn't. Thus the strip died unmourned and unloved. A pity. There was some real potential there.
 

Fozzie Bear

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Hiya,

Comic stripping is a HARD job. You have to try to come up with a universally appealing joke, something that is not offensive to anyone, something that is funny to everyone, and you will never ever meet those requirements.

I would never trust the opinion of a newspaper editor regarding how good or bad a comic strip does or is doing because they would rather not have comic strips in a newspaper because they have to pay for them; they would rather save that space for advertising and MAKE money instead. I, too, have friends in publishing as either editors or cartoonists, and both agree to this fact.

If a comic strip has a following at all then there is no decline. A decline would mean a loss of readers, and you can almost bet that more and more people will read a comic strip the longer it runs, so this could not possibly be what happened to the strip.

What happens is the POPULARITY of the characters at the time. Remember those horrible Ninja Turtles or Rugrats? They're in the comics pages in (what I consider) HORRIBLE comic strips. Why? Is anybody reading them? I dunno, but they ARE popular characters, and the papers will run them for as long as they're popular. Heck, our local paper stinks. They dropped Pogo for Ninja Turtles, and now Rugrats. They also won't pick up The Buckets, and both the writer and artists are FROM THE SAME CITY!!

Though, I'm still lost on Apartment 3-G and Mike Roper/Steve Nomad and a few others.

Hope this sheds some light on the cartoonists' perspective of things.

Jamie? Smig? What do you two think?

FOZ
 
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