unfortunately I never met CORNY COLE, I know though some of his work, especially what he did for RAGGEDY ANN AND ANDY. RICHARD WILLIAMS worked very often with CORNY, he described to me his crazy style, doing most of his sketches with a simple ballpoint pen and never using any reference. DICK described him as a genius. the illustrations below might have been for a personal project, CORNY had in mind, or it was one of those collaborations with DICK WILLIAMS, anyway, DICK gave me these xeroxes about 30 years ago.
© corny cole
my name is hans bacher, – I work as production designer in the animation film industry. for the last 45 years I lived and worked in exciting places around the world. after 7 years of teaching in singapore I am back at my homebase in manila, working on a few more books.
Interesting (beside being beautiful!) – it appears to be storyboard work forThe Phantom Tollbooth. Cole storyboarded the film in 1966, before Chuck Jones came on board. Chuck couldn’t work with Corny, who quit when he’d completed the boards. Dick Williams saw them and invited Cole to come and work on The Cobbler and the Thief, according to Michael Barrier’s interview with Corny Cole.
from hans –
thank you very much for the info, that explains a lot!
Corney was beyond brilliant! If you can get ahold of a personal film, possibly the history of everything, you’d get a better idea of just how great he was. I fear tho that much of his work was destroyed in a fire.
from hans –
I have to doublecheck – but I think I might have a bad quality copy of that film on DVD
If you do have that film check out the drawings that look like Turner paintings. I know it'[s impossible to draw like those paintings but Corny did it. And I still say it’s impossible!