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I recently realized that out of all the BarbozaToons-related pieces I've done for DA, I've never shown the characters looking like they did in periods other than the 1940s and 1950s. I figured it was high time I schooled you folks in the fabricated history of my original characters...

Ken Kangaroo wasn't always the principal star of the Gryphon cartoon studio. He was preceeded by Bill the Dog, who was the studio's only starring character in the 1930s and spent pretty much all his cartoons chasing after his disobedient pet parrot Toots when she'd go off and cause trouble. Bill and Toots started out in 1932 as very generic-looking characters, with Bill being sort of a bizarre hybrid of Mickey Mouse and Oswald the Rabbit. As the 1930s progressed and the Gryphon animators got a better grasp of their skills, Bill and Toots were redesigned to be a little more distinctive.

1938 saw the release of a black-and-white Bill and Toots cartoon called "Australian Antics", in which Toots gets loose in the Outback and makes friends with a kooky-looking kangaroo. But in the end, the kangaroo proves to be so crazy and unhinged that he gets the best of both dog and bird, and the film ends with the looney marsupial hopping off into the sunset as he repeatedly bashes himself in the head with a mallet while singing "Waltzing Matilda". The kangaroo character got such huge laughs from moviegoing audiences that the Gryphon studio decided to give him a few more cartoons, this time as a solo player who pulled his schtick on other unsuspecting saps. Within a year, he completely replaced Bill and Toots as Gryphon's biggest cartoon star.

It wasn't until 1940 that the character became known as Ken Kangaroo, in a cartoon called "Hop, Skip, and Chump", directed by pivotal Gryphon director Howard Alberts. Alberts turned the character into a more controlled personality - less insane and more sophisticated, as was the style in animation at the time. He also redesigned Ken to become less goony and more solid. By 1943, Ken's look had been ironed out by Hal Williams, who took over Alberts' unit after Alberts left to pursue other endeavors.

As for Ken's most popular and frequent adversary, Cleft Rockpile, he didn't come along until 1945, when director Dirk Halstead decided that Ken's cartoons needed a recurring villain, one who could pose a threat without being too clever to outsmart the quick-witted kangaroo.

Description
I recently realized that out of all the BarbozaToons-related pieces I've done for DA, I've never shown the characters looking like they did in periods other than the 1940s and 1950s. I figured it was high time I schooled you folks in the fabricated history of my original characters...

Ken Kangaroo wasn't always the principal star of the Gryphon cartoon studio. He was preceeded by Bill the Dog, who was the studio's only starring character in the 1930s and spent pretty much all his cartoons chasing after his disobedient pet parrot Toots when she'd go off and cause trouble. Bill and Toots started out in 1932 as very generic-looking characters, with Bill being sort of a bizarre hybrid of Mickey Mouse and Oswald the Rabbit. As the 1930s progressed and the Gryphon animators got a better grasp of their skills, Bill and Toots were redesigned to be a little more distinctive.

1938 saw the release of a black-and-white Bill and Toots cartoon called "Australian Antics", in which Toots gets loose in the Outback and makes friends with a kooky-looking kangaroo. But in the end, the kangaroo proves to be so crazy and unhinged that he gets the best of both dog and bird, and the film ends with the looney marsupial hopping off into the sunset as he repeatedly bashes himself in the head with a mallet while singing "Waltzing Matilda". The kangaroo character got such huge laughs from moviegoing audiences that the Gryphon studio decided to give him a few more cartoons, this time as a solo player who pulled his schtick on other unsuspecting saps. Within a year, he completely replaced Bill and Toots as Gryphon's biggest cartoon star.

It wasn't until 1940 that the character became known as Ken Kangaroo, in a cartoon called "Hop, Skip, and Chump", directed by pivotal Gryphon director Howard Alberts. Alberts turned the character into a more controlled personality - less insane and more sophisticated, as was the style in animation at the time. He also redesigned Ken to become less goony and more solid. By 1943, Ken's look had been ironed out by Hal Williams, who took over Alberts' unit after Alberts left to pursue other endeavors.

As for Ken's most popular and frequent adversary, Cleft Rockpile, he didn't come along until 1945, when director Dirk Halstead decided that Ken's cartoons needed a recurring villain, one who could pose a threat without being too clever to outsmart the quick-witted kangaroo.