The Circle

As many of you know , Iwao died. Sad but yet still beautiful in a sense . A happier ending we should all find because as many of you know he was active to the end. I was lucky enough to get to actually work with him on my last job at Warners. You know I was so blown away I forgot to blame him for my career. Name it he did it and he was drawing right there while I talked to him. I'm sure 15 minutes after we met I blended back into the crowd like the millions of my fellow geeks. Still, it was Iwao. He talked a lot about being Milt Kahls lead key . About Milts sarcasm with him and their interesting , almost adversarial relationship. I wish I had written it all down because it was fascinating. It's sort of like seeing the martians and forgetting to turn on your camera. Oh well, he was terrific and though I didn't get to work with him directly after that he still worked on The KarateGuard as did , doing a couple scenes for Tony and Spike.

All this and Joe Barbara dying too. It's been a bad year that way. These people were so nice. Bill Hanna used to talk to me when ever I ran into him in the elevator . He was like that, relaxed and friendly. It never was a disappointment meeting these people because animation people are actually often exactly what they seem (not all , but most).

Now the pic of Scoob is not on model. I doubt any of us ever really got him on model because to be honest , the only person who could draw him right was Iwao. He was both simple and incredibly complex. Incredibly. Luckily we were guided by stock footage from greats like Irv Spence Ray Patterson and Ed Barge. They could move just about anything . This is probably the last time I will ever draw Scoob for a reason and it's fitting to draw him my way. God , it has been since 1980 that I really drew him and this is totally from memory so it joins the honored roll of the thousands of off model Scoobs . How amazing that a character that wasn't even supposed to exist (he was not in the original script) could turn out to be TV's historical champion for longevity. No small tribute to virtually the father of almost every HB character . I think Milt would have been very proud to say he worked with Iwao Takamoto. And that is fitting because who wouldn't.