Kyoto University’s Naoyuki Osaka scanned the brains of volunteers while exposing them to the work of Hokusai Katsushika (above), showing them Hokusai-san’s art with examples implying motion (on the left), little to no motion (in the centre batch) and static objects (right). In the results the university team found that only the images on the left (the ones which implied motion) activated a region of the brain known as the extrastriate visual cortex – the same area which lights up on scans when subjects are shown photographs which depict real-world motion. Interestingly even single images could imply movement to the brain, even without any extra devices such as ’speed lines’ and facial expressions were also found to imply a sort of movement.

It won’t be a surprise to cartoonists, comics creators and readers, of course, that you can successfully imply movement and actions from a seemingly frozen image (and indeed a whole, flowing narrative from just a few static panels with the imagination filling in the gaps between frames) but it’s amazing to learn that the actual areas of the brain which deal with motion comprehension are activated by these pictures too. To coin an old Vulcan phrase, ‘fascinating’. (via Exclamation Comics’ twitter)

(a cool set of wee pixel-art James Bonds – in chronological order from left to right – by and (c) Kristof Saelen)

The images are not as highly elaborated as the eBoy cityscapes , or as minimized as the portraits Craig Robinson still occasionally creates for Flip Flop Flyin’, but they are very consistent and, what’s more important, very recognisable.  Even with only a few dots of colour at his disposal, Kristof gets his subjects ever time.

He’s becoming all the rage with the kids on Twitter, and is slowly but surely reaching stardom in Brazil.  Jump on the wagon now before there’s a new fad !

(a beautifully ethereal Swamp Thing piece for DC by Charles Vess, borrowed from his site)

“I wasn’t quite sure what Charles Schulz meant when I first heard that. That’s because gag, or magazine, cartoons are often recast with a brand new punchline, so you never really have to kill-off the entire idea, just come at it from a different angle. I know Michael Shaw has rewritten a punchline for a cartoon that the New Yorker didn’t like, and then liked, in its new version. I’ve done it myself, when it suddenly occurred to me that I could completely remake a cartoon I had drawn years before, by changing the punchline to suit a new market, Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Truth be told, cartoonists do it all the time. That’s not to say though, that you can’t ever come up with a completely unusable cartoon, you can – at least I can; but it is never as difficult to kill off a cartoon idea as it is to kill off an idea for a comic book, or comic strip, or a graphic panel.”

(a scene from Sunshine on Leith by and (c) Rod McKie)

(cover to the first Bodley Head edition of Captain Pugwash by John Ryan, pic borrowed from the Gregory & Company author’s agent site)

The BBC reports the sad news that cartoonist John Ryan, creator of Captain Pugwash, has passed away at the age of 88. The cartoon pirate captain of the Black Pig was created by Ryan while he was an art teacher and first saw publication in 1950’s Britain, the same year (as the BBC article notes) which saw the birth of the Eagle. The first animated series hit the BBC in 1957 and Pugwash and his inept piratical companions would appear and re-appear on children’s television many times throughout subsequent decades, meaning its fairly simple and basic animation style would, like other classic kid’s animation such as the Clangers or Bagpuss, become embedded in the minds of generations of delighted children -- and then embedded in a warm, cosy blanket of nostalgia for those self same children when they became adults. Goodbye, John Ryan; your creation made many children smile and that’s a wonderful thing to be remembered for.

(TOTT’s Last Cartoon, art by and (c) Thomas Ott)