Here’s how the publisher describes the book:

Animation doesn’t come with instructions; Rowland B. Wilson demanded guidelines. Trade Secrets [256 pages; 8.5 x 10.875 inches; ISBN-10: 0240817346; ISBN-13: 978-0240817347] offers a never before published peek into the personal journals of Rowland B. Wilson (1930-2005), a legend in the world of Cartooning, Advertising, Illustration and Animation. Trade Secrets is a compendium of tips and tricks, philosophies and techniques garnered over a lifetime of professional animation and artistry. Study one-on-one with a mentor whose Walt Disney film credits include The Little Mermaid, Tarzan, Atlantis and Treasure Planet and apply a lifetime of professional creative tools for both traditional and digital workflows. These writings represent the quintessential refresher for fine artists and animation professionals, and it is a vital tutorial for students who are now poised to be part of another new generation in the art form. Have a seat and let an amiable respected mentor reveal his keys to success. Develop your professional creative toolset with a focus on foundational animation techniques with chapters on Caricature, Composition, Tone, Texture, Color, Reverse Negative, Rendition and Technical/Theories. Inspiration in your pocket; Trade Secrets includes a digitalpocket guide, filled with charts and diagrams as well as helpful tools and tips.

Legendary lessons from a master Disney animator, Playboy Illustrator and SchoolHouse Rock artist – collected for the first time ever. Trade Secrets is a unique, never before published compendium of tips, tricks, procedures and philosophies of an acclaimed artist, animator and illustrator.

Consistently create superior animations and illustrations with a 32 point checklist, a proven resource for digital and non digital workflows as well as professional projects and academic endeavors.

Develop your professional creative toolset with a focus on foundational animation techniques with chapters on Caricature, Composition, Tone, Texture, Color, Reverse Negative, Rendition and Technical/Theories.

And here’s a lovely example of Rowland B. Wilson’s cartoon art:

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— Visit “Today’s Inspiration” for lots more! —

BONUS LINKS:

Temple of the Seven Golden Camels has Rowland Wilson’s handouts on Composition, Light and Shadow, and Color.

Also, like Today’s Inspiration, Michael Sporn Animation Splog has a very well-stocked archive of work by Rowland B. Wilson.

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The finished art, as usual, was by Will Elder…

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BTW, I have no plans to post part II of that story/episode; I’ve only included the published pages above for the sake of comparison with Kurtzman’s layouts.

If you’d like to read more, you really ought to consider purchasing the full-colour collection, Little Annie Fanny, Volume 2: 1970-1988 (ISBN-10: 1569715203; ISBN-13: 978-1569715208), which was published by Dark Horse in 2001 and is still available for purchase, new, at various online bookstores.

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Look Here: Aldren Watson illustrates THE JUNGLE BOOKS: VOLUME TWO (Part 1 of 3)
Look Here: Aldren Watson illustrates THE JUNGLE BOOKS: VOLUME TWO (Part 2 of 3)
Look Here: Aldren Watson illustrates THE JUNGLE BOOKS: VOLUME TWO (Part 3 of 3) <– You are here!

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Look Here: Aldren Watson illustrates THE JUNGLE BOOKS: VOLUME TWO (Part 1 of 3)
Look Here: Aldren Watson illustrates THE JUNGLE BOOKS: VOLUME TWO (Part 2 of 3) <-- You are here!
Look Here: Aldren Watson illustrates THE JUNGLE BOOKS: VOLUME TWO (Part 3 of 3)

Look Here: Aldren Watson illustrates THE JUNGLE BOOKS: VOLUME TWO (Part 1 of 3) <-- You are here!
Look Here: Aldren Watson illustrates THE JUNGLE BOOKS: VOLUME TWO (Part 2 of 3)
Look Here: Aldren Watson illustrates THE JUNGLE BOOKS: VOLUME TWO (Part 3 of 3)

[CLICK IMAGES TO ENLARGE]

Look Here: Aldren Watson illustrates THE JUNGLE BOOKS: VOLUME TWO (Part 1 of 3) <-- You are here!
Look Here: Aldren Watson illustrates THE JUNGLE BOOKS: VOLUME TWO (Part 2 of 3)
Look Here: Aldren Watson illustrates THE JUNGLE BOOKS: VOLUME TWO (Part 3 of 3)

Today, art lovers world wide are lamenting the sad news that the much-admired, much-imitated, much-decorated British cartoonist and illustrator Ronald Searle has died. A family statement said:

Ronald William Fordham Searle, born 3 March 1920, passed away peacefully in his sleep with his children, Kate and John, and his grandson, Daniel, beside him on 30 December 2011 in Draguignan, France, after a short illness.

He requested a private cremation with no fuss and no flowers.

In an article published on the guardian.co.uk site on Tuesday 9 March 2010, cartoonist Steve Bell summarized Searle’s accomplishment as follows:

What marks Searle’s work out is genuine wit, intelligence and unabashed ambition. He is our greatest living cartoonist, with a lifelong dedication to his craft unequalled by any of his contemporaries. His work is truly international, yet absolutely grounded in the English comic tradition. It is the highest form of conceptual art, but devoid of any of the pretence that usually accompanies such a notion. Which is to say it is extremely funny, but not all the time. It cuts to the essence of life.

“At the Cambridge School of Art it was drummed into us that we should not move, eat, drink or sleep without a sketchbook in the hand. Consequently, the habit of looking and drawing became as natural as breathing.” — Ronald Searle

Searle’s caption for the above drawing is typically blunt:
“More clowns, more wide-eyed children, and more phoneys to the square metre than any other public place in Europe (Saint Tropez compris). La Place du Tertre, Montmartre — artistic rubbish dump of Paris — and two born every minute to keep it thriving.”

Ronald Searle’s most recent book, Les Très Riches Heures de Mrs Mole, is a collection of the drawings Searle created for his wife each time she underwent chemotherapy for her breast cancer, “to cheer every dreaded chemotherapy session and evoke the blissful future ahead.” Mrs. Searle died in July 2011.

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Oddly enough, that beautiful page — which I first saw when I bought The Tomb of Dracula #4 new, off the newsstand, when I was in high school — has a very strong personal resonance for me. You see, once upon a time my father quit his job in the big city to chase a dream, dragging his family to a “godforsaken place” that my mother “despised” from the moment she set eyes upon it. The mute object of my mother’s contempt was a shabby, drafty, uninsulated log house with no plumbing or adequate heating located on a discontinuous, serpentine tract of marginal farmland that some anonymous homesteader had laboriously carved out of the bush in east-central Saskatchewan. I won’t burden you with the depressing details of my father’s fourteen-year experiment in pigheaded determination and wishful thinking. Suffice to say that by the time the man finally admitted defeat, he and my mother had already spent more than a year shuttling back and forth between the farm and various low-skilled jobs the meagre pay from which might have slowed but certainly did not stop their burden of farm debt from growing more burdensome every month — which led them, at long last, to conclude that the only way forward was to file for bankruptcy and retreat, with my brothers and sister in tow, back to the city… well, not quite back to the city, but that’s a whole other story…