CONTACT WELCOME BIO GALLERY INTROS RESUME
..to my site. Not one full of fripperies, blinkies and flash, but a nuts-and-bolts industrial strength art showcase I hope you will enjoy. 
Photo by Amid Amidi
I've been cartooning professionally since 1980, but this site is not designed as a trudge down Memory Lane; I am focusing on new work, which I think is my finest. Those friends whom want to pick up data on the bad old days will find some here as well.

JUST WHO AM I ANYWAY?
Born in 1962 in Mineola, N.Y. Started drawing, painting, creating my own attempts at comic books and animation at age two. Always enthused about drawing and creating characters, so much that it became a life force.
I've never formed a barrier between fine art and cartooning. The art of expression was always the most important one to me, and growing up, I treasured Chinese watercolors, Breugel, Charlie Brown and Terrytoons equally. My very young childhood was during the era of "pop art", when fine artists were freely inspired by comics and other popular culture; I remember being captivated by these works during trips to museums and galleries in New York.
Clipped from Newsday, 4/21/67: One of "a dozen 4-to-5-year-olds taken to an avant-garde exhibit of Japanese geometric paintings [at the Emily Lowe Gallery in Hempstead, N.Y.], and then let loose with their own brushes and paints...Modern art is no more unreal to children, they say, than the cotton candy, cutsie-pie fare that makes up the general run of children's entertainment today."
Graduated from BOCES Cultural Arts Center (Syosset, N.Y.), then took a few college classes in art while beginning a freelance art and writing career.
Left home at eighteen, ekeing out what some would call a semi-living at my crafts while enjoying a lovely semi-homeless existence on Manhattan's waterfront. Finally landed in a Brooklyn brownstone where I spent seven waterbuggy years.
Did everything I could, I wasn't particular. Wrote and drew comic books and comic strips for magazines and small newspapers, illustrated, designed record covers, posters, candy and T-shirts, and exhibited paintings when I could. Spent the 1980's on the outskirts of the "radical art scene" of the East Village. A challenging time, if not always a happy one.
(To see a flyer for a cartoonists' event from this period, click here.)
Labor on Ninja Turtles comics allowed me to get up a grubstake to come to the West Coast in 1991, lured by prospects of a more healthful existence. Lived through a riot and a few earthquakes while working in animation as a designer, animator, and breaking in as a director thanks to my good friend Felix the Cat.
To retain my sanity (HA), I work on a stream of independent projects, which include those of a literary nature, and a ten-minute animated film, done solo and now in the ink and paint stage.
My interest in every type of art I make is not in recapturing or approximating reality, but in creating new forms and abstractions and giving them their own unique life.
 
To believe in the unreal
To accept what it may do

To list my interests and inspirations is difficult. People have been startled by the range of art books on my shelf. Instead of zeroing in on a few favorites, I choose to ask myself what I think is boring, and then ask myself why, being determined to learn something from everything. Some people have complained that this is a fault. That this deters one from having a "style", that I try too many different approaches, and that my work is therefore overwhelming and confusing. I feel that the concept of "style" has been abused as of late, that too many artists put the search for a highly recognizable and highly limited vocabulary of hieroglyphics before content and heart. This tends to not only date one, but also make one highly imitatable, and therefore expendable.
Art springs first from an observation of life, then a philosophy from the heart and mind of the artist. And it must be honest to be truly worthwhile.

I had been painting virtually since birth, and exhibited a few works in a New York gallery in 1989. But it wasn't until ten years after that I was able to discover my preferred medium (acrylic), technique and "voice". I have been exhibiting paintings in various venues since 2000, and occasionally sell them. My first loves were animation and comics; but I drew to the latter because they offered a far more instant gratification. Most comic artists have interests rooted in film, and we work hard to approximate filmic effects on the page.
My first pro work was writing scripts for Harvey's Richie Rich. The work paid eight dollars a page; when I found better conditions illustrating for Marvel's Crazy magazine, I started branching out, eventually steering toward independent publishers for more complete freedom.
The comics I like to do are neither superhero sagas or artistic post-nuclear angstfests. Following the classic style, they tell stories of humor... and drama...for entertainment's sake. (A form which, in my opinion, is becoming a lost one.)
Maintaining a humor comic in the independent market is no easy task for its creator. No matter how 'independent' the market pretends to be, it still remains a slave to the trends and tastes of the big fellas. The humor books are always the last ones the publishers are willing to promote and the first ones they will choose to cancel. In 1989, I tired of the vicissitudes and left the market...until 2002.
 
Click for an INTERVIEW centering on my comics work conducted in Spring '03.
COMICS
gallery 1
gallery 2


ILLUSTRATION
has paid some of the bills since 1980. Featured in gallery 2 is an assortment of CD covers done over the years.

ILLUSTRATION
gallery 1
gallery 2


ANIMATION

Always a prime focus of interest, I had experimented with animation (mostly using Super 8) throughout my younger life, but didn't move in professionally until my L.A. relocation in 1991. (See resume for details.)
I'd honestly have to say that of all the phases of my career, labor in animation studios has proven to be the most financially rewarding and the least artistically. Even the shorts I directed were mauled by other hands after my job was done. L.A.'s studio system is a committee system, and the result is typically a spoiled broth.
But the experience has taught me a lot, enriching every form I work in. One result is CAPRICE, TEEN OF TOMORROW; a solo ten-minute short that I've completely animated. One half is inked, and, at present, one-and-a half minutes are shot and in color. Now...the quest for capital!
ANIMATION
Studio work
Personal work


EDITORIAL CARTOONS
I do 'em for community papers and for myself. A few are politically slanted; all are takes on humanity.

 
EDITORIAL CARTOONS GALLERY

SONGS & STORIES!
As mentioned elsewhere in this site, I write as well as draw. Here, you can find some of my prose sketches!

 
SONGS & STORIES!

COMMISSIONED ART
...done at the request of fans & visitors (of all ages)!
COMMISSIONED ART!

SKETCHES!
Pencil drawings straight from the brain! (A gallery that changes.)
SKETCHES!


 
PREVIEWS!
Your chance to view new projects fresh off the drawing board! (A gallery that changes.)
PREVIEWS!


 
INTERVIEWS!
 With Yours Truly...
ON COMICS!
ON ART & EROTICA!
THE GOOD OLD DAYS! (?): 
A GALLERY OF VISUAL SOUVENIRS!


 
GLAMOURTOONS
(FOR ADULTS ONLY!)
You can believe it or not, but ever since I was a kid (late 1960s) I wanted to do 'adult' cartoons. It was early viewings of cocktail napkins, Jimmy Hatlo comics, and the subtly voluptuous women of Jack Hamm's cartooning manuals that did it. I wanted to be the boss chasing the secretary around the desk!
(Discovering underground comix...at a Manhattan news stand, at age seven, was a truly magical moment. I didn't notice the smut; here were comics that looked like cartoons (!) as opposed to the Archie and Gold Key diet that kept my aesthetic heart barely beating.)
A girlfriend, upon seeing an erotic cartoon I did in my late teens, opined that this was a form I should never abandon; one more mature lady claimed that an exhibition of my paintings gave her an orgasm! Whatever...I find this genre infinitely exciting.
This gallery will be added to as items are done or found in The Vaults.
 
GLAMOURTOONS GALLERY (ADULTS ONLY!)

ADDITIONAL ADULTS ONLY GALLERIES...


BUXOTICA!
THE A__ GALLERY!

FUN FOR SALE!

Books 'n' bags, CDs, sketches and more! All with the unmistakable imprint of Knight! And all can be yours!


FUN FOR SALE GALLERY!

RESUME

 
Education:
1978-1979: Completed courses in drawing and painting, BOCES Nassau County Cultural Arts Center. (Syosset, N.Y.)

1979-Present: Illustrator/Cartoonist for national magazines and newspapers. (The Village Voice, Family Weekly, Nickelodeon Magazine, The Electric Company Magazine, National Lampoon,Heavy Metal, etc.)
Create and design theatrical posters, covers for vintage & contemporary jazz recordings, greeting cards, candy, t-shirts, etc.

1982: First independent comic book published. (Hugo, Fantagraphics Books) Continue to create & publish to
present. (Midnite the Rebel Skunk, Slug & Ginger, Hinkley)
Licensed comics characters handled include Richie Rich, Mighty Mouse, Betty Boop, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

1991-Present: Work in animated films.
Design, layout, animation on COOL WORLD (Ralph
Bakshi/Paramount)
Story, storyboard, character, background & prop design, layout, animation on THE ADVENTURES OF SONIC THE HEDGEHOG (DIC Entertainment)
Development art, storyboard, character, prop, background & color design for Disney TV, MGM TV, Warner Bros. Animation, Saban, Rhythm & Hues, HBO,etc.
Directed four shorts on THE TWISTED TALES OF FELIX THE CAT (Film Roman)
Directed, animated theatrical & TV safety spot for California Dept. of Water Resources. (Baer Animation)
Currently completing independent animated short.

1984: Gave seminar on cartooning at School of Visual Arts (N.Y.C.) as guest of teacher. Also gave private instruction in cartooning.
1995: Lectured to Asian animation crew on procedures of animation (Film Roman Studio)
2000: Instructed children in film animation at Animation Creations. (Sherman Oaks)

1989-Present: Exhibiting paintings at galleries including Psychedelic Solution Gallery (N.Y.), Gallery Figueroa (L.A.), Gallery Bink (Portland, OR.)

Works in Progress:
Ongoing work on acrylic paintings.
Series of thirty ink drawings about depression for publication.
Two children's books with painted illustrations.
Completion of color animated film.

Award:
1995: Awarded Certificate of Merit for Service to the Art, Craft, and Industry of Animation, by the International Animated Film Society.

CONTACT AT MILTONKNIGHT@EARTHLINK.NET
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