I gotta say, Pluto is such a great character, and if I ever got to work with him, I'd be very happy. The scene where he gets caught in fly paper, he's such a great dog!
My cartoon strips in college strived to have the Schulzian mix of surrealism and Charlie Brown angst. A bit of that combo shows up in 'Up.'
I've owned a lot of dogs in my life - Marcela, Rusty, Petey Pup, Precious, Rosy and Ava. Each were in love with life's simple pleasures, but being people in dog suits, as they seem to be, they each had a defined personality!
Some of my favorite media is the still cartoon that you can sit and study. You can get amazing metaphors across really quickly. I'm in awe of a Charles Schulz.
I was a Charles Schulz kind of guy. I didn't read comics books. The Warner Bros. guys were great - Chuck Jones and Friz Freleng.
The trick of 'Up' was to balance the sad stuff with the silly stuff.
I've always loved dogs and have had one since I was three. We bought her from a kid selling puppies out of a cardboard box on the street where we lived in New York City. Great dog. We named her 'Marcella' after a Raggedy Ann character. She grew up with us.
After my wife and I were married, we obtained a rescue dog from a family that didn't want her anymore. She was a beautiful Collie/Shepherd mix named 'Precious.' It then came to pass that our first marital 'debate' was whether we should change the dog's name away from the same name used by the wacky villain in 'Silence of the Lambs.'
I'm a lot less cranky when it's just me and my dog.
