By Jake Friedman

Dean Yeagle has been animating and designing for decades, from licensed characters to his own creations. His work can be seen from Bugs Bunny to Playboy magazine, and his sketchbooks, including that of the sexy character dubbed “Mandy,” are a trove of quality draftsmanship. He was also assigned the unique task to revitalize a 65-year-old Disney property in the World War II-era comic book, “Return of the Gremlins,” for Dark Horse Comics. Look for it on the shelves.

Recently I had the chance to talk to Dean about his rise to success, the Gremlins project, and his sexy pin-ups.

Let’s start with your background. What was your first job?

I started working in Philadelephia – that’s where I’m from. It was a tiny company called “Animation Arts Incorporated” and it had some very good people working there. They were able to teach me some stuff that I might not have been able to learn going cold into a place like Disney, being pegged into one job or another. I got to do a little bit of everything.

Then I had to go into the service during Viet Nam; I was in the navy. After that my wife and I moved to New York. For the first seven years I worked at Zander’s Animation Parlour as a designer and animator and eventually a director. Jack Zander was a great animator of the old Tom & Jerry cartoons; he recently celebrated his 99th birthday. Afterwards I opened my own company called “Caged Beagle Productions” with Nancy Beiman and Daryl Cagle. Nancy is a great animator who worked for Disney and is now teaching in Rochester New York. Daryl is editor of the MSNBC editorial cartoon site now. And as of 2006 I’m living in Southern California.

How did you get involved in such a fringe project as reviving “The Gremlins?”

It was originally Dark Horse’s idea. Mike Richardson is the company head, and he also works in movies as a producer and director, and it was his idea to reprint the original book that Disney put out in 1943. It was Roald Dahl’s very first book, and Dahl was a flyer for the British air force at the time. The basic premise is that there are these little gremlins who are messing up the British airplanes. People started saying that when anything went wrong, it was the work of the gremlins. After he wrote it, it got to Disney, Disney bought the book, and they were going to do a feature film. In fact, I have storyboards from it that they sent me.

But various things happened, including the war ending, and they never made the movie. Another thing was that Warner Brothers took the gremlin idea and came out with a couple very funny gremlin cartoons by Bob Clampett, and that was another reason why Disney killed the project. The gremlin from the Bugs Bunny cartoon “Falling Hare” looked very much like Disney’s, as a matter of fact.

Are the drawings that you’re doing based on the original character designs?

Yes. They’re great little designs and very pleasant to draw. The comic book that I’m working on is a sequel to the original. When Dark Horse wanted to put out a new printing of the old book Disney said,“ok, but we want to also put out a three-issue comic book showing what happened to them afterwards, in today’s age.” It was written by Mike Richardson and I’m doing the first two issues out of the three. I was going to do the whole thing, but time and moving and other work got in the way, and I’ve only been able to do the first two, although I did all the covers. There are new human characters, which are all my designs, but the gremlins are all the same ones from the book. They live a long time.

Do you think the current wartime climate explains the newfound interest in this old product?

I don’t think so. I think it was just brought up to them, and Disney decided it was a good thing to pursue.

Do you know of any of the original Gremlins artists?

The original books came out without artists’ names; it just said “art by the Disney Studio.” However, Walt Kelly, of Pogo fame, did little one-page and two-page inserts into the old Disney Comics and Stories during the war. They were little pantomime things with no dialogue and starring Gremlin Gus – he has a little mustache and he wears a derby over one horn. This was before Kelly started Pogo in 1949.

How do the gremlins behave differently now than they did in 1943?

Well they’re not working on planes anymore. In the original story the air force came in and built aircraft factories in their woods. So they were so angry they started wrecking the airplanes. And the lead flyer came to an agreement with them to stop wrecking the airplanes, and let them live in the big house that he had, which is where they’re living now. In our story, they find out that their house might be sold, and they begin to wreak havoc again, on the more villainous characters. So they’re still up to their old tricks, but they don’t do them to planes; they do them to houses, cars and things.

How much freedom did you have with the project?

Disney is pretty hands-off, except I was approved by Disney to do this. I am in their database as an approved Disney artist, which was actually news to me, but Dark Horse found that out. And I have a reasonably free hand with what I can do.

Tell me about Mandy. Where did she come from?

Mandy is a character I developed in 2002 for an online workship I hosted at bellefree.com. A group of us cartoon pin-up types got together as an offshoot of sketchbook sessions, and that’s what I started on. I originally based her on what the Coppertone girl might look like grown up, in the style of my Playboy cartoons. Now she has a wide audience with both men and women. She doesn’t use guns or karate chops – she’s just herself, a sexy but innocent and, I hope, charming character. I get a lot of fans from my websites, and a good number of projects come up as well…for instance, she’s been licensed as the iconic character for coffee by a company in Russia – they’re actually calling it ‘Café Mandy’, and her picture’s on every package. They have big plans for the brand in Japan, Europe, China, and here in the US.

And I’ve been publishing my own sketchbooks for several years now, all of which feature Mandy on the covers, and two of which, ONE MANDY MORNING and MANDY’S SHORTS, are sort of storybooks about her. And a French publisher, Akileos, is putting out a 128 page book of my work in general, including some animation, children’s illustrations, and a good selection of my Playboy cartoons. It’s called MÉLANGE, and should be out here in the US in October.

How did you get involved with drawing Playboy cartoons?

Some time ago Playboy sent around a poster to animation companies all over the country because they were having a contest on their website for a little piece of animation that they would use on their site. And there was a cash prize for the winner. Of course animation is very time-consuming and I’m a one-man company now, so instead I did a couple cartoons like the ones they use in the magazine, and sure enough I got a call from the cartoon editor and she actually said, “where have you been?” And I‘ve been working for them ever since. By then I’d been working on the computer and coloring in Photoshop. The computer has opened new worlds as well.

How did you hone your digital skills?

All I can say is practice. I never read the Photoshop book, but you learn a few tricks that serve you well: ways of doing rendering on a character using a couple of filters, and the rest is painting. You can adjust the color and undo as many times as you want, and that’s priceless.

What’s the hardest part about your job today?
Getting the time to do it. The Mandy stuff is on my own time.

What’s the biggest perk?
The whole job in general. I get to work from home on my own time. I get to adjust my hours- I tend to be a night person, and I often work until 2 in the morning; it’s quiet, no calls, no interruptions.

Why did you choose to do what you’re doing?
It’s what I always wanted to do. At the time I went to the Disney Studio years ago, animation was pretty dead. So I ended up in New York doing animation, children’s books and Playboy cartoons. It’s been a pretty varied career. You never know what will happen to it. I did a lot of CD Roms, and now stuff for the web. A lot of new options open up all the time. You have to keep changing your career direction.

How do I get to be where you are now?

It’s hard to tell anybody exactly what to do - except you have to keep drawing, keep developing your skills. Of course Playboy helped a lot in getting my name out. In animation, very few people in the general public get to know your name. But try developing your own style, which is important. I notice people will go by my booth at the comic conventions and recognize my work. If your stuff looks like everybody else’s, nobody will know you, and nobody has to come to you to get that particular look. You develop your style by drawing and drawing and drawing, and you incorporate pieces of everybody’s work that you like. There are many very good artists out there, and you need to be able to stand out and be recognized. Good luck!

You see more of Dean’s work and products at gallery.bellefree.com/dabeagle and at CagedBeagle.com

Jake Friedman is a New York-based animator and animation journalist. Visit him at www.jakefriedman.net