Same Story, Different Artist - Oil Jugs

Its apparent, some of the earlier stories in Ranger Rick, ended up repeating over a couple of years, often times between artist tenure. This allows us to see how different artists interpret the scenes in their own style. In the case of the adventure story of properly disposing of used motor oil, both Lorin Thompson and Alton Langford had similar ideas when it came to telling the story with some pictures.

Let's have a look at what was drawn.

Images are © 1979, 1984 the National Wildlife Federation, used with permission.

Drawings by Lorin Thompson and Alton Langford, where applicable.

We start out the story with Ranger Rick, feeling ill after apparently drinking from a poisoned stream. Sammy Squirrel went to check on him and found him lying in his tree den, uninterested in moving around. Both Langford (left) and Thompson (right) have very similar ideas on how to draw Rick when he looks sick. Actually, when I look at it more closely, you'd think Rick was dying in Langford's image based on the expression. Well, if you're poisoned I guess you'd feel like you were dying too.

On the second page, both artists were instructed to draw the cast of characters cleaning up the polluted pond. Because the story was not changed, the same cast of characters was drawn--Ollie Otter, Sammy Squirrel, Molly Muskrat and Zelda Possum. (The white spaces are where the text goes, which I did digitally remove.) Again, the only major difference between the drawings, besides where the text was going to go when it was put into the final magazine. Langford's image has the animals getting dirty over the cleanup (Ollie's a mess!), whereas Thompson had it drawn where the characters don't get messy. While I think it should be known that any garbage cleanup dictates you will get messy, I also looked at this difference realistically. While I do not remember the story word for word, I do think Langford's drawing better illustrates what happened, simply because the jugs are leaking. Isn't improperly disposed of oil what made Ranger Rick sick? I think he'd certainly be sicker if the oil was leaking into the water source. Both work, just one makes the situation all more obvious of the problem at hand.

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