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ARTS FOR AMATEURS : Learning Tree’s Cartooning Class Is a Big Draw With the Kiddie Crowd

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<i> Rip Rense is a Sherman Oaks writer</i>

Marty Martsegis pushed his gray hair back and carefully pinned his sketch to the classroom wall. It was a large, happy, well-adjusted-looking turtle with a photo of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles pasted above it and an explanatory title: “Their Little Brother.”

“Hey!” said one of about 12 youngsters in Martsegis’ class, “he doesn’t have a band around his head!”

“Or a belt!” offered another.

“And he’s not even a mutant!” another shouted.

Martsegis grinned.

“Boy,” he said, “when I was a kid, I didn’t even know what a mutant was!”

Martsegis is a big draw, and the reason for his popularity is sketchy, which is to say, children like the way he sketches.

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Martsegis teaches “Cartooning for Kids” at Learning Tree University--both the Chatsworth and Thousand Oaks branches--where he turns learning art into, well, an art. At 73, the veteran artist is devoting himself to motivating kids who are 60 or more years his junior.

“Theoretically, I’m supposed to be retired, but who wants to be retired when you can still do things like I’m doing?” said Martsegis, a Thousand Oaks resident and lifelong commercial artist. Martsegis has collaborated on animation projects for Disney, MGM, lesser Hollywood animation studios and UCLA, where he produced medical animation for the health science center. He also directed a school of animation at Sheridan College of Applied Art and Technology near Toronto.

For the past 3 1/2 years, Martsegis--or Mr. Marty, as some of his students call him--has spent two hours a week at each class, striding patiently about with his tortoise-shell glasses about halfway down his nose. “Everybody got it right?” he asks while relating the basics of drawing cartoon figures. His students range in age from about 7 to 10, although the suggested age group for the class is 8 to 13. In general, the students are a study in concentration: tongues between teeth, lips drawn tight or pursed, working on sketches of drooling dogs, happy raccoons and those not-so-Ninja turtles.

“Notice how quiet it is in here?” whispered a satisfied Martsegis during one recent session at the Chatsworth Learning Tree. “That’s called motivation.”

It’s also called education. The children start the eight-week, $69 course by learning how to draw favorite cartoon characters. “Bart Simpson is very popular at the moment,” Martsegis said.

They then progress to more sophisticated figures and techniques. By the time they have finished, they not only have basic drawing skills, but they also know how to draw 3-D pictures and to create simple animation.

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“I usually save the lesson on 3-D cartoons for the last class because it’s so popular,” said Mr. Marty, who also gives art demonstrations for children at public schools, parks, libraries and parties. “They literally learn to draw cartoons on paper that will project out into space. They’ll look like they’re floating in space when I give them the 3-D glasses. That’s quite exciting to the kids. The drawings just leap off the page!”

For the animation lesson, Martsegis reconstructs the prototypal motion picture machine known as the Zoetrope.

“It’s a kind of movie machine which rotates--a historic device which was invented many years ago when people were trying to get involved in the development of photography and moving pictures. . . . The figures are sequenced on a long strip of paper, and the paper, which carries 12 images that are equally spaced, is then slipped into this cylinder--it looks like a top hat--and the cylinder has little windows all around it. Well, you put it on a phonograph turntable, turn it on and look through the windows and, lo and behold, the thing comes to life!”

As do the kids--even with less dramatic demonstrations. Take, for instance, one recent day when Martsegis taught them how to make “pie-creatures”--using parts of a circle to draw animal figures. The kids grew visibly amazed as they followed step-by-step instructions, and pieces of their circles miraculously turned into canine ears, noses, even lolling tongues, until the face of a happy hound took shape.

“Oh, that’s cool !” said one little boy as Martsegis colored the tongue pink. Annie Huang, who gives her age as 9 3/4, asked politely if she could give the dog a “different expression.” Martsegis said, “Whatever you like,” and Annie went to work, changing the eyebrows to a more quizzical slant.

Another kid asked about giving the dog a collar, or “how ‘bout just a neck.” Smiling, Martsegis said, “Well, if you have to put a collar on him, you need a neck first!” In the end, the “pie-creature” dog ended up variously with sad, droopy eyes; angry, deranged eyes; dripping fangs; hanging tongues (one with “a lot of drool,” as its creator noted); and one, by 8-year-old Graham Stanton, with horrible scars all over its face. Asked about this extra decoration, Graham looked a little impatient and responded in a don’t-you-know? tone, “Well, he was created--like Frankenstein!”

Further embellishments were rampant: Some boys added planes in the background, and a few girls adorned their pieces with bows, flowers, happy suns.

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And through all the fun seeped that horrible stuff called learning.

“Art is more than just drawing,” Martsegis said during a break. “It’s an education. The kids learn a lot of things in the process of learning how to draw.

“We get involved in some simple mathematics. You can’t escape mathematics. When you’re plotting animation, it involves figuring. They don’t know they’re learning this. It’s sort of subconscious. You know, it’s something that they learned because they’re motivated to draw. Therefore they’re going to have to learn in order to get to their goal, which is a very painless way of learning.

“It’s not academic. It’s not, ‘Now we’re going to give you some lessons in math or history.’ It just comes with the territory!”

And so, evidently, does the children’s respect. Martsegis received the faculty award for excellence in 1990 and some of the input, according to Learning Tree University program administrator Mary Son, came from his young charges.

“It’s based on the overall merit of the class,” Son said, “but we also have kids fill out evaluations of their teachers, and you know kids are brutally honest. Marty’s evaluations are very, very good. He takes very good care of the kids, and he takes things very seriously.”

Some of the kids in one recent session seemed genuinely inspired by Martsegis. Daniel Lam, 8, who named his raccoon pie-creature Max, actually asked if he could repeat the course. Martsegis advised against it for fear of wasting Daniel’s time but encouraged him to continue art on his own.

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Learning Tree, in September, will add a more advanced course for children called “The Ultimate Art Experience,” which is for youngsters who want to learn more complex drawing, designing and working with mixed media.

“The children who apply themselves really do show some progress,” Martsegis said.

“But I’m always happy to see children who take it seriously and want to go on, who come up and ask me where they can take more courses. I look forward to it each week. All those things are rewarding to the teachers.”

Then there are other, more subtly rewarding moments, such as the time Martsegis paused to remind the fledgling Rembrandt Graham Stanton that he was walking around with a shoelace untied on one of his high-top moon-boot tennis shoes.

“You’re losing your shoe,” Martsegis said.

“I don’t care!” said Graham, rolling his eyes at the fact that Martsegis simply didn’t understand that the untied laces were a fashion statement.

Martsegis broke into a wide grin and laughed quietly.

“Oh, to be a kid again!” he said.

A new eight-week session of “Cartooning for Kids” begins Sept. 11 at Learning Tree University, 20920 Knapp St., Chatsworth, or 1408 Thousand Oaks Blvd., Thousand Oaks. Fee: $69. Call: (818) 882-5599 or (805) 497-2292.

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