Timothy Wood, 48, knew well the Disney menagerie of dogs and ducks and mice as a kid. “How could you not growing up in America?” he asks. He designates Mickey more than a cartoon character. “He was an ambassador.”
Wood was a broad-minded kid, however, turning the TV dial with tiny fingers to the edgier offerings of Saturday and Sunday mornings.
Fans of good two-dimensional humor will well recall “Tennessee Tuxedo and His Tales” (Don Adams, the legendary Maxwell Smart, was the voice of Tennessee). It was a riff on “Yogi Bear,” though comedic light years beyond the quest for a “pic-anic bas-ket.” Instead of Yogi and BooBoo, “Tennessee Tuxedo” featured a wisecracking penguin, his sidekick walrus named Chumley and the intellectually heroic Phineas J. Whoopee, “a genius.” “Fractured Fairy Tales” (film great Edward Everett Horton narrated) was another Wood favorite; a typical episode featured a demure childhood stalwart like Rapunzel or Red Riding Hood grousing about life and remarking, “What are you lookin”™ at, buster?” If you recall fondly a dog named Mr. Peabody and his boy named Sherman, so does Wood; he cites the clever time travelers ”“ “Set the wayback machine!” ”“ as four-star entertainment.
Wood watched the cartoons and found he had a knack for drawing characters like Snoopy and Charlie Brown. He drew what he calls “quirky caricatures.” He could draw President Gerald Ford, which for a grade-schooler just about qualifies for “Ripley”™s Believe It or Not.”
“I was always drawing in the margins,” he says. “I was the kid in school who could draw anything.”
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He never stopped. It takes him about one hour to complete one of his cartoons, which, he notes, passes very quickly. “The joke comes out as I”™m doing it,” he says. He has no recurring characters, but every monkey who appears ”“ drawn any number of ways ”“ is Mr. Bingles. He now markets them online at everydaycartoon.com.
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It is common for artists and cartoonists to forego a youthful audience entirely; Ralph Bakshi”™s bawdy “Fritz the Cat” sprang from his days drawing “Mighty Mouse” for Terrytoons. And one suspects R. Crumb was not born drawing Mr. Natural. Yet creative efforts like Bugs Bunny, The Little Rascals and Mad magazine prove masterpieces can have feet planted firmly in both worlds. When Bugs and Elmer take on Richard Wagner in “What”™s Opera Doc?”, parents and their children can laugh at the same scenes for different reasons. This is the world of Wood, who says he draws for all ages: “I make a point of keeping it generally off-the-wall, but never offensive or controversial. There will always someone that will take offense somehow, but I don”™t use any vulgarities or profanity, literally or portrayed visually.”
Today, Wood is a businessman, running the three-person shop Go2 Media Design on Brown Street in Peekskill, which he founded in 2001.
Clients, including the Hudson Valley Hospital Center in Peekskill and the Westchester County Library System, present needs to Go2 Media in arenas such as branding, web development and web design. The company turns the needs into reality, increasingly in the digital realm, according to Wood. Go2 Media works closely with Stamford, Conn.-based JKS Software and its principal Stephen Collins in what Wood calls “a strategic partnership” of shared services. Wood pays Collins the highest compliment: “He has one of the best senses of humor I”™ve ever come across.”
Wood”™s wife is Madeleine Fenamore Wood and they have two girls: Isabella, 14, and Julia, 9. He notes with pride Isabella”™s swimming skill and Julia’s artistic streak.
