Denis Kitchen is a legend in the comics industry. The all-new documentary, Oddly Compelling, highlights Kitchen’s long, strange trip. It covers his early days as a hippie cartoonist, to his thirty years as one of the most independent comic publishers, as well as his advocacy for the First Amendment. The documentary is crowdfunding through Kickstarter.

Filmmaker Soren Christiansen and Ted Intorcio have captured hours of in-depth, candid conversations with Denis Kitchen, as well as fellow cartoonists and colleagues including Alison Bechdel, Warren Bernard, Eddie Campbell, Paul Gravett, Karen Green, Justin Hall, Gary Hallgren,Tom Heintjes, MariNaomi, Peter Poplaski, Carol Tyler, and the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund’s Interim Director Jeff Trexler. The film also features rare archival footage of comic book legends Robert Crumb, Will Eisner, and Harvey Kurtzman, along with new animation of Kitchen’s iconic cartooning. The film charts Kitchen’s career — as an indie cartoonist, a provocateur and publisher, and founder of the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund.

A good part of my motivation for undertaking this massive project was the opportunity to do these animations. The initial inspiration was the stop motion short, Creature Comforts by the Great Nick Parks in which man-on-the-street interviews are used in animating animals at the zoo. My idea was to animate Denis Kitchen’s drawings using Denis’ own unscripted voice for each character. I was struck by the wonderful juxtaposition of his conversational, matter-of-fact delivery with the surreal, weirdly funny but compelling characters that sprung from the mind of Denis himself. I think the results are striking, funny and somehow feel familiar in a way, giving form to Denis’ id, displaying it for all to see.

My process was to first acquire hi-res scans of the original drawings from Denis’ wife, Stacey. I then broke them down into pieces—head, body, appendages etc. The head is then further dissected into animatable features: eyes, nose, mouth etc. A particularly fun step is to create the mouth shapes (phonemes) that I’ll use to create the lip-sync for the audio using Adobe Character Animator. Once the breakdown of the character is finished I work on rigging the character in After Effects using bones (joints) and puppet tools (deformation). The character is now ready to be manipulated and the character’s performance developed. I’m not an actor but I would guess that this stage is much like what an actor does—interpreting the words and communicating emotion through the facial expression and movement of the character. The final step is to add appropriate backgrounds, color, texture and Camera movement, necessary to put the characters into context.

It has been a thrill to work with Denis on this and I hope you’ll enjoy them as much as I have enjoyed animating them! Thank you for all your kind support in making this dream a reality.

— Ted Intorcio

In 1969 Denis Kitchen founded Kitchen Sink Press and, for more than 30 years, he published many of the most prominent and innovative creators in comics, including such legends as Will Eisner, Harvey Kurtzman, Robert Crumb, Charles Burns, Al Capp, Milton Caniff, Howard Cruse, Trina Robbins, Mark Schultz, Art Spiegelman, Scott McCloud, Alan Moore, the ground-breaking Gay Comix series, and countless others. In 1989, Kitchen formed the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund after comic store manager Michael Correa was convicted of possession and sale of so-called “obscene” material, which included a series published by Kitchen Sink Press. 

Kitchen subsequently raised money for experienced defense attorneys, resulting in the overturn of Correa’s conviction on appeal, and the organization Kitchen founded continues to fight ongoing First Amendment cases. Denis Kitchen’s comics have been collected in multiple books; his most recent is  the acclaimed Creatures From the Subconscious from Tinto Press. His original art has been in numerous one-man and group exhibitions, and he was just granted an Honorary Doctorate by the University of Wisconsin.

Oddly Compelling documents Kitchen’s career and activism and also explore his personal collection of curiosities. Kitchen has amassed an astonishing array of unusual collectibles, from over 100,000 vintage postcards, scores of Big Boy, Kewpie, and celluloid figures, metal toys and robots, to original comic art and political buttons. He has also spent years creating “The Valley of Frankenstein Dolls,” an eccentric outdoor art project that offers unique eye candy throughout the documentary. 

Watch the exclusive clip above and go support the project.