Local cartoonist wins national recognition

By ASHLEY LUTHERN

‘He was a star from a very young age,’ a former teacher said.

Even with national accolades, a freelance cartoonist credits his native Girard and a local television show with sparking his first interest in cartoon art.

On “The Barney Bean Show,” which was formerly broadcast on WYTV Channel 33, out of Youngstown, Bean would write the initials of someone who had a birthday that day and then draw a cartoon using the initials as a base for the cartoon’s design. It was that gimmick that first piqued an interest in drawing,said Daryll Collins, who graduated from Girard High School in 1975 and Youngstown State University in 1981 with a bachelor’s degree in commercial art. After YSU, he attended the Columbus College of Art and Design for a few months and later moved to Cincinnati, where he resides.

Now the kid who was fascinated with Bean’s cartooning skills has become a professional cartoonist himself and was presented with the top award in the magazine and feature illustration division from the National Cartoonists’ Society in May.

“I submitted six of my illustrations from Boys’ Life magazine because I liked the continuity that they had, and they ended up winning,” Collins said.

The society consists of about 500 professional cartoonists, about 100 of whom are retired, and a committee chooses the winners each year, he said.

In addition to his award-winning work from Boys’ Life, Collins has worked for Gibson Greeting Card Company, Sports Illustrated for Kids and Weekly Reader, an elementary school newspaper where he drew the characters Peanuts the Elephant and Jocko the Monkey.

“When I considered trying to make a career out of cartooning, I had to think of full-time employers. For the greeting card companies, I was able to do cartooning all day long,” Collins said.

Collins admits that he was lucky to have parents who supported his dream.

“Other kids were just as good as me in art, but their parents were not as supportive of them. Even now when kids say they want to be a professional cartoonist, it’s a head-scratcher for parents,” Collins said. “The feeling is always ‘How in the world are you going to make a living doing that?’”

Another supportive figure in Collins’ life was Helen Lafferty, one of hisjunior high school teachers at St. Rose School in Girard, who encouraged him to pursue his passion for art. Collins dedicated his first book to his parents, wife and Lafferty.

“I have very fond memories [of Collins]. He was very artistic and I put him in charge of the bulletin boards in my room,” said Lafferty who is now a vice president at Villanova University. “He was a star from a very young age.”

Others saw that star quality in Collins and he was given the chance to create an animation series for Cartoon Network and the animation studio Hanna-Barbera.

“I was thrilled to just receive a phone call to do the project. That was a studio that first stirred my interest in cartooning. The limited animation look that I gravitated to as a kid, shows like ‘The Flintstones’ and ‘Yogi Bear,’ I can still see its influence in my work today,” he said.

Despite a positive response from Hanna-Barbera about his cartoon series, he ultimately did not get the job. Rejection, however, was nothing new to Collins.

“You have to have a thick skin in this business because there is a lot of rejection. You’ll deal with it, but when it comes to art you take it more personally because it is a part of you,” Collins said.