Mariusz Szczurowski
Class of 1976
Class of 1976
Cartoonist
Mariusz had already become known for his cartoons at school, drawing pictures of his teachers in class.
After completing his final exams, he studied Film & Television at WAIT (now Curtin University). He entered a number of film making contests, winning a record 5 TVW-7 Young Film Makers Awards.
After University, Mariusz worked at TVW Channel Seven as a news cameraman, film editor and in studio production. While at Seven, he animated his ‘Be Alert with Bert’ community service announcements, some of the first animation produced direct to video in Western Australia.
Mariusz then went on to work in radio at 6AM Northam, and writing ads for 6PR and 6IX.
In 1979, he broke into the cartooning world with the “Good Sports” and “Lilypad” comic strips in the Daily News newspaper.
In June of 1982 he was appointed as the political cartoonist for the West Australian newspaper, a position he held for over four years.
His subjects ranged from local (the crackdown on alcohol at the WACA) to national (Prime Minister Hawke tipping a load of fertiliser onto a flower called “VOTES”) and the international (the UK-France Chunnel project given a local twist with a Dad on a Perth beach starting to dig his own “chunnel” to Rottnest as a protest against the price of ferry tickets).
Mariusz’s name, if not his face, was very well known round Perth. Intriguingly, however, because of his appearances as ‘Telethon Jones’ (a character always searching for the ‘Sunny Sandgroper’ and Telemints), the reverse was also true. To TV viewers, his face was well known, but not his name.
After his time with the West, Mariusz established his own video animation company, ‘Fox Creative’. The company specialised in film and video animation and in live action film and video special effects.
‘Fox Creative' produced a number of award winning commercials, but is perhaps best known for Channel Ten’s Kenny Kidna good night spots. The lyrics “Good night Captain Possum …” were seared into the memory of Perth, and played by the station for 18 years.
Illness meant that Mariusz withdrew from the business and media worlds for a time, and now he runs “Caricatoons by Mariusz”, producing TV animation, special effects, caricatures, cartoons, logos, paintings and murals. He also hopes to produce an exhibition of his work.