drawings and pencil roughs of each page of the comic, followed by larger, more-detailed layouts on translucent vellum specifying lighting, color, and speech balloon placement. These also required Hefner's approval—a typical two- to seven-page episode would take as many as nine pages of layout. Kurtzman then discussed the layout with Elder, who drove from his home in New Jersey to Kurtzman's in New York. Kurtzman acted out every detail of the strip; according to Elder, "He would change his voice and take on the characteristics of each role ... We'd crack each other up and fall down laughing." This gave Elder what he needed to create the penciling, including "eye pops" (background gags worked into blank areas of Kurtzman's layout; Hefner rejected many, so Elder created as many as possible) and the final rendering. Elder painted in oil, tempera, and watercolor, never using ink. Beginning with a white illustration board, Elder explained he would "pile on" his oil paint, light colors over dark, then apply tempera, then layer several watercolor washes to give Annie luminous tones. "The colors were like gems to me," he said. "I worked very hard to give them iridescence." The work was labor-intensive and deadlines were often difficult to meet, so other artists, including Russ Heath, Arnold Roth, Jack Davis, Al Jaffee, Frank Frazetta, and Paul Coker, were occasionally enlisted to help finish the art. Jaffee, a childhood friend of Elder, said about the experience: "Little Annie Fannie was the most unique, lavishly produced cartoon cum illustration feature ever. Each panel was a miniature masterpiece that Willie glazed and re-glazed in brilliant watercolor until he reached the level of 3-D-like translucence that he wanted. I know from first-hand experience what went into this project." Letterers inked the dialog balloons before Kurtzman cleaned and submitted the finished work. Little Annie Fanny, first comic strip, was the first multi-page comics feature in a major American magazine. Characters Annie Fanny is the feature's lead character. Like other young women in Playboy pictorials, Annie is beautiful, buxom, and often unclothed. She is sexually innocent, oblivious to the worldliness around her. Like her forebear Goodman Beaver, Annie was conceived as a modern Candide, above the story's corruptions and temptations. Unlike Goodman, however, Annie is never shocked or offended; she remains blithe. The authors of Icons of the American Comic Book say Annie "glides through a changing world with an untiring optimism"