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Saturday, April 29, 2006

Media: Milt Gross' Cartoon Tour of New York Part Three

This post is just the tip of the iceberg... see reason number 2 on our The Top Ten Reasons To Support The A-HAA for links to more great posts about print cartoonists.

Our posting of images from Milt Gross' guidebook to the 1939 World's Fair, A Cartoon Tour Of New York concludes... If this is the first you've seen of it, check out Part One and Part Two first.

Milt Gross
Milt Gross
Milt Gross
Milt Gross
Milt Gross
Milt Gross
Milt Gross
Milt Gross
Milt Gross
Milt Gross
Milt Gross
Milt Gross

For more great images from this rare book, see Milt Gross' Cartoon Tour Of New York Part One and Part Two.

Many thanks to Kent Butterworth for allowing us to scan this wonderful book.

Stephen Worth
Director
ASIFA-Hollywood
Animation Archive

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posted by Stephen Worth @ 11:24 PM
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7 Comments:

At 11:05 AM, Blogger Marc Deckter said...

This comic is unbelievable - SO MUCH LIFE ON EVERY PAGE! I wonder how many of these guidebooks he made? It would be fun to see his take on other cities as well!

 
At 10:04 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

This book was made for the 1939 World's fair in New York. As far as I know, it was sold to tourists visiting the Fair

Kent B

 
At 9:57 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

This is beautiful stuff... nearly priceless.

But why, why is ASIFA spending time and (presumably) money scanning and blogging example after example of cartoon BOOK AND MAGAZINE ILLUSTRATION when it could be scanning and blogging examples of vintage animation art and model sheets?
Don't get me wrong. It is absolutely crucial that the rare, magnificent material that you are archiving be archived. And I'm sure it had an important influence on golden age animators. BUT Cartoon Retro and other sites are already archiving this stuff, or would if the source material were made available to them! For Stimpy's sake, please do something with the ASIFA blog that is more animation-specific!
I want vintage studio drafts, story sketches, the inside pages of that Cupples and Leon Van Beuren Tom and Jerry children's book, and other things that are directly related to an animation archive. Not things that are one, two, or even three degrees removed, regardless of how great they are.

(BTW: I'll be rather miffed if you reply by calling me culturally illiterate. One more time: I think the stuff you're putting up is brilliant. But too much of the time, it's not appropriate. It's like going to a pizza parlor and being given an incredible pep talk for spaghetti. I already appreciate spaghetti. But I came for PIZZA.)

 
At 3:43 AM, Blogger Stephen Worth said...

It's too big of a question to answer right here... but in a nutshell, there are good reasons why we don't just digitize material directly related to animation.

The primary purpose of the ASIFA-Hollywood Animation Archive is to act as the "ultimate artist's clip file", providing inspiration and education to help artists to grow in their work. There are a lot of things that can be learned from studying the motion in classic cartoons frame by frame, but that is something that is difficult to put across on the internet. We aren't able to post many of the over 1000 digitized cartoons in our database online because of bandwidth issues. But those cartoons are available for viewing in the Archive office in Burbank.

When it comes to design, sometimes it's best to look beyond animation to other forms of art. For the past 30 years or so, animation design has consisted of rehashing older designs- with poorer drawing and ignoring the original context. The last thing young artists need to study at this point are the same old model sheets and styles that have been reprocessed and regurgitated so many times already.

What they do need is an understanding of the roots of cartooning in its purest form. John Kricfalusi has been doing a great job at pointing this out in his blog lately. He told his readers, "Don't study my cartoons... study my influences." That's great advice. When the golden age animators studied other cartoons, they came up with generic MIckey Mouse clones and created stock ways of drawing and moving characters. When they looked to Chaplin, Tenggren and the diverse styles of early 20th century newspaper comics, they came up with original approaches that pushed the boundries of how an animated cartoon could look and move.

Model sheets and animation drawings are great, and I will get around to digitizing them as time passes. After all, we've only been working for four months. But first, I want to get people thinking about ways to make animation that looks different from everything that has come before, while providing the same foundation that provided the influences to animators working in the golden age.

That said, there's hardly a lack of animation related posts in the Archive blog... This week, we posted the first part of an interview with Hanna, Barbera and Freleng. We've posted Fleischer and Terry cartoons in their entirety. a pencil test by Art Babbitt, Chad's Design for Animated TV Commericals, amazing animation drawings from the Ray Patin Studios, a section of storyboard from Stimpy's Invention, a Herb Klynn pitch for an unmade animated feature, and Bill Nolan's lessons on how to draw for animated cartoons. Just click on MEDIA or BIOGRAPHY in the masthead and you'll find lots of stuff to browse directly related to animation.

The other purpose of the Archive is to tell the story of the people who made the cartoons. Not all of these people worked in animation throughout their entire careeer. We've done features on Virgil Partch, Eldon Dedini, Milt Stein and Gustaf Tenggren, among many others. These artists all worked in animation for a period of their lives and what they learned from cartoons profoundly influenced their print comics and illustrations. That's part of the broad story of animation's history too.

Lastly, I want to point out again that the ASIFA-Hollywood Animation Archive Blog *isn't* the archive... It's just a report on the progress of the archive. The posts here represent just one day of work, and for every image you see in the blog, there are twenty or more images you don't see here that have been added to the Archive Database.

Since we are just starting on this project, we have the luxury of not having to pick and choose what we add to the archive. Once the collection reaches critical mass, we can focus on filling in the gaps. Right now, we are digitizing what people bring to us. If you have animation related material that you think is important, please digitize it for us, or allow us to digitize it. The Archive isn't something external to the artists it serves. It relies on you to help mold the collection and expand it.

Thanks
Stephen Worth
Director
ASIFA-Hollywood
Animation Archive

 
At 5:20 PM, Blogger david gemmill said...

The great thing about the archive is that there is so much stuff. What you see posted on this blog is only the 2 inch tip of an iceberg the size of of antarctica. Steve's point is a very good one. I am sure a bunch of people in animation already have access to model sheets and older animation artwork through their animation schools, or the studios they work at. there is no need in bastardizing the same designs all the time. If you love animation and cartoons, then you will probably appreciate the techniques and styles of artists who work outside the "animation realm" that steve has been posting and scanning. From my standpoint, i would rather see milt gross comics, than a hanna barbera turnaround of scooby. Another thing is a lot of the stuff that is being posted is very rare and hard to find and much of it young artists like myself have never seen before.

 
At 12:03 AM, Blogger Stephen Worth said...

One other thing...

I have a standing request of the great group of artists who support the archive... I ask them to bring me the material that they have found useful in their own work. This Milt Gross book was provided to us by animation director, Kent Butterworth, and was used as an illustration of a basic cartooning principle by animation director, John Kricfalusi. The Golden Books and Artzybasheff posts were thanks to cartoonist, Mike Fontinelli. Cartoonist Chad Coyle provided the Playboy cartoons. These are the things that fire their creativity to make animation.

If you really don't know what Milt Gross, Erich Sokol or Golden Books have to do with animation, then you need to take a step back and make sure you are thinking like an artist. Don't read the cartoons like a member of the audience, look at the shapes... the composition... the construction and posing of the characters. Look at the colors and see how they are used to create harmonies that express the mood. Look at the poses and expressions of the characters. See how clear and expressive they are. Then think about how you can apply the things you see in the illustrations to your own animation work.

The purpose of this stuff isn't to provide a "cop file" of animation related stuff you can appropriate for your own film... It's to get you to THINK LIKE AN ARTIST. Once you start thinking like an artist, you'll see things in all forms of art and in real life that you can apply to your animation work.

This isn't a trade school that teaches you how to use Maya or teaches you formulas for drawing the generic characters du jour... It's a place where you are exposed to perfect examples of creativity to spark your own creativity. It's important to remember that you are an ARTIST first and foremost. There are enough people in animation who have forgotten that. We don't need any more of them.

Hope this clarifies it a bit more,
Stephen Worth
Director
ASIFA-Hollywood
Animation Archive

 
At 1:36 PM, Blogger Oscar González Loyo said...

Sorry for my bad English...

Your Blog is GREAT!!!!


If you wish to look at my artwork:

http://sketchbookdeogl.blogspot.com

Regards from your Mexican friend!

 

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