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.














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

Stumble It!

Biography: John K Interviews Bill, Joe and Friz Part One

This post is just the tip of the iceberg... see reason number 8 on our The Top Ten Reasons To Support The A-HAA for links to more great info on the careers of great animators.

This post is going to have a lot of words, so I'll keep my comments short. Here is the first installment of a 1992 interview conducted by John Kricfalusi with Bill Hanna, Joe Barbera and Friz Freleng. Rarely do we have the opportunity to listen in as directors speak filmmaker to filmmaker. Although the candidness of some of the comments may surprise you, I think you'll agree that this may be one of the most illuminating interviews on the subject of animation ever conducted. -Stephen Worth

INTRODUCTION by John Kricfalusi

Strictly speaking, the Renaissance was not primarily a forward-looking movement. It turned its back in disgust upon the recent past, called the works of its immediate predecessors "barbaric"... and concentrated its main interest upon those arts which seem to be pervaded with that curious substance known as the "classical" spirit. -Hendrik Van Loon, "Tolerance" 1927

There has lately been a lot of talk of an animation Renaissance. Where is it? It hasn't happened. We're confusing quantity with quality. It could happen. There certainly is a great upsurge of interest in cartoons, especially from adults. We all want it to happen. Animators want it to happen. Studio Executives want it to happen and most importantly; the public wants it to happen.


Luckily we have a great heritage to learn from. In the 1940s, men like Bill Hanna, Joe Barbera, Friz Freleng and their contemporaries, Bob Clampett, Chuck Jones and Tex Avery, brought animated cartoons to their height of glory. They forged America's other great art form. During this period they created a huge stable of the most popular characters (live or otherwise) of all time. Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Tom and Jerry- the MGM and Warner Brothers stars are still successful today, 50 years later. They still make considerable profits for the studios that own them. How did these cartoonists do it? Even more remarkable- why has no one asked them how they did it and why no one is doing it now?

Actually, I should credit Betty Cohen of The Cartoon Network who did ask them for advice. What I heard at that meeting needed to be shared with others, thus this interview. Noe Gold from the Hollywood Reporter and I met with Joe Barbera, Bill Hanna and Friz Freleng in Mr. Barbera's office. I felt like a 14th century Italian who magically found a way to meet with some classical Greeks face to face and ask them directly for their secrets. These fellows were incredibly candid and generous with their knowledge. Some of their statements are revelations; others seem blatantly obvious bits of common sense. If we put some of their techniques into practice and build on them intelligently, rather than continue to ignore the lessons of their superior work, surely we will drag ourselves out of animation's dark ages to experience a renaissance after all. -John Kricfalusi

---

WHO MAKES CARTOONS?

John Kricfalusi: In your opinion, on a cartoon project, who is the key man on the cartoon? Is it the writer, the director? Let's say in the "golden age" of cartoons.

Friz Freleng: If you're trying to find out what it is that made the cartoons what they were in those days, it's easy. The whole secret is that one man controlled it- not a comittee- the director.

John K: How did you men get your start as directors?

Bill Hanna: Hugh Harman and Rudy Ising were making Bosko cartoons. I can still remember that very first Bosko picture and the cels on that. That was back when we used to wash the cels after a picture- wash the painting off and reuse them. Bob Edmond, one of the writers, and I were washing off these cels down in the garage and working on story material as we were washing the cels.

John K: It's interesting how those two jobs link together-- washing cels and writing the stories for a cartoon.

Joe Barbera: Well, that's where the writers are- the bottom of the barrel. At Disney's I heard that the animators were like gods. You had Bill Tytla and Art Babbitt, and Jack Hannah over there. They even had a special dining room. But the writers were way down there somewhere... It was the animators that were the kings of the whole setup.

John K: Well, I guess that's why they call it "animation". In those days how would you get into writing stories? Was that easier to get into?

Friz F: There were no stories really.


JOE'S EARLY DAYS:
FLEISCHER, VAN BEUREN, TERRY

Joe B: You know, I worked at Fleischer's for four days. I was working at a bank and I got to know one of the animators there through an art director at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn where I used to go at night. He called me and asked if I wanted to try out there.

So I took a vacation, and I snuck up there and worked there for four days. For two days, I was painting. But I had magazines with me that I had sold cartoons to, and that made an impression on Dave Fleischer- Max Fleischer's brother. He called me in and a whole committee took a look at me. Dave said, "We've decided we will offer you a dollar a gag for any gag you give us that we use." Can you believe that statement? I could go in there with fifty gags and they might buy one and give me a buck. That's what they thought of creative people. The king-pins were the animators, they didn't even have story men there. They made it up as they went along.

John K:How did you get started directing?

Joe B: Well, it was an evolution. I got into the Van Beuren Studio in New York by telling them I was an animator. Actually, I had never animated. I worked in a bank, and at night I would go home and draw cartoons. It seemed to titillate me when I would see a magazine like a Colliers or a Life or a Judge. So I began drawing cartoons and suddenly they began to buy them. It was very bad times, and finally the bank closed its doors... So, I'm strolling down the street and I meet a fraternity brother, and he says, "Go across the street to 729 7th Avenue and tell them you're an animator." I didn't even know what that meant. So I went in and I had four magazines with me which had my printed material in it. It made enough of an impression on them to decide to hire me.

They walked me into a room and sat me down at a desk with a light board and gave me a scene which had about thirty pages in it, and I stared at it. I didn't know what the heck it was all about. But fortunately, a fella next to me- named Carlo Vinci said, "You don't know what to do, do ya?" I said, "Noooo..." So he said, "Well, I'll show ya..." He put drawing one down and drawing three and showed me the job of an Inbetweener. He said, "You have to make that drawing inbetween these two drawings." He described motion to a degree, and that's how I got started in that end of the business.

Now what happened was I was doing such good work in cleaning up these drawings at the same time, that I graduated up to an assistant- a cleanup man. You know, the animator has one assistant that breaks his stuff down and another one cleans it up... Well, in the meantime, at home at night, I had a light board and I was making up animation. I created animation, working there by myself. I had worked there about a year and a half, and in about six months working on my own, I became an animator. Now that's how I got into animation.

When Van Beuren closed, I started animating at Terrytoons; but what I really wanted to do was story. So on my own, I did a storyboard. I didn't even know what a storyboard was. But Paul Terry had come up with a character he liked called Kiko the Kangaroo- unbelievable! So I did a storyboard of Kiko in a race with Dirty Doug- He was the villain.

View a Kiko the Kangaroo Cartoon, "Farmer Al Falfa's Prize Package".

We finally convinced Terry to let us make a cartoon- Jack Zander and myself and Dan Gordon. We worked on the story at night. One was about pink elephants...

View the cartoon Joe Barbera is referring to, "Pink Elephants".

Back then, I was doing animation mostly, but whenever I got a chance, I would be into the story end of it. Dan Gordon was sketching it up and I was still animating, but my ideas were going into the stories. We were about to become a regular working unit up there, which eventually I became with Bill when we got the offer to go to California. That offer broke the whole thing up.

---

Please see PART TWO of this interview

PLEASE NOTE The text and media files on the ASIFA-Hollywood Animation Archive Blog are not to be duplicated, redistributed or hosted on other websites without the prior written permission of the Board of Directors of ASIFA-Hollywood.

Thanks
Stephen Worth
Director
ASIFA-Hollywood
Animation Archive

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Filmography: Al Falfa's Prize Package 1936

I pulled the video files for the early Terrytoons that Mark Kausler and Jerry Beck donated to the archive to look for the Kiko the Kangaroo cartoon that Joe Barbera mentions in the First Part of the John K Hanna, Barbera and Freleng Interview. Apparently, the storyboard Joe did was never produced, because it doesn't appear in our filmography. Here then instead, is the first Kiko cartoon, one which Joe Barbera certainly animated on, Farmer Al Falfa's Prize Package (1936).








Farmer Al Falfa's Prize Package
(Quicktime 7 / 12 meg)

We have a good strong server, but we occasionally experience traffic spikes. If the movie doesn't stream smoothly, please bookmark us and check back later. It should be back to normal in a day or two. In the meantime, there's a LOT more low bandwidth info of interest to look at on this site. Visit the Archive Homepage, or click on MEDIA in the masthead above for galleries of amazing sketches...

For another great Terrytoon by Joe Barbera, see... Al Falfa In Pink Elephants

PLEASE NOTE The text and media files on the ASIFA-Hollywood Animation Archive Blog are not to be duplicated, redistributed or hosted on other websites without the prior written permission of the Board of Directors of ASIFA-Hollywood.

Thanks
Stephen Worth
Director
ASIFA-Hollywood
Animation Archive

Stumble It!

Media: Cliff Sterrett's Polly And Her Pals 1936

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.


Al Capp once described Cliff Sterrett as "the finest cartoonist of them all". Yet most people have never heard of him or his strip, Polly And Her Pals.

Sterrett debuted the Polly strip in 1912. Initially, it focused on a pretty girl, but as the strip developed, Sterrett turned his attention to Polly's family- specifically, her father, known as "Paw" and her mother, referred to as "Maw". Other characters filled out the cast- Neewah, the family's houseboy; Ashur, the dimwitted nephew; and Carrie, Paw's sister in law. Shadowing Paw through the panels is Kitty, the cat.


Richard Marschall produced a pair of books documenting the Polly And Her Pals Sunday pages from 1926 to 1929. This was the prime era of the strip, with Picasso-esque cubist backgrounds and surreal gags. If you see these books for sale, grab them. By the mid-1930s, Sterrett was afflicted with arthritis, and had turned over a lot of the responsibility for the strip to his assistant, Paul Fung. Sterrett let Fung create the dailies without much input, but he supervised the Sunday pages personally, with Fung simply providing the background detail repeated from panel to panel.

Kent Butterworth brought in a stack of original Sunday pages from 1936 for us to digitize. This era of Polly And Her Pals has never been reprinted, so these delicate originals are particularly important. These oversize sheets are twice as large as the platen on our scanner, so we have to scan them in two passes and splice them together in Photoshop. With the high resolutions we're scanning art at, it takes over an hour to digitize each Sunday page. But I think you'll agree that it's well worth it.

Many thanks to Kent Butterworth for providing these great newspaper comics to us... Another example of wonderful artwork you won't see anywhere else.


January 5, 1936


January 12, 1936


February 2, 1936


February 16, 1936


February 23, 1936


March 29, 1936


April 5, 1936


June 7, 1936


June 28, 1936


July 5, 1936


August 2, 1936


September 13, 1936


September 20th, 1936


September 27th, 1936


October 25th, 1936


November 1st, 1936


November 8th, 1936


November 29th, 1936


December 6th, 1936


December 20th, 1936


December 27th, 1936

For another example of Cliff Sterrett's genius, see Michael Sporn's Splog.

For more great newspaper cartoons, see... Milt Gross Sunday Pages and Dailies Part One, Part Two, Part Three, Part Four, Part Five, Part Six and Part Seven; Chic Young's Blondie, Rube Goldberg's Side Show; George Lichty's Grin and Bear It; and Harrison Cady's Birds' Eye Views

Stephen Worth
Director
ASIFA-Hollywood
Animation Archive

7.9.08
.

Stumble It!

Media: Mel Crawford's Rootie Kazootie Joins The Circus

This post is just the tip of the iceberg... see reason number 3 on our The Top Ten Reasons To Support The A-HAA for links to more great posts about Golden Book illustrators.

Over the weekend, I received a phone call from John Kricfalusi. "You have to come over... I just came across a box full of treats I think you're going to want to scan for the archive." I hopped in the car and headed straight over without delay.

When I got there, John pulled out a sealed box and said, "If this is what I think it is, you're going to be pretty excited." I opened it up and I wasn't disappointed... The box contained a stash of John's favorite Golden Books- rare titles by Gustaf Tenggren, J.P. Miller, Tibor Gergely and Mel Crawford, among others. Every single one was amazing. As John and I dug through the box, flipping through the yellowed pages we had a great time discovering gem after gem. "Hey! Look at this one..." "Check out the colors here!" "Get a load of these textures!"



I asked John which his favorite book was, and he immediately pointed to the Mel Crawford Rootie Kazootie titles. "Crawford was a genius," he explained. "and for some reason, the books he did for 50s puppet shows were his best." I promised John that I would scan one of the Rootie Kazootie books and post it here if he would comment on what he loves about it in his own blog, All Kinds Of Stuff. As soon as he gets a chance to do that, I'll link to his post here. So bookmark this page and come back later to see what he has to say.

In the meantime, here is Mel Crawford's Rootie Kazootie Joins the Circus.


















For more great artwork by Mel Crawford, see Media: Mel Crawford's Golden Books

Mel Crawford is still actively painting. Visit his website... MelCrawford.com. Drop him an email and let him know how much you appreciate his work.

Thanks
Stephen Worth
Director
ASIFA-Hollywood
Animation Archive

Stumble It!

Media: Mexican Lobby Card Fiesta

Here's another reminder to stop by the ASIFA-Hollywood Animation Archive to see our exhibit of Mexican Lobby Cards. The images that we have posted here in our blog just scratch the surface of this wonderful collection.

This is my fourth post on this subject, so I don't need to say much about the subject, except to say "enjoy!" The spirit of fun leaps right off the pages.
















...and another inexpicably weird one!

To see more amazing Mexican Lobby Cards, see our previous posts... The Greatest Cartoonist You've Never Heard Of / The Lobby Cards of Cabral Part Two / More Fun Mexican Lobby Cards.

Stephen Worth
Director
ASIFA-Hollywood
Animation Archive

Stumble It!

Media: Chad's Design For Television (1960)

This post is just the tip of the iceberg... see reason number 8 on our The Top Ten Reasons To Support The A-HAA for links to more great art instruction posts.

Remember those matchbooks that said "Draw Me!" on the front? They advertised a correspondence course called "Famous Artists". Everyone made fun of "draw Binky the Skunk any size but the same size"; but the truth of the matter was that the Famous Artists Course was no laughing matter- it was one of the best art instructional courses ever created.

Founded by Norman Rockwell in the early 1950s, Famous Artists had three courses... Painting, Illustration/Design and Cartooning. Each course consisted of 24 lessons in three oversized binders covering a wide variety of subjects. Each month, a new lesson would arrive in the mail. The student would read the program material, complete the assignment, and mail it back to the school, where a professional artist would critique it and offer suggestions.

To design the courses, Rockwell brought together the top artists of the day... Albert Dorne, Stevan Dohanos, Rube Goldberg, Milton Caniff, Al Capp, Willard Mullen, Virgil Partch, and Whitney Darrow Jr, among others. The result was a correspondence course that puts many current university programs to shame.

There were two editions of the Famous Artists Courses. The first was published in the early fifties, and the second was published almost 10 years later. There were differences between the two, especially in the Design/Illustration course. A concluding chapter written by the cartoonist known simply as "Chad" was added in the second edition. It deals with design for television.

Chad (last name Grothkopf) was eminently qualified to write this chapter. After leaving the Disney Studios in 1938, he was hired by NBC to create the very first commercials for television. At this time, there were approximately fifty television sets in the entire country! Chad also worked in comic books, most notably in Fawcett's Funny Animals series, for which he created the character "Hoppy the Marvel Bunny", a rabbit superhero. He passed away in January of 2005 at the age of 89.

The ASIFA-Hollywood Animation Archive is fortunate to have a complete set of the Famous Artists courses, and we began digitizing them for inclusion in the database today. The first article we scanned was Chad's introduction to the TV design chapter, and his discussion of the storyboard. These scans are quite large, but the size was necessary to clearly reproduce the text and details in this fascinating article. I hope you find them useful.













"In this ever-growing field of television, the visual language is supreme, and the artist is the king. So far, there are no famous artists in this young medium. Maybe you will be one of them." --Chad (1960)

The Famous Artists school is still in operation. Visit their website at www.famous-artists-school.com.

If you found this post to be interesting, see more great educational material in our collection... Willard Mullin on Animals, ZIM's Cartoons and Caricatures and How To Draw Funny Pictures, W. L. Evans Cartooning and Caricature Course Brochure, Lesson One and Lesson Two, Preston Blair and John K's $100K Animation Drawing Course, Gene Byrnes' Complete Guide To Cartooning Part One: The Men Behind The Newspaper Comics, Part Two: How To Get Ideas / Studies of Comic Strips, Part Three: Single Panel and Sports Cartoonists, Part Four: Editorial Cartoons & Comic Books, Part Five: Sketching, Part Six: Magazine Cartooning and Part Seven: Magazine Cartooning (continued); Nat Falk's "How To Make Animated Cartoons" Part One: The History of Animation, Part Two: The Cartoon Studios, Part Three: How Cartoons Are Made, Part Four: How To Draw Cartoons and Part Five: How To Animate.

Stephen Worth
Director
ASIFA-Hollywood
Animation Archive

7.3.08
.

Stumble It!

Media: Three More Early Tenggren Books

This post is just the tip of the iceberg... see reason number 6 on our The Top Ten Reasons To Support The A-HAA for links to more great posts about golden age illustration.

Today, we digitized the illustrations from three more early books by Gustaf Tenggren. Tenggren was a key concept artist on Snow White and Pinocchio, and it's clear that the Disney artists looked to his work for inspiration in establishing the Disney feature style.

As we scan more books, we are able to find interesting parallels. For instance, it's interesting to compare Tenggren's approach to Hawthorne's "Tanglewood Tales" to Dulac's highly stylized version.


And a similar comparison between Tenggren's approach to a battle scene and the way Kay Nielsen handled the same subject in East of the Sun, West of the Moon.


We can also compare Tenggren's early "Juan And Juanita" to his treatment of an almost identical subject in a totally different style in the Golden Book, "The Little Trapper".


We can also see similarities to Tenggren's contemporary book, Small Fry And The Winged Horse.


As our database fills out, more and more interesting comparisons and relationships like this will become apparent. That's one of the most exciting things about the ASIFA-Hollywood Animation Archive Project. The information has always existed, but gathering it all together in one place, and making it searchable will add a level of understanding that has never been possible before. Stay tuned. It will get even better!

Here then, are three more books by the great artist, Gustaf Tenggren...




















For more incredible illustration by Gustaf Tenggren, see... Tenggren's Tell It Again Book Part One and Part Two, D'Aulnoy Fairy Tales and The Good Dog Book, Tenggren's Grimms Fairy Tales Part One and Part Two, Heidi, Wonderbook and Juan & Juanita, and Sing For Christmas.

See also... Einar Norelius' Bland Tomtar Och Troll 1929 and 1934, John Bauer's Bland Tomtar Och Troll 1917, More Norelius and Bauer, Arthur Rackham's Grimm's Fairy Tales Part One and Part Two, Kay Nielsen's East of the Sun and West of the Moon and Hansel & Gretel, Dulac's H.C. Andersen Part One and Part Two.

Stephen Worth
Director
ASIFA-Hollywood
Animation Archive

7.2.08
.

Stumble It!

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

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 continues... If this is the first you've seen of it, check out Part One first.


















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

John Kricfalusi recently wrote an article titled Two Types Of Cartoonists- Origin Of Styles that discusses the two schools of cartooning in the early days that formed the foundation for all cartooning that follows. He uses T.S. Sullivant and Milt Gross to exemplify those two styles. It's fascinating reading. Check This Article out at John's blog, All Kinds Of Stuff.

Stephen Worth
Director
ASIFA-Hollywood
Animation Archive

Stumble It!

Meta: Eight Great Blogs For Students Of Animation

Lately, there has been a lot of activity in the "blogosphere" related to design and animation history. I want to quickly bring a few blogs to your attention that you should add to your bookmarks. I've limited this list to the blogs that provide the best resources for information on animation history, analysis and design for students. There are many other great news and personal artist sites to explore as well. In no particular order...

John Kricfalusi's ALL KINDS OF STUFF

John K's blog is swiftly rising to the top of the traffic rankings, and for good reason... He's packing it full of amazing drawings and solid information. His analysis of style in animation surpasses that of anything currently in print. Post by post, he's laying the groundwork for a broadly arching theory about the creative process that taps upon the whole history of cartooning, from T. S. Sullivant and Milt Gross all the way through the present day. I really don't need to say anything else about John's blog, except to say that it is essential reading for all animators.

Michael Sporn's SPLOG

Michael Sporn's Splog is to independent animation what John K's blog is to cartoons. Sporn has had a long career in animation, going all the way back to the days before he opened his own studio, when he worked with John and Faith Hubley, Richard Williams and R. O. Blechman. His blog is anecdotal and varied, as a forum for a creative artist's reflections should be, with commentary on the current animation scene, reflections on his own past work, and analysis of the importance of great animators from the past. Sporn's understanding and appreciation of the art of animation radiates through every post.

Jenny Lerew's BLACKWING DIARIES

Jenny Lerew's blog is indispensable reading for all animators for two reasons... First, for the well articulated analysis of the creative process in animation. Her articles on the art of pitching a storyboard, the importance of simplicity, and the need for likeable and honest protagonists in animated features are clear and direct and derive from practical experience and a firm foundation in the history of the medium. Secondly, her research into the life and work of Freddie Moore has been shining new light on a major talent. Moore's work illustrates vividly what is missing from a lot of animation today. Students of animation would be well advised to follow Jenny Lerew's blog closely.

Marc Deckter's DUCK WALK

Marc Deckter is one of the handful of people who form the core of the ASIFA-Hollywood Animation Archive project. He's an animator himself, and has great appreciation for the history of the artform. He recently became inspired to create his own blog, Duck Walk. Although there are just a few postings so far, his article on rubber hose animation, and his collection of images by T.S. Sullivant are already tops on my list of great blog postings. Marc donates time each week to help us catalog the material being inducted into our digital archive. Through his work at the archive, he sees more cartoons and artwork than anyone else in town. You'll want to read what he has to say about all of it.

Clarke Snyder's INSPIRATION GRAB BAG

Clarke Snyder's approach to animation blogging is very similar to my own. In each of his postings, he focuses on a single artist or film. He provides an introduction to put the work in context, and then provides a long stack of jaw droppingly beautiful images. He's done features on many of my favorites... Virgil Partch, Mel Crawford, Floyd Gottfredson, and Milt Gross... as well as some of the best looking animated films ever made... Gerald McBoing Boing, Deputy Droopy and Betty Boop in Old Man of the Mountain. If you find the ASIFA-Hollywood Animation Archive Blog to be useful, you need to follow this one as well.

Amid Amidi's CARTOON MODERN

Amid Amidi has been working on a book dealing with 50s animation design for several years now. I shared some of my own original artwork from UPA with him back when he was first starting on the project- including the model stat on the right. Since then, he has amassed a remarkable amount of information on an area of animation that has been relegated to the back chapter of too many history books for too long. The stories of Disney and WB have been told... It's time for books that tell the rest of the story. Cartoon Modern features info on great artists like Bobe Cannon, Ed Benedict, Mary Blair and Tom Oreb. The focus is on a very narrow time frame and range of styles, but it's invaluable research into an area that's been neglected in the past.

Dan Goodsell's A SAMPLER OF THINGS

Dan Goodsell, the author of Krazy Kids' Food! Vintage Food Graphics for Taschen, was our first Archive Alliance member. Dan's personal collection of pop culture graphics, cereal mascot material, and just plain crazy wonderful stuff is monumental. His blog, A Sampler of Things is a showcase for his own comic work, The Imaginary World of Mr. Toast, and a way to share images of material from his collection. Dan's eye for quality is unerring, and he has grouped items from his collection to reveal a context that one wouldn't normally be able to discern viewing them in everyday life. Organization of objects into a group that is more important than the sum of its parts is the mark of a truly brilliant collector.

P-E Fronning's group blog, MARTIN KLASCH and his scrapbook blog MUSSELSOPPANS VANNER

I know nothing at all about P-E Fronning except that he lives in Sweden, and his blogs consistently unearth remarkable examples of photography, illustration, industrial design, popular culture, animation and comics. It's rare when every single posting in a blog fascinates me, but this blog succeeds at that. I could easily spend an entire day just navigating through all the links in the sidebar. Along with Boing Boing, this is the blog I find myself reading most often.

These are just a few of my favorite blogs. You'll find more, including great animation news sites and artists' personal blogs in my Technorati Blogroll.

Stephen Worth
Director
ASIFA-Hollywood
Animation Archive

Stumble It!

Media: Milt Stein's Supermouse Comics No 4

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 comics.

Funny animal comics don't get enough respect.

Many incredibly talented artists worked in funny animal comics... some, like Kurtzman and Frazetta, went on to fame in other genres. Yet the only artist working in this field that most people are familiar with is Carl Barks. Uncle Scrooge comics are fine, but they're just the tip of the iceberg. In the 1940s and 50s, there was a wealth of funny animal comics all drawn in completely unique styles. I have to admit that comics aren't my strong suit, but when I see a comic like this one, I want to know more about the people responsible for them.

Here is Supermouse Comics number 4, drawn by Milt Stein. Little is known about Stein's career. Tom Sito points out that he was an animator at Famous for a time, and he worked on Tubby the Tuba for Dr. Alexander Shure's Westbury Long Island Company, the tradtional forerunner of NY Tech's Computer Animation Program. He committed suicide in 1977. Milton Knight adds, that Stein "animated some very expressive scenes at Terry in the early 40s (the girl mouse puppet in Down With Cats). And in the 60s, he animated the humorous characters on an independent TV pilot that Jerry Beck likes to include in his "Worst" ASIFA shows, titled Cosmic Raymond. I think Stein was one of the most neglected artists of all time; and he drew far better than Barks!"

If anyone else with expertise in this area are reading, please post what you know about Stein into the comments field and I'll add your info to this post too.



















Thanks to Kent Butterworth for donating these scans to the Archive.

If you enjoyed this post, see... Milt Stein's Supermouse Comics Part Two; Jim Tyer Funny Animal Comics; Harvey Kurtzman Comics; Harvey Eisenberg's Foxy Fagan; Virgil Partch's Here We Go Again, The Wild Wild Women and Man The Beast. Milt Gross Sunday Pages Part One, Part Two and Part Three; Basil Wolverton's Powerhouse Pepper; Basil Wolverton On Cartoon Sounds Part One and Part Two; and Milton Knight's Great Brown Pericord Motor.

Stephen Worth
Director
ASIFA-Hollywood
Animation Archive

6.26.08
.

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Media: Milt Gross' Cartoon Tour of New York

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.


It's especially gratifying when an animation professional stumbles across this blog and immediately grasps what it is we're doing and how important it is to the art of animation. A while back, animation director, Kent Butterworth (www.attilatheham.com) was doing a web search for Ralph Bakshi and found our post on Ralph's Phone Doodles. Kent was excited by what he saw and bounced around the site, discovering that the archive is located less than a mile from his home. It was a Tuesday afternoon, so he jumped in the car and came right over to see what we were doing. I gave him the tour and explained how the database we are building is intended to work, and he was behind the concept 100 percent. On Thursday he was back, with a stack of books and comics to allow us to digitize.

Kent's collection is amazing, and the scope is huge. He brought a hard drive full of scans of vintage comic books by dozens of great artists, 40s Colliers magazines with Virgil Partch cartoons, original Sunday pages by Cliff Sterrett, and a book I've never seen before... Milt Gross' Cartoon Tour of New York.

Milt Gross is one of the greatest comic artists who ever lived. His books Nize Baby, He Done Her Wrong and Dunt Esk are classics of ethnic New York humor. His drawing style is direct and funny with absolutely flawless staging, composition and expression. Gross's Cartoon Tour of New York was published as a program guide for tourists visiting the 1939 New York World's Fair, and it's an amazing time capsule into life in the "big apple" in its golden age. If Weegee's Naked City depicts the front page view of this marvellous time and place, Gross' Cartoon Tour tells the Funny Pages version.

A lot of this book appears to have been drawn by Milt Gross' assistant, but there's still plenty of joy in ever panel. Here are scans of the entire book. Enjoy!










































Many thanks to Kent Butterworth for sharing this great book with us!

For more Milt Gross cartoon goodness, see... Milt Gross Sunday Pages and Dailies Part One, Part Two, Part Three, Part Four, Part Five, Part Six and Part Seven. Also see... Chic Young's Blondie, Rube Goldberg's Side Show; George Lichty's Grin and Bear It, Cliff Sterrett's Polly & Her Pals Part One, Part Two and Part Three; and Harrison Cady's Birds' Eye Views

Thanks
Stephen Worth
Director
ASIFA-Hollywood
Animation Archive

6.28.08
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Biography: Dick Brown Retrospective

The more I learn about the history of animation, the more surprises I uncover... The other day, Margaret Kerry Willcox brought in some old 3/4 inch videotapes to be digitized. One of the tapes had a demo reel on it that blew my mind and changed the way I thought about one of the early TV cartoon pioneers, Dick Brown.



I knew that Margaret had been married to Brown, and that she had provided the voice (and live action lips!) of Spinner in the classic TV cartoon series Clutch Cargo. I knew that Brown also produced a couple of other series using the "Syncrovox" system of combining live action mouths with cartoon heads... Captain Fathom and Space Angel. I knew that both Alex Toth and Doug Wildey worked on Space Angel, and they would go on to create Jonny Quest. But one of Margaret's dusty old 3/4 inch tapes showed me that I didn't know the half of it.



Did you know that Dick Brown made a functional horizontal multiplane out of sliding glass doors? Did you know that he produced the first half time special for the Super Bowl? Did you know that he pioneered computer graphics and flying logos on the General Electric Genegraphics system as early as 1971? Well I didn't until I saw this demo reel. It includes clips from his animated feature, Button Willow; an episode of the half time special cartoon, Freddie the Football; and never before seen pilot cartoons for the unmade series, Golden Eagle and Dinosaur Island.



Just as a sample, here is a Quicktime movie of the unsold pilot for Golden Eagle. It includes several beautiful multiplane shots using Brown's horizontal multiplane stand...

Golden Eagle Pilot
(Quicktime 7 / 5 megs)

Many thanks to Margaret for sharing this amazing treasure with the Archive.

Stephen Worth
Director
ASIFA-Hollywood
Animation Archive

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Media: Grammar of Ornament Part Two

Today, we continue posting the color plates from a 1910 printing of the first comprehensive book on design, Owen Jones's "The Grammar of Ornament". For our first collection of images, see Grammar of Ornament Part One,

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GENERAL PRINCIPLES IN THE ARRANGEMENT OF FORM AND COLOR IN ARCHITECTURE AND THE DECORATIVE ARTS, WHICH ARE ADVOCATED THROUGHOUT THIS WORK

Proposition 1: The Decorative Arts arise from, and should properly be attendant upon, Architecture.

Proposition 2: Architecture is the material expression of the wants, the faculties, and the sentiments, of the age in which it is created.

Proposition 3: As Architecture, so all works of the Decorative Arts, should possess fitness, proportion, harmony, the result of all which is repose.

Proposition 4: True beauty results from that repose which the mind feels when the eye, the intellect, and the affections, are satisfied from the absence of any want.

ASSYRIAN AND PERSIAN ORNAMENT







GENERAL PRINCIPLES (cont)

Proposition 5: Construction should be decorated. Decoration should never be purposely constructed. That which is beautiful is true; that which is true must be beautiful.

Proposition 6: Beauty of form is produced by lines growing out one from the other in gradual undulations; there are no excrescences; nothing could be removed and leave the design equally good or better.

Proposition 7: The general forms being first cared for, these should be subdivided and ornamented by general lines; the interstices may then be filled in with ornament, which again may be subdivided and enriched for closer inspection.

GREEK ORNAMENT





GENERAL PRINCIPLES (cont)

Proposition 8: All ornament should be based on a geometrical construction.

Proposition 9: As in every perfect work of Architecture, a true proportion will be found to reign between all the members which compose it, so throughout the Decorative Arts ever assemblage of forms should be arranged on certain definite proportions; the whole and each particular member should be a multiple of some simple unit. Those proportions will be the most beautiful which it will be most difficult for the eye to detect.

Proposition 10: Harmony of form consists in the proper balanceing, and contrast of, the straight, the inclined, and the curved.









GENERAL PRINCIPLES (cont)

Proposition 11: In surface decoration all lines should flow out of a perfect stem. Every ornament, however distant, should be traced to its branch and root. (Oriental practice)

Proposition 12: All junctions of curved lines with curved or of curved lines with straight should be tangential to each other. (Natural law)

Proposition 13: Flowers or other natural objects should not be used as ornaments, but conventional representations founded upon them sufficiently suggestive to convey the intended image to the mind, without destroying the unity of the object they are employed to decorate. (Universally obeyed in the best periods of Art, equally violated when Art declines.)





GENERAL PRINCIPLES (cont)

Proposition 14: Colour is used to assist in the development of form, and to distinguish objects or parts of objects one from another.

Proposition 15: Colour is used to assist light and shade, helping the undulations of form by the proper distribution of the several colours.

Proposition 16: Those objects are best attained by the use of the primary colours on small surfaces and in small quantities, balanced and supported by the secondary and tertiary colours on the larger masses.

Proposition 17: The primary colours should be used on the upper portions of objects, the secondary and tertiary on the lower.

POMPEIAN ORNAMENT







GENERAL PRINCIPLES (cont)

Proposition 18: The primaries of equal intensities will harmonise or neutralise each other, in the proportions of 3 yellow, 5 red, and 8 blue- integrally as 16. The secondaries in the proportions of 8 orange, 13 purple, 11 green- integrally as 32. The tertiaries, citrine (compound of orange and green) 19, russet (orange and purple) 21, olive (green and purple) 24- integrally as 64.

Proposition 19: When a full colour is contrasted with another of a lower tone, the volume of the latter must be proportionally incerased.

Proposition 20: When a primary tinged with another primary is contrasted with a secondary, the secondary must have a hue of the third primary.

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For more beautiful designs from this amazing book, see Grammar of Ornament Part One and Part Three.

Thanks
Stephen Worth
Director
ASIFA-Hollywood
Animation Archive

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Meta: Animation's 100th Birthday Party

Last night's birthday party for animation was a huge success. We estimate we had between 60 and 75 people packed into the archive over the course of the evening. I'm not great with names (I often forget my own!) so I'll fill in what I know right now. If you see yourself or someone you know, email me the info and I'll add it. If you have more pictures, email them to me so I can share them here. Thanks for the wonderful turnout! --Stephen Worth sworth@animationarchive.org


The ASIFA-Hollywood Animation Archive
2114 Burbank Bl in Burbank


Jim Smith, the man who brought you Ren & Stimpy's
Untamed World, and soon to bring you Chestacles,
with Bob Miller and Fred Ladd in the background.


Kevin Koch, president of Archive Sponsor, The Animation Guild.
To the left is animation recruiter, Pam Thompson.


Bronnie Barry and director, Bruce Woodside


Mike Fontanelli, whose comic "Barber Shop" has been
featured at John K's blog All Kinds of Stuff shares a laugh
with his buddies Mark Shirmeister and ASIFA-Hollywood
president, Antran Manoogian


Animation Nation stalwart, Eric Hedman
samples a hot dog with Jack Daniels mustard.


The man who put the whole party together,
Archive volunteer Marc Deckter, who has
a new blog, called Duck Walk.


Luke Cormican and Katie Rice,
from the brilliant blog Funny Cute
along with a sly looking David Gemmill,
the proprietor of the CartoonDavid Blog..
Thanks to independent film producer and director, Kent Butterworth (Atilla the Ham) for taking these great pictures!.

Two more pictures from Marc Deckter!


The cake! (It was a lot bigger than it looks here.)


Expert hot doggery by Wienermeister,
Jon the Food Slob of Hot Dog Spot..

Thanks
Stephen Worth
Director
ASIFA-Hollywood
Animation Archive

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Media: Grammar of Ornament Part One

This post is just the tip of the iceberg... see reason number 8 on our The Top Ten Reasons To Support The A-HAA for links to more great art instruction posts.

Today, we began digitizing a 1910 printing of the first comprehensive book on design, Owen Jones's "The Grammar of Ornament". Originally published in 1856, this book is one of the holy grails of art reference books. In 112 oversize chromolithographic plates, Jones collects representative samples of ornamental design from all over the world. It's a veritable enyclopedia of pattern, contrasts and color harmony, with an almost mathematical perfection of form. The copy we are digitizing from is missing 20 plates, but the ones that remain are stunning. This book has been reprinted over the years, but none of the reissues match the original printings for image quality. Unfortunately, vintage copies of this book complete and in good condition sell for thousands of dollars, so we are very lucky to be able to bring this to you.

I've made the clickable images a bit larger this time, because of the detail required to reproduce the complex patterns and shapes in these designs. If you would like to see more of this book, let me know by clicking on the comments at the bottom of the post.

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FROM THE PREFACE

In the following chapters I have endeavoured to establish these main facts-

First. That whenever any style of ornament commands universal admiration, it will always be found to be in accordance with the laws which regulate the distribution of form in nature.

Secondly. That however varied the manifestations in accordance with these laws, the leading ideas on which they are based are very few.

Thirdly. That the modifications and developments which have taken place from one style to another have been caused by a sudden thowing off of some fixed trammel, which set thought free for a time, till the new idea, like the old, became again fixed, to give birth in its turn to fresh inventions.

Lastly. I have endeavoured to show, in the twentieth chapter, that the future progress of Ornamental Art may be best secured by engrafting on the experience of the past the knowledge we may obtain by a return to Nature for fresh inspiration. To attempt to build up theories of art, or to form a style, independently of the past, would be an act of supreme folly. It would be at once to reject the experiences and accumulated knowledge of thousands of years. On the contrary, we should regard as our inheritance all the successful labours of the past, not blindly following them, but employing them simply as guides to find the true path. --Owen Jones

ORNAMENT OF SAVAGE TRIBES

From the universal testimony of travellers it would appear, that there is scarcely a people, in however early a stage of civilization, with whom the desire for ornament is not a strong instinct. The desire is absent in none, and it grows and increases with all in the ratio of their progress in civilisation. Man appears everywhere impressed with the beauties of Nature which surround him, and seeks to imitate to the extent of his power the works of the creator.

Man's earliest ambition is to create. To this feeling must be ascribed the tattooing of the human face and body, resorted to by the savage to increase the expression by which he seeks to strike terror on his enemies or rivals, or to create what appears to him a new beauty. As we advance higher, from the decoration of the rude hut or wigwam to the sublime works of a Phidias and Praxiteles, the same feeling is everywhere apparent: the highest ambition is still to create, to stamp on this earth the impress of an individual mind.







EGYPTIAN ORNAMENT

The Architecture of Egypt has this peculiarity over all other styles, that the more ancient the monument, the more perfect is the art. Monuments erected two thousand years before the Christian era are formed from the ruins of still more ancient and more perfect buildings. We are thus carried back to a period too remote from our own time to enable us to discover any trace of its origin; and whilst we can trace in direct succession from this great parent, we must believe the architecture of Egypt to be a pure original style, which arose with civilisation in Central Africa, passed through countless ages, to the culminatiing point of perfection and the state of decline in which we see it.

The lotus and papyrus, growing on the banks of the river, symbolising the food for the body and mind; the feathers of rare birds, which were carried before the king as emblems of sovereignty; the palm-branch, with the twisted cord made from its stems; these are the few types which form the basis of that immense variety of ornament with which the Egyptians decorated the temples of their gods, the palaces of their kings, the covering of their persons, their articles of luxury or of more modest daily use, from the wooden spoon which fed them to the boat which carried their similarly adorned embalmed bodies across the Nile to their last home in the valley of the dead.





We may imagine it the custom of the Egyptians in early times to decorate the wooden posts of their primitive temples with their native flowers tied round them; and this custom, when their art took a more permanent character, became solidified in ther monuments of stone. The lotus and papyrus form the type of fifteen of the capitals we have selected for illustration; yet how ingeniously varied, and what a lesson do they teach us!





Egyptian ornament which is simply decorative, or which appears so to our eyes, but which doubtless has its own laws and reasons for its application, although they are not apparent to us. Plates VIII, IX, X, XI are devoted to this class of ornament, and are from paintings on tombs, dresses, utensils and sarcophagi. They are all distinguished by graceful symmetry and perfect distribution. The variety that can be produced by the few simple types we have referred to is remarkable. On Plate IX are patterns of ceilings, and apear to be reproductions of woven patterns. Side by side with the conventional rendering of actual things, the first attempts of any people to produce works of ornament take this direction.

The formation of patterns by the equal division of similar lines, as by weaving, would give to a rising people the first notions of symmetry, arrangement, disposition, and the distribution of masses. The Egyptians, in their decoration of large surfaces, never appear to have gone beyond a geometrical arrangement. Flowing lines are very rare, comparitively, and never the motive of the composition, though the germ of even this mode of decoration, the volute form, exists in their rope ornament.











We venture, therefore, to claim for the Egyptian style, that though the oldest, it is, in all that is requisite to constitute a true style of art, the most perfect. The language in which it reveals itself to us may seem foreign, peculiar, formal and rigid; but the ideas and the teachings it conveys to us are of the soundest. As we proceed with other styles, we shall see that they approach perfection only so far as they followed, in common with the Egyptians, the true principles to be observed in every flower that grows.

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If you are a student, you might want to print the large size pages out. There's a wealth of design and color inspiration in these illustrations.

For more beautiful designs from this amazing book, see Grammar of Ornament Part Two and Part Three.


Thanks
Stephen Worth
Director
ASIFA-Hollywood
Animation Archive

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