Opinion: Bakshi on 2D vs. 3D

ASIFA-Hollywood is honored to post this article by the legendary animation director Ralph Bakshi. Ralph has retired to New Mexico to paint, but he is still very much in touch with the animation scene today. In this article, Ralph addresses animators in both the 2D and 3D fields, and points the direction that he thinks animation should take in the future. -Stephen Worth


The paintings on this page are by Ralph Bakshi. (© Bakshi) To see more of Ralph's work, visit RalphBakshi.com

BAKSHI ON 2D vs 3D

First of all, when it comes to controversy over 2D vs. 3D, I'm in no particular camp. I think computer animation is amazing. Some of the Japanese hand drawn animation I've seen is great too. John K. was a breath of fresh air for animation. But the discussion always comes down to the same one I always have with the young kids in the industry- the starving ones with mortgages to pay. When I see the end credits on big studio animated films, I'm floored by the amount of people it takes to finish a film. The cost to make the first 20 minutes of your modern animated feature would comprise the entire budgets of all of my first six films put together. Hard to believe but true!


It's probably inconceivable to you guys, but I made my feature films with no pencil tests, no storyboards, no retakes, no color keys, no character designers, no special effects department, nothing, zip, nada- because we had to. (How I did that is another discussion altogether.) I was my own animation director- everything came to me. I flipped the drawings and gave the OK. God bless the professionalism of Irv Spence, John Sparey, Ambi Paliwoda, Virgil Ross, Manny Perez... all those guys who animated for me, because they're the ones that made it all come alive.


I'll tell you a secret... Not having pencil tests was liberating for the animators who worked for me. They knew I was expecting creativity, not perfection. I wasn't gonna be standing over the moviola looking at their tests saying, "raise that pinkie finger a little higher" or "fix that lip flap". There was no room for retakes. Knowing that made them unafraid. No one was going to look over their shoulder and second guess them. They puzzled out the scene, expressed themselves through the character, and moved on to the next scene. You better believe- they loved it!

When I was young, I had a dream- and a rage over Disney's insistence that nothing worked on the big screen unless it was perfect- redone and reworked until it was flawless. I always thought the difference between my films and the Disney ones was the difference between rock n' roll and a symphony. I love them both if the music is right. But a lot of spoiled animators claimed that I was ruining every young kid's life with my rough animation- and that Terry-Toons and I were nothing. I didn't listen to them, because I always felt that honesty, leaving the pack, telling stories that were part of the director's personal life and not some merchandiser's idea- all those things were more important than Disney's insistence on perfect animation.

OK. Let's talk animation. First of all, I want to talk to you drawing type animators...

When I hear 2D animators today talking about acting in hand-drawn cartoons, I ask, what kind of acting? Are you talking about the old fashioned acting that animators have always done? You know... the hand on the hip, finger-pointing, broad action, lots of overlapping action, screeching to a halt- all that turn-of-the-century old fashioned mime stuff. Is that what you're talking about? Well, forget about it. If you're gonna compete with computer animation, you better go all out and do something that's totally different. Call it "new acting". Blow the computer out of the water. Sure, Milt Kahl, Irv Spence, Bill Tytla and all those guys were great. Leave them alone. They've done their job. It would just seem old to do the exact same thing today. Find something new to call your own- something exciting as hell.


To you computer guys...

I'm supposed to scold you computer animators and tell you to think more like the hand drawn guys. Well, there's no question hand drawn animation is different than CGI, motion capture or rotoscope, or even limited animation. Yes, computer animators CAN learn a lot from hand drawn if they know where to look. Maybe... maybe... maybe...

Some history- Early on, hand drawn was great- Fleischer's Popeye, Jim Tyer, Freddie Moore, Rod Scribner, Bill Tytla, Johnny Gent... the direct, fresh stuff. But then suddenly, along came "real good animation" with all its complication, and the long painful looks, big shrugs and sighs, batting eyelashes, cutesy pie phony crap until you want to vomit... Overnight, all the old greats were forced to either kill themselves, stay drunk all the time, or quickly fade away. Animation got saddled with a bunch of boring, repetitive, old fashioned, dumb cliches. I am NOT going to tell computer animation to follow that road. Sure, computer animators should look at hand drawn animation to learn. But don't get down on your knees. Don't make the same mistakes hand drawn animation made at the end. Study the right stuff. There's a hell of a lot more to learn from a Fleischer Popeye than there is from some "epic fantasy" like Prince of Egypt.


So I'm sitting in the theater watching a rat trying to cook some food. Now he's trying to get out the window... I blink with amazement at the brilliance of your computer, but wait a minute... This is nothing more than a Disney film made with a computer! Your bosses must have MADE you do this. Where do you guys think you're headed? Do you really think copying Disney films over and over isn't going to get just as boring as the boring Disney films you're copying? You've got all these great computers... show me something I haven't seen a million times already. I have things in my head that the computer could do that would stun you. (But don't worry. I got turned down by every studio in town.)


Listen. I'm talking to that bunch of you computer guys out there who want to crawl into a basement with a big stack of machines and kick ass- the guys who want to do something NEW and DIFFERENT. Don't worry about the money. You're not getting paid that much anyway. If your characters shake and spit the colors off in some scenes- great. It doesn't matter. And if some of the textures jiggle a little, who cares? Back in the day, I heard animators critique the animation in my films as being "too ruff". Well, we didn't like it all either- but we LOVED what we were making- Fritz the Cat, Heavy Traffic, Coonskin, Hey Good Lookin', Wizards- thirty years later and they're still playing worldwide, because they were honest and rugged. The animation didn't take away from the movie like the slick stuff I see in hand drawn animation at the end. Something REAL is always better than something realistic.


OK. Now I'm talking to ALL animators- with a computer or with a pencil...

Here's a guy you could all learn a trick or two from... John Kricfalusi. Why is John Kricfalusi so great? Why do people copy John's stuff but never seem to really get it? Great draftsmen have tried and failed to imitate him. How the hell does he do it?

Well, when I first let John direct, it was an amazing thing to watch. It wasn't the way he combed his hair and it wasn't the way he tried to hustle me. John was a one-of-a-kind. When one of John's characters pointed a finger, it REALLY pointed. It pointed like no other finger in no other cartoon ever pointed before. When John drew the curve of an ankle on a girl character, it was like no ankle curve I ever saw before. Everybody thinks John's style is what sets him apart. It isn't about his style... it's not about the color... it's not about the jokes... it's not about the expressions... it's not the voices... Don't imitate that stuff. If I hear another fake John K cartoon voice I think I'm gonna scream!


The thing that put John so far ahead of the pack was his originality. His poses were fresh and they jumped off the sheet at you. They lived and breathed and acted in a way that wasn't like anything that came before. Every drawing was brand new for him. He thought things out for himself, expressed his own ideas, and didn't keep rehashing someone else's tired old cheats. John's brilliant posing took animation to another level, and animators would be smart if they followed his lead. BUT HEAR THIS... Don't imitate his creations. Imitate his creativity.

There are no sides here, only techniques. The important thing is to do something more than just sell dolls and hamburgers, or get the best table at some bullshit restaurant. Stop crying. Go out and do something. Starve to death if you have to. It's honorable.

Go buy my book. Read more. Learn more. Get mad at me again.
Old Man Ralph

© Bakshi Productions


Click for more Bakshi Phone Doodles
This article has been translated into Persian.

If you found this article interesting, see... Imitation vs. Inspiration: Chaplin's Shadow / The Application Of Inspiration / How To Properly Use Reference / Incorporating Natural Forms / (Visual) Literacy / Why Do We Need An Animation Archive? / Parody: Whack! Comics

UNFILTERED: The Complete Ralph Bakshi isn't one of those "art books" with postage stamp sized pictures floating in oceans of tasteful white space and huge text blocks of scholarly blather that crowds out the images. It's just pictures, pictures and more pictures... along with just enough text to put them in context. The book is organized to show Ralph's career from his earliest days at Terry-Toons, to his groundbreaking features, to his revolutionary TV work, to his most recent fine art paintings. Even if you think you know all there is to know about Bakshi, this book will grab you by the lapels and shake you and show you things you've never seen the likes of before. Click through the link to pick up the Bakshi book at Amazon.
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Design: John K On Character Design

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.


Click for more great designs by John K.
Today, John Kricfalusi has posted another great article on his blog, All Kinds of Stuff. You owe it to yourself to check it out. If you're a student, you'd be smart to print articles like this out and organize them in a binder for easy reference.

ALL KINDS OF STUFF: CHARACTER DESIGN PRIMER

Another example of how blogging is changing the face of animation.

Thanks, John!
Stephen Worth
Director
ASIFA-Hollywood
Animation Archive
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Comics: Basil Wolverton On Cartoon Sounds

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.


Last week, archive supporter Marc Schirmeister stopped by with a stack of rare fanzines from the late 1960s and early 70s. Included among them were two great issues of Graphic Story Magazine devoted to Wolverton.


Here is an article Wolverton wrote in 1948 for the Daily Oregonian...



ACOUSTICS IN THE COMICS
By Basil Wolverton

The so called comic strip on my drawing board showed a heavy horse stepping on a bozo's bean. The horse was tramping on the guy's head in a delicate way, of course, so the situation would be more entertaining than grusome- depending on the reader's sense of humor. But, like an old silent movie, the cartoon needed something, and that something was sound. There had to be a heavily lettered word oozing out from the exact point of contact between the horse's hoofs and the man's head. Thus the reader, pronouncing that sound word to himself, would actually hear within his mind the excitingly comical noise that would eminate from such action.


Summoning both brain cells hurriedly together, I tried desperately to imagine just what sort of sound would ensue if a nag were to step on someone's skull. The word CRUNCH popped into my mind. Then CRONCH. Then CRANCH. I settled for CRANCH because somehow it seemed more refined. But before I could letter the word on the cartoon, I suddenly recalled my latest unhappy interview with the person who publishes my comic strips.


"I want realism!" he had bellowed. "No more of this wild imaginitive stuff that's causing some people to want to ban our comic books! From now on, get that realism in there, and your strips will be horribly funny! Then the readers will go into hysterics and laugh like crazy, and our books will be acclaimed the most laugh provoking on the stands!" That meant that an imaginative word like CRANCH was taboo. It was up to me to get the real sound word. I looked furtively about as a preposterous plan permeated my pate.

It was easy to rent a horse. It wasn't as easy to argue my brother in law into placing his pan on the pavement, and letting me ride the nag over his noggin. "Horses are so heavy!" he foolishly kept countering. "Besides, I have a cold sore." As he waddled away, I realized my plan was hopeless- until he stumbled over something in the street. Before he could pull his chin out of the asphalt, I had steered the rented mare over him, and her hind hoof scored a bull's eye on his bare bean.

The sound? It was far from CRANCH. The real thing turned out to be SLORNK. It was a sort of a slippery liquid sound. That was probably because my brother in law has oily skin and a thin skull. With the noxious noise fresh in mind, I streaked into my studio and feverishly lettered the word SLORNK boldly across the cartoon.


Weeks later the fan mail began pouring in. They all said the same thing. In fact, both of them were worded the same. The first one read "I want to congratulate you on that completely true to life cartoon you drew of the horse stepping on a man's head. The word SLORNK describing the sound was absolutely accurate. I know, because I am always getting my head stepped on by some careless nag." The second letter was the same as the first, except for the signature. I figured when I wrote them that there should be some difference. Otherwise the publisher might get wise when I showed them to him.

He was dumbfounded when he saw them. After recovering, he slapped me on my sunburn and rammed one of his dollar cigars into my mush. Unfortunately, he stuck the wrong end into my mouth. Besides, he was smoking it. "Two fan letters in eleven years" he murmured incredulously. "My boy, you have arrived! It's just like I predicted," my publisher beamed, "your horribly realistic sound words are paying off!"


I leaped on his desk. "Then I'm ripe for a raise?" I queried. peering so anxiously and closely into his red-rimmed readers that I could detect his wife's fingernail scratches on his contact lenses. Anticipation was causing me to quiver like a rat terrier with radio-active fleas on a cold day. The suspense was terrible. Finally he opened his trap. He was grinning. This was the day for which I had waited eleven long years. "It does not!" he roared, brushing me off his desk. "I was merely feeling pleased that at last you may be worth almost as much as I've been paying you!"

While I gathered my teeth up off the floor, he pointed at me demandingly. "If you want a raise, every one of your sound effect words will have to be absolutely authentic! In other words, don't draw a single sound word into your strips until you've actually staged the cartoon situation with real people and things!"


(Incidentally, you readers should stop worrying about my brother in law. Ever since the day the horse stepped on his head, he has had nothing but good luck. Why shouldn't he, what with a horseshoe embedded in the back of his bean? Furthermore, he's the only living person who can slide his head inside those record-in-the-slot phonographs without crushing his ears.)

My publisher pointed at me demandingly. "If you want a raise, every one of your sound effect words will have to be absolutely authentic! In other words, don't draw a single sound word into your strips until you've actually staged the cartoon situation with real people and things!"

As for my publisher's demands, they resulted in my running out of friends and relatives within a week. Neighbors complained about howls and screams emanating from the studio. People sued. The ASPCA hounded me. My wife and fourteen kids swore sudden allegiance to the Progressive party, then fled to Siberia.


Meanwhile, however, I managed to catalog hundreds of authentic sound words- enough to last me for a lifetime of cartooning, and enough I thought, to cover any and all comic situations, regardless of how terrible. I was so proud of my achievement that I showed the lengthy list to my publisher. Here are some of the more subtle sound words describing various clashings, crashings, slashings, bashings, hashings, mashings, etc. Read the situation, then voice the accompanying sound word to yourself, and note how vividly the picture then comes to your mind:

• Pinheaded person pullingg pate out of a pop bottle: FOINK!
  
• Glass eye falling into tomato soup: PLOOP!
  
• Glass eye falling into a pitcher of thick syrup: PLOFF!
  
• Man sitting on short tack: SQUINCH!
  
• Man sitting on long tack: SQUONCH!
  
• Uppers dropping in gob of putty: FLUP!

• Hungry cannibal filing eyetooth: FWATCH!
  
• Man with calloused feet crossing rough linoleum: SKIRP! SKIRP!
  
• Thumb gouging eye: SPOP!
  
• Hot lava speweing on WCTU convention: FOOSK!
  
• Hot lava spewing on Elks' convention: SSSCRISH!
  
• Person skidding on hot stove in bare feet: SCREESH!
  
• Beaver biting into wooden leg: CRASP!
  
• Car crashing into large vat of frogs' eggs: SKWORP!
  
• False teeth falling through skylight: TWUNK!
  
• Sock in the face with Sears Roebuck catalog: PWOSH!
  
• Sock in the face with Montgomery Ward catalog: PWASH!
  
• Octopus slapping a tentacle on bald bean: SPOOP!

• Man dragging toenails over No.2 grade sandpaper: SKARP!
  
• Man falling on face in a barrel of wet teabags: FROMP!
  
• Sock in the kisser with a wet codfish: SCHALAMPF!
  
• Person socking wet halibut with his kisser: SCHLOOF!
  
• Lowers falling into a bucket of cup grease: UNPH!
  
• Man with small head drowning in a glass of tomato juice: GOIK!
  
• Woodpecker hammering on human head: DUD-DUD-DUD-DUD-DUD!
  
• Cannon ball landing in mush of toothless man: FWOCK!
  
• Two bald men colliding headon: KROCK!
  
• Garter snapping on varicose vein: SCHWIPP!
  
• Single BB shot landing on a cow's udder: PWIP!
  
• Person pulling ponderous pate through a puny porthole: SPOOCH!
  
• Bear trap springing on human noggin: SPROCK!
  
• Rat trap springing on person's big toe: SPACK!
  
• Man falling into a garbage can full of spoiled caviar: CROFF!
  
• Surgeon tossing gallstones into empty garbage can: KRANG!
  
• Man with one hair getting a haircut: WHICK!
  
• Person being kicked in the neck: PFWUMPFPH!
  
• Person getting kicked in snappers: PWACK!
  
• Measle germ snapping at skin: SCHLOPP!

If you've been able to struggle through the foregoing list of cartoon words, perhaps now your acoustical sense has been sharpened to the extent that you can readily guess a situation just by reading a sound word. To test your ability, hee is a list of cartoon words denoting various noises. If you can guess the action by which even one of them is produced, then your extremely something or other.

SNIKK / SPIRP / FAMP / SWORP / SPITCH / KANK / IKK / SPRATCH / PWOT / YOTCH / KZEEP / KLISH / FEEMP / SHZWOP / KOPYP


Now check your definitions with the following list. Even if you missed defining all the words, it's no reflection on your intelligence. Fact is, the more you miss, the brighter you probably are. On the other hand, the more you can guess, the better comic strip cartoonist you can become- unless, unfortunately, you're already one.

• SNIKK: The sound made by an African pygmy idly snapping his fingernail against his skull
  
• SPIRP: Nose being caught in an orange juicer
  
• FAMP: Corpulent person falling on back in a vat of peanut butter
  
• SWORP: Meteor hitting obese dame on back of neck
  
• SPITCH: Man sticking his head inside huge dynamo in action
  
• KANK: Crazed horsefly crashing into dome of empty-headed man
  
• IKK: Person with protruding eyeballs falling face down

• SPRATCH: Court plaster being yanked off polose chest
  
• PWOT: Wet socks being tossed into the corner of the room
  
• YOTCH: Post office pen forming the letter O
  
• KZEEP: Man with rusty eyelid winking at gal
  
• KLISH: Man falling on chin on thin crusted beetle
  
• FEEMP: Mole (on chin) being hit with stray buckshot
  
• SHZWOP: Obese dame's girdle splitting out
  
• KOPYP: Skin pore snapping shut on contact with cold air

"Good work!" my publisher mumbled two days later, when he had finished reading the list. "Then I get the raise?" I gurgled hopefully. His brows knitted. (He was working on a pair of socks at the same time.) "Not until you complete that list by adding one more sound word! The word that's missing is the one that describes the sound of a railway train running over a cartoonist's conk!"

"That should be easy," I chirped. "I'll just-" Suddenly, the awful significance of his demand dawned on me. My publisher had conceived of this diabolical plan to prevent my getting a raise. But I would fool him.

A half hour later my noggin was resting uncomfortably on a railroad rail.


They told me later at the hospital that it wasn't too bad. Only 22 cars, plus the locomotive had been derailed. "The train crew wanted the day off anyway" my doctor said. "They will be up later to thank you." While he poured glue in the cracks in my conk, I struggled to recall the exact sound of the locomotive passing over my pate. I became frantic at the thought that it had eluded me. Then I remembered. How could I forget something that had been so forcefully crammed into my mind?

I raced out of the hospital and downtown to my publisher's office. When that man saw the Scotch tape on my skull, he blanched a little. "Did you find out what the sound of a train running over a cartoonist's head is?" he asked. "I did." I announced triumphantly. He leaned expectantly so far forward that his rear suspender buttons flew off, zipped out the window, and nailed a burglar who was ransacking a safe in an office across the street.


"What is the sound?" he asked shakily.
"It is GJDRKZLXCBWQ."
"GJDRKZLXCBWQ?" he queried doubtfully.
"No. It's GJDRKZLXCBWQ. The L is silent."


My publisher is not emotional. I have never known him to be moved to tears. But now his lips quivered violently. Or perhaps he was just trying to get something out of his teeth. "Now I have heard everything!" he blubbered.

"The raise." I reminded him. "How about it?" "The raise? Oh yes. To show my appreciation for collecting the most complete and authentic list of cartoonists' sound words, I'm going to double your salary!" Whereupon he reached into his wallet and tossed me twice as much as I had been getting previously per week.


Then I realized that my list of sound words wasn't quite complete until that moment. In all my life I had never heard that lush, lovely sound. It was a mild, whispery sound, barely audible.

Here it is: FMNW!

It was the sound made by my new doubled salary- two $1.00 bills brushing lightly together.


Thanks to Marc Schirmeister for sharing this with us.

For more examples of Basil Wolverton's genius, see Basil Wolverton's Powerhouse Pepper Also see... Virgil Partch's Wild, Wild Women Part One, Part Two and Part Three, Here We Go Again and Man The Beast, George Lichty's Grin and Bear It; Milt Gross Sunday Pages Part One, Part Two and Part Three; Jim Tyer Funny Animal Comics; and Milton Knight's Great Brown Pericord Motor.

Stephen Worth
Director
ASIFA-Hollywood
Animation Archive
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Biography: The Training of a Golden Age Animator

This post is just the tip of the iceberg... see reason number 4 on our The Top Ten Reasons To Support The A-HAA for links to more great biographies of important artists.


If you have been reading our blog for a while, you're familiar with Carlo Vinci. He was a brilliant animator whose work you've seen many times in Mighty Mouse cartoons...

...and on The Flintstones.

You might remember that John K and I visited his family a few months ago...

This weekend I returned with Archive volunteers Joseph "JoJo" Baptista, Chris Allison and Mike Nassar to photograph some of the incredible artwork that lines the walls of Mrs. Vinci's beautiful home. Carlo Vinci left behind an important legacy, and the family is now sharing it with you.

It's interesting how different aspects of one's life can come together to point in the same direction. Recently, I was participating in an internet discussion forum where we were discussing the best way to educate aspiring animators. Some people in the discussion felt that basic drawing skills are necessary. Others believed that drawing is unnecessary for students aiming at a career in computer animation. There was disagreement over just what sort of education is best for a student animator. This led me to ask a question... What sort of education did golden age animators have?

Carlo Vinci provides the answer...


Carlo Vinci attended The National Academy of Design in New York. This isn't just any art college. This is one of the most prestigious art schools in the world. It's the school that Winslow Homer, Thomas Nast, William Steig, Norman Rockwell and James McNeill Whistler attended. Students are accepted by invitation, free of tuition or cost. The instructors are major artists who serve without pay as a public service. At the end of his studies, Vinci didn't just receive a diploma. He was awarded a medal and was given the honor of being able to put N.A. after his name. (Much like the Royal Academy in the UK awards R.A. status.)

Vinci's work at the National Academy included studying the work of classical painters. Here are two paintings he made after Boucher...



Yes. That's the work of the guy who animated The Flintstones!

Vinci had a life-long passion for learning. He studied sketching from life, painting in oils and watercolor, as well as sculpture and etching. He studied from early in the morning until late at night. Here is one of his student drawings- a self portrait.



His family told me that he was always working and studying. On weekends, he would paint in oils and watercolors. He painted portraits...



...and landscapes...


...and still lifes...


He was an accomplished illustrator...



...and he worked in a dozen totally different styles.

He even designed and painted murals and stained glass windows...


Carlo Vinci wasn't just an animator. He painted, sculpted, designed, illustrated... He worked in the fields of fine art, illustration and cartooning. He was a LOT more than just an animator.

Vinci's job was to animate, but his occupation was ARTIST. The same was true of most of the other great talents in animation- Marc Davis, Milt Kahl, Grim Natwick... The reason they were great animators was because they were great artists.

If you're an animation student, go back and read that last sentence again.

I'm not an animator. I studied graphic design at UCLA. I spent many months learning to spec type, do pasteup, calculate reductions on a Lucigraph and use a Rapidograph pen. A few years after I graduated, the Macintosh came out and all of those skills became obsolete. What I was left with when the dust cleared was my knowledge of composition, color and design.

If you're an animation student, focus on your core art skills, regardless if you plan to do hand drawn, CGI, cut out or puppet animation. Computer programs will come and go. You can always teach yourself Maya or Flash or whatever on your own time. Demand that your school provide you the same quality of education that Carlo Vinci had. Work hard. Study to become an ARTIST.

Read Illustrator Lainey Schallock's comments on this post in her blog, Miscellainy.

If you enjoyed this article, you'll also want to check out... How To Pick An Animation School, Profile of Carlo Vinci, Carlo Vinci Notes, The Temperamental Lion, John K on Flintstones Animators

Also see... An Interview With Playboy's Eldon Dedini, John Canemaker on Bill Tytla, Tytla At Terry: Mighty Mouse Meets Jekyll &' Hyde Cat 1940, The Pencil Test of Art Babbitt's Best Scene, and Remembering Berny Wolf

Thanks
Stephen Worth
Director
ASIFA-Hollywood
Animation Archive

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Illustration: More From The Monkey Man, Lawson Wood

This post is just the tip of the iceberg... see The Top Ten Reasons To Support The A-HAA for more jaw dropping images from classic illustrated books and magazines.



Awhile back, we featured an article on the "Monkey Painter", Lawson Wood. Mike Fontanelli recently brought by a big stack of vintage Colliers magazines with Wood covers for us to scan. Check these babies out!








The other day, I was surfing blogs and I came across a post that popped my eyes on Will Finn's blog, Small Room. It featured scans of a fabulous Wartime era calendar by Wood from Will's collection. I dropped him a note and he generously brought it by for us to scan for the Archive. Here are a few samples...







There are more images from this great calendar in Will's article on Lawson Wood. If you haven't bookmarked Will's page yet, you should. Where else are you going to find inspiration and insight like the stuff on Will Finn's Small Room?

Many thanks to Will Finn and Mike Fontanelli for their generous support of the Archive project.

If you found this post useful, see our first post on... Lawson Wood, The Monkey Painter and our posts on 1940s Colliers Illustration and Colliers From The 30s.

Also see... The Genius Of Miguel Covarrubias, Wartime Propaganda Posters Part One and Part Two, Will Finn's Letter From Ward Kimball, John Bauer's Bland Tomtar Och Troll / Frank Reynolds Paints Pickwick / Arthur Szyk's The New Order / Artzybasheff's Neurotica, Machinalia and Diablerie

I carefully choose the "Also See" links at the bottom of each post to tip you off to great related stuff that you might have missed. Click on them! For more info, see Bud Plant's terrific Lawson Wood Bio.

Thanks
Stephen Worth
Director
ASIFA-Hollywood
Animation Archive

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Milt Gross: Banana Oil!

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.


The hoi-polloi are out in droves tonight to celebrate this great day!

It's Marc Deckter Appreciation Day!


All of Marc's fans and admirers are jumping on the bandwagon, writing appreciative blog postings. Here's John K's.

For the past couple of weeks, we've been working on digitizing a batch of nearly 200 Milt Gross Sunday pages and dalies that Marc generously loaned to us. That adds up to over a million laughs!


Three cheers for Marc Deckter!


And as I always say... if you're one of those folks who don't click on the images because you don't think it's worth the time it takes to read... YOU DON'T KNOW WHAT YOU'RE MISSING!

Banana Oil Dailies (1924)







Count Screwloose & Dave's Delicatessen Sunday Pages (1930-1933)






For more Milt Gross cartoon goodness, see... Milt Gross Sunday Pages and Dailies Part One, Part Two, Part Three, Part Four and Part Five. Also see... Milt Gross' Cartoon Tour Of New York Part One, Part Two and Part Three; 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

Many thanks to Marc Deckter for sharing this wonderful stuff with us!

Stephen Worth
Director
ASIFA-Hollywood
Animation Archive
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History: Clair Weeks- Pioneer of Indian Animation

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 history of animation told through the careers of great animators.


Bambi II?
Today I am presenting an interesting bit of history from the collection of Disney animator, Clair Weeks along with an exciting update since we last featured this topic. Read on for details...

Weeks was born in India, the son of a Methodist missionary- a source of humor for his co-workers at Disney. (See caricature, right.) He spent 16 years at the Disney Studios, working on Snow White, Bambi and Peter Pan. In 1956, Weeks travelled to Bombay, India on the invitation of Information Films of India to set up and train the country's first animation studio as part of the American Technical Co-Operation Mission. What started as a one year project expanded into almost a decade of service abroad working for the US Agency for International Development. Weeks toured Southeast Asia and headed up a communitactions office in Katmandu, Nepal. He made films and audio-visual programs that aided in the social development and economic growth of third world countries.

I know very little about Weeks' work in India, but a scrapbook donated to the archive by his family provides some tantilizing clues. I contacted the chapter of ASIFA in India asking if they had any information on Weeks, and the Vice President of ASIFA-India, Prasad responded...

The studio Weeks helped to train some animators for was the Films Division of India (FDI). The stint of Clair's there apparently lasted for about 18 months, during which they made a film called The Banyan Deer. I spoke to Rammohan, who was one of the students in 1956, and is generally acknowledged as one of the father figures of Indian animation to get these details. Clair apparently also taught in the late sixties or early seventies at the National Institute of Design in Ahmedabad. One of the students at that point, Nina Sabnani heads the Animation Department there now.

Since this article was last posted, ASIFA-Hollywood has transferred a rare 16mm film showing Weeks at work at FDI in India. It's fascinating to see behind the scenes in the earliest days of Indian animation.


Cartoon Division of FDI (FDI/1956)
(Quicktime 7 / 13.8 megs)

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.

Here are some scans from Weeks' Indian scrapbook. If anyone has any information on the film or the people in the photos, let me know in the comments below and I will add it to this post.

THE BANYAN DEER (1957) STORYBOARD






TREND MAGAZINE ARTICLE




PRODUCTION PHOTOS

19 April, 1958: Sitting: S.L. Badami (Deputy Chief Producer), Ezra Mir (Chief Producer), Clair Weeks (Key Animator Instructor), Dr. B.V. Keskar (Union Minister for Information & Broadcasting), D.L. Kothari (Controller of Administration). Standing behind: G.K. Maharesh (Production Manager), G.K. Gokhale (Animator), S.M. Junnarkar (Editor), G.H. Saraiya (in dark pants, Director)





19 April, 1958: D.L. Kothari, Clair Weeks, Dr. B.V. Keskar, Ezra Mir. Behind: H.R. Doraiswamy (Camera Assistant), S.S. Varma (Animation Cameraman)





Many thanks to the family of Clair Weeks for sharing this important material with us, and thanks to Steve Stanchfield of Thunderbean Animation for transferring the film footage.

If you found this interesting, you'll want to check out our previous posts about material from the collection of Clair Weeks... Dispatch From Disney's Part One and Part Two, The Building Of The Disney Studios, Clair Weeks Goodbye Book, the 1938 Disney Artists Tryout Book and Clair Week's Animal Studies. Also, see... Walt Disney Goes To War, John Canemaker on Bill Tytla and Musical Timing Rediscovered.

Thanks
Stephen Worth
Director
ASIFA-Hollywood
Animation Archive
.

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Life Drawing: Pogany's Sketchbook

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.


Drawing is a language, and it requires building a vocabulary to be eloquent. Students should carry a sketchbook with them wherever they go and draw everything they see- from people's heads in a late night coffee shop to fireplugs on the street. Everything you draw becomes part of your dictionary of imagery in the future.

Cartoons are about things that aren't real- pure imagination. But even here, it's important to have balance... A friend of mine, Louise Zingarelli once told me, "You can't draw crazy things until you can draw perfectly straight. Wonky perspective all over isn't weird or interesting- it's just ugly and dumb. You've got to have both, working right against wrong... just like working warms against cools in colors."

Recently, we featured the book, Willy Pogany's Drawing Lessons. Pogany was a children's book illustrator who specialized in fantasy subjects. At the end of the book, after the lessons, he presents a selection of his work sketches. Pogany was particularly eloquent, with a huge library of shapes and forms in his head. He also had an amazing sense of balance- making the fantastic seem real. This is truly great draftsmanship.


















This classic book is still in print. Pick up a copy at Amazon for your reference library.


If you found this post to be useful, see Willy Pogany's Drawing Lessons Part One

For more art instruction posts, see The $100K Animation Drawing Course, Fundamentals of Composition Part One and Part Two, Chad's Design for Television, Willard Mullin on Animals, Incorporating Natural Forms- Haeckel's Artforms in Nature, and Originality vs Imitation: Chaplin's Shadow.

Thanks
Stephen Worth
Director
ASIFA-Hollywood
Animation Archive
.

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Opinion: Bakshi Speaks To CGI Animators

In 1914, Max Fleischer invented the rotoscope as a time and labor saving way of producing animation. He soon came to realize that although the device was a great aid in effects and technical animation, it was a poor substitute for character animation.

In 1986, engineer Ernie Blood developed motion capture techniques as a time and labor saving way of producing animation. A decade and several mocap features later, many CGI animators are coming to the same realization that Max Fleischer and his staff had more than a half century ago.

The ASIFA-Hollywood Animation Archive documents the golden age of hand drawn animation, but it isn't intended as a resource exclusively for 2D animators. I encourage CGI artists to think of themselves as animators and build upon animation's rich history instead of reinventing it bit by bit. Animation is animation. Pencils and computers are only tools.

No one today has as much experience with hand drawn animation and rotoscoping than the legendary director, Ralph Bakshi (See related article Bakshi Phone Doodles). I've asked him to speak "animator to animator" to CGI artists and pass along his observations about the things that really count when it comes to animation. -Stephen Worth

BAKSHI SPEAKS TO CGI ANIMATORS

Frame to frame animation eventually came to a grinding end. I'm not sure which generation of young animators were at Disney redoing and relearning the tradition of making boring films and recreating cliched motion when it expired. Except for Jim Tyer, "Modern Animation" and Ralph Bakshi, animation was dying- while doing the same old thing. Big money and animators never really followed Bakshi, "Modern Animation" or Jim Tyer. They just rehashed its past.


(Read Chuck Jones' article on the failure of "Modern Animation")
UPA failed because it was nothing more than elitist designers trying to animate on museum walls. Content was unimportant to them, really. Matisse or Picasso were more important. Bakshi was hounded out of the business by controversy. And you'd be surprised how many animation directors at Terrytoons disliked Jim Tyer's work because it didn't look like Disney- or anything else for that matter. Terry kept him on because his weekly footage output was so large.


(See the gallery of images from Lord of the Rings on RalphBakshi.com)
Lord of the Rings was done in rotoscope animation because rotoscope made it physically possible to do it. You couldn't do Lord of the Rings in less than 25 years using traditional animation. Thirty years later- Wow! Along comes the computer... "We can do Disney story animation with another look and sell it back to audiences." Of course, I would have used computers and motion capture if they had been around during my day. But I turned to Tolkien to try to change the kinds of stories animation told. My city films were being thrown out of theaters.

So, what's the argument here? Unless hand-drawn animation finds new creative story approaches and new creative drawn motion exaggerations, it will look as it always looked at the end- faded and drawn. There'll be no great interest for it either. Computer animation has the exact same problem. Computer animation will eventually grow old, just like hand-drawn animation, unless something new happens. It will fall into manneristic boredom if it continues to endlessly redo what's already been done before. The success and the money will always follow the creative artists who take either of these two mediums and do something different with it.

A lot of people remember and love Jim Tyer's animation today because he really did something different with hand-drawn animation. He didn't follow the crowd.


(See Jim Tyer's work: Terrytoons: Barnyard Actor / Funny Animal Comics Part One and Part Two

Ralph Bakshi 2007


At this year's San Diego Comic-Con, I had the honor of hosting an interview with Ralph Bakshi. He had some important things to say to young animators. Watch Ralph take my question and hit it out of the park...



Many thanks to the Bakshi family for their helpfulness and generosity, and to our fantastic videographer, JD Mata.

Feel free to embed the YouTube on your own website. Spread the word! Educators may download a higher resolution copy of this video to burn to DVD for viewing in their classroom.

Read the comments about this video at YouTube, Cartoon Brew and Weirdo's blog on Newgrounds.

UNFILTERED: The Complete Ralph Bakshi isn't one of those "art books" with postage stamp sized pictures floating in oceans of tasteful white space and huge text blocks of scholarly blather that crowds out the images. It's just pictures, pictures and more pictures... along with just enough text to put them in context. The book is organized to show Ralph's career from his earliest days at Terry-Toons, to his groundbreaking features, to his revolutionary TV work, to his most recent fine art paintings. Even if you think you know all there is to know about Bakshi, this book will grab you by the lapels and shake you and show you things you've never seen the likes of before. Click through the link to pick up the Bakshi book at Amazon.
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Education: W L Evans Cartooning And Caricaturing Course 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 instructional material.


I don't normally post twice in the same day, but today is special. Cartoonist, Marc Schirmeister stopped by to donate the granddaddy of all cartooning courses to the archive- a stack of 19 mail order cartooning lessons by W. L. Evans.

In 1913, Elzie Segar, aged 18 began a correspondence course headed up by the Cleveland Leader cartoonist, W. L. Evans. The course cost a dollar per lesson and it took Segar a year and a half to complete the 20 lessons. By 1917, he had landed a job penning the "Charlie Chaplin Comic Capers" and "Looping the Loop" strips. In the ad above, Segar is quoted as saying, "I'm getting along fine, and it's all your fault."

Decades later, Segar made mention of his early education in his strip, Thimble Theater. In 1934, his character, Sappo took the W. L. Evans Cartooning Course and delighted readers with cartoon drawings made from letters of the alphabet. Segar wasn't the only cartoonist who got his start with this course. Chester Gould of Dick Tracy fame was a graduate of the W. L. Evans course, as was Dennis the Menace creator, Hank Ketcham.

Here is the first lesson that got these great cartoonists started on their career path. If there is interest, I will post more of this landmark course.








THE PLATES




STUDENTS: Print this stuff out and USE IT!

If you found this post to be interesting, see... Gene Byrnes' Complete Guide To Cartooning Part One: The Men Behind The Newspaper Comics, Part Two: How To Get Ideas / Studies of Comic Strips and Part Three: Single Panel and Sports Cartoonists, Part Four: Editorial Cartoons & Comic Books, and Part Five: Sketching and Part Six: Magazine Cartooning; 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. Also, see... Willard Mullen on Animals.

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Comics: More Jim Tyer Funny Animal Comics

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.







I'm busily scanning more Milt Gross Sunday pages from the collection of Marc Deckter today, so I don't have time to say much about these great comics. But who needs words when the pictures are as good as this! Thanks to Kent Butterworth for providing us with these great scans!








If you enjoyed this post, see Jim Tyer Funny Animal Comics and Jim Tyer: Barnyard Actor;

Also see... Harvey Kurtzman Comics; Harvey Eisenberg's Foxy Fagan; Milt Stein's Supermouse Comics Part One and Part Two; 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; and Milton Knight's Great Brown Pericord Motor.

Stephen Worth
Director
ASIFA-Hollywood
Animation Archive

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Theory: Propaganda Part Two

This post is just the tip of the iceberg... see The Top Ten Reasons To Support The A-HAA for more jaw dropping examples of classic illustration.


Here is a continuation of my previous post on Propaganda Theories.

When the nations of the world entered into World War I, the methods and techniques of propaganda were naiive and innocent. But by the end of the First World War, the techniques of waging war in the hearts and minds of the public had entered the modern era. Propaganda had become much more sophisticated and powerful. By WWII, leaders realized that battles could be fought and won on the homefront. Propaganda became an important part of motivating the population to work together toward the common goal of defeating the axis powers. Compare the WWI posters in this and the previous post to the examples from WWII presented here. Notice how the design and layout enhance the emotional impact of the concepts. Many of these posters still pack a wallop.














For more on this subject, see Alfred and Elizabeth Briant Lee's book The Fine Art of Propaganda: A Study of Father Coughlin's Speeches 1938.

If you enjoyed this post, check out... Propaganda Theories Part One

Also see... Walt Disney Goes To War, Dispatch From Disney's Part One and Part Two, Arthur Szyk's The New Order and Artzybasheff's Neurotica, Machinalia and Diablerie.

Thanks
Stephen Worth
Director
ASIFA-Hollywood
Animation Archive

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Illustration: Coronet Magazine 1945

This post is just the tip of the iceberg... see The Top Ten Reasons To Support The A-HAA for more jaw dropping examples of classic illustration.



Archive supporter, Rich Borowy stopped by to digitize some classic Stan Freberg radio shows for the archive database yesterday. Under his arm was a box of old Coronet and Omnibook magazines. Rich said that he was given the box at a garage sale that was closing down. I've never looked at these particular magazines, but they have wonderful illustrations and features. Here are highlights from the December, 1945 issue. Check it out. There's a big surprise at the end. Thanks for bringing these in, Rich!

Each issue opens with an inspirational message and illustration. This one is by illustrator, Vera Bock. Many issues contain the work of Arthur Szyk, whose book The New Order we featured last year. I'll be doing a whole post of Szyk illustrations from Coronet soon.


Next up is a retelling of "The Night Before Christmas" by Golden Book illustrator, Sheilah Beckett. Will Finn recently posted about her book on Gilbert & Sullivan Operettas. These pages strongly resemble the back of Little Golden Books. Do you think Sheilah Beckett designed that?




Here's a feature on the artists who created the Famous Artists Course... Stevan Dohanos, along with his illustrator friends Albert Dorne, Ben Stahl, Hardie Gramatky, Fred Ludekens and Dean Cornwall donated their services to decorate casts in the Halloran Army Hospital in New York.



And here's a feature on exotic superstitions and religious beliefs by Stevan Dohanos...



Here's a real surprise- The autobiography of Bugs Bunny! "A Hare Grows In Manhattan"...









If you enjoyed this post, check out... Little Verses Part One, Part Two and Part Three, Baby's House, Arthur Szyk's The New Order and Artzybasheff's Neurotica, Machinalia and Diablerie.

Thanks
Stephen Worth
Director
ASIFA-Hollywood
Animation Archive

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Comics: Virgil Partch's Wild, Wild Women 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.



Today, we continue with Virgil "Vip" Partch's greatest collection of cartoons, The Wild, Wild Women. Notice how clear the staging is, the beauty of the line and the strength of the posing and expressions.
















For more examples of Virgil Partch's genius, see Virgil Partch's Wild, Wild Women Part One and Part Two, Here We Go Again and Man The Beast. Also see... George Lichty's Grin and Bear It; Milt Gross Sunday Pages Part One, Part Two and Part Three; Basil Wolverton's Powerhouse Pepper; Jim Tyer Funny Animal Comics; and Milton Knight's Great Brown Pericord Motor.

Stephen Worth
Director
ASIFA-Hollywood
Animation Archive

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