Animation Art: Ray Patterson At Mintz

Ray Patterson's career in animation spanned seven decades. He was responsible for the animation of Jerry Mouse dancing with Gene Kelly in Anchors Aweigh as well as animation for Dumbo and the "Pastoral" sequence of Fantasia. In 1954 he formed his own studio Grantray-Lawrence and he worked at Hanna-Barbera and Sanrio Productions as well.

Today, his family is sharing some of his earliest work with us... Ray began as an inker in 1929 at the Charles Mintz Screen Gems studio, working on Krazy Kat and Scrappy cartoons. By 1930, he had worked his way up to a position as animator. Here are some rare sketches and model sheets from his tenure there... Enjoy!




















Many thanks to the family of Ray Patterson for sharing these treasures with us. We will have more to post soon.

Stephen Worth
ASIFA-Hollywood
Animation Archive
.

Stumble It!

Filmography: UPA's Man On The Land 1951

This post is just the tip of the iceberg... see reason number 7 on our The Top Ten Reasons To Support The A-HAA for links to more great cartoons to study.

Our server is maxed out right now, so the movie file may take a while to load. Check back a little later and it will be a lot smoother. You've already got the ASIFA-Hollywood Animation Archive in your bookmarks... Right?


We received a surprise in the mail today from Archive supporter James Tucker- a DVD of great fifties industrial films, including UPA's groundbreaking Man On The Land. This film includes animation by Pat Matthews, Grim Natwick and Art Babbitt, but animation isn't the primary attraction here. It's the drop dead brilliant layouts by Director Bill Hurtz, Associate Director Art Heinemann and background artists Bob Dranko, Boris Gorelick and Paul Julian (among others). Just about every setup in this film is strong enough to be an illustration in a book. Check out the depth and lighting in these backgrounds. They may be painted flat, but they sure aren't composed flat. If this sort of design sensibility was applied to a cartoon with vivid characters, humor and entertainment value, wouldn't it be incredible? (Like this!)





















This is a large file, so allow yourself some time before clicking on the link.

Man On The Land (UPA/1951)
(Quicktime 7 / 16 minutes / 35 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.

It's great folks like James Tucker that make sure that cartoons like this aren't lost and forgotten. We all owe him a big thank-you for sharing his film collection with us at the ASIFA-Hollywood Animation Archive.

If you found this article to be interesting, see also... John Sutherland's Rhapsody of Steel, Artzybasheff's Machinalia, The Alvin Show Pilot Storyboard, Jules Engel's Alvin Show Color Keys, UPA Done Right, Early 50s UPA Model Sheets, Herb Klynn The Shrimp, and Grim Natwick's Post UPA Commercials.

Stephen Worth
Director
ASIFA-Hollywood
Animation Archive
.

Stumble It!

Filmography: Ko-Ko the Clown in Jumping Beans 1922

This post is just the tip of the iceberg... see reason number 7 on our The Top Ten Reasons To Support The A-HAA for links to more great cartoons to study.


Today, I am finally acknowledging a supporter of ASIFA-Hollywood and our Archive that I really should have thanked long ago... Ray Pointer. Ray is an animator and producer who has been dedicated to preserving the history of animation for decades. Through his production company, Inkwell Images, Ray restores and annotates classic animated films from the earliest days of the medium. Without his hard work and research, these wonderful cartoons might be forgotten and unappreciated. Thanks for the great work, Ray!

Here is a 1922 cartoon from his "Out of the Inkwell" DVD collection... Ko-Ko the Clown in "Jumping Beans".




Ko-Ko the Clown in "Jumping Beans" (Fleischer/1922)
(Quicktime 7 / 15.8 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.

Max Fleischer was an important pioneer in the history of animation, and his influence is still being felt. Here, from the brilliant cartoonist Eddie Fitzgerald's blog, Uncle Eddie's Theory Corner is an excerpt from a hilarious "fume-Eddie" comic titled, Out of the Ink Bottle...




Eddie Fitzgerald: Out of the Ink Bottle

If you enjoyed this cartoon, see these previous postings... I'm Forever Blowing Bubbles, Mariutch, Swing, You Sinners, You're Driving Me Crazy, Betty Boop in Snow White, Popeye in Li'l Swee Pea, Grim Natwick in New York, Nat Falk's "How To Make Animated Cartoons" Part One: History of Animation, Part Two: The Cartoon Studios, Part Three: How Cartoons Are Made, Part Four: Drawing For Animation and Part Five: How To Animate.

Archive supporter, Ray Pointer has produced a fantastic collection of rare Out of the Inkwell cartoons on DVD. The set includes beautiful restorations of 29 cartoons, including the one above, along with expertly produced documentary footage explaining the history of the Fleischers. You can order this great set at... InkwellImagesInk.com.

Stephen Worth
Director
ASIFA-Hollywood
Animation Archive
.

Stumble It!

Comics: The Animation Business in Boy Comics 1942

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 have another treasure from the collection of Archive supporter, Marc Schirmeister. Here's the oddly titled Boy Comics Number 39 from April, 1942. This comic book isn't as interesting for its art, (check out the wonky perspective on that cover!) but rather for its subject matter...


Yes, this noir style comic written by cartoonist Charles Biro and drawn by Norman Maurer deals with the animation business! And check out the names of the incidental characters...


Sound familiar? And the design of "B.S.", the head of NDN Studios, it a pretty clear caricature of Walt Disney!

It seems that Biro had some sort of connection to the East coast animation scene. Does anyone out there reading have more info on this unique comic book? If so, please let us know in the comments. UPDATE: Mark Mayerson points out the Charles Biro was an animator and director at the Fleischer Studios from 1930-1936. Thanks, Mark!













Thanks to Marc Schirmeister for bringing this rare comic to our attention!

The ASIFA-Hollywood Animation Archive is looking for collectors of gold and silver age comic books, 50s and 60s Mad magazines, 50s Playboys, National Lampoon, etc. who would be willing to lend us their books to digitize. If you'd like to help out, contact me at... sworth@animationarchive.org.

If you enjoyed this post, see... Jack Kirby in Not Brand Echh Number One, Marie Severin in Not Brand Echh Number Two, Parody: Whack Comics Part One and Part Two; Basil Wolverton On Cartoon Sounds Part One and Part Two; Basil Wolverton's Powerhouse Pepper; Boodie Rogers' Babe Comics Part One, Part Two, and Part Three; Milt Stein's Supermouse Comics No. 4; Virgil Partch's Wild, Wild Women; 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; and Jim Tyer Funny Animal Comics

Stephen Worth
Director
ASIFA-Hollywood
Animation Archive
.

Stumble It!

Theory: Chuck Jones on the Art of Animation

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


Assistant Archivist, JoJo Baptista brought in some magazines for the archive donated by his teacher, and long-time ASIFA supporter, Dave Brain. Among them was an AFI publication with this great article by Chuck Jones...

ANIMATION IS A GIFT WORD
By Chuck Jones
A young man was once sent fresh from Columbia University with a mutual friend's introduction to Robert Frost. Frost scanned the young man's writings, then looking quizzically up through his craggy white brows he asked, "What do you do, son?" The young man drew himself up proudly; he was, after all, one with the great Frost. "I am a poet," he said. Frost gently answered, "The term 'poet' is a gift word, son; you cannot give it to yourself."

The term "artist" or "animator" are gift words too, and yet they are employed as self-description by an astonishing number of our colleagues.


The Marx Brothers, Laurel & Hardy, Harold Lloyd, W.C. Fields, as well as Chaplin, are now considered to be artists, but I grew up in Hollywood when they were in the height of their power and I know that the term would have staggered and surprised them. They were honestly and simply trying to make funny pictures and were about as aware of dramatic and comedic theory as a bunch of otters. They were a joyous, funny, often drunken, usually wild and impetuous group and all I wanted in the whole world when I grew up was to be one of them. This horrified my mother, who felt that the mayhem and violence of the Keystone Cops, Larry Semon and even Chaplin when, for instance, he gassed or blew people up, was hideous fare for my budding libido.


She was right. When I did kind of grow up my hideously budded libido found that the one-reel comedy was no longer around, but I managed to stumble into another company of comedians who would have been just as unaware as their great live-action predecessors to find themselves characterized as "artists": the animators. Tex Avery, Friz Freleng, Ham Hamilton, Hugh Harman and Rudy Ising, Hanna and Barbera (when they directed the marvellous Tom & Jerrys), Grim Natwick, Bob Cannon, Ted Sears, the Fleischers, Walt Lantz, Paul Terry, Shamus Culhane, Bill Littlejohn, Ken Harris, Pete Burness, Emery Hawkins- to mention only a few who were doing animated short subjects- were all working in a field which was a logical extension not only of the motion picture itself, but of the old one-reel live action comedy.

If as a child you drew stick figures on the edge of a tablet or a school book, then flipped the pages to get a spastic and funny little dance, you were animating. Anything beyond that is only sophistication and embellishment. For even today those dancing sticks are absolute in the art of animation, just as the unique essence of the art of painting is the application of pigment to a reasonably flat surface, and the essential isolating quality of sculpturing is a three dimensional representation in some solid material. These are the disciplines that isolate these methods of creativity. Therefore, animation can be created without any embellishment whatsoever, for an audience of one and without a camera. Anything that squiggles, wiggles, waggles, will likely excite in us a feeling of stimulation, an emotional reaction, even a revulsion. We all know that such reactions cannot, or should not be aroused by inanimate things. We should not be angered by a rake when stepped on in the dark since it has no quality of life. Breaking a golf club or throwing a tennis racquet is a natural reaction against seemingly human qualities in an inanimate object. Inanimate objects are diabolically funny indeed in animation. Remember Disney's piano in Moving Day or the clock in Clock Cleaners or Norman McLaren's A Chairy Tale?


McLaren's delightful laughing squiggles and strokes brought universal and deserved praise. Each of us drew our own conclusions as to what the films meant, but very near the surface was an area of response that had very little to do with rationality, and depending upon our area of interest all of us react to other forms of life in quite different ways: a tumor may be beautiful to a pathologist; herpetologists have small, sinewy, evil snakes where other people carry watches; an entymologist may stroke a tarantula with more thoughtfulness and understanding than a parent spends on his own child.

Animation's potential and scope is literally boundless. In many parts of the world today great experiments in the field are taking pace- new thoughts, ideas, wild flights of fancy, much of it in surface techniques. Color; graphic breakthrough; startling, sometimes shocking in cruel subject matter; animation is being used as political commentary, abstract expressionism, pop and op art experiments, stop live action, painted stones, self-cannibalism, the black experience, textural adventures and sex. Many of these animated films are shown only in garages. But in many countries, notably the United States, most studios have been captured by an avalanche of network demands for low cost Saturday morning television.


One team in Hollywood which once turned out eight to ten seven minute shorts a year now turns out four half-hours a week during the production year, an increase from one hour a year to at least 130 hours, or a 13,000 per cent increase.

A few animators are getting wealthy- which is a happy novelty indeed.

Some of the best work being done in animation, both in the United States and throughout the world, is in the field of animated commercials. Some are brilliant, nearly all are exquisitely timed and cut. This field may be the best training ground available for animators, directors, writers and designers. The disciplines are implicit in the United States: the film is one minute or less, it must tell a story, display a product, make a sales point, have a beginning, middle and an end, be unique yet comprehensible and bear constant repetition.

It is a pity that the experimentalists and the commercial animators could not exchange personnel occasionally, because the disciplines of commercial production would serve the laboratory animator well. Art and experimental and even student films usually run three times too long. The commercial animator would benefit from a little soul-waching and freedom from the very disciplines his opposite needs. The average commercial director would feel grossly sinful if he had an extra 14 seconds to play with.


I believe that every studio that makes a substantial income off this market, or the so-called "kid-vid" market, owes a serious obligation to the future to pour part of it back- five to ten per cent- into training programs, internships, but above all to pure research. The trade unions support the idea; it is just common sense, not altruism.

There is a tendency in the history of any art form when a preoccupation with new instruments or unusual techniques preoccupies the time of the practitioners of that art form, and we get quaint and cacaphonous sounds and sights in our galleries and halls. This is a natural occurance, to be expected and enjoyed, but the tools of the artist have remained very much the same for hundreds of years and I cannot remember when the last valid musical instrument was introduced into an orchestra, perhaps because my father could not remember either.

It is well, I think, to learn from an Edward Steichen, I believe it was, who undertook a photographic assignment from Life magazine limiting him to a 30-year-old Brownie box camera. The result should have surprised no one: a series of exquisite, striking Steichen pictures, because Steichen does not confuse a convenience with a necessity. Steichen and Lincoln's Matthew Brady are the same cut of man, and each would have flourished in the other's time.


Occasionally, an artist should look at his tools and ask himself what he cannot do without -the essentials- what he must have to pursue his form of expression in animation. In animation as different from other art forms, he must have only three things: a pencil, a number of sheets of paper and a light source. With these things he can animate, without them he cannot.

All other additions are conveniences and embellishments which shade his art form toward others. He does not even need a motion picture camera. The first valid animation, indeed the first motion pictures, were without such cameras. Do you remember the photographic flipping machines at penny arcades?

One of the odd misunderstandings about animation even by those who work in the field is the supposition that an individual drawing in animation has the same importance as doing an illustration.

In animation, drawing is indeed important and great draftsmen as well as great animators are required for such episodes as Bill Tytla's Night on Bald Mountain or Art Babbitt's Mushroom Dance. But a single drawing to an animator represents a time interval of 1/24th of a second.

Animation is a chorus of drawings working in tandem, each contributing a part to the whole of a time/space idea. If a single drawing, as a drawing, dominates the action, it is probably bad animation, even though it may be good drawing.


So many of the greatest animators were and are men who became masters of their craft without once having to resort to cleaning up a single drawing. They simply didn't think that way. Norm Ferguson, the great "Fergie" of Pluto fame who worked in a kind of fluid shorthand, catching the elements of motion in dazzling simplicity, was probably the outstanding example of the animator in his purest form. But Ham Hamilton, Ben Clopton, Ken Harris and many, many others could not draw and found no need to draw, in the conventional sense, which in no way diminishes their artistry; it simply identifies the form.

Different kinds of animation are suitable and correct for the needs of different products. John Halas has been quoted as saying that animation can now get along with four drawings a foot where it once required 24. Actually, animation can get along with no drawings a foot if the subject requirements are such- but it should not be denied 100 drawings per foot if they are needed. The Four Poster required only two actors, but staging Julius Caesar with such restrictions might prove difficult. The point is, if you can only afford two actors, don't do Julius Caesar.


Animation
The simple question we must ask ourselves about limited animation is this: would we use better animation if we could do so? I contend that the average director on Saturday morning television or in his experimental or laboratory film would rather- far rather- employ the finest animators available and have them deliver not 200 feet but 20 feet a week. And everywhere I have gone in Europe and the Orient the hunger has been for animators, animators in the grand tradition, because a great animator can do anything from a dancing dot to a dinosaur- and every director dreams of working only with great actors, or great animators, as well as great graphics, set designs, lighting and cameramen.

All of us must eventually do what the matador does: go out and face not only the bull, but the crowd. It does the matador little good, provides him little satisfaction to make beautiful passes alone in a moonlit pasture.

If in animation we are to advance our craft we must each eventually face the terror of creativity and each of us must some day do it before the great crowd, for animation is not only an art form, it is also a method of entertainment and a method of communication.


MODERN Animation
We are fortunate, all of us, that animation is so appealing in its verstility. All over the world the most extraordinary things are happening. From Yugoslavia to Japan, South America to, I suppose, Lapland, young men and women are trying new ideas of the most imaginative sort. The medium is springing into life on a thousand fronts with a million facets.

But if we ignore our heritage, if we forget or allow to lapse one of the most important factors, the art of pure animation- a drop of water, a dinosaur, a paramecium, a McLaren dancing line, a blob a silver wind, a silver flute, a beautifully animated, delightfully floating mass of our own introspection- if we forget that these wonders cannot be accomplished by simple means, if we use limited animation only because we can get away with it, then we are overlooking the very essence of our craft and callously destroying history itself.

Chuck Jones
AFI Report (Vol 5, No 2)
Summer 1974

Many thanks to Dave Brain for this great article, and thanks to the Van Eaton Galleries for allowing us to digitize these wonderful Chuck Jones drawings for our database.

If you found this article to be interesting, see also... Chuck Jones on Modern Animation, The Animator Newsletter 1946, Bakshi Speaks To CGI Animators Part One and Part Two, Bob Clampett in Schlesinger's Exposure Sheet, Early 50s UPA Model Sheets, Herb Klynn The Shrimp, Grim Natwick's Post UPA Commercials, Alvin Show: The Whistler Storyboard and Jules Engel's Color Keys.

Stephen Worth
Director
ASIFA-Hollywood
Animation Archive

Stumble It!

Update: John Sutherland's Rhapsody of Steel

This post is just the tip of the iceberg... see reason number 7 on our The Top Ten Reasons To Support The A-HAA for links to more great cartoons to study.


We received a surprise in the mail today from Archive supporter, Kevin Kidney- a DVD of John Sutherland's landmark industrial film, Rhapsody of Steel. For more information about this great film, see our previous post.


This is a very large file, so allow yourself some time before clicking on the link.

Rhapsody of Steel (Sutherland/1959)
(Quicktime 7 / 22 minutes / 50.5 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.

If you found this article to be interesting, see also... John Sutherland's Rhapsody of Steel, Artzybasheff's Machinalia, The Alvin Show Pilot Storyboard, Jules Engel's Alvin Show Color Keys, UPA Done Right, Early 50s UPA Model Sheets, Herb Klynn The Shrimp, and Grim Natwick's Post UPA Commercials.

Stephen Worth
Director
ASIFA-Hollywood
Animation Archive
.

Stumble It!

Filmography: John Sutherland's Rhapsody of Steel

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


Today we scanned a read-along storybook adaptation of John Sutherland's industrial film, Rhapsody of Steel (1959). Sutherland's studio was very influential in the mid-1950s, employing some of the best designers in the business. This film is no exception. Legendary stylists Eyvind Earle (Sleeping Beauty, Pigs is Pigs) and Maurice Noble (Duck Dodgers, How The Grinch Stole Christmas) collaborated on Rhapsody of Steel, and you can see evidence of both their hands everywhere in these pages. (Earle in the landscapes and textures, Noble in the bold primary and secondary colors...)

Time Magazine said of this film...

Rhapsody of Steel, a 23-minute animated cartoon that cost $300,000, is one of those rare industrial films with enough specific quality and general interest to play the commercial circuits. In the next few months it will be shown as an added attraction in several thousand U.S. movie houses. Made by former Disney Staffer John Sutherland, Rhapsody sets out to tell a sort of child's history of steel from the first meteor that ever hit the earth to the first manned rocket that leaves it, and most of the time Moviemaker Sutherland proves a slick entertainer and a painless pedagogue. Unhappily, the music of Oscar-Winning Dmitri Tiomkin, who is probably the world's loudest composer, bangs away on the sound track like a trip hammer. But the picture's pace is brisk, its tricks of animation are better than cute, and the plug, when the sponsor slips it in on the final frame, is modestly understated: "A presentation of U.S. Steel."

I have included a Quicktime of Rhapsody of Steel at the bottom of this post, and you can find many other John Sutherland fIlms at Archive.org. This book suffers from little tiny pictures and oceans of white space, so I've enlarged a bunch of the pictures so you can see them better.























Courtesy of Archive supporter, Kevin Kidney, here is a video of the film for you to view...

Rhapsody of Steel (Sutherland/1959)
(Quicktime 7 / 22 minutes / 50.5 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's a great post by Michael Sporn on Eyvind Earle.

If you found this article to be interesting, see also... Artzybasheff's Machinalia, The Alvin Show Pilot Storyboard, Jules Engel's Alvin Show Color Keys, UPA Done Right, Early 50s UPA Model Sheets, Herb Klynn The Shrimp, and Grim Natwick's Post UPA Commercials.

Stephen Worth
Director
ASIFA-Hollywood
Animation Archive
.

Stumble It!

2007 Review: 3 Clair Weeks

As the ASIFA-Hollywood Animation Archive completes its second year in operation, it's time to review the accomplishments of the past year. Here's a countdown of the ten most important subjects we've covered in 2007. See if your list matches mine. (View the complete list.) Click on the links to read more on this topic.


From Clair Weeks' Goodbye Book 1952 February 1st, 2007
NUMBER 3: CLAIR WEEKS

The ASIFA-Hollywood Animation Archive owes a tremendous debt of gratitude to the family of Disney animator, Clair Weeks. Weeks was a missionary's son, born in India, who moved to America in the early 30s and ended up working as an assistant animator on Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. Here is the book Weeks was given when he applied for work as an artist at Disney...


From the Disney Artist Tryout Book February 6th, 2007
Weeks' wife made a scrapbook of material related to Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, and the family recently donated it to the permanent collection of the ASIFA-Hollywood Animation Archive...


From Clair Weeks' Snow White Scrapbook December 21st, 2007
After the success of Snow White, Disney relocated his studio to a newly built facility in Burbank. Here is a magazine from Clair Weeks' scrapbook detailing the building of the studio...


From History: The Building of the Disney Studio April 27th, 2007
Weeks was Marc Davis's assistant on Bambi, working closely with him on the animation of the animals in the forest. During the production of the film, Disney instituted a training program where the artists studied animals from life. Here is a collection of Weeks' animal studies...


From Instruction: Clair Weeks Animal Studies March 2nd, 2007
During WWII, Weeks took a leave from the Disney Studios to serve in the military. To keep him informed about the activities at the studio in his absence, Disney sent him this pamphlet...


From Dispatch From Disney's 1943 Part One
July 11th, 2007 and Part Two July 26th, 2007
Weeks returned to the studio after the War and was soon promoted to animator. He worked on Tinkerbell in Peter Pan, but decided to leave the studio to travel the world in 1952. Upon his departure, he was presented with this book, containing autographs and sketches from the entire staff...


From Clair Weeks' Goodbye Book 1952 February 1st, 2007
In 1956, Weeks was invited by Information Films of Bombay, India to set up the country's first animation studio as part of the American Technical Cooperation Mission. Weeks' pioneering influence is still felt in the burgeoning animation business in India...


From Clair Weeks- Pioneer of Indian Animation August 17th, 2007
Many thanks to the family of Clair Weeks for sharing his fascinating story with us.

Go To Number 2 on the list of Top Ten Subjects of 2007

Stephen Worth
Director
ASIFA-Hollywood
Animation Archive
.

Stumble It!

2007 Review: 4 Advice For CGI Animators

As the ASIFA-Hollywood Animation Archive completes its second year in operation, it's time to review the accomplishments of the past year. Here's a countdown of the ten most important subjects we've covered in 2007. See if your list matches mine. (View the complete list.) Click on the link to read more on this topic.


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.

NUMBER 4: ADVICE FOR CG ANIMATORS

One of the principle purposes of this website is to provide the link between animation of the past and animation of the future. The principles that brought Pinocchio and Bugs Bunny to life are the same principles that should be used to create current computer animated characters. This is not a website devoted to promoting hand drawn animation. This is a website devoted to promoting animation.


Bakshi Phone Doodle
Ralph Bakshi is a monumental force in the world of animation. I convinced him to come out of retirement to speak directly to the CGI guys in the trenches and share his viewpoint on the current state of animation. Ralph has an uncanny knack for kicking your ass in a way that makes you want to say "thank you!" afterwards. These two articles are Bakshi at his best.

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. -Ralph Bakshi

Bakshi Speaks To CGI Animators August 13th, 2007

Bakshi On 2D vs. 3D August 31st, 2007

A few weeks ago, I stuck my own head on the chopping block with a post titled, CGI Animators Should THINK Like Artists. I received some flak from an industry pro who said, "You take an all-or-nothing approach, where everything ever done in CG animation is crap, and everyone making these films are dopes." Well, that isn't what I'm actually saying... Crappy animation is crappy animation, no matter what technique is used to create it. And a lot of great artists are working on crappy CG films. The problem isn't that CG animation sucks and the people making it are dopes... It's that the current crop of CG features don't come close to scratching the surface of what's possible using the medium.


In the late teens and early 20's, hand drawn animation was in the same place CG is today. Everyone was focused on developing technical processes and filing patents on techniques. The drawings were realistic and stiff, the stories were simplistic, and they recycled cliched formulas and stock animation without a great deal of variety. Audiences didn't mind, because they were amused by the novelty of drawings that moved. But the novelty eventually wore off.

The medium had to advance itself creatively to survive, and animators like Otto Messmer and Bill Nolan stepped up to the bat to pioneer personality animation, the Fleischers developed musical timing, and Walt Disney codified the fundamental principles of animation like overlapping action, follow through and squash and stretch. We can learn a lot from the past. Motion libraries and rotoscoping were a dead end in 1925 and they're a dead end now. Earl Hurd's patent for the cel system didn't make cartoons any more entertaining, and neither do new techniques for rendering fur or water in CG. The thing that makes cartoons better is to utilize the unique aspects of the medium to tell new and original stories in an expressive and creative way.


In this article, I use an illustrated book from a century ago to attempt to show how the reference on this website is relevant to artists working in the field of computer animation...

CGI Animators Should THINK Like Artists
November 28th, 2007

I ask every animator who walks through the doors of the ASIFA-Hollywood Animation Archive for the same favor... Use the resources I'm sharing with you to make animation that people like me who love animation would want to watch. That goes the same for animators who use a computer as it does those who use a pencil. Take Ralph's advice to tell fresh and original stories, and my advice to think like an artist, and you can't go wrong.

Go To Number 3 on the list of Top Ten Subjects of 2007

Stephen Worth
Director
ASIFA-Hollywood
Animation Archive
.

Stumble It!

Pencil Test: Virgil Ross Scene From A Hare Grows In Manhattan

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.


Virgil Ross had a sixty year career in animation. He was a friend of mine and let me make flipbooks of some of his favorite scenes of animation. Today, I digitized one and made it into a pencil test. It's a little larger than usual so you can still frame through it and study the action.

Pencil Test By Virgil Ross
From "A Hare Grows In Manhattan" (WB/1946)
(Quicktime 7 / 4 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.

If you like this cartoon, see our previous post...


Bugs Bunny In Coronet Magazine

Also see... The Pencil Test Of Art Babbitt's Greatest Scene, The Training Of A Golden Age Animator, An Interview With Playboy's Eldon Dedini, John Canemaker on Bill Tytla, Ward Kimball In Escapade Magazine, A Drawing Lesson From Walter Lantz, Grim Natwick's Scrapbook and Remembering Berny Wolf

Stephen Worth
Director
ASIFA-Hollywood
Animation Archive
.

Stumble It!

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.
.

Stumble It!

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
.

Stumble It!

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.
.

Stumble It!

Terry-Toons: Carlo Vinci Notes

This post is just the tip of the iceberg... see reason number 7 on our The Top Ten Reasons To Support The A-HAA for links to more great cartoons to study.


Last Friday, archive assistant Amir Avni, John Kricfalusi and I took a trip out to visit Carlo Vinci's family at the home of his wife, Margaret. Mrs. Vinci graciously welcomed us into her home for a tour of her collection of artwork belonging to her late husband. Carlo's animation desk, which he designed and built himself, still stands in his office just as he left it, with caricatures by co-workers hanging above it on the wall. Every room in the house has beautiful artwork filling the space. It was an awe inspiring experience to get a chance to see it all.


John K, Steve Worth and Margaret Vinci
Carlo Vinci was a remarkable artist. He received classical art training at the National Academy of Design in 1930. He joined Paul Terry's Terry-Toons soon after, and worked there for twenty years. He came West to join Joe Barbera at MGM, and ended up as the lead animator at H-B for twenty more years. But as I learned at my visit, those great achievements were only a small part of his story. In addition to cartooning, Vinci was an all-around fine artist, adept at oil painting, watercolor, illustration, stained glass and sculpture... in a variety of styles, from classical to baroque to art deco... with a wide range of subjects- still lifes, portraiture, landscapes and religious subjects. It was a mind blowing experience to discover the depth of talent behind a cartoonist we thought we already knew.


Carlo Vinci's son, Paul and grandson, John
with John K in front of Vinci's self-portrait
After we had viewed all the amazing artwork, Mrs. Vinci invited us to enjoy some home made Italian desserts with her family. Excited by everything we had seen, we had plenty of questions about Carlo and his wonderful career as an artist. We asked if she had met him before he started working for Terry-Toons or after, and she replied, "He was working for Mr. Terry when I met him. When we were courting, he lived in the Bronx, and I lived in Brooklyn. It was a long trip across town to meet for our date every Wednesday evening. Carlo would send me a little note with a cartoon every day in the mail when we couldn't be together. I've saved them all these years, but I don't suppose you would be interested in seeing them..."

Naturally, we were! Her son, Paul Vinci helped her to retrieve the hundreds of letters from a closet- all on Terry animation paper in envelopes with the distinctive Terry-Toons logo. Dating from 1938 to 1939, these charming little notes had a personal message, along with brilliant drawings depicting Terry characters. Paul commented that he himself hadn't seen the letters since he was very small; and even then, his mother only shared one or two with him. They had been bundled away carefully for over fifty years. Mrs. Vinci has kindly allowed us to share these drawings with you...

















We will be presenting more material by the great Carlo Vinci in the coming weeks. All of us at ASIFA-Hollywood appreciate Mrs. Vinci's generosity. Paul and John Vinci will be printing out this post and sharing it with her, so you can thank her yourself in the comments below.

For more information on this great animator, see our Carlo Vinci Cartoon Hall of Fame entry. Also see... Terrytoons Model Sheets and The Temperamental Lion / John K on Flintstones Animators / Ruff And Reddy And Pinky The Pint-Sized Pachyderm / Alex Toth Model Sheets / Nat Falk's How To Draw Animated Cartoons Part Three: How Cartoons Are Made, Part Four: How To Draw Animated Cartoons and Part Five: How To Animate

Stephen Worth
Director
ASIFA-Hollywood
Animation Archive

4.8.09
.

Stumble It!

Blogs: Research Roundup 3.13.07

Al Capp's Hard Hats
(Jeffrey's Goof Button)

Walt Stanchfield's Gesture Drawing For Animation
(Leo Brodie's Punch & Brodie)

Pinocchio Drafts
(Hans Perk's A. Film L.A.)

I. Klein on Charlie Bowers Part One / Part Two / Part Three
(Michael Sporn's Splog)

Virgil Partch's The Captain's Gig
(Allan Holtz's Stripper's Guide)

Bobe Cannon Commercial
(Amid Amidi & Jerry Beck's Cartoon Brew)

1943 Article On George Pal Puppetoons
(Amid Amidi & Jerry Beck's Cartoon Brew)

Hollywood Censors Its Animated Cartoons 1939
(Amid Amidi & Jerry Beck's Cartoon Brew)

Peter Pan Sweatbox Notes
(Tinker Bell's Sacred Tree of the Aracuan Bird)

Carlo Vinci: Slow But Sure
(John K's All Kinds of Stuff)

Stumble It!

Instruction: Clair Weeks Animal Studies 1940

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, I'm proud to present more amazing treasures from the Clair Weeks collection. As I mentioned in an earlier post, Weeks was born the son of a missionary in India. At DIsney, he was often teased about his resemblence to a village parson or pilgrim. (See caricature to the right.)

Around 1940, Disney Studios was at its peak. Several animated feature films were in production at once, and the staff numbered at an all time high. Disney instituted a comprehensive training program for the artists at his studio, which included life drawing, animal studies and action analysis classes under the direction of Don Graham. Today, we scanned animal drawings by Clair Weeks from these classes.


Archive supporter, Mike Fontanelli was in last night when I was scanning these beautiful sketches, and he expressed his admiration for Weeks' skill. It's difficult to draw animals and capture any kind of natural pose because they are always moving. Weeks not only exhibited mastery of construction and posing, but also the ability to embed the spark of life that makes a drawing come alive. His technique allowed for both analytically realistic depiction and cartoony stylized caricature.

Aspiring cartoonists and animators should look over these drawings carefully and make a trip to the zoo to study the animals themselves the way the artists did at Disney in 1940.
















If you found this interesting, you'll want to check out our previous posts about material from the collection of Clair Weeks... Clair Weeks Goodbye Book and the 1938 Disney Artists Tryout Book. Also, see... Willard Mullen on Animals.

Stephen Worth
Director
ASIFA-Hollywood
Animation Archive

1.14.08
.

Stumble It!

Pitch: Herb Klynn's The Shrimp Part One

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



Over the weekend, we received another donation from the family of UPA and Format Films designer, Herb Klynn. The Klynn collection is fascinating, because it consists of portfolio cases full of unsold pitches. The one I'm featuring today is a sort of animated Leave It To Beaver in a style very similar to the films of UPA. These sketches are very likely the work of Klynn himself, and stand as an example of his impeccable design sense and appeal.

Here is Format Films' presentation for THE SHRIMP.


My name is Christopher. I'm a guy like everybody else.


This is The Shrimp. He's my brother and he's different.


He doesn't talk much. He just follows me and copies everything I do. That's his turtle, Mr. Coolidge.


His really name is Marvin. Only everybody calls him Shrimp. Except my mother. She calls him Marvin. I don't know why. My mother thinks he's an angel. She kisses him and junk like that. Someday he'll bite her. She'll see.


My father likes the Shrimp too. I don't know why. Maybe it's because he ain't home all day like me. Some day he'll find out.


My mother thinks he's more important than the President maybe. She doesn't care about me havin' fun. Oh no. I'm supposed to take care of him and watch him and keep his nose dry. It's all I do practically. He has the wettest nose on the block.


Nobody talks like my mother. Not nearly. Just listen to her: "Christopher what's the matter with you why must you be so selfish you're a big boy you're eight marvin's only four anybody would think you'd love to take him with you wherever you go if you ever tie him to a fire hydrant again and leave him there so he has to ring false alarms for help you'll be so sorry I'll do more than just tell your father I'll take away your bicycle for good!" See? She never even has to take a breath.


These are the guys in our gang. With our shadow.


The Shrimp never wants to play with the little kids. He only wants to be with me and the other big guys. Like the ones in my gang. Which are swell.


This if Funk-Funk. He's keen. When he grows up, he wants to get tattooed all over and be in the circus.


This is Fats. He's neat. Once he ate twenty two Eskimo Pies without throwing up. He just got a rash.


This is Cannonball. He's cool. He never takes off his skates. Except in bed. Or on Christmas.


Caption missing.


This is Hubba. He's slick. He likes girls.


I do too. But it depends on the girl.

Although the humor in South Park is from a totally different universe, imagine how much better the show would be if it had half the style and expressiveness of these sketches. Quality design and expressive animation matters.

Many thanks to the family of Herb Klynn. I'll post more from this pitch soon.

If you found this article to be interesting, see also... Herb Klynn And The Animated Feature That Might Have Been.

Stephen Worth
Director
ASIFA-Hollywood
Animation Archive

Stumble It!

Media: More 50s and 60s Album Covers

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 50s children's book illustrators.



Here are some more great album covers from the colleciton of Archive volunteer, Eric Graf. Check out our Previous Post of album covers too.










For more LP art, see... 50s and 60s Album Covers

For more amazing illustration for kids, see our postings on Little Golden Books

Thanks
Stephen Worth
Director
ASIFA-Hollywood
Animation Archive

Stumble It!

Illustration: Uncle Remus Stories Part Two

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 50s children's book illustrators.



Here are more scans from "Uncle Remus Stories", loaned to us by archive volunteer, Eric Graf. These wonderful illustrations are by Al Dempster and Bill Justice. For more images from this great Giant Golden Book, see... Uncle Remus Stories Part One

As always, if you'd like to see more of this book, let me know in the comments below.













If you found this to be useful, see also... Uncle Remus Stories Part One, Little Verses Part One, Part Two and The New Golden Song Book Part One, Part Two and Part Three, and Huckleberry Hound Builds A House.

Thanks
Stephen Worth
Director
ASIFA-Hollywood
Animation Archive

Stumble It!

Filmography: Tytla and Terry-Jekyll and Hyde

This post is just the tip of the iceberg... see reason number 7 on our The Top Ten Reasons To Support The A-HAA for links to more great cartoons to study.



Today, we continued to digitize our collection of Terrytoons. The second-tier golden age studios have been given short shrift in animation history books. It's unfortunate that book after book about Walt Disney and the Warner Bros. cartoons continue to be published when other studios, like Terry-Toons and Walter Lantz have never been adequately covered. The ASIFA-Hollywood Animation Archive is gathering together information on these studios with the hopes that we can raise the awareness of these neglected cartoons.

Here is a fabulous Terry-Toon featuring Mighty Mouse... Mighty Mouse Meets Jekyll & Hyde Cat. You might remember the recent postings we published here with John Canemaker's notes to a gallery exhibit of artwork by Bill Tytla, (Part One / Part Two). After leaving Disney during the strike, Tytla worked for a brief time at Terry-Toons before moving on to Famous Studios. This is one of his best cartoons for Terry during this period.




In particular, pay attention to Tytla's wonderful transformation sequence...








The animation of the cat running across the rooftops has a creepy sort of "man in a cat suit" feeling. At Terry-Toons, the animators were given much more latitude to handle scenes in their own particular style. Tytla takes full advantage of that in this cartoon.






Mighty Mouse Meets Jekyll & Hyde Cat (Terry/1944)
(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.

If you found this post to be interesting, you should also see... Canemaker On Tytla Part One and Part Two, The Temperamental Lion 1940, Catnip Capers 1940, Jim Tyer's Barnyard Actor 1955 and Terrytoons Lobby Cards

Many thanks to John Kricfalusi for donating this great cartoon to our archive.

Stephen Worth
Director
ASIFA-Hollywood
Animation Archive

Stumble It!

Meta: 2006 Annie Awards Photos

Here are some photos from this Sunday's Annie Awards... The shirt I'm wearing was made for me by my sister from material made in the early 30s. (Sorry there are so many of me! I wasn't the one holding the camera this time.) Many thanks to all the people who attended.


Me with my brother, Don and niece Sarah


Margaret Kerry Willcox, the rotoscope model for
Tinkerbell and voice actress from Clutch Cargo


Archive Sponsor Kevin Koch, President of the Animation Guild


Bill Frake, director/storyboard artist (Bill has some great
lecture notes from Disney he will be sharing with us soon.)


Marea and Jerry Beck, Archive Angels


Annette O'Neil, whose expertise
makes the Annies a success year after year


Andreas Deja, Winsor McCay Award recipient and Archive Angel


Kathy and Antran, two of the greatest people I know


The Annie Trophy Girls (the Annies are a lot of fun!)
UPDATE: ASIFA-Hollywood Volunteer, Jason Jones snapped some great pictures...


June Foray and me


Archive Volunteers: Marc Deckter, Michael Fallik and Eric Graf


Frank Gladstone and the Winsor McCay Award winners: Genndy Tartakovsky, Andreas Deja and Bill Plympton


John Lasseter and the Best Animated Feature Annie for "Cars"

If anyone out there has photos of the event, please email them to me with the names of the people in the picture at sworth@animationarchive.org

See also... List of 2006 Annie Award Winners, 2006 June Foray Award and Yet More Annie Photos

Thanks
Stephen Worth
Director
ASIFA-Hollywood
Animation Archive

Stumble It!

Blogs: Research Roundup

There's a wealth of information in the blogosphere! When I come across good stuff, I'll post a roundup of links here on the Archive site for you. Enjoy! -Steve

News of Yore: Paul Terry on Animation
(Allan Holtz's Stripper's Guide via Cartoon Brew)

Emanuele Luzzati: 1921-2007
(Michael Sporn's Splog)

Ward Kimball's Escalation
(Amid Amidi & Jerry Beck's Cartoon Brew)

Feodor Rojankovsky: Drawing Skill Plus Design
(John K's All Kinds of Stuff)

Yaroslav Horak: James Bond Comics
(Warren Leonhardt's Percussive Oompah)

More About T.S. Sullivant
(Uncle Eddie Fitzgerald's Theory Corner)

Don Graham's Action Analysis Class Notes
(Hans Perk's A. Film L.A.)

Telling Tommy About Famous Inventors: Winsor McCay
(Tom Stathes' Cartoons on Film)

Stumble It!

Meta: 2006 Annie Award Winners

PRODUCTION CATEGORIES

• Best Animated Feature: Cars - Pixar Animation Studios


• Best Home Entertainment Production: Bambi II - DisneyToon Studios


• Best Animated Short Subject: No Time For Nuts - Blue Sky Studios


• Best Animated Television Commercial: United Airlines "Dragon" - DUCK Studios


• Best Animated Television Production: Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends - Cartoon Network Studios


• Best Animated Video Game: Flushed Away The Game - D3 Publisher of America, Inc.

INDIVIDUAL ACHIEVEMENT CATEGORIES

• Animated Effects: Scott Cegielski - "Flushed Away" - DreamWorks Animation & Aardman Features


• Character Animation in a Feature Production: Gabe Hordos - "Flushed Away" - DreamWorks Animation & Aardman Features


• Character Animation in a Television Production: Yu Jae Myung - Avatar "The Blind Bandit" - Nickelodeon


• Character Design in an Animated Feature Production: Nicolas Marlet - "Over The Hedge" - DreamWorks Animation


• Character Design in an Animated Television Production: Mike Kunkel - The Life & Times of Juniper Lee "Party Monsters" - Cartoon Network Studios


• Directing in an Animated Feature Production: Tim Johnson & Karey Kirkpatrick - "Over The Hedge" - DreamWorks Animation


• Directing in an Animated Television Production: Giancarlo Volpe - Avatar "The Drill" - Nickelodeon


• Music in an Animated Feature Production: Randy Newman - "Cars" - Pixar Animation Studios


• Music in an Animated Television Production: James L. Venable & Jennifer Kes Remington - Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends "One False Movie" - Cartoon Networks Studios


• Production Design in an Animated Feature Production: Pierre-Olivier Vincent - "Flushed Away" - DreamWorks Animation & Aardman Features


• Production Design in an Animated Television Production: Martin Ansolabehere - Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends "Good Wilt Hunting" - Cartoon Network Studios


• Storyboarding in an Animated Feature Production: Gary Graham "Over The Hedge" - DreamWorks Animation


• Storyboarding in an Animated Television Production: Li Hong - The X's "You Only Sneeze Twice" - Nickelodeon


• Voice Acting in an Animated Feature Production: Ian McKellan - Voice of the Toad - "Flushed Away" - DreamWorks Animation & Aardman Features


• Voice Acting in an Animated Television Production: Eartha Kitt - Voice of Yzma - The Emperor's New School "Kuzclone" - Walt Disney Television Animation


• Writing in an Animated Feature Production: Dick Clement & Ian La Frenais and Chris Lloyd & Joe Keenan and Will Davies - "Flushed Away" - DreamWorks Animation & Aardman Features


• Writing in an Animated Television Production: Ian Maxtone-Graham - The Simpsons "The Seemingly Neverending Story" - Gracie Films

JURIED AWARDS

• June Foray Award - Significant and benevolent or charitable impact on the art and industry of animation: Stephen Worth


• Winsor McCay Award - Recognition of lifetime or career contributions to the art of animationL Bill Plympton, Genndy Tartakovsky, Andreas Deja


• Certificate of Merit: Bill Matthews, Michael Fallik, Marc Deckter, Eric Graf

For more info, see... www.annieawards.org and www.asifa-hollywood.org

See also... 2006 Annie Awards Photos and 2006 June Foray Award

Stumble It!

Meta: June Foray Award

Tonight was the 34th Annual Annie Awards. I was honored to receive the June Foray Award for a significant benevolent impact on the art of animation. The award was presented by the great lady herself, June Foray.

Here is the text of my acceptance speech...

In 1973, Eric Larson, one of Disney's Nine Old Men, announced to the studio that he was setting down his pencil for good. He saw the great accomplishments of his generation of animators slipping away, and knew that the art of animation needed his help. Instead of taking advantage of a well-deserved retirement like most of his peers, he decided to dedicate the rest of his life to training and developing young animators.

His story is kind of a cross between Noah's Ark and The Wise Little Hen. For the next fifteen years- during the dark ages of the 1970s, he set to work building the foundation for the recent wave of animation. He didn't get discouraged, he stuck with it until the end. He passed away in 1988. By then, his job was done. The torch had been passed.

Many of the people you see on this stage tonight owe their first break in the animation business to Larson's training program... Andreas Deja, Glen Keane, Brad Bird, John Lassiter... They all use the knowledge Larson generously passed on to them every single day of their career. Eric Larson may not be the first name you think of when you think of the Nine Old Men, but he's the one who ultimately had the greatest impact on the art of animation.

It's doubtful that we'll ever see the likes of Larson's training program again. No major animation studio is interested in devoting their resources to such a forward thinking idea like this. The artform is the same, the raw talent is still out there, but the business is very, very different. Today. if young artists want to grow and develop and hone their skills, they need to do it on their own.

The ASIFA-Hollywood Animation Archive is dedicated to following in Larson's footsteps, providing invaluable support to the animators of the future. Now, I'm no Eric Larson- I can't do it single-handedly the way he did. But I can facilitate gathering together the experience, knowledge and teamwork it'll take to take animation to the next level.

Ralph Bakshi once told me... "STEVIE! If you're able to make a living drawing cartoons, you're the luckiest guy in the world. You owe for that... You've gotta give back to the muse." Ralph is right. We owe it to the people who came before us, like Eric Larson and the hundreds and hundreds of other legendary animators who took time out of their busy schedules to give a green assistant a drawing lesson, or offer a few words of advice and encouragement to a student. I know I have a list a mile long of people who helped me when I was just starting out. I'm sure all of you do too.

ASIFA-Hollywood is giving all of us the opportunity to give back and build the foundation for the next wave of animation. We need your help. I want you to know I appreciate this honor. I can't think of an award I would rather have than the one with June Foray's name on it. She's at the top of my list.

Many thanks to the people at the event who offered words of encouragement. A special thanks to my hero and friend, June.

See also... List of 2006 Annie Award Winners and 2006 Annie Awards Photos

Stephen Worth
Director
ASIFA-Hollywood
Animation Archive

Stumble It!

History: Disney's Artist Tryout Book

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.


Today, we scanned another fascinating document from the collection of Clair Weeks. This is the "Disney Studios Artist's Tryout Book" from 1938. It provides a valuable overview of the production process and description of the various job categories. You will definitely want to print this out and study it carefully.

Here are some quotes from this booklet that you might find interesting...

STORY MEN must be able to draw. The stories are not written but are visualized in sketch form.

The value of an animator is dependent upon his ability to dramatize and caricature life, and to time and stage his characters' actions in an unusual and interesting way. An animator must be a showman- he must know how to entertain an audience, to present a gag, to picture dramatically an ordinary incident. Above all, he must be a sure and skillful draftsman.

THE DIRECTOR must have complete knowledge of every phase of animation, have executive ability and outstanding dramatic talent. He must be familiar with practically all of the Arts... To date, all directors have arisen from the ranks of the Studio, sometimes through story work, but more often through animation. Because of the complexity of animation it seems that this will continue to be the case.

All inking and painting of celluloids, and all tracing done in the Studio is perfomed exclusively by a large staff of girls known as Inkers and Painters... This is the only department in the Disney Studio open to women artists.

The original brochure was in very poor condition, with tears and waterstains throughout. I'm sure that this was carried around in Weeks' back pocket for quite a while. But Photoshop can work miracles, so these scans ended up looking better than the original.

In case you haven't noticed, the Archive has become "an embarassment of riches". We are doing very important work here. I hope you will support our project any way you can.


















If you found this useful, you'll also want to check out... Walt Disney Goes To War, John Canemaker on Bill Tytla and Musical Timing Rediscovered.

Jerry Beck posted a related booklet at Cartoon Brew... Titled "The Ropes At Disney", it outlines the rules and regulations governing the employees of the studio and the organizational hierarchy of the various departments.



If you haven't seen it yet, make a point of checking it out.

Thanks
Stephen Worth
Director
ASIFA-Hollywood
Animation Archive

12.11.08
.

Stumble It!

Biography: Bob Clampett's Swimming Pool

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.

Archive supporter, Mike Fontanelli stopped by Thursday night and dropped off this TV Guide from February 17th, 1962...



It features a story on "Hollywood swimming pools", including the pool belonging to Bob Clampett...




Aren't those cutouts of the characers cool? Notice the "footprints in cement" from the characters surrounding the pool.

Thanks, Mike!

For more on Bob Clampett, see... Biography: Bob Clampett in Schlesinger's Exposure Sheet.

Stephen Worth
Director
ASIFA-Hollywood
Animation Archive

Stumble It!

Biography: Clair Weeks' Goodbye Book 1952

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.


Today, we had a visit from the family of Clair Weeks. They brought along several portfolios full of beautiful drawings, mostly from Bambi. Over the next few weeks, they will be allowing the ASIFA-Hollywood Animation Archive to digitize the material for inclusion in our database. They also promise to write a Biopedia Page for Weeks. Here is the "Readers' Digest version" of Weeks' career...

A missionary's son, Clair Weeks was born in 1912 in India. He lived there until the early 1930s, when he relocated to America. In 1936, he joined the staff of the Walt Disney Studio and set to work as an assistant on Snow White. He went on to assist Marc Davis on Bambi, CInderella and Peter Pan, taking a brief break from animation to serve in the military during WW2.

In the early 50s, Weeks left the studio travel the world. He eventually settled in Bombay, India, where he headed up a government owned studio that produced animated shorts. Weeks' impact on Indian animation was immense. The people he trained were the pioneers who established the Indian animation industry.


The treasure I'm presenting today dates to August of 1952... It's the scrapbook given to Weeks upon his departure from Disney. I won't spoil the fun by telling you what's in it. Click on the images and prepare to be amazed! (Thanks to Hans Perk for the identifications!)



Members of the "9 Old Men": Marc Davis (Weeks was his assistant), Ollie Johnston, Frank Thomas, Milt Kahl, Eric Larson / Assistant Animators: Bob McCrea, Clarke Mallery, Iwao Takamoto, Julius Svendsen, Bill Eigle (?)


Ben Sharpsteen (Director) / Hazel George (Studio Nurse) / Hal Adelquist (Asst. Director) / Oliver Wallace (Music) / Koneta Roxby (Library) / Bob Gibeaut (Cutting) / Jo Sears (Ink & Paint / Production)


Layout Artists: Lance Nolley, Al Zinnen, Don Griffith, Ken Anderson, Ken O'Connor, Mike Holoboff, MacLaren Stewart, Basil Davidovich, Tom Codrick, Charles Philippi / Background Artists: Jimi Trout, Hugh Hennesy, Ray Huffine, Art Riley, Dick Anthony, Ralph Hulett, Al Dempster, Claude Coats, Art Landy / Art Directors: Thor Putnam, John Hench / Directors: Jack Kinney, Charles "Nick" Nichols, Gerry Geronimi, Wilfred "Jaxon" Jackson / Asst Directors: Bee Selck, Lou Debney, Toby Tobelman (?) / Directors' Secretary: Marie Dasnoit / The Man: Walt Disney / Tom Jekel (?)


Animators: Bob Youngquist, Jack Campbell, Les Clark (9 Old Men), Hugh Fraser, John Lounsbery (9 Old Men), Harry Holt, Art Stevens, George Nicholas / Asst Animators: Walt Stanchfield, Lou Appet, Bob Ogle, Dale Barnhart


Don DaGradi (Art Director)



Animators / Assistants: Dick Lucas / Al Wilson / Jim Steele / Eric Cleworth / Ambrozy Paliwoda / Jerry Hathcock / Charlie "Chuck" Downs / Bob Carlson / Woolie Reitherman (9 Old Men) / Ed Soloman / Wathel Rogers


Bonar Dyer (Personnel) / Mary Flanigan (Notary) / Bunny Venable (Production or Legal)



Mostly Effects Animators: Retta Davidson, Dwight Carlisle, Joe Nunez, Sandy Strother, Dan MacManus, Al Severns, George Rowley, Marion Mahnken, Jack "Buck" Buckley, Frank Onaitis, Ed Parks, Jane Fowler


Ed Aardal (Animator) / Harvey Orr (Print Shop) / Johnny Bond (Head of Clean Up)




Ken Peterson (Animator / Prod. Mgr. / Scheduling) / Andy Engman (Effects Animator / Prod. Mgr.) / Esther "Esta" Haight (Front Office File Room / Western Union) / Anne Meyer (Production?)


Thanks to the family of Clair Weeks for sharing this with us!

If you enjoyed this post, you'll also want to check out... Art Babbitt's Best Scene / Canemaker on Tytla Part One and Part Two and Carlo Vinci, Pioneer Animator

Stephen Worth
Director
ASIFA-Hollywood
Animation Archive

11.26.08
.

Stumble It!

Illustration: Uncle Remus Stories 1949

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 50s children's book illustrators.


On Saturday archive volunteer, Eric Graf brought by another treasure for us to digitize... a 1949 edition of the Disney Giant Golden Book, "Uncle Remus Stories". It features a spectacular cover by Mary Blair and many beautiful interior illustrations by Al Dempster and Bill Justice.

This book is interesting, not just for its relationship to the rarely seen Disney film, Song of the South, but for the material that doesn't appear in the film. Along with the familiar stories about the Tar Baby and Brer Rabbit's Laffin' Place, the book illustrates a dozen other stories like "De Great Rabbit Terrapin Race", "Brer Fox and de Stolen Goobers" and "Why de Cricket Fambly Lives in Chimbleys".
































If you found this to be useful, see also... Little Verses Part One, Part Two and The New Golden Song Book Part One , Part Two and Part Three, and Huckleberry Hound Builds A House.

Thanks
Stephen Worth
Director
ASIFA-Hollywood
Animation Archive

11.24.08
.

Stumble It!

Illustration: Maxfield Parrish's Arabian Nights 1909

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.


Yesterday, I posted on Lotte Reiniger's Prince Achmed, and I thought it might be interesting to see a different approach to the same subject... this time by illustrator Maxfield Parrish.

Parrish was one of the most successful artists of the golden age of illustration. It is said that during the depression, there were more Maxfield Parrish prints hanging on the walls of American homes than there were American homes!

The book I'm featuring today was done early in Parrish's career, but it contains all of the aspects of his style that would make him famous... the electric blues set off of bright sunset oranges, the dramatic lighting effects, the amazingly lifelike natural shapes and patterns contrasted with large flat areas of color, and the total control of the mechanical aspects of offset printing... if you look carefully at the foliage in the image with the urns on either side, you can see that the painting was pasted up from several pieces. Bud Plant's website has an interesting article on how Parrish used the four color process. Check it out.











I'll be posting soon on another of the great American illustrators, N. C. Wyeth.

If you enjoyed this post, see... Edmund Dulac's Tanglewood Tales and Gustaf Tenggren's Wonderbook

Stephen Worth
Director
ASIFA-Hollywood
Animation Archive

11.21.08
.

Stumble It!

Meta: The $100,000 Animation Drawing Course- Functional Drawing

NOTE: Do not move on to this lesson unless you have completed Lesson One, Lesson Two, Lesson Three, Lesson Four, Lesson Five, Lesson Six, Lesson Seven, Lesson Eight, Lesson Nine, and Lesson Ten

FUNCTIONAL DRAWING

Read John Kricfalusi's lesson at...
Functional Drawing Part One: Layout & Posing



I will add links to the further lessons in this topic as John posts them.

Stephen Worth
Director
ASIFA-Hollywood
Animation Archive

Stumble It!

Filmography: Reiniger's Prince Achmed Part Two

This post is just the tip of the iceberg... see reason number 7 on our The Top Ten Reasons To Support The A-HAA for links to more great cartoons to study.



A reader of this blog, Michael generously translated the synopsis of the first part of Lotte Reiniger's Adventures of Prince Achmed. I updated the first post on this landmark film with the info, and have included his translations here as well. Thanks, Michael!



A flaming abyss opened next to Prince Achmed. A hideous woman rose out of it and stepped towards him. Was she going to kill him? He walked up to her and told her who had brought him there, and that the great wizard's animals had kidnapped him. When she heard that, she shouted: "He is my enemy, let us fight him together!" She called the monsters that served her, for she was very powerful, as powerful as the wizard. She ordered them to dive into the core of the earth and fetch weapons with which they could fight the wizard. Now she was friendly to Achmed, took him by the hand and freed him. Look how they soared through magic might, walking through the air with ease, as if they were walking on level ground. The prince shouted: "O look, down there is Paribanu, dressed for a celebration. Oh, she is going to be married with that hunch-backed jester! Let's go down there quickly and save her!"

Down they swooped like birds of prey, grabbing that noble girl. How they lay in each other's arms, Paribanu and Achmed!
But listen! The beating of wings, what does it mean? New dangers! Hosts of black creatures, horrible animals with flapping wings! "O Paribanu!" "These are the spirits of Wak-Wak, my home country. They will not tolerate my staying away from home, they will take me with them! O, the horror!" So the demons took to the air with their prey, and again Prince Achmed stood there alone, separated from his lover. He was furious, and in his anger he forced one of the birds to serve him. Racing after Paribanu, he saw the magic island from far away. The gate of Wak-Wak, and next to it endlessly high mountains. He flew into the gate, and through it.

Then, suddenly, the gates closed, and a voice told the Prince that he was not allowed to enter. "Have you heard of Aladin and his lamp," the voice said, "only that lamp can be your salvation!" Achmed stopped short, trying to recall what he knw about that name: Aladdin! Aladdin!

What monster is this? Many-armed, abominable! Big as a mountain! And look, there is a man in its claws! The prince took his magic weapons to kill it. He shot arrow after arrow, until it dropped dead. He asked the man who he was. It was Aladin, the man he was looking for! He told Achmed his story: "I used to live a quiet life in the caliph's city. While I was working in my workshop one day, a stranger of noble appearance came in and asked me to follow him to a place where immense treasures could be found. He lead me to a cave and bade me descend to the depths of the earth. There, between shiny stones, I found the marvelous lamp. "Give it to me, scoundrel!" the stranger shouted; he was waiting at the cave's entrance. When I refused, he left me behind in darkness and desparation. But I, lighting the lamp, became the master of its spirits. They helped me escape. They served me and did whatever I ordered them to do. I gave them the order to build a palace, more beautiful than any palace I had seen before. And before the sun set, they had accomplished that feat. I went to the caliph's daughter and led her home with me as my wife. But in the evening, everything had disappeared - she, the lover, as well as the incredible palace and, with it, the lamp.

The stranger had done that, but who was he? The great wizard!



"So I got up and fled the caliph's wrath. Travelling over the sea in a tiny boat, i got into a storm. I was whirled around, I was almost smashed against rocks, then I was thrown on the coast. I saw a tree with fruit that could help me recover. But as I reached out for it, the tree rose to the height of a mountain and threw off branches and leaves: It was a monster! That was when you found me, Prince Achmed, and when you saved me!"

When Aladdin had finished his story, the witch appeared and told them that Paribanu was in danger. She said that the spirits of Wak-Wak were revolting against her and only Aladin's lamp could save her. "So you must fight the wizard!" both Aladdin and Achmed begged her, "wrench the lamp from his hands and kill him, the villain!" Already the witch got up and wove magic circles in order to catch the wizard. Not before long he was with them, angry and raging.

Now began a fight like the earth has never seen one, never before and never after it. In a lion's shape, the wizard jumped at the witch in order to pin her on the ground, but she turned into a snake. He, however, took the shape of a poisonous scorpion, which she countered by changing into a rooster. Many shapes they turned into, but neither of them was stronger than the other. Until at last, the witch tore the fire down from the skies, engulfing the wizard in flames. He, too, had power over the flames, and threw many a fire towards her, but finally, finally he got weak and burned. The villainous enemy was destroyed! Now the lamp belonged to them.

Victory, victory! Now they had to hurry to Paribanu's rescue. Numberless were the demons that attacked them. But numberless were also the good spirits that came streaming out of Aladdin's lamp to fight them. And so the black power of the demons was broken forever that day, they fled desperately to the recesses of the earth. They were free now, all of them: Paribanu and Achmed, Dinarsade and Aladdin!

Once more they summoned the lamp's spirits and bade them carry them to the palace they had built in one night and that the wizard had whisked away from the ground. Happily the spirits obliged. Look what made them so glad, while it was flying through the air, light as a cloud, but still artfully created, with numberless galleries and stairs and proud towers. In front of them the house landed like an animal that was meant to carry their burden. They entered the palace, and it flew up again to bring them back to the caliph's city. There, they were greeted with measureless joy. How long they had been away, and what adventures their eyes had seen!

But the caliph embraced them all as his children, Paribanu the beautiful, who was now the wife of Achmed, the noble son, and Aladdin, his lovely daughter Dinarsade's husband. The caliph lifted his hands and blessed them all.

THE PLATES

Here is the balance of the plates from the 1926 portfolio of prints from Lotte Reiniger's Adventures of Prince Achmed...


17. Achmed with the witch


18. Paribanu in her wedding attire


19. The wedding procession


20. Achmed shooting the monster


21. The monster threatening Aladdin


22. Aladdin tells Achmed his story


23. The wizard calls on Aladdin in his workshop


24. The wizard leads Aladdin past the caliph's palace


25. Dinarsade, the caliph's daughter, playing chess


26. Aladdin discovers the magic lamp in the cave


27. Aladdin greets Dinarsade


28. Aladdin at sea in the storm


29. The battle between the witch and the wizard


30. The wizard and the witch fighting in the shape of a vulture and a rooster


31. Aladdin fights the demons of Wak-Wak with his magic lamp


32. The homecoming
This important film is available at Amazon... Adventures of Prince Achmed DVD

For the first part of this article, see... Reiniger's Prince Achmed Part One

Thanks
Stephen Worth
Director
ASIFA-Hollywood
Animation Archive

Stumble It!

Comics: Dan Gordon's Superkatt

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 other day, John K posted an article in his blog about Dan Gordon. He described Gordon as a "pure cartoonist" whose characters seem really alive and motivated from within.

Gordon was an animator, story man and director on the Superman and Popeye series at Fleischer in the early 1940s. After the war, he dropped out of animation and made a living as a comic book artist, working on titles like Giggle Comics. He returned to animation in the late 1950s as a storyboard artist at Hanna Barbera, (Gordon boarded the pilot episode of The Flintstones) and on Clampett's Beany & Cecil series.

Here is an example of Gordon's work featuring Superkatt. These scans were donated to the Archive by our good friend Kent Butterworth. Thanks Kent!










For more on Dan Gordon, see Sherm Cohen's great features at Cartoon Snap.

If you enjoyed this comic, see also... Milt Stein's Supermouse Comics No. 4, Basil Wolverton's Powerhouse Pepper, and Boody Rogers' Babe Comics Part One, Part Two and Part Three.

Thanks
Stephen Worth
Director
ASIFA-Hollywood
Animation Archive

12.10.08
.

Stumble It!

Filmography: Reiniger's Prince Achmed 1926

This post is just the tip of the iceberg... see reason number 7 on our The Top Ten Reasons To Support The A-HAA for links to more great cartoons to study.


If you ask the average person what the first feature-length animated film was, just about everyone will answer Walt Disney's "Snow White & the Seven Dwarfs". But Disney's film wasn't the first animated feature by a longshot. Arguably, that honor belongs to Lotte Reiniger's "Adventures of Prince Achmed".


In 1923, Reiniger and her husband and business partner, Carl Koch began work on an ambitious project... a feature length silhouette puppet film based on "The One Thousand and One Nights". She worked with animator Bertold Bartosch and background artist Walter Ruttman for three years on the film. The paper cutouts were jointed using wires and delicately arranged on top of a lightbox, where it was photographed frame by frame. Reiniger continued to animate her distinctive silhouette films up into the mid-1970s. She passed away in 1981.


Archive volunteer, Eric Graf was perusing a local library book sale when he spotted an amazing find... a portfolio of prints from Reiniger's landmark film. Published in Berlin in the year the film was released (1926), this group of images shows just how beautiful Reiniger's work was... and how unique. Eric picked up the book for the archive and brought it by today. Thanks, Eric!

Our reader, Michael generously translated the synopsis for us...


Once upon a time there was a wizard who could control all the powers and elements of the world. One day, he made a mighty flying steed out of pure will and thought. Then he took it to the caliph's palace and asked him to let him marry his daughter in exchange for the horse. The girl refused (she thought he was ugly), so the plan was dismissed, but her brother, Achmed, got angry and insulted the wizard. So the latter set up a trap for him: He offered him to have a ride on the horse to see how fast and strong it was. But as soon as he was in the saddle, the horse flew up into the sky and far away. Achmed managed at last to make it land on an island. There he found many beautiful women asking him to be their lover, but he denied as he wanted to find their queen, who - as he had heard - was a woman of exceptional beauty.


Achmed flew over the island on the magic horse and saw a lake shimmering in the night. While he was waiting there, a bird with beautiful feathers landed nearby and changed shape before his eyes: It transformed into Paribanu, the queen of the island, and she wanted to bathe there; around her were many gentle women. Achmed asked her to stay with him, but she was frightened and tried to flee; he, however, held on to her feathers and followed her through the thicket like the hunter follows the deer. He asked her to flee no longer and sat her onto the horse with him. Then they flew over numberless countries, until at last they found a lonely valley, where Achmed made a bed for her under a tree.

But in the meantime, the wizard was not idle, searching for his horse with magic webs, in which he caught the picture of the faraway valley. Then he transformed into a kangaroo, that strange jumping animal of the desert, and in the next moment he was with Achmed and Paribandu. He lured Achmed into a deep canyon, in which a horrible snake lived. While Achmed was fighting that snake, trying to save his life, the wizard kidnapped the girl and escaped with the flying horse.

In China he wanted to sell her as a slave. A very powerful emperor lived there; he had a hump-backed jester, who amused him with his pranks and his chimes. The emperor liked Paribandu and gave many sacks of treasures to the wizards for her. Big was the emperor, and fat. Beautiful he was not. When he approached Paribandu and wanted to make her his lover, she pushed him away, crying: "No, you monster!" That made the emperor angry, so he called his jester and told him: "Do with her what you want! You can kill her, but you may also take her as your wife if you want!" "Ah, marriage! We make marriage!" the hump-backed one called out and danced with joy.

Meanwhile, the wizard was flying back to the island on birds that he had made out of the sacks of gold from the emperor. On the island, Achmed was mourning the loss of his lover, but the wizard gave Achmed to those birds: They tore him away like vultures tear a corpse away. When they found a wasteland where the earth was gaping and spewing out horror, they layed him down shackled under a big rock.


A flaming abyss opened next to Prince Achmed. A hideous woman rose out of it and stepped towards him. Was she going to kill him? He walked up to her and told her who had brought him there, and that the great wizard's animals had kidnapped him. When she heard that, she shouted: "He is my enemy, let us fight him together!" She called the monsters that served her, for she was very powerful, as powerful as the wizard. She ordered them to dive into the core of the earth and fetch weapons with which they could fight the wizard. Now she was friendly to Achmed, took him by the hand and freed him. Look how they soared through magic might, walking through the air with ease, as if they were walking on level ground. The prince shouted: "O look, down there is Paribanu, dressed for a celebration. Oh, she is going to be married with that hunch-backed jester! Let's go down there quickly and save her!"

Down they swooped like birds of prey, grabbing that noble girl. How they lay in each other's arms, Paribanu and Achmed!
But listen! The beating of wings, what does it mean? New dangers! Hosts of black creatures, horrible animals with flapping wings! "O Paribanu!" "These are the spirits of Wak-Wak, my home country. They will not tolerate my staying away from home, they will take me with them! O, the horror!" So the demons took to the air with their prey, and again Prince Achmed stood there alone, separated from his lover. He was furious, and in his anger he forced one of the birds to serve him. Racing after Paribanu, he saw the magic island from far away. The gate of Wak-Wak, and next to it endlessly high mountains. He flew into the gate, and through it.

Then, suddenly, the gates closed, and a voice told the Prince that he was not allowed to enter. "Have you heard of Aladin and his lamp," the voice said, "only that lamp can be your salvation!" Achmed stopped short, trying to recall what he knw about that name: Aladdin! Aladdin!

What monster is this? Many-armed, abominable! Big as a mountain! And look, there is a man in its claws! The prince took his magic weapons to kill it. He shot arrow after arrow, until it dropped dead. He asked the man who he was. It was Aladin, the man he was looking for! He told Achmed his story: "I used to live a quiet life in the caliph's city. While I was working in my workshop one day, a stranger of noble appearance came in and asked me to follow him to a place where immense treasures could be found. He lead me to a cave and bade me descend to the depths of the earth. There, between shiny stones, I found the marvelous lamp. "Give it to me, scoundrel!" the stranger shouted; he was waiting at the cave's entrance. When I refused, he left me behind in darkness and desparation. But I, lighting the lamp, became the master of its spirits. They helped me escape. They served me and did whatever I ordered them to do. I gave them the order to build a palace, more beautiful than any palace I had seen before. And before the sun set, they had accomplished that feat. I went to the caliph's daughter and led her home with me as my wife. But in the evening, everything had disappeared - she, the lover, as well as the incredible palace and, with it, the lamp.

The stranger had done that, but who was he? The great wizard!


"So I got up and fled the caliph's wrath. Travelling over the sea in a tiny boat, i got into a storm. I was whirled around, I was almost smashed against rocks, then I was thrown on the coast. I saw a tree with fruit that could help me recover. But as I reached out for it, the tree rose to the height of a mountain and threw off branches and leaves: It was a monster! That was when you found me, Prince Achmed, and when you saved me!"

When Aladdin had finished his story, the witch appeared and told them that Paribanu was in danger. She said that the spirits of Wak-Wak were revolting against her and only Aladin's lamp could save her. "So you must fight the wizard!" both Aladdin and Achmed begged her, "wrench the lamp from his hands and kill him, the villain!" Already the witch got up and wove magic circles in order to catch the wizard. Not before long he was with them, angry and raging.

Now began a fight like the earth has never seen one, never before and never after it. In a lion's shape, the wizard jumped at the witch in order to pin her on the ground, but she turned into a snake. He, however, took the shape of a poisonous scorpion, which she countered by changing into a rooster. Many shapes they turned into, but neither of them was stronger than the other. Until at last, the witch tore the fire down from the skies, engulfing the wizard in flames. He, too, had power over the flames, and threw many a fire towards her, but finally, finally he got weak and burned. The villainous enemy was destroyed! Now the lamp belonged to them.

Victory, victory! Now they had to hurry to Paribanu's rescue. Numberless were the demons that attacked them. But numberless were also the good spirits that came streaming out of Aladdin's lamp to fight them. And so the black power of the demons was broken forever that day, they fled desperately to the recesses of the earth. They were free now, all of them: Paribanu and Achmed, Dinarsade and Aladdin!

Once more they summoned the lamp's spirits and bade them carry them to the palace they had built in one night and that the wizard had whisked away from the ground. Happily the spirits obliged. Look what made them so glad, while it was flying through the air, light as a cloud, but still artfully created, with numberless galleries and stairs and proud towers. In front of them the house landed like an animal that was meant to carry their burden. They entered the palace, and it flew up again to bring them back to the caliph's city. There, they were greeted with measureless joy. How long they had been away, and what adventures their eyes had seen!

But the caliph embraced them all as his children, Paribanu the beautiful, who was now the wife of Achmed, the noble son, and Aladdin, his lovely daughter Dinarsade's husband. The caliph lifted his hands and blessed them all.

THE PLATES




1. Achmed on the magic horse


2. At the caliph's court


3. The magic horse takes Achmed into the air with it...


4. ...so the wizard is taken prisoner


5. Achmed with Paribanu's servants


6. Paribanu flying to the forest lake in her feathery costume


7. Her nightly bath


8. Achmed following Paribanu


9. The lovers in the mountains


10. Achmed and Paribanu


11. Achmed fighting with the snake in the canyon


12. The emperor of China's jester playing the chimes


13. Paribanu is sold to the emperor


14. The emperor pressing Paribanu


15. The wizard turns the sacks of gold into birds


16. The hunchback plays the flute for Paribanu


17. Achmed with the witch


18. Paribanu in her wedding attire


19. The wedding procession


20. Achmed shooting the monster


21. The monster threatening Aladdin


22. Aladdin tells Achmed his story


23. The wizard calls on Aladdin in his workshop


24. The wizard leads Aladdin past the caliph's palace


25. Dinarsade, the caliph's daughter, playing chess


26. Aladdin discovers the magic lamp in the cave


27. Aladdin greets Dinarsade


28. Aladdin at sea in the storm


29. The battle between the witch and the wizard


30. The wizard and the witch fighting in the shape of a vulture and a rooster


31. Aladdin fights the demons of Wak-Wak with his magic lamp


32. The homecoming
This important film is available at Amazon... Adventures of Prince Achmed DVD

Thanks
Stephen Worth
Director
ASIFA-Hollywood
Animation Archive

Stumble It!

Biography: Bill Tytla Part Two

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.



Today, we complete the article that John Canemaker lent us to digitize. It's an article he wrote for an exhibit of artwork by Bill Tytla. If you missed the first half, you can find it at... Biography: Bill Tytla Part One.

Here is the conclusion of this fascinating article...

















If you enjoyed this article, you'll also want to check out... Tytla At Terry: Mighty Mouse Meets Jekyll &' Hyde Cat 1940, The Pencil Test of Art Babbitt's Best Scene, our Profile of Carlo Vinci, and Remembering Berny Wolf

Thanks
Stephen Worth
Director
ASIFA-Hollywood
Animation Archive

Stumble It!

Story: Ren & Stimpy Big House Blues Seq 03

This post is just the tip of the iceberg... see The Top Ten Reasons To Support The A-HAA for more amazing animation related articles.



It's been quite a while since I posted an installment of the storyboard to the pilot episode of the original Ren & Stimpy Show, Big House Blues. ASIFA-Hollywood owes a debt of gratitude to John Kricfalusi for generously sharing this material with us. This is a fascinating look at the Genesis of one of the most successful animated TV shows of all time. If you missed it, see Part One of this storyboard and Part Two.

BIG HOUSE BLUES PART THREE


















I will be posting the last section of this storyboard soon.

For the first two sections of this storyboard, see... Big House Blues Seq. 1 and Big House Blues Seq. 2. For more Ren & Stimpy stuff, see... John K's Stimpy's Invention and our profile of Vincent Waller

Thanks
Stephen Worth
Director
ASIFA-Hollywood
Animation Archive

Stumble It!

Filmography: The Temperamental Lion 1940

This post is just the tip of the iceberg... see reason number 7 on our The Top Ten Reasons To Support The A-HAA for links to more great cartoons to study.

Today, we digitized some great Terrytoons model sheets that Carlo Vinci's family loaned to us...






This one is particularly interesting to me...



...because it's from one of the very best Terrytoons of the time, "The Temperamental Lion". Connie Rasinski created the goofy Bert Lahr lion character as the "King of the Jungle" for the classic cartoon "Doomsday" (1938) as well as "The Nutty Network" (1939). The model was adapted a bit in the late 1940s for "The Lyin' Lion", a film that includes some funny Jim Tyer animation...


...but the character was never better animated than he was by Carlo Vinci in this short... Check out his great scene of the lion singing!







The Temperamental Lion (Terry/1940)
(Quicktime 7 / 14.5 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.

Many thanks to the Vinci family for sharing their treasures with us!

Stephen Worth
Director
ASIFA-Hollywood
Animation Archive

11.18.08
.

Stumble It!

Illustration: Mary Blair Song Book Part Three

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 50s children's book illustrators.



Today, we continue digitizing Mary Blair's "New Golden Song Book" from 1955. If you missed the first two parts of this book, see Mary Blair Song Book Part One and Part Two.



Click on the image for a full size view.

















If you missed the posting of the first part of this book, see Mary Blair Song Book Part One and Part Two.

For more beautiful illustrations by Mary Blair, see... Little Verses Part One, Part Two, and Baby's House.

Stephen Worth
Director
ASIFA-Hollywood
Animation Archive

Stumble It!

Filmography: Bambi

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

Archive supporter, Mark Kirkland stopped by the other day with his collection of artwork from Bambi. It's a nice overview of the film... color keys, animation drawings, model sheets. Many thanks for sharing these with us, Mark!







Bambi's Father
Animation Drawing by Milt Kahl


Bambi's Mother
Animation Drawing by Frank Thomas


Model Sheet by Marc Davis



Character Design by Marc Davis


The wonderful thing about our digital archive is that it allows collectors to share their treasures with the world. If you have artwork you would like to loan us to be digitized, please stop by for a visit.

Thanks
Stephen Worth
Director
ASIFA-Hollywood
Animation Archive

11.03.08
.

Stumble It!

Biography: Bill Tytla Part One

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.

John Canemaker lent us a copy of an article he wrote for an exhibit of artwork by Bill Tytla. Tytla was a giant among animators, known for his solid, dimensional drawings and convincing depiction of weight and mass.

Here is the complete article...


































If you enjoyed this article, you'll also want to check out... Tytla At Terry: Mighty Mouse Meets Jekyll &' Hyde Cat 1940, The Pencil Test of Art Babbitt's Best Scene, our Profile of Carlo Vinci, and Remembering Berny Wolf

Thanks
Stephen Worth
Director
ASIFA-Hollywood
Animation Archive

10.23.08
.

Stumble It!

Story: Walt's War

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.

Here's a fascinating article from Life magazine on the Disney Studios during the wartime years...











Thanks
Stephen Worth
Director
ASIFA-Hollywood
Animation Archive

10.21.08
.

Stumble It!