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.

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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
.

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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
.

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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

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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
.

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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.)