The Genius of Dan Gordon at Cartoon Snap

Over at his blog Cartoon Snap, archive supporter Sherm Cohen posted a Great Article on Dan Gordon. Check it out!
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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
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Comics: Felix Answers The Deckter Challenge

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.


Here are more great Sunday pages from the collection of Marc Deckter. This sequential run of Otto Messmer's Felix the Cat was brought to you through the generosity of Archive Supporters B. Paul Husband and Christopher Peterson.


Many thanks to everyone who has gone out of their way to support the archive this year. We're making great strides, and it's all because of you.















For more great comic strip action, see... Otto Messmer's Felix The Cat 1932 and Felix In Mother Goose Land; Milt Gross Sunday Pages and Dailies Part One, Part Two, Part Three, Part Four and Part Five and Part Six; Chic Young's Blondie, Rube Goldberg's Side Show; George Lichty's Grin and Bear It, Cliff Sterrett's Polly & Her Pals Part One, Part Two and Part Three; and Harrison Cady's Birds' Eye Views

Stephen Worth
Director
ASIFA-Hollywood
Animation Archive
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Comics: Felix The Cat In Mother Goose Land

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.


Recently, Marc Deckter shared his collection of Milt Gross Sunday pages with us. That gift just keeps on giving... the back sides of the Milt Gross pages featured Otto Messmer's classic Felix the Cat!


You might also remember our recent posting of 1932 Felix The Cat Sunday pages. Messmer was one of the most influential cartoonists of all time, in both comics and animation. John K called Messmer "the founding father of the American style of animation".


Here's a batch of Sunday pages from late 1930 and early 1931. They deal with Felix's visit to Mother Goose Land. Enjoy!









Many thanks to Marc Deckter for sharing his great collection with us! There's a great book packed with Felix strips... It's called Nine Lives To Live: A Classic Felix Celebration. Pick it up at Amazon. You'll be glad you did.

For more great comic strip action, see... Otto Messmer's Felix The Cat 1932; Milt Gross Sunday Pages and Dailies Part One, Part Two, Part Three, Part Four and Part Five and Part Six; Chic Young's Blondie, Rube Goldberg's Side Show; George Lichty's Grin and Bear It, Cliff Sterrett's Polly & Her Pals Part One, Part Two and Part Three; and Harrison Cady's Birds' Eye Views

If you enjoyed these comics, you owe it to yourself to check out Digital Funnies. Jonathan Barli is hard at work on an important project- documenting and restoring early cartoons and comics in digital form. He offers a wide variety of fascinating material for sale on CD-ROM and DVD-ROM. Please take a moment to visit the Digital Funnies website, and let him know that the ASIFA-Hollywood Animation Archive sent you.

Stephen Worth
Director
ASIFA-Hollywood
Animation Archive
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Opinion: Bakshi Speaks To CGI Animators

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

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

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

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

BAKSHI SPEAKS TO CGI ANIMATORS

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


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


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

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

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


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

Ralph Bakshi 2007


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



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

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

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

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

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







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








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

Also see... Harvey Kurtzman Comics; Harvey Eisenberg's Foxy Fagan; Milt Stein's Supermouse Comics Part One and Part Two; Virgil Partch's Here We Go Again, The Wild Wild Women and Man The Beast. Milt Gross Sunday Pages Part One, Part Two and Part Three; Basil Wolverton's Powerhouse Pepper; and Milton Knight's Great Brown Pericord Motor.

Stephen Worth
Director
ASIFA-Hollywood
Animation Archive

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Comics: Otto Messmer's Felix The Cat 1932

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.


You might remember our earlier posts featuring the work of Jonathan Barli at Digital Funnies... Dudley Fisher's Right Around Home and Harrison Cady's Boys Life Bird's Eye Views. Jonathan was kind enough to donate a large portion of his collection of meticulously restored scans of vintage comic strips to the Archive, and many of them are for sale on CD-ROM at his website. I encourage you to scoop up all of his collections. He's got a treasure trove of great comics!


Today we feature the depression era comic strips of Otto Messmer. Felix the Cat was the first really famous cartoon star and his popularity is due in large part to Messmer's creativity and craftsmanship. Messmer was a quiet man who eschewed the limelight. For many years, Pat Sullivan took the full public credit for Messmer's work. After Sullivan's death, Messmer quietly continued to pen the Felix strip until 1954.


John Canemaker wrote an excellent book on the history of Felix titled, Felix: The Twisted Tale of the World's Most Famous Cat. It's currently out of print, but if you see it in a used book store, snap it up. It's one of the best books on animation history.

Here are a selection of Felix Sunday pages from 1932...







These fabulous scans of original Sunday pages were provided to the Archive by Jonathan Barli of Digital Funnies. Jonathan is hard at work on an important project- documenting and restoring early cartoons and comics in digital form. He offers a wide variety of fascinating material for sale on CD-ROM and DVD-ROM. Please take a moment to visit the Digital Funnies website, and let him know that the ASIFA-Hollywood Animation Archive sent you.

Read how Felix the Cat became a Cultural/Historical Landmark in Los Angeles this week.

Stephen Worth
Director
ASIFA-Hollywood
Animation Archive
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Comics: Kurtzman's Comic Books

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


Today, Kent Butterworth stopped by on his lunch break to watch Terry Bears cartoons featuring eye popping Jim Tyer animation. I realized that it's been a while since I posted any comic book scans from Kent's great collection of golden age funny animal comics. I'm righting that wrong right now with some great examples by Harvey Kurtzman. Enjoy! (Thanks Kent!)




















If you enjoyed this post, check out our first article on Kurtzman & Elder's Little Annie Fanny Part One and Part Two. Also see... Milt Stein's Supermouse Comics No. 4, Milt Stein's Supermouse (Coo Coo Comics No. 7) Dan Gordon's Superkatt, Jim Tyer's Comic Books, Harvey Eisenberg's Foxy Fagan and Boodi Rogers' Babe Comics.

Thanks
Stephen Worth
Director
ASIFA-Hollywood
Animation Archive

6.6.09
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Comics: Harvey Eisenberg's Foxy Fagan 1946

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



Here is a vintage funny animal comic by cartoonist, Harvey Eisenberg. Eisenberg started out in New York at the Fleischer and Van Beuren studios, but he is best known for his work with Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera as a layout artist on the Tom & Jerry series. He went on to work at Hanna-Barbera as a character designer, layout artist and story man.

This comic is particularly interesting because it is a collaboration between Eisenberg and Joe Barbera, with Barbera providing the story sketches and Eisenberg creating the finished art. (This is very similar to the way they worked together as director and layout artist on the Tom & Jerry cartoons at MGM.) This story is from Foxy Fagan No. 1, published by Eisenberg and Barbera's DIY comic book company, Deerfield in 1946.

John Kricfalusi recently posted an insightful article on Eisenberg's Tom & Jerry comics that you definately shouldn't miss. Mark Evanier has an interesting article on Foxy Fagan too and a link to more scans of it on the web. Thanks to Archive supporter, Kent Butterworth for sharing this great comic with all of us.














See also Harvey Eisenberg and Al White's Huck Hound Builds A House.

For more great golden age funny animal comics, see... Milt Stein's Supermouse Comics No. 4, Milt Stein's Supermouse (Coo Coo Comics No. 7) Dan Gordon's Superkatt, Jim Tyer's Comic Books and Boodi Rogers' Babe Comics

Thanks
Stephen Worth
Director
ASIFA-Hollywood
Animation Archive

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Media: Jim Tyer Comic Books

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.


Jim Tyer was a one-of-a-kind. He animated for Van Beuren, Famous Studios, Terrytoons and Hal Seeger and drew and wrote funny animal comics. Once you've seen a really good Tyer drawing, you can never forget it. I'm going to let these examples tell you about him...



























Thanks to Kent Butterworth for providing us with these great scans!

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

Stephen Worth
Director
ASIFA-Hollywood
Animation Archive

7.31.08
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Media: Milt Stein's Supermouse Comics No 4

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

Funny animal comics don't get enough respect.

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

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

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



















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

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

Stephen Worth
Director
ASIFA-Hollywood
Animation Archive

6.26.08
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