Golden Book: Tibor Gergely's Early Children's Books

Tibor Gergely was born in Budapest, Hungary, and studied and taught in Vienna before the War. He escaped the Nazis and relocated to New York City in 1939, along with his wife. He became a well known illustrator, creating covers for the New Yorker and illustrating countless Little Golden Books. The subjects of his children's books were often anthropomorphic automobiles, trucks, trains or boats. In his free time, Gergely was a fine artist, sketching and painting the city and small seaport towns in New England. In his own art, he was fascinated by bridges, in particular the Brooklyn Bridge. Perhaps the feeling of being planted with one foot in New York City and the other in his native Europe had something to do with that.

The ASIFA-Hollywood Animation Archive is fortunate to have been contacted by the heirs of Tibor Gergely. They have a treasure-house full of artwork that they plan to share with us. Check back with this blog in the coming weeks for more soon. To start out, here are two of Gergely's earliest children's books. On the surface, they appear very simple, but there is a great deal of thought in these compositions. Today, many children's book illustrations are cluttered and packed with details. Gergely was at his core a storyteller, so he keeps the illustrations clear enough that even very young children can follow the story.

"WATCH ME" SAID THE JEEP















THE RED, WHITE AND BLUE AUTO



















Many thanks to Terry and Linda for sharing these books with us.

For more of Tibor Gergely's work, see Tibor Gergely's Golden Books Part One and Part Two

Stephen Worth
Director
ASIFA-Hollywood
Animation Archive
.

Stumble It!

Online Exhibit: Illustration

The ASIFA-Hollywood Animation Archive isn't just an archive OF animation... it's an archive FOR animators. There's a subtle but important distinction there... One of the aspects of modern animation that could stand improvement is design. Too many current animated films ignore the importance of appealing design, or lean too heavily on the designs of other animated films. There's absolutely no reason why every princess, king or mouse should look like princesses, kings and mice from previous films. There's a wide world of design inspiration to be found in the history of illustration. Here's just a sampling of the important material related to illustration contained in the ASIFA-Hollywood Animation Database...

---

CLASSIC ILLUSTRATION


One of the primary projects of the ASIFA-Hollywood Animation Archive is to gather together the reference materials that inspired the artists who made animated cartoons in the golden age. It's a little known fact that every animation studio had a library of children's books for the reference of the background painters and designers. Rare editions of Rackham, Dulac and Wyeth sat on the shelves at studios in both New York and in Hollywood. Many great children's book illustrators worked for a time in animation, including Kay Nielsen, Gustaf Tenggren and Willy Pogany.

---

BLAND TOMTAR OCH TROLL: John Bauer 1915 / Einar Norelius 1929 / Einar Norelius 1934 / Bauer & Norelius 1944 & 1949

KAY NIELSEN: East of the Sun and West of the Moon / Twelve Dancing Princesses / Hansel & Gretel

ARTHUR RACKHAM: Grimm's Fairy Tales Part One and Part Two

EDMUND DULAC; Hans Christian Anderson Part One and Part Two / Poe's Poetical Works / Tanglewood Tales

MILO WINTER: Aesop For Children

GUSTAF TENGGREN (CLASSIC STYLE): Small Fry And The Winged Horse / D'Aulnoy's Fairy Tales, Good Dog Book / Heidi - Wonderbook - Juan & Juanita / Grimms Fairy Tales Part One and Part Two (See also Gustaf Tenggren under Golden Book Style below.)

WILLY POGANY: Willy Pogany's Drawing Lessons / Sketchbook / Mother Goose

OTHER CLASSIC ILLUSTRATORS: Maxfield Parrish's Arabian Nights (1909) / N. C. Wyeth's Legends of Charlemagne / Mabel Lucie Attwell's Peter Pan and Wendy / Frank Reynolds Paints Pickwick / W. Lee Hankey's Quiet Village Part One and Part Two / Monks By Eduard von Grutzner

---

MODERN ILLUSTRATION


From the 1920s through the late 1950s, magazines featured the work of some of the top talents in the art world. Leindecker, Artzybasheff, Szyk and Hurst were all great artists whose work has a lot to offer today's cartoonists and character designers. Thanks to Archive Supporters Mike Fontanelli and Kent Butterworth, we have been able to bring many of these great names to your attention.

---

BORIS ARTZYBASHEFF: As I See: Neurotica, Machinalia and Diablerie

LAWSON WOOD: The Monkey Painter Part One and Part Two

WARTIME PROPAGANDA: Arthur Szyk: The New Order / WWI Propaganda Posters / WWII Propaganda Posters

COLLIERS MAGAZINE: Mid-1930s Illustrations and Advertisements / WWII Era Illustrations / Late 40s Illustrations

CORONET MAGAZINE: Bugs Bunny: A Hare Grows In Manhattan 1945 / Disney's Casey At The Bat / Harper Goff's Blood On The Moon

---

GOLDEN BOOK STYLE


Thanks to a generous donation by Archive Supporter John Kricfalusi, we are able to share the beautiful work of the great artists who made a fortune for Western Publishing's Little Golden Book line. The style was created by Disney concept artist, Gustaf Tenggren and reached its peak in books by Mel Crawford. Many animation artists moonlighted as children's book illustrators... among them Norm McCabe, Harvey Eisenberg, Mary Blair and J. P. Miller.

---

GUSTAF TENGGREN: Tenggren's Tell It Again Book Part One and Part Two / Sing for Christmas / The Little Trapper (See also Gustaf Tenggren under Classic Illustration above.)

FEODOR ROJANKOVSKY: Frog Went A-Courtin'

TIBOR GERGELY: A Day In The Jungle

MARY BLAIR: Mary Blair's Baby's House / Little Verses Part One and Part Two / The New Golden Song Book Part One, Part Two and Part Three

MEL CRAWFORD: Rootie Kazootie Joins The Circus

AL WHITE: Rocky & His Friends / Huck Hound Builds A House

ANIMATION RELATED: Early 50s Disney Christmas Cards / Disney's Uncle Remus Stories Part One and Part Two / Ferdinand the Bull / Late 30s Looney Tunes Placemats

RECORD ALBUMS: 50s & 60s LP Covers Part One and Part Two / Bozo And His Rocket Ship

---

FINE ART PRINTS


VISIT OUR GALLERY OF FINE ART PRINTS

The ASIFA-Hollywood Animation Archive in association with Imagekind is proud to present a collection of fine art prints representing some of Kay Nielsen's greatest work- illustrations from the classic book, East of the Sun and West of the Moon. Produced on demand from high resolution archival scans, these prints are carefully color corrected for maximum image quality and fidelity to the original book. Visit the Kay Nielsen Gallery at Imagekind to see all the available images.
.

Stumble It!

Theory: Our Dreams of the Future

THE FUTURE OF THE DISTANT PAST
Last week, I posted an article on James Montgomery Flagg's "Nervy Nat", a comic strip that ran in Judge magazine from 1903 to 1907. The page below was part of that post. It depicts a trip to Venus by zeppelin. For the past few days, I've been thinking about this comic and what it says about the way mankind's vision of the heavens has changed in the past century.


In previous generations, outer space was thought of in terms of symbolic mythology. Mars was the god of war- Venus, the goddess of love. The stars in the sky formed the shapes of the signs of the Zodiac. The concept of traveling to another planet was unthinkable- as fantastic as the trip to the underworld, purgatory and paradise in Dante's Divine Comedy. When people of the past envisioned what the inhabitants of other planets might be like, they conceived of gods and spirits who lived lives like those of the heroes and villains found in fables and ancient myths.

In Disney's 1957 television program, "Mars And Beyond", director Ward Kimball explored this concept...


People On Other Planets
"Mars & Beyond" (Disney/1957)
(Quicktime 7 / 13.3 MB)

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.


Around the turn of the 20th century, mankind's conception of the world underwent a huge shift. Advances in technology were occurring at an unprecedented rate. These changes affected the way people lived their lives and the way they thought about their place in the universe. Technology was enabling people to travel faster, further and more comfortably than ever before. For the first time, ordinary folks were able to travel all around the globe. People began to think there might be no limit to the number of amazing changes technology was going to bring to them in the next hundred years.

They were right.


By the midpoint of the 20th century, things that had seemed unthinkable a generation before had become commonplace... trains, planes and automobiles carried people to every point on earth. Electricity powered a wide range of household appliances. Television, phonographs and radio enabled pictures and sound to be captured and broadcast to every household in America. The lives led by the average family in the year 1950 would have seemed like wild, futuristic dreams to the generations that preceded them.

But society wasn't through dreaming.

CHESLEY BONESTELL'S TRIP TO VENUS

Chesley Bonestell was trained as an architect. He designed the art deco facade and gargoyles for the Chrysler Building in New York, and was the first to create an architectural rendering of what the Golden Gate Bridge would look like spanning the opening of San Francisco Bay. In the late 30s, he created matte paintings for movies like Citizen Kane and The Hunchback of Notre Dame. But an interest in astronomy soon led him to his most well known work: illustrations depicting space travel.


In 1944, Bonestell created photorealistic paintings of Saturn for Life magazine that caused a sensation. This led to a series of illustrated articles which were eventually collected in an anthology titled, The Conquest of Space. Bonestell worked with George Pal as a designer on Destination Moon and War of the Worlds. When the famous scientist, Wernher Von Braun was preparing a series of articles for Colliers on the topic of manned space exploration, Bonestell was his first pick to illustrate. Von Braun had dedicated himself to informing the American public that space travel was not just a dream- it could become a reality- all that was needed was money and will. Remember those two things... I'll be coming back to them in a moment.


Here is an article from the March, 1950 issue of Coronet magazine. Illustrated by the "father of modern space art", Chesley Bonestell, this fantastic vision of a vacation trip to Venus in the year 2500 doesn't just offer suggestions for what sort of technology might exist; it shows how that technology might be incorporated into our everyday lives.















ANIMATION EXPLORES DISTANT WORLDS

Director/animator Ward Kimball (far right) saw Bonestell's illustrations in Colliers and encouraged Walt Disney to produce a television program based on Wernher von Braun's vision of the future. Disney, Kimball and von Braun came together to create three episodes of the Disneyland television series- "Man in Space", "Man and the Moon" and "Mars and Beyond".

In this segment from "Mars and Beyond" the Disney animators speculate on the strange forms alien life might take...


Life Forms On Other Planets
"Mars & Beyond" (Disney/1957)
(Quicktime 7 / 11 MB)

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 impossible to overstate how important the Disney space shows were to the American space program. President Dwight Eisenhower requested a copy of "Man in Space" to screen for his top military officers to convince them that space travel was indeed possible. Six months after "Mars and Beyond" aired, congress passed the National Aeronautics and Space Act which established NASA. The launch of Russia's Sputnik satellite in October 1957 might have been the immediate impetus for the swift passage of the funding for the program, but the groundwork for the concept behind NASA was laid by Wernher von Braun and Walt Disney.

THE MEN WHO TOOK US TO THE MOON


Walt Disney and Wernher von Braun
Clearly, scientists like Wernher von Braun and politicians like Eisenhower and Kennedy were responsible for America's space program. But it took more than science and funding to put man on the moon. It took will. The awe inspiring imaginary vistas of Chesley Bonestell and the fantastic animation of Ward Kimball and Walt Disney became our collective dreams. The day after "Man in Space" aired, every man, woman and child in America had the same fantasy in their head- the burning desire to go to the moon. The visions created by these artists and filmmakers became reality because they crystallized and energized our collective will.

Animation has the power to mobilize society to do great things.

THE FUTURE OF THE PRESENT
If you've read through this half century of history I've laid out for you, I'm going to reward you by poking pins in a few of your childhood sacred cows- the futuristic visions of the latter part of the 20th century.


"So Bad It's Good?"
I've read several places on the internet about the concept of retro futurism. This is one of those post-modern, ironic ideologies that looks back at the visions of the future from the past as some sort of quaint, naiive thing. The problem with this outlook is that it ignores the fact that the fantasies it mocks were responsible for putting man in space.


"Obsolete Future?"
If the visions of Von Braun, Disney and Bonestell are now considered "camp", what sort of imagery have we replaced it with?

Our modern conception of futuristic fantasy has been dragged down to banal reality by people with nowhere near the imagination of the futurists of the past. If movies represent our collective dreams, then let's look at what we are dreaming about...


"Today's Future?"
Instead of idealistic heroes like Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon, space is populated by jaded, long-haul truckers like Han Solo and the squabbling crew of the Nostromo in Alien. Stanley Kubrik succeeded in turning a space station into a boring 21st century DMV waiting room in 2001. The world of the future isn't a beautiful city of glass and steel where people live in climate controlled safety- in Blade Runner it's a crowded downtown ethnic marketplace with weather that would make Seattle seem like a tropical paradise.


"Has our imagination gone soft?"
Space ships are no longer sleek, chrome plated rockets with exotic tail fins- they're flying shoeboxes with a bunch of dirty breakfast cereal glued all over them. Robots aren't complex humanoid machines whose prime directive is assisting their owners in any way they can- they're trash cans on wheels that make annoying beeps and blorps, or time-traveling thugs in leather jackets riding motorcycles.

Aliens aren't fantastic creatures made of crystal that chew the landscape into wild filagrees like in "Mars and Beyond", or even super-intelligent beings who will help us solve all the world's problems with their advanced technology. They're medieval monsters with scales like a dragon that lurk in the shadows, or parasitic worms that crawl inside us to devour us from the inside out, or rubbery magical midgets covered with wrinkles and warts. Science has been replaced by pseudo-religious concepts like "the force". Aliens in Close Encounters don't just have the technology to make Richard Dreyfuss mold mountains out of his mashed potatoes, they can even make toys come to life!

Cynicism and magic are the order of the day- no room for scientific inquiry and ambition...


"Is this what life on other planets looks like?"
If these are our collective visions of the future, I sincerely hope that our dreams never come true. Perhaps we should consider dreaming a higher quality of dream. Let's bring back the futurism we were cheated out of and start building a future that's worth inhabiting.

Stephen Worth
Director
ASIFA-Hollywood
Animation Archive
.

Stumble It!

Illustration: St Nicholas Magazine, Dec 1910

Sorry for the late posting on this... we had server problems that couldn't be corrected until after the holiday.


I would like to take this opportunity to wish you Happy Holidays on behalf of all of us at the ASIFA-Hollywood Animation Archive and the Board and membership of ASIFA-Hollywood. I'd also like to thank our latest Archive Hero, Caroline Melinger, and Archive Supporter Carlos Trijueque Albarran. Thanks to their generous Christmas gifts to the Archive, we are well on our way to purchasing the collection of St Nicholas Magazines for our library. To celebrate, here are more wonderful illustrations from nearly a century ago.

















If you find this post interesting, see our previous post on Reginald Birch and St Nicholas Magazine

THANKS FOR YOUR SUPPORT
This issue of St Nicholas Magazine from December 1910 was sent to us as a sample from a larger collection. We have the opportunity to purchase a largely complete half century run of this influential magazine for our library covering the dates 1874-1930. The collection consists of 75 bound volumes, and is being offered to us at a very reasonable price. However, funding for this project is limited, and every penny goes to maintaining the facility in Burbank, hosting the website and the material and labor costs involved in operating the archive. We operate a very tight ship, but there is no slack in our operating budget. We don't have an acquisitions fund to cover costs like this.

If you think that it's important to have material like this in our collection, and you haven't donated before, please remember the Archive with a Christmas gift this year. Many thanks to those who have pitched in to help so far... Nicolas Martinez, Hardeep Kharbanda, John Stater, Amir Avni, Carlos Trijueque Albarran, and Caroline Melinger.

Stephen Worth
Director
ASIFA-Hollywood
Animation Archive
.

Stumble It!

Illustration: Reginald Birch and St Nicholas Magazine

Today, December 6th is St. Nicholas Day, so in celebration of this forgotten holiday, here are some amazing examples of forgotten classic illustration...


Today, we profile another artist whose name might not be familiar to you, but the characters he helped to create certainly are. I hope you'll read to the bottom of this article, because I have a very important request related to the subject of this post. -Stephen Worth

A MAGAZINE FOR CHILDREN
In 1872, Scribner's began publishing St Nicholas Magazine, a sister publication to The Century aimed at an audience between the ages of 5 and 18. As Linda Young points out in her excellent article on St Nicholas, in the late 19th and early 20th century, there was no real distinction between young children and teenagers. Children were considered children until they married or went away to college. Features "For The Little Folk" ran in St Nicholas side by side with articles on natural history or science intended for older readers. When it came to fiction, the subjects ranged from adventure stories about far-away lands to fairy tales and historical romance. St Nicholas was the premiere magazine of its type, and although it was aimed at children, it counted many adults among its readership.


But the main reason why we're interested in St Nicholas is the illustrations. Scribner's had access to many of the best artists of the day... Arthur Rackham, Harrison Cady, Maxfield Parrish, Willy Pogany, Charles Dana Gibson, Palmer Cox and Howard Pyle, among many others. But no artist was as closely associated with the look of St Nicholas as Reginald Birch.

Reginald Birch was born in 1856 in London, England. At the age of 14, he relocated to San Francisco, CA where he prepared wood block theater posters in his father's shop. In 1873, Birch attended the Royal Academy in Munich and upon his return to America, he settled in an illustrator in New York City.

Today, Birch may be forgotten, but his contribution to our American cultural identity certainly isn't. At St Nicholas Magazine Birch took the character of Santa Claus, created by Thomas Nast in the 1862 Christmas Issue of Harper's Weekly, and refined it into the jolly bearded character in the red suit that we all think of today.


1906 Christmas cover by Reginald Birch
Reginald Birch illustrated a wide variety of poems and stories for St Nicholas, but perhaps the most famous was Frances Hodgson Burnett's "Little Lord Fauntleroy". Following Burnett's vivid description, Birch created the iconic image of the precocious little boy in curls wearing a black velvet suit with lace collar. This image became the basis for the character Buster Brown, and was widely lampooned in parodies casting Burnett's wunderkind as a spoiled brat or monster child, like Eddie Munster. The image of the enfant terrible in the Buster Brown outfit has entered our cultural subconscious to the point where most of us don't even realize where it came from... but it came from Reginald Birch.


Freddie Bartholomew as Little Lord Fauntleroy
By the beginning of World War I, Birch's Victorian pen and ink style was beginning to look dated. Demand for his services began to decline, and by 1930, he was penniless. He enjoyed an "Indian Summer" as a book illustrator in the late 30s until his failing eyesight forced him to retire in 1941. He passed away in 1943.

Here is a fantastic story written by St Nicholas editor, Tudor Jenks and illustrated in the distinctive style by Reginald Birch. Notice how Birch juggles the text in the layouts, his superb draughtsmanship and control of perspective, and the expressive posing of his characters.














A REQUEST
If you have read this far in this posting, you are one of the people who regularly reads our blog and benefits from the material we post here. I have favor to ask of those of you who have not yet contributed to our project.


This volume of St Nicholas Magazine covering May to October 1889 was sent to us as a sample from a larger collection. We have the opportunity to purchase a largely complete half century run of this influential magazine for our library covering the dates 1874-1930. The collection consists of 75 bound volumes, and is being offered to us at a very reasonable price. However, funding for this project is limited, and every penny goes to maintaining the facility in Burbank, hosting the website and the material and labor costs involved in operating the archive. We operate a very tight ship, but there is no slack in our operating budget. We don't have an acquisitions fund to cover costs like this.

If you think that it's important to have material like this in our collection, and you haven't donated before, please consider making a contribution using the PayPal buttons this week. I would like to make more of this amazing magazine available to you, but I need your help.

Many thanks to those who have pitched in to help so far... Nicolas Martinez, Hardeep Kharbanda, John Stater, Amir Avni

Stephen Worth
Director
ASIFA-Hollywood
Animation Archive
.

Stumble It!

Illustration: Mary Blair Song Book

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.



Mary Blair is one of the most popular illustrators/color stylists among today's animation designers. This book was published in 1955, and it's a great example of Blair at the height of her powers. The full color illustrations are great, but check out the duotones and the page layouts... It's as if she can do no wrong! Her taste is impeccable. Check out the links at the bottom of this post for more beautiful images by Mary Blair.




































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

If you would like to see more from this book, let me know in the comments below...

Thanks
Stephen Worth
Director
ASIFA-Hollywood
Animation Archive

11.08.08
.

Stumble It!

Illustration: Huckleberry Hound Builds A House

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


We scanned another Golden Book today... Huckleberry Hound Builds A House. Published in 1959, this was one of the earliest Hanna Barbera books, and it's one of the best. The early H-B characters were beautifully designed and perfectly suited to the TV medium. This book was illustrated by Harvey Eisenberg and Al White.








If you found this to be useful, see also... Harvey Eisenberg's Foxy Fagan Comics, Bozo And His Rocket Ship, Rojankovsky's Frog Went A Courting, Tibor Gergely's A Day In The Jungle, Gustaf Tenggren's The Little Trapper, Uncle Remus Stories Part One and Part Two, Little Verses Part One, Part Two and The New Golden Song Book Part One, Part Two and Part Three.

Thanks
Stephen Worth
Director
ASIFA-Hollywood
Animation Archive

04.30.08
.

Stumble It!

Illustration: Lawson Wood Monkey Mania

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


Here are more great monkey paintings by Lawson Wood. If you missed our previous posts on this great illustrator, see the links at the bottom of this post.











Thanks to Mike Fontanelli and Will Finn for contributing these great vintage illustrations.

If you enjoyed this post, see... Lawson Wood: The Monkey Painter, More Fabulous Monkey Paintings, Wartime Era Colliers, Mid 30s Colliers Illustrations, Mid 30s Advertisements, Late 40s Colliers, Casey Strikes Out In Coronet, Bugs Bunny in Coronet Magazine December 1945, Milton Caniff in Coronet Magazine, Dispatch From Disney's Part One and Part Two, John Held Jr, Ward Kimball in Escapade, Complete Guide To Cartooning On Magazine Cartoons Part One and Part Two, and Rube Goldberg's Side Show.

Stephen Worth
Director
ASIFA-Hollywood
Animation Archive
.

Stumble It!

Illustration: More of Willy Pogany's Mother Goose

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 children's book illustrators.


I'm working on several projects at once right now, and there are two great posts coming up soon. One deals with the writing process for animation and the other is a re-evaluation of a major comic strip artist. But these subjects are large, and they require some extra work, so there may be a little gap before I can get them online. In the meantime, here's more from Willy Pogany's Mother Goose.

















One last image (racially insensitive)

If you would like to find out more about Willy Pogany, see... Willy Pogany's Mother Goose Part One, Life Drawing: Willy Pogany's Drawing Lessons and Pogany's Sketchbook

See also... Milo Winter's Aesop For Children, Lorioux's Fables De La Fontaine Part One and Part Two, Felix Lorioux's Tom Thumb, Puss in Boots, Fables De La Fontaine Part One and Part Two, Le Buffon des Enfants, Mabel Lucie Attwell's Peter Pan and Wendy, Einar Norelius' Bland Tomtar Och Troll 1929 and 1934, John Bauer's Bland Tomtar Och Troll 1917, More Norelius and Bauer, Arthur Rackham's Grimm's Fairy Tales Part One and Part Two, Kay Nielsen's East of the Sun and West of the Moon and Hansel & Gretel, Dulac's H.C. Andersen Part One and Part Two, Little Verses Part One and Part Two, and Rojankovsky's Frog Went A-Courtin'.

Thanks
Stephen Worth
Director
ASIFA-Hollywood
Animation Archive
.

Stumble It!

Illustration: A Visual Feast

I'm in the process of revamping our Jump Page in anticipation of our bi-annual fundraising drive which begins May 1st. The massive amount of posts linked there are bunched into poorly organized clumps, so it's time for some housework. As I revise the sections, I will post them to give you a chance to check out all the incredible things we've brought you over the past two and a half years. I hope this will inspire you to support us with a contribution in May.

---

Illustration


The ASIFA-Hollywood Animation Archive isn't just an archive OF animation... it's an archive FOR animators. There's a subtle but important distinction there... One of the aspects of modern animation that could stand improvement is design. Too many current animated films ignore the importance of appealing design, or lean too heavily on the designs of other animated films. There's absolutely no reason why every princess, king or mouse should look like princesses, kings and mice from previous films. There's a wide world of design inspiration to be found in the history of illustration. Here's just a sampling of the important material related to illustration contained in the ASIFA-Hollywood Animation Database...

---

CLASSIC ILLUSTRATION


One of the primary projects of the ASIFA-Hollywood Animation Archive is to gather together the reference materials that inspired the artists who made animated cartoons in the golden age. It's a little known fact that every animation studio had a library of children's books for the reference of the background painters and designers. Rare editions of Rackham, Dulac and Wyeth sat on the shelves at studios in both New York and in Hollywood. Many great children's book illustrators worked for a time in animation, including Kay Nielsen, Gustaf Tenggren and Willy Pogany.

---

BLAND TOMTAR OCH TROLL: John Bauer 1915 / Einar Norelius 1929 / Einar Norelius 1934 / Bauer & Norelius 1944 & 1949

KAY NIELSEN: East of the Sun and West of the Moon / Twelve Dancing Princesses / Hansel & Gretel

ARTHUR RACKHAM: Grimm's Fairy Tales Part One / Part Two

EDMUND DULAC; Hans Christian Anderson Part One and Part Two / Poe's Poetical Works / Tanglewood Tales

MILO WINTER: Aesop For Children


GUSTAF TENGGREN (CLASSIC STYLE): Small Fry And The Winged Horse / D'Aulnoy's Fairy Tales, Good Dog Book / Heidi - Wonderbook - Juan & Juanita / Grimms Fairy Tales Part One and Part Two (See also Gustaf Tenggren under Golden Book Style below.)

WILLY POGANY: Willy Pogany's Drawing Lessons / Sketchbook / Mother Goose

OTHER CLASSIC ILLUSTRATORS: Maxfield Parrish's Arabian Nights (1909) / N. C. Wyeth's Legends of Charlemagne / Mabel Lucie Attwell's Peter Pan and Wendy / Frank Reynolds Paints Pickwick / W. Lee Hankey's Quiet Village Part One and Part Two / Monks By Eduard von Grutzner

---

MODERN ILLUSTRATION


From the 1920s through the late 1950s, magazines featured the work of some of the top talents in the art world. Leindecker, Artzybasheff, Szyk and Hurst were all great artists whose work has a lot to offer today's cartoonists and character designers. Thanks to Archive Supporters Mike Fontanelli and Kent Butterworth, we've been able to bring many of these great names to your attention.

---

BORIS ARTZYBASHEFF: As I See: Neurotica, Machinalia and Diablerie

LAWSON WOOD: The Monkey Painter Part One and Part Two

WARTIME PROPAGANDA: Arthur Szyk: The New Order / WWI Propaganda Posters / WWII Propaganda Posters

COLLIERS MAGAZINE: Mid-1930s Illustrations and Advertisements / WWII Era Illustrations / Late 40s Illustrations

CORONET MAGAZINE: Bugs Bunny: A Hare Grows In Manhattan 1945 / Disney's Casey At The Bat / Harper Goff's Blood On The Moon

---

GOLDEN BOOK STYLE


Thanks to a generous donation by Archive Supporter John Kricfalusi, we are able to share the beautiful work of the great artists who made a fortune for Western Publishing's Little Golden Book line. The style was created by Disney concept artist, Gustaf Tenggren and reached its peak in books by Mel Crawford. Many animation artists moonlighted as children's book illustrators... among them Norm McCabe, Harvey Eisenberg, Mary Blair and J. P. Miller.

---

GUSTAF TENGGREN: Tenggren's Tell It Again Book Part One and Part Two / Sing for Christmas / The Little Trapper (See also Gustaf Tenggren under Classic Illustration above.)

FEODOR ROJANKOVSKY: Frog Went A-Courtin'

TIBOR GERGELY: A Day In The Jungle

MARY BLAIR: Mary Blair's Baby's House / Little Verses Part One and Part Two / The New Golden Song Book Part One, Part Two and Part Three

MEL CRAWFORD: Rootie Kazootie Joins The Circus

AL WHITE: Rocky & His Friends / Huck Hound Builds A House

DISNEY: Early 50s Disney Christmas Cards / Disney's Uncle Remus Stories Part One and Part Two

RECORD ALBUMS: 50s & 60s LP Covers Part One and Part Two / Bozo And His Rocket Ship

---

PLAYBOY CARTOONISTS


In the 1950s and 60s, Playboy magazine employed many of the most talented cartoonists of the day. There's a lot to learn from these beautiful and deceptively simple cartoons. Many of them are models of color harmony, composition and staging. There's also a wide variety of styles, from the fast watercolor washes of Eldon Dedini to the carefully rendered airbrush work of Alberto Vargas. Style is something sadly lacking in a lot of cartooning today. These cartoons have style in abundance.

---

ERICH SOKOL: Early Sokol Cartoons / More Erich Sokol / A Passel of Sokol

ELDON DEDINI: Introducing Dedini / Satyrs & Nymphs / Dedini in the Swingin' 60s

HARVEY KURTZMAN & WILL ELDER: Little Annie Fanny Part One, Part Two and Part Three

OTHER PLAYBOY CARTOONISTS: Jack Cole And More Great 50s Playboy Cartoonists / A Jack Cole Valentine / Meet Doug Sneyd / Doug Sneyd - Phil Interlandi / More Phil Interlandi Playboy Cartoons

PINUP ARTISTS: Alberto Vargas / George Petty's Ridgid Tools Calendars and the 1947 Petty Girl Calendar / John Held Jr's Flappers
.

Stumble It!

Illustration: Willy Pogany's Mother Goose

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 children's book illustrators.


One of my favorite blogs is David Apatoff's Illustration Art. David is one of the best writers on the subject of art that I've read online. He's unique because he thinks like an artist and he's concise, two characteristics that are rare when it comes to art criticism in the blogosphere.

The other day, David posted about one of my favorite illustrators, Willy Pogany. (Read his post HERE.) You might recall that we featured Pogany on the Archive site twice last Summer... (Willy Pogany's Drawing Lessons and Pogany's Sketchbook) The post on Illustration Art discusses how much better Pogany's work was when it was less embellished and more direct. I couldn't agree more. I would add that it's even better when it doesn't take itself quite so seriously. A perfect example of Pogany at his absolute peak is a book that just happens to be my favorite illustrated children's book, Willy Pogany's Mother Goose.

I'm afraid that viewing this book on the web puts you at a distinct disadvantage. This is one of those books that expresses itself beyond just the images. The size and weight of the book, the feel of the paper, the proportion of text blocks and margins, and the counterpoint in the layout of opposing pages all contribute to the powerful impression this book makes on the reader. The best way I can describe the feeling of reading this book is that each turn of the page is like revealing a new surprise.

From a design standpoint this book was revolutionary, because in 1928 when it was first published, the norm for illustrated books was to have uniform text blocks filling the bulk of the pages with an occasional hand tipped and tissue protected color plate. Pogany breaks all those conventions and makes every single page a fully illuminated illustration. I think it could be argued that this is one of the very first modern children's books. The watercolors are rendered quickly in a deceptively simple style, but they're packed with a million clever design ideas and tremendous spontaneity.

I'm afraid this is one book that I can't afford a clean first edition copy of. The copy I scanned was battered and worn. I've done extensive Photoshopping to remove smudges and creases from the many decades of abuse by tiny fingers, and I've done my best to maintain the relative scale and basic compositions of the page spreads. I hope you enjoy this book as much as I do.















Let me know in the comments if you'd like to see more from this book.

If you would like to find out more about Willy Pogany, see... Life Drawing: Willy Pogany's Drawing Lessons and Pogany's Sketchbook

See also... Milo Winter's Aesop For Children, Lorioux's Fables De La Fontaine Part One and Part Two, Felix Lorioux's Tom Thumb, Puss in Boots, Fables De La Fontaine Part One and Part Two, Le Buffon des Enfants, Mabel Lucie Attwell's Peter Pan and Wendy, Einar Norelius' Bland Tomtar Och Troll 1929 and 1934, John Bauer's Bland Tomtar Och Troll 1917, More Norelius and Bauer, Arthur Rackham's Grimm's Fairy Tales Part One and Part Two, Kay Nielsen's East of the Sun and West of the Moon and Hansel & Gretel, Dulac's H.C. Andersen Part One and Part Two, Little Verses Part One and Part Two, and Rojankovsky's Frog Went A-Courtin'.

Thanks
Stephen Worth
Director
ASIFA-Hollywood
Animation Archive
.

Stumble It!

Illustration: Milo Winter's Aesop For Children

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 children's book illustrators.


Today, I am going to introduce you to another great golden age illustrator, Milo Winter. Born in 1888 in Princeton, Illinois, Winter studied at the Chicago Art Institute. He illustrated dozens of books throughout the teens, twenties and thirties. His better known books are the ones for the Windermere series... Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, The Three Musketeers and Alice in Wonderland. Winter also served as the art director of the Childcraft series in the late 40s and early 1950s. But his greatest work was the oversize books he illustrated for Rand McNally from the late teens like the one we are featuring today.

Winter was a master of animal drawing. Check out the amazing depictions in these pages... anatomically accurate to the last detail, yet still full of personality and life. If you like this book, let me know in the comments. I have lots more from this and other Winter books if you are interested.





















If you enjoyed this article, see also... Lorioux's Fables De La Fontaine Part One and Part Two, Felix Lorioux's Tom Thumb, Puss in Boots, Fables De La Fontaine Part One and Part Two, Le Buffon des Enfants, Mabel Lucie Attwell's Peter Pan and Wendy, Einar Norelius' Bland Tomtar Och Troll 1929 and 1934, John Bauer's Bland Tomtar Och Troll 1917, More Norelius and Bauer, Arthur Rackham's Grimm's Fairy Tales Part One and Part Two, Kay Nielsen's East of the Sun and West of the Moon and Hansel & Gretel, Dulac's H.C. Andersen Part One and Part Two, Little Verses Part One and Part Two, and Rojankovsky's Frog Went A-Courtin'.

Thanks
Stephen Worth
Director
ASIFA-Hollywood
Animation Archive
.

Stumble It!

Illustration: The Genesis of the Golden Book Style

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


If you are a fan of the Golden Book style, you'll be very interested in today's post. They say a picture is worth a thousand words... Well, using a few pictures and fewer words, I'm going to show you how Gustaf Tenggren developed the Golden Book style for the first time and what inspired him to create it.

If you haven't seen my previous post on Tenggren's Tell It Again Book, take a look at it before you read this one. It will fill you in on the back-story of Tenggren's unhappy experience working at the Disney Studios and how he resolved himself to reinvent his style to suit a new market for children's book illustration. Tenggren was searching for a way to simplify and streamline his style. You can see his experiments with stylization and more basic rendering techniques in these examples...








For inspiration, Tenggen goes all the way back to his roots... the work of his mentor, John Bauer. Here is one of Tenggren's illustrations...


And here is one by Bauer from the Swedish Christmas annual, Bland Tomtar Och Troll...


He also appears to be familiar with the work of his successor on the Bland Tomtar Och Troll series, Einar Norelius. Here is Tenggren...


And here is Norelius...


But halfway through Tenggren's Tell It Again Book comes a huge breakthrough in design. Instead of the full page plates, Tenggren begins to float his characters over the white of the page, wrapping the text around the compositions. Background elements are reduced to small islands on the page, rather than extending out to the edges of a square bounding box. When I first got this book, I wondered why Tenggren had changed format halfway through. Clearly one reason was to save time and streamline the work of producing so many illustrations for a single book. But there was an aesthetic precedent to it as well. The answer has been hanging on my bedroom wall since I was a little boy!

Like Tenggren, my Grandmother was Swedish. In the early 1920s, she took my father to Sweden to visit his Grandparents. It was the only time he was able to meet them, since he lived in Peterborough, Canada, a very long sea voyage away from their farm in Goteborg, Sweden. My great grandparents gave my father a gift to take home with him to remind him of the visit- this Swedish folk art picture...


When I was born, my father gave it to me to hang in my bedroom, and it's been there ever since. Notice the similarity between the forward pitched perspective, the staging of the characters in clear profile silhouettes, and the simple rendering of the figures over the white of the paper on this print and the Tenggren illustrations that follow...










Tenggren had discovered a way to simplify and refine his illustrations even further. Instead of busy backgrounds full of details, he used just enough information to place the characters, and focused his attention on composing the figures. Immediately after publishing this book, Tenggren produced The Poky Little Puppy, the book that was the model for the hundreds of Little Golden Books that followed over the next seventy years. By going back to his roots and synthesizing his Swedish cultural upbringing, Tenggren invented a style that now seems to us to be quintessentially American.

This is a perfect example of how immigrant artists of all kinds suited their artistic voice to their new lives in the United States in the first half of the 20th century. Carlo Vinci's Italian heritage resulted in a superhero mouse who sang opera. Bill Tytla's Eastern European roots helped him create a monster in Fantasia. And Milt Gross' Jewish upbringing expressed itself in comic celebrations of the ethnic vitality of New York City.

The melting pot of American culture sure is rich with cartoons!

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

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

Thanks
Stephen Worth
Director
ASIFA-Hollywood Animation Archive
.

Stumble It!

Illustration: Mabel Lucie Attwell's Peter Pan and Wendy

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 children's book illustrators.


There often seems to be a disconnect between the illustrators Walt Disney hired to do inspirational artwork for his films and the designs he actually ended up using. On Snow White, Disney hired the amazing painter, Gustaf Tenggren; but his instructions to him were to paint in the style of Arthur Rackham. For Peter Pan, he hired the illustrator David Hall, but the film itself doesn't resemble his work at all. Instead, it seems to be a "Disneyfication" of Mabel Lucie Attwell's illustrations for the 1921 edition of J. M. Barrie's Peter Pan & Wendy.

Attwell was born in 1879 and received some education at the Regent School of Art and Heatherley's School of Art in London, but she grew bored with her academic studies and dropped out to focus on her own interests... painting cherubic children and fairies. Her work wasn't very warmly received at first by galleries and agents, but when her first batch of paintings sold out in three days, they became much more enthusiastic. Attwell illustrated greeting cards and children's books, the most famous of which we are featuring today, Peter Pan & Wendy.

Disney didn't appropriate Attwell's baby faced characters, but he did use some of the same details of costume and setting, and placed the emphasis of his visual storytelling on many of the same elements. Attwell's designs lean a bit too heavily on formula, but there is a distinctive delicate appeal to her style. Enjoy.














Please let me know in the comments if you found this post to be useful.

If you enjoyed this article, see also... Little Verses Part One and Part Two and The New Golden Song Book Part One, Part Two and Part Three, Felix Lorioux's Tom Thumb, Puss in Boots, Fables De La Fontaine Part One and Part Two, Le Buffon des Enfants, Rojankovsky's Frog Went A-Courtin', Tibor Gergely's A Day In The Jungle, Gustaf Tenggren's The Little Trapper, Uncle Remus Stories Part One and Part Two.

Thanks
Stephen Worth
Director
ASIFA-Hollywood
Animation Archive
.

Stumble It!

Illustration: Wartime Colliers Magazine

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


Thanks to Archive supporters Kent Butterworth and Mike Fontanelli, our database includes many great examples of classic illustration from the pages of the "Rolls Royce" of weekly publications, Colliers magazine. In the past, we've covered mid 30s Colliers illustrations, mid 30s advertisements, and late 40s Colliers illustrations. Today, we turn our attention to a very interesting time in American history, WWII. The war effort permeated everyday life throughout the nation, from the richest person all the way down to the poorest. This magazine reflects that, with feature stories, illustrations and ads that all reflect wartime themes. (For more on WWII, see Walt's War, Wartime Propaganda, Dispatch From Disney's and Artzybasheff's Diablerie.)

At the time this issue was published, circulation for Colliers was nearing 2.5 million readers. By the mid 50s, circulation would rise to 4 million copies, but it wasn't enough to save the magazine. Competition for ad revenues with television spelled doom for many of the big magazines, and Colliers was forced to go biweekly in 1953, ceasing publication altogether in 1957.

At Colliers, the illustrator was king, and many great artists filled its pages over the years, from Charles Dana Gibson, Maxfield Parrish, Arthur Szyk and F.X. Leyendecker. For more info on a couple of the incredible illustrators featured in this post, see Lawson Wood, the monkey artist and our article on magazine cartooning with Earl Oliver Hurst. If you'd like to try these techniques out for yourself, see Ink Wash Painting: In Praise of Happy Accidents Part One and Part Two.




















Thanks to Mike Fontanelli for contributing these great vintage magazines to be digitized for the ASIFA-Hollywood Animation Archive.

If you enjoyed this post, see... Mid 30s Colliers Illustrations, Mid 30s Advertisements, Late 40s Colliers, Lawson Wood: The Monkey Artist, Casey Strikes Out In Coronet, Bugs Bunny in Coronet Magazine December 1945, Milton Caniff in Coronet Magazine, Dispatch From Disney's Part One and Part Two, John Held Jr, Ward Kimball in Escapade, Complete Guide To Cartooning On Magazine Cartoons Part One and Part Two, and Rube Goldberg's Side Show.

Stephen Worth
Director
ASIFA-Hollywood
Animation Archive
.

Stumble It!

Illustration: Harper Goff in Coronet Magazine

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


Illustration by Harper Goff
Today, in honor of Presidents Day, we present another batch of illustration from late 40s Coronet magazines. This group of images isn't interesting so much for their style as much as their authenticity. With a clarity of staging reminiscent of production designs for classic motion pictures, these paintings vividly show the value of careful research into period costume, props and decor. The first batch is a history of medicine by Leslie Saalburg. The last is a review of classic children's literature by Douglass Crockwell. But the most interesting is the middle feature, Carl Sandberg's "Blood on the Moon" illustrated by Disney imagineer, Harper Goff.

Harper Goff was born in 1911, and studied art at Chouinard Art Institute. He was an accomplished illustrator, working for Colliers, Esquire and Coronet. Goff was employed as a set designer for Warner Bros on classic films like Sergeant York, Casablanca and Captain Blood. He met Walt Disney in a model train store in London, and was invited on the spot to join the Disney staff.


Goff's first assignment was to storyboard a True Life Adventure story dealing with undersea life, but expanded the idea into a feature film adaptation of Jules Verne's 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea. Goff's designs for the submarine and its plush interiors were the most striking part of the film, resulting in an Oscar for Art Direction and Special Effects. Goff played banjo in the Disney studio Dixieland jazz band, "The Firehouse Five" and was the designer of the World Showcase at Epcot. He passed away in 1993.

MEDICINE ONE HUNDRED YEARS AGO
by Leslie Saalburg








SANDBURG'S BLOOD ON THE MOON
By Harper Goff









A TREASURY OF LITERARY CLASSICS
by Douglass Crockwell







Thanks to Rich Borowy for donating these great vintage magazines to the ASIFA-Hollywood Animation Archive.

If you enjoyed this post, see... Casey Strikes Out In Coronet, Bugs Bunny in Coronet Magazine December 1945, Milton Caniff in Coronet Magazine, Dispatch From Disney's Part One and Part Two, Mid 30s Colliers Illustrations, Mid 30s Advertisements, Late 40s Colliers, Lawson Wood: The Monkey Artist, John Held Jr, Ward Kimball in Escapade, Complete Guide To Cartooning On Magazine Cartoons Part One and Part Two, and Rube Goldberg's Side Show.

Stephen Worth
Director
ASIFA-Hollywood
Animation Archive
.

Stumble It!

Illlustration: Tenggren Tell It Again Book 1942

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


In my last post on the legendary illustrator Gustaf Tenggren, I discussed the stark change in Tenggren's style after leaving the Disney Studios. In the twenties, Tenggren had been paid handsomely for his work. But the wartime economy changed all that. Publishers were no longer able to pay him to work a week or more on a single painting. He was forced to simplify his style.

While at Disney, Tenggren chaffed under the bit of anonymity. It's said that Walt instructed his artists, "If you're going to sign a name to your artwork, spell it 'Walt Disney'." But Tenggren defiantly maintained his individuality, signing many of his key paintings for Pinocchio. He left the studio under unhappy circumstances, and was bitter about the whole episode. But he had learned one thing from Walt... the power of branding one's self.



Tenggren resolved that he would never again waste his skills building a reputation for someone else. He boldly built his name into the masthead of his first major publication after leaving Disney. No longer was it Andersen's Fairy Tales or Tales By The Brothers Grimm... It was The Tenggren Tell-It-Again Book. This led to a series of self-titled books sprinkled throughout his career... Tenggren's Story Book, Tenggren's Jack & The Beanstalk, Tenggren's Bedtime Stories, Tenggren's Farm Stories, and many others.

This particular book is amazing, because it shows Tenggen's thought process and refinement gelling into what would become the classic "Golden Book style". (Click on the Three Little Pigs images above for a vivid example.) He simplifies by going back to his roots... combining the character designs of his mentor John Bauer with the colored pencil and watercolor style of his successor on the Bland Tomtar Och Troll series, Einar Norelius. (See our earlier post on Bauer and Norelius.) It's fascinating to compare similar subjects and compositions with earlier Tenggren paintings or the work of other classic illustrators. Below a few of these images, I have added links to similar pictures and themes. See how Tenggren has distilled the essence of the earlier attempts into a clear and simple presentation that still has plenty of beauty and balance. To read the second half of this article, click through the link at the end of this post.




See also Tenggren's Grimm's Fairy Tales
and Arthur Rackham's Grimm



See also Tenggren's Grimm's Fairy Tales, John Bauer's
Bland Tomtar Och Troll, Einar Norelius'
Bland Tomtar Och Troll, and Arthur Rackham's Grimm




See also Einar Norelius' Bland Tomtar Och Troll


See also Tenggren's Sing For Christmas and Grimm's
Fairy Tales and Dulac's H.C. Andersen


See also Dulac's Tanglewood Tales and
Kay Nielsen's East of The Sun And West Of The Moon


See also Tenggren's Grimm's Fairy Tales, Kay Nielsen's
Hansel & Gretel and Arthur Rackham's Grimm




Read the conclusion of this article in this followup post... The Genesis of the Golden Book Style.

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

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

Thanks
Stephen Worth
Director
ASIFA-Hollywood Animation Archive
.

Stumble It!

Cartoons: Casey Strikes Out In Coronet Magazine

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


Today, we present another batch of illustration from late 40s Coronet magazines, including work by Douglass Crockett and Vera Bock. Last time, we featured Bugs Bunny. Today, it's Casey At The Bat. Enjoy!









CASEY AT THE BAT






Thanks to Rich Borowy for donating these great vintage magazines to the ASIFA-Hollywood Animation Archive.

If you enjoyed this post, see... Bugs Bunny in Coronet Magazine December 1945, Milton Caniff in Coronet Magazine, Dispatch From Disney's Part One and Part Two, Mid 30s Colliers Illustrations, Mid 30s Advertisements, Late 40s Colliers, Lawson Wood: The Monkey Artist, John Held Jr, Ward Kimball in Escapade, Complete Guide To Cartooning On Magazine Cartoons Part One and Part Two, and Rube Goldberg's Side Show.

Stephen Worth
Director
ASIFA-Hollywood
Animation Archive
.

Stumble It!

Illustration: Mid 1930s Advertisements From Colliers

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.


Here's a batch of advertisements from the mid-1930s Colliers magazines loaned to us for digitization by archive supporter Mike Fontanelli. I don't know about you, but after looking over these great magazines, I have the urge to go out and buy a 1936 Terraplane! For more wonderful illustration from Colliers see the links at the end of this post.














Thanks, Mike!

If you enjoyed this post, see... Wash Painting: In Praise of Happy Accidents Part One and Part Two, Mid 30s Colliers Illustrations, Late 40s Colliers, Lawson Wood: The Monkey Artist, John Held Jr, Coronet Magazine 1945, Ward Kimball in Escapade, Complete Guide To Cartooning On Magazine Cartoons Part One and Part Two.

Stephen Worth
Director
ASIFA-Hollywood
Animation Archive
.

Stumble It!

Illustration: More From W. Lee Hankey's Deserted Village

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


You might remember our previous post on W. Lee Hankey's Deserted Village. Here are the balance of the plates from this remarkable book. Hankey was one of the first illustrators to paint to suit the newly invented four color printing process. He would paint loose and wet, and would press fabrics into the washes to create textures. This book was one of the first big successes using these techniques. It led to a boom in illustrated books during the teens and twenties, which we have documented in our posts on Arthur Rackham, Edmund Dulac and Gustaf Tenggren. (See the links at the bottom of this post for examples of their work.) Check out how Hankey depicts the mood of different times of day. The figure drawing is remarkable as well.




















If you found this post to be interesting, also see... W. Lee Hankey's Deserted Village Part One, Arthur Rackham's Grimms Fairy Tales, Edmund Dulac's Edgar Allen Poe, Dulac's Tanglewood Tales, Gustaf Tenggren's Wonderbook, Monks By Eduard von Grutzner, N. C. Wyeth's Legends of Charlemagne, Maxfield Parrish's Arabian Nights, Frank Reynolds Paints Pickwick, and John Bauer's Bland Tomtar Och Troll

Stephen Worth
Director
ASIFA-Hollywood
Animation Archive
.

Stumble It!

Link: David Apatoff's Illustration Art

What a great blog!

In particular, check out these recent posts that set fire to the status quo...

• Drawing With Your Brains
• Words And Pictures
• Steganography: Hiding Messages Right Out In The Open
• "New"

And this eloquent one about caricaturist, David Levine...

• Much is Taken, Much Abides

Bookmark it.
David Apatoff's Illustration Art
.

Stumble It!

Theory: CGI Animators Should THINK Like Artists

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


You probably have never heard of William Lee Hankey, but he was a pioneer in the field of illustrated books at the turn of the century. Perhaps I'll tell you more about him in a follow up post. But as I was scanning this book, something came up that I need to address. I hope you'll bear with me as I take a little time out to do some sorely needed ass-kicking.

LISTEN UP!

This is NOT a site strictly for 2D animators. CGI animators can learn as much from this stuff as the guys with the pencils.

I happened across a thread in an internet forum on the subject of CGI animation. The thread was titled, "Why aren't animators artists?" I was surprised to find people debating a question that to me is self-evident. I take it for granted that people realize that animation is an artform with close ties to the traditional arts of drawing, painting and sculpture. It's always a shock to find that there are people working in the field who don't see the link.

I started to wonder whether the readers of this blog understand the intent behind the material that we post here. We're not just presenting "pretty pictures" to inspire in some sort of vague manner. We intend for this material to be used and applied to everyday work. We don't get a lot of feedback from this website. Other animation blogs get hundreds of comments on each post, but we rarely get any comments at all. I don't know why that is. I suspect it's because people are taking a passive attitude to the resources all of us at the ASIFA-Hollywood Animation Archive are working so hard to provide to them. Normally, I let the artwork create its own context, but today, I specifically want to address CGI animators to show them how art like this can inform and improve their own work.

WHAT CAN AN ILLUSTRATED BOOK THAT IS NEARLY A CENTURY OLD TEACH SOMEONE WORKING IN COMPUTER ANIMATION?


I'm going to break down illustrations from W. Lee Hankey's 1909 edition of The Deserted Village and show you how you should be thinking about and analyzing the information we provide here on this site. It's time to THINK like an artist!

AVOID EXCESSIVE DETAIL

Too often, artists and animators mistake detail for quality. Rendering out every leaf on every tree, every pore on every inch of skin, every single blade of grass or shock of fur may be an entertaining exercise for retentive types, but all that detail is nothing more than gilding the lilly- distracting from the main point of the design. Notice how Hankey focuses your attention on the important parts of the composition by rendering those out, while leaving unimportant background information very loose. The choice of colors clearly defines light and shadow, and the carefully balanced values hold the background together as a frame for the subject of the image. Click on these to see them larger and you'll be surprised to see just how loose the rendering is on the girl's dress and the background foliage.





COMPOSE SHOTS ON A HUMAN SCALE

Too many CGI features are set in environments that are completely out of scale to the characters. Rooms are the size of convention halls and gardens are as big as football fields. Everything is wide open, with very little variety to the depth or contrasting perspectives of the structures. Camera angles on wide shots are staged from 20 feet in the air, much higher than a real human perspective. This makes everything look like model railroad sets instead of like real environments. The way to lay out a background is through skillful composition and a range of different sizes of forms. Look at how Hankey creates a zig-zag perspective on the first image, layers of contrasting shapes and textures on the second, and divides the last example to frame three separate simultaneous actions beautifully.





LEARN TO COMPOSE GROUPS OF PEOPLE

Check out these amazingly expressive tableaux by Hankey. Each one defines the personality and situation of each individual character in relation to all the other characters, while directing the eye cleverly through the image from one main focal point to the next. Just try to find a grouping like this in current animation! Characters are almost always staged obliquely, lined up like a chorus line or in perfect half circles in front of the camera- sitcom style. If you search through the films of great directors like Chaplin, Hitchcock or Welles, you'll never find these sorts of flat setups. The dynamics of group relationships are never revealed in what the characters say- it's always in how they are arranged visually.





CREATE MOOD THROUGH UNIQUE COMBINATIONS OF COLORS

John Kricfalusi recently discussed how important unique color harmonies are to animation in his blog, All Kinds Of Stuff. He makes the point that colors "straight out of the tube"- lime green, purple, orange, etc.- are not nearly effective as hues with non-mathematical mixes of colors... colors that don't have names. For instance, what color would you call the street in this first example? Pure colors are best used in small areas to create interest, like with the sea green door on the house in the second one. Sometimes the best color harmonies involve muted colors to create a mood, as in the third example here. The colors tell you exactly what is going on in the scene. In fact, each of the three characters is surrounded by an unique set of colors that reflects his or her attitude.





CREATE CHARACTERS BY OBSERVING LIFE

The most obvious power of animation to entertain is its ability to caricature life, yet amazingly, observation is exactly what is lacking in character design in current CGI movies. Every day, a million great personalities are all around you who have never been seen in animation- just go to your local coffee shop or shopping mall with your sketchbook. You won't be able to get all the great characters down on paper fast enough. So why do we get the same old stereotypical cool dude, smartass sidekick, goofy fat kid, and "independent minded pretty girl who doesn't know how pretty she really is" in every doggone movie? I keep hearing people say that story is the most important thing in animation. Well, that's a lie. Personality is at the core of all great animation. OPEN YOUR EYES AND OBSERVE! SHOW THE AUDIENCE SOMETHING REAL!





POSE CHARACTERS EXPRESSIVELY

This is CGI animation's cardinal sin. Gestures and body positions NEVER reflect a character's unique personality. Every character scrunches their mouth to one side and looks upwards when they think- they all lower their eyebrows and narrow their eyes the exact same way when they're angry- they all throw their hip to one side and lean their head when they're petulant... This is "formula acting". If we were talking about the performance of a human actor instead of a grizzly bear or raccoon, it would be called "BAD acting". Formulas don't tell you anything about the character, yet entire movies are performed by rote. Don't believe me? Take any of the recent CGI movies, whether they involve animals invading backyards or escaping zoos, rodents in European restaurants, superhero terrapins or prehistoric sloths- and count the number of times the characters deliver dialogue with that meaningless, stock- hands out to the side, palms up, up and down movement on every accent- sort of gesture. What the heck does that gesture mean? It's just water treading because the animator is too lazy to think of a gesture that actually expresses something. Now look at the last image in this post- the one with the fella sitting next to the girl. Even his feet tell you what he's thinking! Every pose in an animated film should be that expressive. There's no excuse for stock poses or actions.




An animator isn't just moving a complex polygon through space- an animator creates a performance from a succession of still poses. That's the job of an artist and anyone doing that sort of work needs to THINK like an artist. As you browse through this site, if you just "look at the pretty pictures" without thinking about what makes them work, you might as well be off shopping or playing video games. This website is a tremendous resource, but it won't help you if you expect it to work passively by osmosis.

Print this stuff out. Put it in binders. Make notes. Talk about your ideas with your fellow artists. Apply these concepts to your work.

If this post didn't make you angry, you'll probably also want to see... Live The Fabulous Lifestyle of a Hollywood Cartoonist, The Application Of Inspiration, How To Properly Use Reference, Incorporating Natural Forms, (Visual) Literacy, Why Do We Need An Animation Archive?, Parody: Whack Comics Part One and Ripoff vs Inspiration: Chaplin's Shadow

Also see... Monks By Eduard von Grutzner, N. C. Wyeth's Legends of Charlemagne, Maxfield Parrish's Arabian Nights, Frank Reynolds Paints Pickwick, John Bauer's Bland Tomtar Och Troll, Edmund Dulac's Tanglewood Tales and Gustaf Tenggren's Wonderbook

Stephen Worth
Director
ASIFA-Hollywood
Animation Archive
.

Stumble It!

Illustration: Bozo And His Rocket Ship

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.


In 1946, a young producer at Capitol Records, Alan Livingston was assigned the task of developing a children's line for the fledgling record company. He came up with the idea of a read-along record and book set featuring a circus clown named Bozo. The album, Bozo At The Circus sold over a million copies, and helped to push Capitol to the top of the charts.

Livingston went on to create read-along sets featuring DIsney, Lantz and Warner Bros characters, but the most successful line was the Bozo series. Voiced by Disney story and voice man, Pinto Colvig with music by Billy May, Livingston wrote and produced Bozo On The Farm, Bozo And The Birds, Bozo Under The Sea, and this one... Bozo And His Rocket Ship. All of the sets were re-released in the LP era, but this one was heavily edited, for obvious reasons. In this album, Bozo makes a survey of just about every ethnic stereotype imaginable. But that isn't the reason we're presenting it here. We're featuring the wonderful work of the illustrators, Norm McCabe and Cecil Beard.

McCabe was an animator at Warner Bros in the 30s and directed in the early 40s. After the war, he turned to commercial work and illustration. He returned to cartoon animation in the mid-1960s, animating the titles to The Pink Panther. He continued to work in the business until his death in 2006. Cecil Beard was an animator and story man at Disney and Columbia. He worked on the Fox & the Crow comic books with Jim Davis in the late 40s, and as an illustrator for Western Publishing in the 1960s. He passed away in 1986.

The most striking thing about these images are the compositions. Notice how the white of the page is used and how small windows in the backgrounds open onto other environments. There's some really clever use of perspective and depth cues here. Enjoy!





















If you found this to be useful, see also... Rojankovsky's Frog Went A Courting, Tibor Gergely's A Day In The Jungle, Gustaf Tenggren's The Little Trapper, Uncle Remus Stories Part One and Part Two, 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!

Illustration: Monks By Eduard von Grutzner

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


Here is another interesting item from the collection of Carlo Vinci. These photographs were among his most prized posessions. They are turn of the century reproductions of the paintings of Eduard von Grutzner. Grutzner was born in 1846 and received classical art training at the Munich Academie under the noted realist painter, Karl von Piloty. Grutzner specialized in genre paintings, which formed the basis for the style of many classic book illustrators who followed. He was famous for his paintings of jolly gatherings in alehouses, hunting scenes, and humorous images of monastic life, which these particular images represent. Grutzner was successful and popular in his day, and died in 1925.

The family isn't quite sure where Vinci obtained these photographs, but my guess is that they date back to his earliest years as a professional artist. After graduating from the National Academy of Design, Vinci was hired to do reproductions of classic paintings. It's entirely possible that these were used by him as reference for reproductions of one or more Grutzner paintings. It's easy to see why Vinci treasured these pictures. The compositions are classically perfect, the caricatures are well observed, the lighting is beautifully rendered, and a Falstaffian sense of humor makes the images a lot of fun.











If you enjoyed this article, you'll also want to check out our... Profile of Carlo Vinci, The Training Of A Golden Age Animator, Carlo Vinci Notes, The Temperamental Lion, John K on Flintstones Animators

Also see... N. C. Wyeth's Legends of Charlemagne, Maxfield Parrish's Arabian Nights, Frank Reynolds Paints Pickwick, John Bauer's Bland Tomtar Och Troll, Edmund Dulac's Tanglewood Tales and Gustaf Tenggren's Wonderbook

Thanks
Stephen Worth
Director
ASIFA-Hollywood
Animation Archive
.

Stumble It!

Biography: Milton Caniff and Norman Rockwell in Coronet

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.


The Milton Caniff Estate recently loaned the ASIFA-Hollywood Animation Archive copies of two issues of Coronet magazine from 1942 and 1947 to digitize. Here are three articles of interest to cartoonists and illustrators...



AMERICA'S PIONEER JAP FIGHTER
By Howard Whitman








NORMAN ROCKWELL: The People's Painter
By Jack H. Pollack






CONFESSIONS OF A COMIC STRIP ARTIST
By Milton Caniff





Thanks to John Ellis and the estate of Milton Caniff for sharing this with us!

If you enjoyed this post, see... Coronet Magazine December 1945, Milton Caniff's Steve Canyon Sunday Pages, Steve Canyon Dalies, People On Paper, Byrnes' Complete Guide To Cartooning Part One- Meet The Men Behind the Comics and Part Two- Studying Comic Strips, Dispatch From Disney's Part One and Part Two, Propaganda Part One and Part Two, Dan Gordon's Superkatt, Rube Goldberg's Side Show and Alex Toth Model Sheets

STEVE CANYON TV SHOW


The Steve Canyon Special Edition DVD is out now! To order it and for more info on the Steve Canyon TV show, see... www.stevecanyondvd.blogspot.com

STEVE CANYON AT AMAZON

Fantagraphics has a great book on Caniff's career, and Checker has released year by year reprints of the classic Steve Canyon strip. Caniff was a master storyteller, and the first few years of Steve Canyon are examples of his genius at the height of its powers. Click on the pictures for more info.

Stephen Worth
Director
ASIFA-Hollywood
Animation Archive
.

Stumble It!

Illustration: More From The Monkey Man, Lawson Wood

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



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








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







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

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

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

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

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

Thanks
Stephen Worth
Director
ASIFA-Hollywood
Animation Archive

Stumble It!

Illustration: Coronet Magazine 1945

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



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

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


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




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



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



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









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

Thanks
Stephen Worth
Director
ASIFA-Hollywood
Animation Archive

Stumble It!

Illustration: Gemma on Illustration

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


You might remember me mentioning Gemma Ross the intern from Dartmouth who did incredible work on designing our database last Spring. Well, she's back for a little while until the end of Summer, and she is making great strides to take the database to the next level.

As she works on the database, Gemma has had the opportunity to see a lot of the amazing cartoons and images in the archive. She's been thinking about everything she's seen and has posted some of her theories to her blog, Los Gemeles Adventures! It's extemely gratifying for me to sit back quietly and watch the changes in the interns we have working here. Being surrounded great cartooning and wonderful artwork of all kinds has opened up their horizons and made them better artists and better people.

Gemma Ross on Classic Illustration

More Pretty Things From Gemma

Dulac's The Tempest

The beautiful illustrations Gemma comments on were contributed to the ASIFA-Hollywood Animation Archive by Minh Lai of Nocloo.com. Minh's site is worth bookmarking. It's a treasure trove of classic illustration and a great tribute to the artists who created these amazing visuals.

Thanks
Stephen Worth
Director
ASIFA-Hollywood
Animation Archive
.

Stumble It!

Meta: iPhone Wallpaper: Golden Age Illustration

These images are just the tip of the iceberg... see The Top Ten Reasons To Support The A-HAA for more jaw dropping examples of classic illustration.


If you just got an iPhone and you're looking for great images to use as wallpaper, download one of these linked archive files. They include 30 classic illustrations by Tenggren, Dulac, Parrish, Wyeth and Artzybasheff, ready to load onto your iPhone...



iPhone Wallpaper: Stuffit FIle (.sit)
(Stuffit Archive / .sit / Get Stuffit Expander / 1.5 mb)

iPhone Wallpaper: Zip FIle (.zip)
(Zip Archive / .zip / 1.5 mb)

Please tell everyone you know with an iPhone about this post. Help spread the word about ASIFA-Hollywood's Animation Archive! Let me know in the comments if you'd like me to put together more wallpaper sets from the archive.

If you'd like to see more great images like this and read about the artists who created these amazing paintings, browse through our Classic Illustration Index.

Thanks
Stephen Worth
Director
ASIFA-Hollywood
Animation Archive

Stumble It!

Biography: Ward Kimball- Escapader Cum Laude

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.


OK. With that picture above, you probably think I've gone off the deep end! But look a little further... This "girlie" magazine from the late fifties has incredible cartoons and illustrations... and an article on the incomparable Ward Kimball!


How the wildest "Old Man" ended up in a men's magazine is anybody's guess. But the article captures Kimball at his peak. And the great illustrations and cartoons in the magazine itself (including a Searle influenced trip to Europe by Schoolhouse Rock designer, Bob Eggers) express the joyful exhuberance of the era. As an added bonus, there's an ad for the Famous Artists Course featuring the inspiring life story of illustrator, Albert Dorne. Enjoy!















Thanks to archive supporter Gary Francis for sharing this gem with us.

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

Thanks
Stephen Worth
Director
ASIFA-Hollywood
Animation Archive

Stumble It!

Illustration: Tenggren's D'Aulnoy and Good Dog Book

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


Just in case you aren't convinced yet that Gustaf Tenggren is one of the most amazing children's book illustrators of all time, here are two more persuasive arguments. These two books were published in 1923 and 1924, a very busy period for Tenggren. He had recently relocated to New York City, and he illustrated no less than eight books in a very short period of time. Make sure to click through the links to our other Tenggren posts at the bottom of this article to see more of his beautiful work.













THE GOOD DOG BOOK






Lines and Colors posted a nice feature on Tenggren this week.

For more incredible illustration by Gustaf Tenggren, see Tenggren's Grimms Fairy Tales Part One and Part Two, Heidi, Wonderbook and Juan & Juanita, and Small Fry and the Winged Horse.

See also... Einar Norelius' Bland Tomtar Och Troll 1929 and 1934, John Bauer's Bland Tomtar Och Troll 1917, Arthur Rackham's Grimm's Fairy Tales Part One and Part Two.

Thanks
Stephen Worth
Director
ASIFA-Hollywood Animation Archive

5.12.09
.

Stumble It!

Illustration: The Genius of Miguel Covarrubias

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


Miguel Covarrubias was one of the most famous artists of his day, but chances are you've never heard of him. Caricaturists know his work- Al Hirschfeld studied under Covarrubias and shared a studio with him in 1924. He spoke of Covarrubias' talent in the same breath as Daumier and Hogarth. Ethnologists and archaeologists know the name of Covarrubias as well. His analysis of pre-Columbian art and the culture of Bali led to books on the subject that have become classics. And his reputation as an anthropologist rivalled any of his peers in that field. Illustrator, caricaturist, anthropologist, author and educator... It's high time you knew about Covarrubias too!


At the age of nineteen, Miguel Covarrubias, already a renowned caricaturist in his home country of Mexico, emigrated to New York City. He was an instant sensation, and his illustrations began appearing in New Yorker and Vanity Fair. Fellow Mexican artist, Diego Rivera described his illustrations as "those caustic but implacably good-humored drawings which, fortunately for his personal safety, people have been misled into calling caricatures. In Covarrubias' art there is no vicious cruelty, it is all irony untainted with malice; a humor that is young and clean; a precise and well defined plasticity."

Most of the caricatures from Vanity Fair below depict unlikely pairs of public figures. Click on the links to the Wikipedia entries on these people and see why Covarrubias put them together.

MIGUEL COVARRUBIAS CARICATURES


Jim Londos & Herbert Hoover
(Vanity Fair, August 1932)


Senator Smith W. Brookhart & Marlene Dietrich
(Vanity Fair, September 1932)


Al Capone & Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes
(Vanity Fair, October 1932)


Clark Gable & Edward, Prince of Wales
(Vanity Fair, November 1932)


Ex-King Alfonso & James J. Walker
(Vanity Fair, December 1932)


Mrs. Ella Boole & Miss Texas Guinan
(Vanity Fair, January 1933)


Arthur Brisbane & The Sphinx
(Vanity Fair, May 1933)


Emily Post
(Vanity Fair, December 1933)


Admiral Richard E. Byrd
(Vanity Fair, December 1934)


Sally Rand & Martha Graham
(Vanity Fair, December 1934)


Dr. Samuel Johnson & Alexander Woolcott
(Vanity Fair, March 1935)


Auguste Piccard & William Beebe
(Vanity Fair, April 1935)
Covarrubias was much more than just an illustrator and caricaturist though. His books on Bali and Mexico revealed a careful analytical mind with an eye for detail. The following article from an arts magazine from 1948 encompasses the latter part of Covarrubias' career...

MIGUEL COVARRUBIAS OF MEXICO CITY
By Henry C. Pitz (January 1948)






Many thanks to the ever-faithful supporter of the ASIFA-Hollywood Animation Archive, Kent Butterworth for sharing this wonderful material from his own collection with us.

If you enjoyed this post, check out... Colliers Magazine Illustrations From the Mid-1930s and the Mid-1940s and also... John Held Jr.'s Flappers, Arthur Szyk's The New Order and Artzybasheff's Neurotica, Machinalia and Diablerie.

Thanks
Stephen Worth
Director
ASIFA-Hollywood
Animation Archive

Stumble It!

Illustration: 1930s Colliers Illustrations

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


Yesterday, we had a wonderful surprise. Archive supporter Kent Butterworth stopped by lugging eight huge bound volumes under his arm. They were library copies of Colliers magazine from the late 1940s and early 1950s. He donated them to our library so folks who stop by can browse the amazing illustrations and cartoons. Thanks, Kent!

Here are a few images from the June 5th, 1948 issue... Check out the amazing illustrations for mundane products like outboard motors and golf balls! Magazines today can't compare.











Here's a batch of advertisements from the mid-1930s Colliers magazines loaned to us for digitization by archive supporter Mike Fontinelli. I don't know about you, but after looking over these great magazines, I have the urge to go out and buy a 1936 Terraplane!















If you enjoyed this post, check out... John Held Jr.'s Flappers, Arthur Szyk's The New Order and Artzybasheff's Neurotica, Machinalia and Diablerie.

Thanks
Stephen Worth
Director
ASIFA-Hollywood
Animation Archive

3.14.09
.

Stumble It!

Illustration: Rojankovsky's Frog Went A-Courtin'

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.


Archive supporter, Kent Butterworth dropped by with a wonderful children's book by the great illustrator Feodor Rojankovsky. Titled, Frog Went A-Courtin', this book won the Caldicot Prize in 1955 for Best Children's Picture Book of the year.

Rojankovsky was born in Russia in 1891, and served in the Russian army in the first World War. He spent some time in France, then emigrated to the United States when war broke out again in 1940. He was a prolific illustrator, creating over 100 picture books for Western Publishing's Golden Books line and for other publishers as well. When asked how be began his interest in art, he replied...

Two great events determined the course of my childhood. l was taken to the zoo and saw the most marvelous creatures on earth: bears, tigers, monkeys and reindeer, and, while my admiration was running high, l was given a set of color crayons. Naturally, I began immediately to depict the animals which captured my imagination. Also when my eider brothers, who were in schools in the capital, came home for vacation, I tried to copy their drawings and to imitate their paintings.

Later when l went to school in Reval Tallinn, an ancient town on the shores of the Baltic sea, my love for art was enhanced and strengthened by a passion for nature. Tallinn was surrounded by forest. The sea presented wonderful opportunities for excursions and study of sea life. But there were also steamers, sailboats, flags, and all the excitement of a port. This was no less exciting than playing Red Indians or reading James Fenimore Cooper, the beloved author of all Russian children before, during, and after the Revolution.

SELECTED ILLUSTRATIONS FROM
FROG WENT A-COURTIN'
Make sure to click on these to see them large. Rojankovsky was a master of texture, and the smaller size images don't show that as well.















If you found this to be useful, see also... Tibor Gergely's A Day In The Jungle, Gustaf Tenggren's The Little Trapper, Uncle Remus Stories Part One and Part Two, 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.

If you like this book, you're in luck... it's still in print. You can find it at Amazon.

Thanks
Stephen Worth
Director
ASIFA-Hollywood
Animation Archive

Stumble It!

Illustration: Lawson Wood- The Monkey Painter

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


Lawson Wood is one of the most unusual artists of the golden age of magazine illustration, largely because of the subject he chose to illustrate- monkeys... well, to be scientifically accurate, most of them are apes, but to a cartoonist, a monkey is a monkey.

Wood was born in London in 1878 to a family already well outfitted with artists. He developed his skills swiftly, and by age 18 he was a published illustrator. By the early years of the 20th century, he was established as an artist adept at both "straight" subjects and humorous fantasy. His images of cave men and dinosaurs were particularly popular in England, but the paintings that brought him fame in America were his monkeys...


This album was brought to us to digitize by archive supporter, Mike Fontanelli, and it gives you a good idea of how much Wood got out of his silly subject matter. Wood's Gran'pop Monkey and friends graced the cover of many issues of Colliers, and there was even talk of adapting the characters to star in a series of animated cartoons. Ub Iwerks was slated to produce the series, but the outbreak of war and the closing of Iwerks' studio nipped the idea in the bud. However, Wood understood the value of merchandising early on; he even headed up his own toy manufacturing firm, and he died a very wealthy man in 1957.

Some people can't get past the "kitsch factor" of Wood's illustrations. But even those who hate his work have to grudgingly admit that he had wonderful painting technique. Love him or hate him, here is Lawson Wood...













Mike Fontanelli recently brought by a big stack of vintage Colliers magazines with Wood covers for us to scan as well. Check these babies out!







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






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

For more info, see Bud Plant's terrific Lawson Wood Bio. Many thanks to Will Finn and Mike Fontanelli for their generous support of the Archive project.

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

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

Thanks
Stephen Worth
Director
ASIFA-Hollywood
Animation Archive

3.3.09
.

Stumble It!

Illustration: Kent Donates Colliers

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



Yesterday, we had a wonderful surprise. Archive supporter Kent Butterworth stopped by lugging eight huge bound volumes under his arm. They were library copies of Colliers magazine from the late 1940s and early 1950s. He donated them to our library so folks who stop by can browse the amazing illustrations and cartoons. Thanks, Kent!

Here are a few images from the June 5th, 1948 issue... Check out the amazing illustrations for mundane products like outboard motors and golf balls! Magazines today can't compare.












You'll want to make a point of stopping by the archive to check these books out.

Thanks
Stephen Worth
Director
ASIFA-Hollywood
Animation Archive

Stumble It!

Pinups: Eldon Dedini's Satyrs and Nymphs

This post is just the tip of the iceberg... see reason number 9 on our The Top Ten Reasons To Support The A-HAA for links to more great pinup art.


You can't beat Christmas in the country.
A while back, we posted a group of Playboy cartoons by Eldon Dedini. Today, we present more of this artist's amazing work, along with a video interview of Dedini in his studio discussing how he got his start.

Eldon Dedini is best known for his magazine cartoons from Esquire and Playboy. But early in his career, he was an editorial cartoonist for local newspapers, and a story man for Walt Disney.

Archive supporter, Ken Kearney lives close to the Monterey area, where Dedini lived and worked for many years. In 2005, he produced an interview video, which he generously donated to the ASIFA-Hollywood Animation Archive for our biographical database. Here is a clip from Ken's video where Dedini tells how he got started as a cartoonist and his experiences as a story man with Disney on Fun & Fancy Free and Donald Duck cartoons like Dumbell of the Yukon.



Eldon Dedini Interview (Ken Kearney/2005)
(Quicktime 7 / 14.2 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.

DEDINI IN PLAYBOY
Here is a feature on Dedini's famous "Satyr & Nymph" comics from Playboy, followed by some higher resolution images of individual cartoons...







We forgot the picnic basket!


I'd like you to meet my father,
but I don't dare. You know how
even old satyrs are!


It's not that I didn't believe in Santa Claus-
It's just that you've shattered my image
somehow...
For more info on the great cartoonists who worked for Playboy in the 1960s, see these posts... Eldon Dedini Part One, Erich Sokol, Kurtzman & Elder's Little Annie Fanny, Doug Sneyd and Phil Interlandi.

If you're a fan of Dedini, you will want to get Fantagraphic's great book, An Orgy Of Eldon Dedini. It comes with a DVD documentary called "Dedini: A Life In Cartoons" Check it out!

I'm not sure if Ken is offering these for sale, but if you would like to inquire about ordering a DVD of Ken Kearney's Dedini interview, email, kenkearneystudios@hotmail.com.

Thanks
Stephen Worth
Director
ASIFA-Hollywood
Animation Archive

2.10.09
.

Stumble It!

Illustration: N. C. Wyeth's Legends of Charlemagne

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.


Today, we digitized a beautiful first edition of Bulfinch's "Legends of Charlemagne" illustrated by N. C. Wyeth. No illustrator of the golden age had a wider influence on the world of art than Wyeth. His son, Andrew Wyeth became a reknowned fine artist, and many of his other children and grandchildren became artists and musicians as well.

Wyeth studied under illustrator Howard Pyle, and quickly made a name for himself. His first published art was a cover for the Saturday Evening Post, a plum job right off the bat. In his early days, he was known as a Western artist. He travelled West to soak up the landscape. The trip resulted in a portfolio of images of Indians that vividly capture the light and spirit of the Old West.

Wyeth is best known for his book illustrations though. In 1911, he painted 16 color plates for Scribner's edition of Stevenson's "Treasure Island". It remains the classic version of the book. Wyeth was incredibly prolific over the next decade or so, "Treasure Island" was followed by "Kidnapped", "The Black Arrow", "The Boy's King Arthur" and many more. The book we are presenting today was published in 1924 by David McKay. It displays Wyeth at the top of his form. Even the endpapers are beautiful!












If you enjoyed this post, see... Maxfield Parrish's Arabian Nights, Frank Reynolds Paints Pickwick, John Bauer's Bland Tomtar Och Troll, Edmund Dulac's Tanglewood Tales and Gustaf Tenggren's Wonderbook

I'll be back with more great stuff later this week.

Thanks
Stephen Worth
Director
ASIFA-Hollywood
Animation Archive

1.23.09
.

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!

Pinups: John Held Jr.

This post is just the tip of the iceberg... see reason number 9 on our The Top Ten Reasons To Support The A-HAA for links to more great pinup art.

Today, Archive volunteer, Gary Francis brought in a couple of Playboys from the late 60s to add to our collection of digitized images by Sokol, Dedini, Interlandi, Sneyd and Vargas. We will be posting more by these great artists soon, but I particularly wanted to bring this great feature on John Held Jr. to your attention.

John Held Jr was born in 1889, and by the age of 16 was an accomplished sports cartoonist for the Salt Lake City Tribune. He served in the military during WWI, and soon after his return he gained fame for his work as an illustrator for Life, Judge and College Humor. His style and subject matter defined the "Jazz Age" of the 1920s. His cartoons depicting sexy flappers and their raccoon coated beaus living the life of flaming youth were all the rage. In later years, he worked in woodcuts and illustrated scenes from the "Gay Nineties"

Here is a feature on Held from the January 1966 issue of Playboy magazine...









I just added the last page of this article, which includes some great biographical info on Held. (A nice Virgil Partch comic too!) If you would like to see more of Held's work, visit Shane Glines' excellent site... CartonRetro.com.

If you find this posting to be useful, you should also see our postings on George Petty's Ridgid Tools Calendars, Erich Sokol, Eldon Dedini, Doug Sneyd and Phil Interlandi.

Stephen Worth
Director
ASIFA-Hollywood
Animation Archive

12.22.08
.

Stumble It!

Illustration: Einar Norelius and John Bauer's Bland Tomtar Och Troll (1944/49)

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.



Today we scanned more illustrations from the Swedish Christmas annual, Bland Tomtar Och Troll. (For links to posts with more from this series, see the end of this article.) The Bauer illustrations are reprinted from the 1919 and 1909 editions in the series. The Norelius images show how his style evolved over the years. By 1949, he had perfected a direct, dreamlike style (some of the images look similar to Magritte) which perfectly suits the timelessness of the fairy tale subjects. Here are more examples of the genius ofJohn Bauer and Einar Norelius- the 1944 and 1949 editions of Bland Tomtar Och Troll...

JOHN BAUER








EINAR NORELIUS