Monday Morning Maurice

Not sure why I’ve never linked to this before but here is an illuminating 1991 interview with legendary animation background designer Maurice Noble (What’s Opera, Doc?,Duck Amuck, The Dot and the Line). The interview was conducted by Harry McCracken and originally appeared in a print issue of Animato.

For some visual examples of Noble’s work, check out this blog post by illustrator Glen Mullaly in which he shares some composite screengrabs from the 1954 John Sutherland industrial It’s Everybody’s Business. The image at the top of this post is from that film, which can be downloaded for free at Archive.org.

And one final interesting Maurice note: in February 2008, the University Press of Mississippi will publish the first in-depth study of Noble’s work. The book, Stepping into the Picture: Cartoon Designer Maurice Noble, by Robert McKinnon, is currently available for pre-order on Amazon in hardcover or softcover. I don’t know much about the book though I believe that McKinnon was working on this with Noble while he was still alive so hopefully the book will have plenty of fresh details about Noble’s life and work.