Monthly Archives: June 2012

Mickey Mouse Original Titles

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I’ll bet you’ve never seen the actual opening of an early 1930s Mickey Mouse cartoon. Oh, you may think you have – but only animation historian David Gerstein really has – and thanks to him, now we can too. Gerstein’s spent years researching and accumulating rare prints and original film elements to these early 30s Disney cartoons – and has compiled all that research into his latest post on his blog.

Gerstein, editor of Fantagraphics’ Floyd Gottfredson Library, is displaying images from more than a dozen of these rare title frames – like this lost one above from Giantland (1933) – he found in various private collections. The newly recovered title cards include several styles previously unseen by modern-day Disney buffs and serious researchers. Calling all Disney Nerds: look closely at some of this material and you’ll note even some copyright lines and sound system credits differ from versions we’ve seen for years. This is some heavy stuff – and I love it! Thanks, David… Mickey mavens, check this out!

Walt Disney’s Favorite Foods

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In his latest “Wonderful World of Walt” column, animation historian Jeff Kurtti explores Walt Disney’s favorite foods. Suffice it to say, Walt was not a foodie:

“[Walt] had eaten in hash houses and lunch wagons for so many years (in order to save money) that he’d developed a hash house/lunch wagon appetite. He liked fried potatoes, hamburgers, western sandwiches, hotcakes, canned peas, hash, stew, roast beef sandwiches. He wasn’t keen for steak — or any expensive cuts of meat. He didn’t go for vegetables, but he loved chicken livers or macaroni and cheese. He liked to eat at Biff’s [a little coffee house on a nearby corner]. He felt they did their potatoes “right” by pan-frying them.” – Diane Disney Miller

“Lil’ Red” by Cale Atkinson

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Lil’ Red is a beautifully designed minimalist animated short by Canadian animator Cale Atkinson. Atkinson simply made it to practice his artistic skills. He writes, “My intention from the beginning was to create a very simple and graphic style, while playing with colour and atmosphere.” I’d say he succeeded brilliantly. A Making Of Lil’ Red is posted here.

Charles Thorson’s “Captain and The Kids” model sheets

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Once upon a time, way back in 1937… MGM decided to produce its own cartoons and set up a studio on the lot. They ended their arrangement with Hugh Harman and Rudolph Ising (and their Happy Harmonies series), bought the rights to popular comic strip The Captain and The Kids, and hired Friz Freleng away from Leon Schlesinger to direct the shorts. A funny thing happened on the way to the big screen – the cartoons were not popular. Here’s an example:

A year later Freleng went back to making Looney Tunes, the studio brought back Hugh Harman and Rudolph Ising — and Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera had an opportunity to emerge…

Cut to 75 years later… Mike Van Eaton has come into a cache of Captain and The Kids model sheets and has graciously agreed to let me post them here. As best I can tell, these were all drawn by Charles Thorson. Thorson really got around, designing significant characters for Disney, MGM, Screen Gems, Warner Bros., Fleischer, Terrytoons – even George Pal – in the 30s and 40s before settling into a career in advertising and illustrating children’s books. Now everything you need to know about drawing the Captain and the Kids is here for you to enjoy (click on images below, and thumbnails below that, to enlarge).

Here’s a few more (below). The first two – probably not designed by Thorson – are from the short Old Smokey (1938).

And that’s not all, folks. Van Eaton has obtained a whole bunch MGM model sheets from later productions (Tom & Jerry, Avery, etc.). I’ll be posting them later this week…

Disney Redesigns The Seven Dwarfs For “7D”

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Have you ever wondered what Disney’s Seven Dwarfs would look like if the characters were designed by an artist who had no fundamental understanding of drawing, color theory or appeal? Wonder no more. The designs above, which look more like an animation student’s first pass in a character design class than functional designs for a TV series, will be used in a new Disney TV production called 7D, that will premiere on Disney Junior in 2014.

A bunch of Tiny Toons and Animaniacs alumni are involved: Tom Ruegger exec produces, Alfred Gimeno directs and Sherri Stoner story edits. Fish Hooks creator Noah Z. Jones designed the characters. He’s made it impossible to differentiate between the dwarfs, but I can only assume that turning them into generic icons was a directive from above.

According to Deadline:

Described as a comedic take on the world of Seven Dwarfs in a contemporary storybook world, 7D takes place in Jollywood where Queen Delightful relies on the 7D – Happy, Bashful, Sleepy, Sneezy, Dopey, Grumpy and Doc – to keep the kingdom in order. Standing in their way are two laughably evil villains, Grim and Hildy Gloom, who plot to take over the kingdom by stealing the magical jewels in the 7D’s mine.

Man, what I wouldn’t give for a couple of solid, well-constructed drawings just about now….

Aah…that’s better.

Disney Begins Production On “Maleficent”

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Today Disney announced the official start of production on their live-action Maleficent and released the first image of Angelina Jolie in the title role. The film is helmed by first-time director Robert Stromberg (production designer, Avatar, Alice in Wonderland), produced by Joe Roth, written by Linda Woolverton (The Lion King, Beauty and the Beast) and executive produced by Angelina Jolie, Don Hahn, Matt Smith and Palak Patel.

Scheduled for release on March 14, 2014, the film recounts “the untold story of Disney’s most beloved villain, Maleficent, from the 1959 classic Sleeping Beauty. The film reveals the events that hardened her heart and drove her to curse the baby, Aurora.” Next in Disney’s series of unnecessary films that destroy the mystery of cartoon villains: the story of the Queen in Snow White and which supermarket she bought the apple from that was used to poison Snow White.

RKO Executives “Snow White” Lunch Menu (1938)

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Not pictured in that Animation Auction catalog we posted about last week is this extra piece that comes with the autographed Snow White storybook. It’s the menu (below, click to enlarge) for the private luncheon of 24 RKO execs at their international distribution convention in Paris, at the Hotel George V on September 6th, 1938.

I don’t know about you, but I wouldn’t mind getting my hands on Snow White’s Magic Pears or have a taste of Clarabelle Cow’s Creamy-Butter!

July 14th in San Fran: John Canemaker at Disney Museum

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Once again we are happy to alert you to an upcoming don’t-miss John Canemaker lecture. In conjunction with the Walt Disney Family Museum’s current exhibition of original drawings by German artist and caricaturist Heinrich Kley, Oscar-winning animation filmmaker, author and historian Canemaker presents an illustrated overview of the varied European aesthetic influences that found their way into Disney feature animated films.

Canemaker will discuss the anthropomorphic art of 19th-century artists Heinrich Kley and J.J. Grandville, as well as the expressionistic silent films of German director F.W. Murnau, and how these sources inspired the visual style of SNOW WHITE, PINOCCHIO and FANTASIA, among other early Disney features. He also spotlights the contributions of European artists who worked at the studio, such as Albert Hurter, Ferdinand Horvath, Gustaf Tenggren, Sylvia Holland, and others.

Heinrich Kley and Company: European Influences On Disney at The Walt Disney Family Museum, San Francisco. Saturday, July 14th at 3pm. Tickets on sale now.

“Madagascar 3″ Leads Global Box Office Again

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For the second week in a row, DreamWorks’ Madagascar 3 remain atop the US box office. It earned $34 million last weekend, pushing its 10-day total to $119 million. It is currently pacing ahead of the first two entries in the Madagascar series. Madagascar 3 has also been the top film overseas for the past two weeks, and has added $157 million from 43 foreign markets. The film’s top market overseas is, of course, DreamWorks-obsessed Russia.

The Problem With Cartoons: They’re All Racist!

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Author Stephen Marche has a problem: he wants to share comics and animated cartoons with his son, but everything is racist. He told the world about his predicament in the most recent issue of the New York Times Magazine. He used the words ‘racism’ and ‘racist’ nine times to describe everything from Asterix to Dumbo to Tintin. Amazingly, Babar gets a pass because, Marche explains, “my son won’t be turned into a more effective colonist by stories of elephants riding elevators.”

Marche seems to lack a fundamental understanding of the cartoon medium, an art form whose essence is rooted in caricature and exaggeration. He finds offensive stereotypes everywhere he looks, including Blue Sky’s Ice Age, DreamWorks’ Madagascar and Pixar’s Monsters, Inc.:

Sulley and Mike, on the way into the office, happen to pass an orange squidlike grocer with a handlebar mustache who kind of talks-a-like-a-this. Perhaps that kind of stereotype is not as gruesome or upsetting as the one in the original Fantasia, but I had the distinct impression, as my son laughed at the scene, that my Italian immigrant grandfather was turning over in his grave.

Asterix gives Marche the biggest headache. As he reads it to his son, he wonders:

What is [my son] going to ask when I explain that for 400 years, white people took black people from their homes in Africa, carried them across the ocean in chains, beat them to death as they worked to produce sugar and cotton, separated them from their children and felt entitled to do so because of the difference in the color of their skin?

Amazingly, this thoughtfulness comes from a man who admits in the article that he told his son, “I don’t know why the pirates have a gorilla,” when his son asked him about a black character in Asterix.

I can only imagine that Marche would have a coronary if he ever watched this piece of animation:

PS – Go here to read a blistering takedown of Marche’s piece.

Classic Cartoon Character TwitterArt

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I’m getting a kick out of this TwitterArt by Gregory Wadsworth, a freelance 3D illustrator in Manhattan. He’s creating a chronological series of tweets commemorating Hollywood cartoon stars – in tweets composed of the maximum of 140 characters.

I’m not sure I understand how he does it, but Greg explains:

“The tweets are composed of a maximum of 140 Unicode box-drawing characters. Box-drawing characters were developed to create tables (frames, or row and column separations) for early text-based computer interfaces, like DOS. To create the imagery, each box-drawing “word” – separated with a space or line-break character – has to be long enough so that it wraps under the previous “word.” Here is a list of articles about “twitter art”.

I’m only representing characters that were created for animation. Adapted characters like Popeye and Bonzo aren’t included. It’s limited to headliners who appeared in four or more cartoons, which excludes characters like Gertie and Goopy Geer. For teams like Tom and Jerry, only one character will be represented. Many early characters, whose images were difficult to obtain, were also left out. Some browsers will display the designs better than others. The series will likely end with 1949.”

Beautiful work! Follow Greg and his tweets, here.