Category: animation

Hear Betty Boop and Max Fleischer favorites performed live

Discussion about the early history of animation tends to focus on Walt Disney and Looney Tunes, ignoring good old Max Fleischer. Fleischer was the man behind Betty Boop, Popeye, and other Depression-era classics. We could talk about those for a week, especially the censorship of Betty Boop, but one of the most critical parts of … Continue reading “Hear Betty Boop and Max Fleischer favorites performed live”

Discussion about the early history of animation tends to focus on Walt Disney and Looney Tunes, ignoring good old Max Fleischer. Fleischer was the man behind Betty Boop, Popeye, and other Depression-era classics. We could talk about those for a week, especially the censorship of Betty Boop, but one of the most critical parts of Fleischer’s cartoons was the music he used. Compared to Steamboat Willie‘s stereotypically peppy score, Betty Boop was jazzier, riskier, and a little more culturally savvy.

In celebration of Max Fleischer’s career, the currently ongoing Washington Jewish Film Festival will host a screening this weekend of some of Fleischer’s cartoons with the music performed live, as improbable as this sounds, by a Max Fleischer cover band. Hear Betty Boop sing! Marvel at how Fleischer’s animation reflects the Jazz Age rather than glossing it over!

The video embedded above should give you an idea of what to expect. This is really novel performance idea and a great way to celebrate Fleischer’s body of work.

The screening-concert will be at 8:30pm on Saturday, March 5th, at the AFI Silver in Silver Spring.

A grueling look at making The Simpsons, start to finish

Digital techniques have greatly sped up the rate at which animation is produced. South Park can turn out a full episode in a week, and some topical YouTube videos can be cranked out even faster. But the producers of The Simpsons have opted to keep things slow, spacing our production over nearly a year to … Continue reading “A grueling look at making The Simpsons, start to finish”

Digital techniques have greatly sped up the rate at which animation is produced. South Park can turn out a full episode in a week, and some topical YouTube videos can be cranked out even faster. But the producers of The Simpsons have opted to keep things slow, spacing our production over nearly a year to ensure that every little background detail and facial tic has been revised and remastered. For maybe the first time, The Verge offers a look behind-the-scenes, telling the story of how an idea for a Simpsons script grows into a full episode.

Despite the lengthy turnaround, it sounds like this process still often comes down to the last day, and the staff certainly never gets a break. Of particular interest is the work of the “timer,” a production member who breaks down every action and detail frame-by-frame as a blueprint for contracted animators. Ongoing quality issues aside, you’ll develop a lot more respect for the show’s craftsmanship when you see how every single detail – even character fidgets and mouth movements – have to be spelled out for an entire 22-minute episode.

If you want a practical example of why all the revision matters, check out our DVD copy of “Some Enchanted Evening,” the last episode of The Simpsons‘s first season (HU DVD 14324, disc 3). That episode had a famously troubled production cycle, eventually produced twice and resulting in the quality control process described by The Verge. The DVD includes commentary explaining the process as well as a few select clips of the doomed original episode. It’s a great complement to the article to prove why the show needs a longer production cycle.

75 years later, celebrating Bugs Bunny – and looking at his contentious history

Today marks the seventy-fifth anniversary of Bugs Bunny, Warner Bros.’s de facto cartoon mascot and a symbol of the golden age of animation (and maybe LeBron James’s future co-star?). Though Bugs is an immediately recognizable icon today, it took hundreds of theatrical animated shorts and countless years of Saturday morning television shows to get there. … Continue reading “75 years later, celebrating Bugs Bunny – and looking at his contentious history”

Today marks the seventy-fifth anniversary of Bugs Bunny, Warner Bros.’s de facto cartoon mascot and a symbol of the golden age of animation (and maybe LeBron James’s future co-star?). Though Bugs is an immediately recognizable icon today, it took hundreds of theatrical animated shorts and countless years of Saturday morning television shows to get there. And those decades have left behind countless historical artifacts of the birth of popular animation that Warner has thankfully preserved and shared for future generations – including the unseemly current of prejudice and xenophobia that sadly defined Looney Tunes for years.

This DVD set, the Looney Tunes Golden Collection, remains the best collection of Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies shorts available anywhere. Across six volumes, the compilation includes a breathtaking 360 animated shorts, spanning from 1929 (before the Looney Tunes name even existed) up to the 3D, CG-created Road Runner shorts from 2010. Each disc includes audio commentaries for select shorts from famous animators, as well as fascinating Looney Tunes ephemera such as interviews and behind-the-scenes footage. If you ever wanted to see Mel Blanc recording the voice of Bugs Bunny, you can find some candid footage on the first disc of Volume 1.

But as mentioned, many of these earlier Bugs Bunny shorts were produced at a time far, far less attune to the hurtfulness of racist and sexist stereotypes. A number of the shorts in this collection traffic in insensitive and damaging racial humor that was unchecked, and Warner Bros. has thankfully included those unedited where possible. Several cartoons known as the Censored Eleven have never been released on home media. Warner Bros. eloquently defends their inclusion in the collection with a message that appears at the top of each DVD:

The cartoons you are about to see are products of their time. They may depict some of the ethnic and racial prejudices that were commonplace in American society. These depictions were wrong then and are wrong today. While the following does not represent the Warner Bros. view of society, these cartoons are being presented as they were originally created, because to do otherwise would be the same as to claim these prejudices never existed.

That’s a powerful statement in defense of artistic history, and with that unfortunate past acknowledged, it’s easier to appreciate the wealth of animated joy Bugs Bunny and directors Tex Avery and Chuck Jones helped bring into the world.

The AU Library proudly circulates three volumes of the Looney Tunes Golden Collection, as well as a massive collection of Tex Avery’s adjacent work from the golden age of animation. Any are suitable viewing for Bugs’s big milestone.

Looney Tunes Golden Collection, Volume 1 – HU DVD 3231 – 3234
Looney Tunes Golden Collection, Volume 2 – HU DVD 3235 – 3238
Looney Tunes Golden Collection, Volume 6 – HU DVD 8181 – 8184
The Compleat Tex Avery – DVD 9781 – 9789
Space Jam – HU DVD 7990

Animation fan? Check out hard-to-find shorts from The Animation Show of Shows

Yesterday in our new acquisitions post, we mentioned The Animation Show of Shows (HU DVD 12101 – 12154), a giant collection of world animation we recently added to our shelves. We want to talk a little before about this series; it’s a remarkable showcase of diverse talent that any animation fan should seek out. The … Continue reading “Animation fan? Check out hard-to-find shorts from The Animation Show of Shows”

Yesterday in our new acquisitions post, we mentioned The Animation Show of Shows (HU DVD 12101 – 12154), a giant collection of world animation we recently added to our shelves. We want to talk a little before about this series; it’s a remarkable showcase of diverse talent that any animation fan should seek out.

The Animation Show of Shows is a traveling exhibition of animation from across the globe that began in 1999. The event has emerged as one of the leading showcases of short-form animation, especially as it has hosted many Oscar-nominated shorts. As a supplement to their shows, the organizers also publish DVD box sets of collected animated shorts, many of which were previously unavailable or only in limited distribution.

The complete Animation Show of Shows collection – totaling a whopping 54 discs – includes decades of terrific animated shorts in nearly every conceivable format and from nearly every continent. We previously highlighted the famous Logorama short (HU DVD 12148), but there are 161 other shorts worth your attention in this box set. Highlights include:

  • Let’s Pollute (HU DVD 12150), a satirical educational video about the benefits of being un-environmental
  • Harvie Krumpet (HU DVD 12127), a Geoffrey Rush-narrated claymation film about a very unlucky Polish man
  • Oktapodi (HU DVD 12121), an octopus love story
  • Ski Jumping Pairs (HU DVD 12102), coverage of the fictional, impossible doubles ski jump Olympic event

If you consider yourself an animation fan (or even if you’ve just felt guilty about never watching anything in the Animated Short Film category), you’ll want to check out at least a disc or two of this collection. Many of these shorts are unavailable anywhere else!

Learn the secrets of Disney animation in 3 minutes

Walt Disney once employed a team informally known as the “Nine Old Men,” nine of the greatest animators of all time and the artistic forces behind nearly the first forty years of Disney animation. If you watch classic Disney movies today, their bold and fluid animations are still astounding and a great artistic accomplishment. Two … Continue reading “Learn the secrets of Disney animation in 3 minutes”

Walt Disney once employed a team informally known as the “Nine Old Men,” nine of the greatest animators of all time and the artistic forces behind nearly the first forty years of Disney animation. If you watch classic Disney movies today, their bold and fluid animations are still astounding and a great artistic accomplishment. Two of Nine Old Men, Ollie Johnston and Frank Thomas, explained the “12 basic principles” behind their iconic style in The Illusion of Life, a book that is now considered one of the most important animation reference works.

But let’s face it, this is about animation. You want to see it in motion, right?

Artist Cento Lodigiani put together a great 3-minute clip demonstrating each of the twelve principles, from basics like “staging” to advanced ideas like “follow through.” Lodigiani is not a Disney animator, but it’s easy to see how many of the illustrated principles apply to films like Snow White and Fantasia. Especially “secondary action,” which you can see at play in “Whistle While You Work.”

There’s of course more than twelve principles to quality animation, but this is a fun, non-technical peek into what goes through the minds of great animators.

Create a cool animated photo montage in After Effects

This 14 step online tutorial from Layers Magazine teaches you how to create a really cool animated photo montage. It’s structured in a way that easily enables you to switch out the photos in the animation for new ones as well. Your final result will be a short animated Quicktime movie. Check it out! How … Continue reading “Create a cool animated photo montage in After Effects”

This 14 step online tutorial from Layers Magazine teaches you how to create a really cool animated photo montage. It’s structured in a way that easily enables you to switch out the photos in the animation for new ones as well. Your final result will be a short animated Quicktime movie. Check it out!

How to create an Animated Photo Montage

1 IMPORT SLIDESHOW ASSETS
In After Effects, double-click in the Project panel to bring up the Import File dialog, then locate and import the images you wish to use. For our project, I’m importing three folders of photos of yours truly training in the Italian Alps before a big race in Spain and one paper-texture image I downloaded from iStockphoto to use as a background. Note: Though not imperative, ensuring your snapshot images are all the same pixel size will make this project a breeze to complete at the end.

Continue on to the Layers Magazine tutorial

Live Action Test Footage from Disney’s Alice in Wonderland

Film archivist lostvocals4 has posted live action test footage for the mad tea party scene in Disney’s 1951 animated rendition of Alice in Wonderland. Upon comparing the live action test to the final film, the archivist discovered much of the test audio was used in the final film. lostvocals4 says: “Walt Disney often filmed actors … Continue reading “Live Action Test Footage from Disney’s Alice in Wonderland”

Film archivist lostvocals4 has posted live action test footage for the mad tea party scene in Disney’s 1951 animated rendition of Alice in Wonderland. Upon comparing the live action test to the final film, the archivist discovered much of the test audio was used in the final film.

lostvocals4 says:

“Walt Disney often filmed actors as models for his animated features. What’s surprising is that the audio from this crude footage for “Alice in Wonderland” is the actual audio used in the film. When Ed Wynn was brought back in to the recording studio to re-do his lines, the reading was not as good as the reference tests, so the test audio was used for the film.

I’ve synched up the test and the released film with black placed where edits were made.”

As seen on Laughing Squid and The World’s Best Ever

Check out a version of Alice in Wonderland from the Media Services Home Use Collection!

Alice in Wonderland (1951) – HU DVD 995

Alice in Wonderland (2010) – HU DVD 7719

LinkAlice in Wonderland (2010) – BLU-RAY DVD 7719

Fox Considering An All-’Simpsons’ TV Channel

THE SIMPSONS: Season 1 – Season 3 – HU DVD 6581 – 6591 Where can The Simpsons, television’s longest-running American prime time, scripted series, go from here? If Fox executives have their way, everyone’s favorite yellow family might get their own TV channel. At a recent media conference, News Corp.’s Chief Operating Officer Chase Carey … Continue reading “Fox Considering An All-’Simpsons’ TV Channel”

THE SIMPSONS: Season 1 – Season 3 – HU DVD 6581 – 6591

Where can The Simpsons, television’s longest-running American prime time, scripted series, go from here? If Fox executives have their way, everyone’s favorite yellow family might get their own TV channel. At a recent media conference, News Corp.’s Chief Operating Officer Chase Carey said the company is looking for ways to increase revenue from the long running show and said an all-Simpsons channel has been discussed. Read more after the jump.

Slice of Sci-Fi alerted us to this surprising, but fairly logical, turn of events. Carey was at the Bank of America Merrill Lynch Media Communications & Entertainment Conference in Beverly Hills and said The Simpsons, well on its way to 500 episodes as its 23rd season is about to kick off, shows “no signs of slowing down.” However, there’s only so much money to be made from merchandising, syndicated repeats and DVD sales after 20 plus years.

Carey said there have been a “number of meetings” to determine how to capitalize on its library of episodes of The Simpsons and he mentioned a digital channel featuring nothing but Homer and the gang as being a possibility. Carey said it is incumbent on the company to take advantage of a show that is “unique in television with a volume, too, that is unprecedented.”

Read more.

As seen on the Slashfilm.com

Must-see animation: Bayeux Tapestry (2009)

A simple concept done to perfection. The Battle of Hastings as depicted in the Bayeux Tapestry with sound effects. link The producers, Potion Graphics, also came up with this entertaining short, Fear with Alfred Hitchcock.



A simple concept done to perfection. The Battle of Hastings as depicted in the Bayeux Tapestry with sound effects.

link

The producers, Potion Graphics, also came up with this entertaining short, Fear with Alfred Hitchcock.