History of Animation

"ANY BONDS TODAY" (1941)

- Buggs Bunny, Porky the Pig - Widest distribution of any WB short - Propaganda not subtle, but many of the WWII films aren't

"WHAT'S OPERA DOC" (1957)

- During the 3-D craze - Jack Warner had Jones make a 3-D cartoon - Another one of Jones's experiments - The colors are odd

"BULLY FOR BUGS" (1953)

- Edward Selzer head of WB cartoon management, disliked greatly by animators, had barely any influence - Selzer said there was nothing funny about a bull fight cartoon, led animators to create a bull fight cartoon - Imaginative, funny, clever, joke builds throughout the cartoon so that the final joke is the most funny

Betty Boop

- First feminine, animated character that moves in the way a real woman moves, rambunctious energy, hard to resist - Extreme sex appeal, everyone is attracted to her, first cartoon character victimized of sexual harrassment - Prohibition era, flapperesque character about her - Songs set to music by jazz singer Cav Calloway - "SNOW WHITE" (1933) - Story makes no sense, but a lot of fun - Used rotoscope during dance sequence - "POOR CINDERELLA" (1934) - More coherent storyline - Weird color pallet, acid red and faded blue/green that can't compare to Disney's 3-strip technicolor watercolors

"RUSSIAN RHAPSODY" (1944)

- Fun, outrageous WB cartoon - Based on tale that blamed the technical airforce problems during the Battle of Britain on Gremlins - Many of the gremlins are caricatures of the Warners animators

"COAL BLACK AND DE SEBBEN DWARFS" (1943)

- Merry Melodies WB cartoon directed by Bob Clampett - Questionable ethnic filter - Racier than mainstream cartoons, intended for more adult audience

Art Babbit

- One of Walt's key animators - Did a lot of the work developing goofy, would go on to develop the wicked queen in Snow White

Goofy

- "CLOCK CLEANERS" (1937) - Goofy makes debut - Good-natured stupidity makes him effective foil for good-guy Mickey and hot-tempered Donald - Thinking about characters in great depth, finding personalities and trying to portray them on the screen

Fred Quimby

- 1937 Hired as manager of MGM Cartoon Studio - Thoroughly disliked in animation industry, not funny, hired away many Harman-Ising artists - Stole other artists away, hired away many Harman-Ising artists, had to hire back Harman and Ising after some confusion and chaos - Had practically no influence over the artists

Mel Blanc

- American voice actor, comedian, singer, radio personality, and recording artist - Came to Warner Bros. in 1937 - Voice of nearly all Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies characters

Walt Disney Studios

- Began when producer Margaret Winkler offered Walt a contract for a series based on "ALICE'S WONDERLAND" - "ALICE RATTLED BY RATS" (1925) - One of the "ALICE'S WONDERLAND" cartoons - Big influence from Felix the Cat seen in Julius the Cat - Eventually became mostly animated shorts bookended by a live action beginning and end - Films got good reviews, made some money - 1926 Moved studio to Silver Lake Los Feliz site

Walter Lantz

- Hired by Mintz to work as director for "Oswald the Lucky Rabbit" series for Universal Pictures after Mintz stole the series from Disney - Started turning out 26 Oswald cartoons a year - Oswald is relentlessly cheerful, not a lot of character, not particularly well-remembered - "CONFIDENCE" (1933) - Same year at "3 Little Pigs" - Bizarre, political cartoon about the Depression - Cost $8,000 to make when Disney was spending at least 5x that much, definitely noticeable in the quality - Oswald redesigned in 1936

Émile Cohl

- Performed early experiments with animation in a series of films he called "Puppets" - Borrowed Blackton's "chalk-like" effect, shot black lines on white paper, then reversed the negatives to make it look like white chalk on a black chalkboard - "FANTASMAGORIE" (1908) - Main character drawn by artist's hands on camera - "First fully animated film" - made up of 700 drawings, 2 min running time

"SHUFFLE OFF TO BUFFALO" (1933)

- Racial Humor - Eddie Cantour caricature - Makes no sense

Pat Sullivan Studio

- Studio started around 1915 - Produced FELIX THE CAT cartoons - Greatest films of the silent era turned out by a studio

"DUMBO" (1941)

- The first of the War time features/the last of the Pre-War features - Runs whole gambit of emotions - Incredibly well made - Made in 18 months for less than a million dollars - Key animator: Bill Tytla - "DUMBO VISITS HIS MOTHER" - Genuinely touching and heartbreaking - Illustrates a principle of Disney's: balance a laugh with a tear and vice versa - "PINK ELEPHANTS"

First Motion Picture Unit

- The primary film production unit of the US Army Air Forces during World War II - The first military unit made up entirely of professionals from the film industry - Directed by Ruby Ising - Top animators from Disney, Warner Bros. and Fleischer went to work on training films for Motion Picture Unit - Produced more footage than any of the Hollywood studios, cranking out training films, many narrated by Ronald Reagan - Most tended to be diagrams, explanations, training films rather than full animation - Project so secret only the artists involved in it knew about it

"BUGS BUNNY NIPS THE NIP" (1944)

- "BUGS BUNNY NIPS THE NIP" - Outrageous Bug's Bunny short - In films when they would character European officers it was individualized - Mussolini, Hitler etc. - In films when they would character Japanese it was racist, stereotyping, yellow skin, speaking gibberish - Japan extremely feared, fear presents itself via racist discourse - Racial stereotyping not one-sided, Asian countries producing racist animation of White ppl

Paul Terry

- "FLYING HOOFS" (1928) - Much more sophisticated because the gags build on each other and there is a story

"OSWALD THE LUCKY RABBIT"

- "OCEAN HOP" (1927) - Films much more unified, everything working together in a way it wasn't in the previous films - Telling stories better

Donald Duck

- "THE BAND CONCERT" (1934) - First color Mickey Mouse, using Technicolor 3-Strip process - Water color backgrounds - Donal Duck makes debut -Mickey redesigned by artist Fred Moore to become rounder, round circles flow better, easier to keep consistent

Bugs Bunny

- "The son of many parents" - 6 directors that worked with the character, as well as designers, animators and writers - Voice performed by Mel Blanc - Daffy Duck debuted in 1937 as a looney big zany character - Bugs Bunny debuts in 1940 in "THE WILD HARE" - Tex Avery breathes live into Buds with his animation of Elmer Fudd character

"THE BRAVE LITTLE TAILOR" (1938)

- 10 years after Steamboat Willie - Mickey has anatomy, weight - A clear sense of his personality and who he is demonstrated just by the way he moves - Has charm, energy, a strong, likeable appeal that wasn't present in earlier Mickey

"I HAVEN'T GOT A HAT" (1935)

- 1933 Harmon and Ising leave over financial dispute, Schlesinger left with no star character or director - Made Merrie Melodies into color - "I HAVEN'T GOT A HAT" - Porky Pig introduced as first Looney Tunes character - Very early on but shows a glimpse of what Looney Tunes humor would become - Same year as Cookie Carnival, lightyears behind

"THREE LITTLE PIGS" (1933)

- 1933 Silly Symphony cartoon - First time 3 characters that look alike demonstrate their personalities through how they move - Proved wasn't how a character looked, but how he moved that determined his personality - First film that had a complete storyboard, a way to analyze and edit the film before the expense of animation - Structure - story has a beginning, middle and end - Jokes build on each other so they add up to something

"WHO KILLED COCK ROBBIN" (1935)

- 1935 Silly Symphony cartoon - Animation more subtle, shows sophistication - Able to caricature and animate actress Mae West's stylized walk - Disney believes animation was a caricature of reality that could express more than live action, which can only imitate

"THE COUNTRY COUSIN" (1936)

- 1936 Silly Symphony cartoon - No dialogue - No what the characters are thinking through the way they move - Able to caricature the mouse's "drunk walk"

"THE OLD MILL" (1937)

- 1937 Silly Symphony cartoon - Shows advancement as filmmakers, camera angles are far more skillfully used and complicated - Shows concentration on acting and storytelling - Multi-plane camera: moves a number of pieces of artwork past the camera at various speeds and distances from one another - creates a 3-D effect

"YOU OUGHT TO BE IN PICTURES" (1940)

- 1941 Looney Tunes short featuring Porky Pig and Daffy Duck - Combines live-action and animation, and features live-action appearances by Leon Schlesinger and other Schlesinger Productions staff members - More self-aware, shows WB. animation beginning to come into its own - Filmed in the Valley and also shot on WB lot - Disney never would have done this, WB is developing a unique identity and style of humor - More slapstick comedy

"THE BIG SNOOZE" (1946)

- 1946 Looney Tunes cartoon - Bobb Clamppett toned down anarchy of Porky and Wacky Land where characters don't make sense and characters are mean for the sake of being mean - This version of Bug's Bunny much saner than any of the ones seen in the 30's - Storyline is stronger

"THE UGLY DUCKLING" (1931, 1939)

- 2 Versions of this Silly Symphony - 1931 Version: rubber hosey, story isn't told well - 1939 Version: much more subtle, characterization much better, able to better communicate emotion, more sympathy for the main character, tugs at heartstrings of the viewer

Hugh Harman & Rudy Ising, Leon Schlesinger

- 2 animators that worked closely, started working for Walt at Kansas City studio, went to work for Mintz, always dreamed of starting own studio - Animated "BOSKO" cartoon that impressed Leon Schlesinger, head of Warner Bros. - Schlesinger wanted Bosko to star in a new series LOONEY TUNES, based on Silly Symphonies - Harman took over Looney Tunes - Ising created sister series MERRIE MELODIES

"SNOW WHITE" (1937)

- 2 years after Cookie Carnival - Still cartoonish but enormous progress - Seven dwarves: six of them virtually identical but they each move differently, able to see their differences in personality by their movement - Different that original, Walt wanted to differentiate the dwarves and make strong individual characters out of them to tell the story, provide comedy and keep the audience entertained - The humor of the dwarves comes out their characters: they aren't telling jokes or using gags, it's who they are that makes them funny - "SNOW WHITE DANCING CLIP" - Dance is hard because you have to figure out how to coordinate it - They studied a young dancer - Much more believable female: has weight, anatomy, femininity - Cost between 1.5 and 2 million, Walt gambled every penny he could - One of the most successful films of all time (made more than 8 million dollars) - First film to have a soundtrack - First American, Technicolor, Musical, Drawn animated feature

Technicolor

- 3-strip color process used for animation created in 1932, Walt signed 2 year contract - "FLOWERS AND TREES" (1932) - First film to use Technicolor - Had to reshoot half the film that was already shot in black and white - Received the first academy award for an animated short - Lush, subtle pallet of all different shades of color and intensities, beautiful water colors, made 2-strip process colors look bleached and washed out by comparison - From then on all Silly Symphonies were shot in color - Mickey stayed in black and white until "THE BAND CONCERT"

"MUSIC LAND" (1935)

- A 1935 Silly Symphony cartoon - Every element is interesting - Well thought out - Imaginative and creative, turning instruments into people - No dialogue, characters speak through movement and the sound of the instrument they are meant to portray - Excellent storytelling

Silent Animation Era

- A lot of it was very crude - Rubber Hose Animation: - Developed by William Nolan - Rather than trying to draw real anatomy, characters are drawn as if their limbs are tubes - Arms don't have to bend at elbows, can end anywhere - Hasn't aged well, not preserved, most films have been destroyed

Popeye

- Animation much more solid than Betty's - More anatomy, though it's distorted - Lip sync doesn't match up to animation, use of add lip makes talking not sync up - Popeye a hit - "A DREAM WALKING" (1934) - Follows motif of Popeye rescuing Olive - Urban, gritty theme

The Silly Symphonies

- Animation series that Walt produced alongside the Mickey shorts - "THE SKELETON DANCE" (1929) - No narrative plot, just animated sequences - Originally rejected by Walt's distributor - Silly Symphonies were Walt's research lab, a place to test and experiment, also a place to test new artists and allow them to learn

Bob Clampett

- Animator for Looney Tunes and Beany and Cecil - Animation grows rubbery - Pushes things further - surreal and strange - "PORKY IN WACKYLAND" (1938) - Porky the Pig Looney Tunes cartoon - Almost pushing it too far - Animation is more solid, starting to be a sense of a character - Aggressive in its humor

Otto Mesmer

- Animator hired by Sullivan to work at Pat Sullivan Studios - Freelanced a film for Paramount that ultimately led to the creation of FELIX THE CAT - Discovered that solid blacks flow on the screen, movements feel and look smoother - Felix is initially blocky and square, redesigned into round shape, circles and oval flow well in movement - Quality, imagination and use of animation set Felix apart, films are surreal, vivid and funny - Felix can defy physics and gravity, manipulates the world around him - Created a unique stylized form of movement that became known as "The Felix Walk," as well as Felix facial expressions (winks, direct eye contact) - Extremely successful and profitable - Felix the first character to be merchandized - Felix one of the most imitated characters in history - "COMICALITIES" (1928) - Felix the Cat cartoon by Mesmer

"HOUSE CLEANING BLUES" (1937)

- Betty fell victim to production code of 1930's, Hollywood's attempt to make films more moral - Code makes Betty respectable, not nearly as interesting, has lost sex appeal, lacks personality, much more boring - 2-D character living in 3-D world, feels odd and out of place - Dress changes from the flapper to the working girl, housewife

Raoul Barré

- Cartoonist, worked with Emil Nolan to build first animation studio: The Barré-Nolan Studio - Designed system of punching the paper and keeping pegs on the artists' desks - Invented The Slash System: redrawing backgrounds is impractical, cut out hole in the background, put it over your drawing, can't see this when it's projected on screen - Slash System replaced by Cell System in 1914: sheets of clear acetate, could have one background, trace it onto the cells and the drawing would show through - 1926 Began working at Pat Sullivan Productions as a guest animator for FELIX THE CAT - The cartoons Barré created for Sullivan are considered the best he ever did, as well as the best Felix cartoons ever made

"DANCING ON THE MOON" (1935)

- Characters not well animated - Poor storytelling, elements don't come together well - Weird film, comparing this to Cookie Carnival which was made the same year shows large gap in polish and successful animation, feels very amateur

Carl Stalling

- Composer and arranger, recorded sound for Steamboat Willie and the Silly Symphonies - Left Disney same time Iwerks left - Hired by Schlesinger and went to Warner Bros. in 1936 - Composed for Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies - Invented melodies and found appropriate songs, matching music to camera play and what was happening onscreen

"TULIPS SHALL GROW" (1942)

- Directed by George Pal, from Holland - Uses stop-motion 3-D animation (quite unusual for animation in the US) - Oscar nominated

Training Films

- Disney's biggest contribution to war effort was creating training films - Before the war Disney put out 30,000 feet of film a year - By 1944 they were turning out 204,000 feet of film a year, 95% of them for the military - Some simple, some elaborate, but majority of training films have been destroyed or lost - "CLEANLINESS BRINGS HEALTH" - Produced 2 dozen education films for coordinator of educational affairs: films about diseases, illness, malaria, goal to educate and spread awareness - "THE NEW SPIRIT" - In 1943 15 million ppl had to pay federal income tax for the first time - Walt summoned to Washington, needed a cartoon to show how paying income tax helped fight the war - Used Donal Duck - other characters talking to him, can't use Donald as a narrator, he's too hard to understand - Poles afterwards showed that by a high % ppl were more willing to pay their taxes

"PINOCCHIO" (1940)

- Disney's second animated feauture - Pinocchio based on Italian serial by Carlo Collodi, original puppet rambling, mean-spirited, nasty - Pinocchio one of the best films they ever made, all the characters are interesting - even the good guys - Received complaints about Pinocchio's lack of resolve - what makes him an interesting and believable hero, his real enemy is his own nature, has to learn to listen to his better instincts - "I'VE GOT NO STRINGS" - Extremely difficult to animate a movement that the character is not expected to do - Animators use anticipation to set up a movement, when there's no anticipation becomes difficult to make convincing - Frank Thomas in charge of "I've Got No Strings" - Pinocchio had only come to life the day before, wouldn't be that sure in his movements and actions - "MONSTRO ATTACKS" - Scary movie: way it's staged, use of shadows, scary villians - A few years earlier would not have been able to animate a character the size of Monstro - Now had crews that were effects animators - did nothing but water, smoke, reflections - Expensive movie - 2 and a half million dollars - Ecstatic reviews but failed to match success of Snow White - Problems at box office, plus cost of new studio, plus losses in profits due to war put them in debt

"SINKIN' IN THE BATHTUB" (1930)

- First Looney Tunes cartoon made by Harman and Ising - Not as clean as Disney - No bizarre urban funk characteristic of Fleischer shorts - Decently good reviews

"THE GODDESS OF SPRING" (1934)

- First attempt to create an animated feature with a realistic, believable heroine - Clear the artists don't know what they're doing - Trying to be realistic, but heroine has limbs that look like west pasta, no joints, no weight - Stagey villian - Entire thing a mish mash that doesn't flow or blend at all

"GULLIVER'S TRAVELS" (1939)

- First feature, Gulliver's Travels is a sophisticated, episodic satire, not an inspired choice - Spent a year and a half (Disney spent 4 years on Snow White) - Poor Miami location meant they had to hire art students to serve as painters, animators and assistants - 3 different styles that don't gel: - The realistic rotoscope Gulliver, traces from live action, looks completely out of place - Semi-cartoony princess - Cartoony, rubbery minor characters - Generally favorable reviews but not nearly the blockbuster Paramount hoped for

John Randolph Bray

- First to discover how to make animation profitable - Discovered that animation was a process that needed to be organized and set up on an assembly basis and PATENTED - Earl Hurd (who invented cells) and Bray tried to patent entire animation process - Even tried to sue McCay to pay royalties, but lost the case - Bray set up the first assembly line and started trend of animators being paid on Mondays - Founded Bray Productions Animation Studio in 1914 - Studio devoted to series animation - Hired animators Earl Hurd and Paul Terry

Fleischer Studios

- Founded by brothers Max and Dave Fleischer - Disney's chief competitor in 1930's - Unlike other studios' animal characters, the most successful Fleischer characters were humans - The cartoons were rough rather than refined, commercial rather than consciously artistic, focused on surrealism, dark humor, adult psychological elements, and sexuality, and the environments were grittier and urban - Instead of trying to imitate reality and make characters more realistic and 3-D like Walt, Fleischer characters get looser, more rubber-hosey - Paramount, the studio's parent company, acquired full ownership in 1941

"BEDTIME" (1923)

- From "Out of the Inkwell"" animated series - Visually an imaginative and fun film - Similar to Felix in that the main character defies physics and gravity - Not the best storytelling, poor structure, plot that's not coherent - Animation is loose and rubbery, not a lot of weight to anything

"BLITZ WOLF" (1942)

- From MGM - Funniest cartoon of world war ii era - 3 little pigs spoof

Winsor McCay

- Important early animator, political cartoonist and comic strip artist - 1905 Comic strip "Little Nemo in Slumberland" appeared in every Sunday paper, - "LITTLE NEMO" (1911) - 4,000 drawings on rice paper, hired an artist to tint each individual frame of the print so that it was colored - Nemo goes to sleep and wakes up in Slumberland - Draws things changing shape, growing, moving, understood motion and anatomy thoroughly - "COL. HEEZA LIAR AT BAT" (1915) - First commercial animated series - Accused of faking bc he was so far ahead of the times people couldn't believe he could draw that well - "GERTIE THE DINOUSAUR" (1916) - Chose to draw something that couldn't be faked - Specific dinosaur -- fussy yet endearing, personality portrayed through her movements Beginning of character animation: the art of making something move in a way that reflects its personality - 25 years before anyone approached that level of animation - "THE SINKING OF THE LUCATANIA" (1918) - Incensed by act of brutalism: patriotic reaction to the German torpedoing of 1915 - Dark angry film, political cartoon in motion - Unhappy with work of commercial studios making animation into a trade, not an art

Woody Woodpecker

- In 1936 Lantz needed a new character - Created the Andy Panda series - "KNOCK KNOCK" (1940) - Part of the Andy Panda series - Features Woody Woodpecker - Woody attacks things for the hell of it, unlike Bugs who wouldn't attack unless attacked - Ugly in his earliest version - Contagious laugh - Violent anarchist humor - No real structure or form, so it isn't very fun

Chuck Jones

- Insisted that Bugs always wanted to be left alone - Most eager to experiment with new characters, new graphic looks - "RABBIT SEASONING" (1952) - Elmer: the perfect patsy, will believe anything you tell him - Daffy: smart enough to have some sense of the situation but can't control it, overthinks scenarios, believes his own words, gets him into trouble - Bugs: smarter than other 2 characters, sets up opportunities that get them into trouble - "ONE FROGGY EVENING" (1955) - Took the frog and now the logo for WB - Demonstrates the discipline or challenge Jones would set for himself and his artists - The only sounds in this film are sound effects, background music, singing frog - Everything else is done in mime - "DUCK AMUCK" (1953) - Work gets so sophisticated and so subtle they can create a character done on a bare screen with no other characters, props or background - He has so much personality and character he can exist on his own - Uses more dialogue than the other directors

Musschenbroek

- Invented a turning slide (instead of a back-and-forth slide) - Painted sequential images on the slide (e.g. a woman bowing, windmill), was the earliest kind of moving image that we can date for certain - Began experimenting with long glass slides and coordinating more than one lantern

Bob McKimson

- Least well known of 3 WB directors, also least imaginative of the trio - Favored a handy style of acting where gestures matched what the character was saying rather than the subtleties we've been looking at - Not as effective as the work of the other two - Goofiest, silliest situations - "DEVIL MAY HARE" (1954) - Tasmanian devil - Not as much fun as other films we've been watching - McKimson's Bugs is at his best when he's confronted with stupid characters like the Tasmanian devil - "GORILLA MY DREAMS" (1947) - Earlier cartoons structured along lines of fairy tale - small weak character outwits stronger character - In this cartoon Bugs just outlasts the gorillas

"VICTORY THROUGH AIR POWER" (1943)

- Line between entertainment and propaganda gets even thinner - Odd film - Realistic animation of bombing and destruction - By the time the film came out long range bombers were part of armaments and US strategy - Powerful, dramatic, politically charged - Different from what we're accustomed to seeing animation do

"MECHANICAL MONSTERS" (SUPERMAN) (1941)

- Much more sophisticated, lavish cartoons, could afford to do pencil tests - Art deco, film noir quality - dark, scary, use of shadow - Strong camera angles, backgrounds - Heavily rotoscoped - Some of Fleischer's best cartoons ever made

Walt's Good Will Tour

- Nelson Rockefeller (Coordinator of International Affairs) wanted Walt to do a good will tour around Latin and South America to stay in their good graces during the war - Disney characters extremely popular in Latin America - Walt went to South America in 1941 with 15 artists, created series of animated interludes strung together, 4 cartoons put together - "LAKE TITICACA" (1943) - Donald goes to Bolivia - Mary Blaire - Colors and sights she saw in South America excited her, developed personal style of her own that emphasized bold color shapes and imaginative designs, quickly became one of Walt's favorite designers - Received enthusiastic responses - "THREE CABALLEROS" (1944) - Animation reflects changing tone of cartoons at this time - humor becoming more aggressive, slapstick wilder, more rash - Artists complained that much of Ward Kimball's work didn't make sense, a character would disappear from one side of the frame and then reappear on the other

"DER FUEHRERS FACE" (1943)

- One of the best Donald Shorts - Similar in style to "Pink Elephants" - Reflects what was going on in the viewers' daily lives at the time - During WWII nearly every family had someone serving, citizens experiencing shortages, every facet of one's life affected by the war effort - reflected in this short - European characters were racial caricatures of actual figures: Hitler, Mussolini - Asian and pacific islander characters were drawn racial in nature, racist sentiments, found offensive today

"THE COOKIE CARNIVAL" (1935)

- One year later - Overflows with movement and colour and the heroine is much more successful - Definitely shows progress, but she's still a bit cartoony and rubber hosey

"BAMBI" (1942)

- Originally a German novel, translated and became a US best seller - Big time live action director wanted to do it, realized he couldn't - Walt thought this would be the second feature he'd do after Snow White - In order to be believable, animals would have to be much more realistic, artists studied and observes animals at studio - Took 6 years to make - Generally favorable reviews, modest success but didn't duplicate success of Snow White - Lyrical, idealized portrait of nature, but also a rather tame one - Seasons and the forest itself are characters in this film - inspired by Chinese landscape painter Tyrus Wong, concerned not about literal depiction but mood and emotion - Also has some dramatic and frightening moments: forest fire, attacked by hunting dogs, death of Bambi's mother - "WHEN WINTER COMES" - Captures both the awkwardness of a faun and the grace of one - Completely impossible, a rabbit cannot ice skate on his back feet, but so beautifully animated you believe he can

Mickey Mouse

- Originally wanted to call mouse character Mortimer - Early Mickey shorts animated by Iwerks almost entirely by himself - Early Mickey resembled Oswald and Felix - "PLANE CRAZY" (1928) - Plays off of Lindbergh's solo flight to France - Mickey at this time has block feet, solid black hands and were given gloves; a very mischievous Mickey - "STEAMBOAT WILLIE" (1928) - Used Pat Power's "Cinaphone" sound equipment - Hired Stallings to write music - To solve problem of synchronization, Iwerks came up w a way to put a spot on the print that would act as a metronome - Fresh, different, no one had ever seen a cartoon move in such synchronicity with music, genuinely looked like he was dancing, marked end of the silent era - More structured - beginning, middle and end - Mickey's charm difficult to resist - Walt began to merchandize Mickey, helped save Walt during early times of financial difficulty and debt

Playful Pluto

- Pluto first character to join Mickey - Animator named Norm Ferguson became a Pluto specialist - "PLAYFUL PLUTO" (1934) - Used expression, timing, anticipation to bring more personality into characters - Able to see character's mental process - Animation more fluid, beginning to see sense of anatomy for characters, less rubbery

"GRIPES" (1943)

- Private SNAFU US Army Training Cartoon - Written by Theodore Geisell (Dr. Seuss), rhymes - Voice by Mel Blanc - Written by Friz Freeleng - Racier than mainstream cartoons, intended for soldier/more adult audience - bare butts, dirty humor

Charles Mintz

- Producer and distributor, husband of Margaret Winkler - Asked Walt and Ubbe to develop a new character: "Oswald the Lucky Rabbit" - Oswald proved more successful than expected, managed to steal Oswald rights away from Walt - Mintz hired away all of Disney's animators except Iwerks - Moved the production of the Oswald cartoons to his new Winkler Studio - Walt bitter about losing Oswald , Disney vowed never to work for anyone again

"GEE WHIZ" (1957)

- Roadrunner cartoon directed by Chuck Jones - Roadrunner cartoons have no dialogue - Not about how you catch a road runner, it's about how many ways you can't catch a road runner - First few cartoons the road runner is mischievous and causes the coyote's defeat - Then realized it works better when the coyote's defeat is caused entirely by himself - ACNE company: a gag Jones kept running through the entire series, all of Wiley's products provided by ACNE

"MR. BUGG GOES TO TOWN" (1941)

- Second feature, doesn't work - Premise about animated insects trying to escape humans extremely predictable, feels forced - Differences in scale between characters, rotoscope humans v. cartoon insects - Doesn't have naive energy of early Fleischer shorts of the drama of Superman - Paramount fired the Fleischers shortly after, changed studios name

Eadwaerd Muybridge

- Set up a line of cameras and took a series of photos that captured motion using stop-motion photography - Proved that a trotting horse has all 4 feet off the ground at once

MGM

- Signed deal with Hugh Harman and Rudy Ising to start a series of Bosko shorts - 1934 Released first "Happy Harmonies" cartoon - Cartoons had bigger budgets but didn't make them much better - "BOSKO'S EASTER EGGS" (1937) - Tried to find a new character - Redesigned Bosko to make him an African-American boy - "SWING WEDDING" (1937) - Jazz frog shorts - Story makes no sense, very weird and racially charged - Lots of caricatures of black famous musicians - Grotesque weird frog girls - Often went over budget - 1937 MGM Execs decided to move the studio in-house

Magic Lantern

- Slide projector: little box made out of wood or tin, curved mirror an series of lenses - Projects an image on a wall in a darkened room - Lantern artists: traveling showman that used the Magic Lantern as a form of entertainment - A circular slide with a series of images could be turned to create an illusion of movement

"FANTASIA" (1940)

- Started out as a Silly Symphony - Intended as a comeback vehicle for Mickey who became more dull as his popularity with children led to restrictions and complaints from parents - Leopold Stokowski (conductor of Philadelphia Orchestra) wanted to work with Walt to create animation illustrating classical music, - Music performed by Philadelphia Orchestra, conducted by Stokowski and brought in Deems Taylor (media figure of radio) - Disney claiming a place for animation with the fine arts - "FANTASIA" (1940) - A milestone, attempting to fuse music, color, sound, emotion, and drawing - A two hour studio experimental film - Enormous departure from jokes and fairy tales - Contains both the worst and the best of Disney's vision - parts don't work, pastoral symphony lacks power of Beethoven - Nice art deco touches in it - "NUTCRACKER SUITE" - Charming, familiar music, creates wondrous vision of miniature enchanted woodland - Extreme detail, some individual cells took more than 5 hours to ink - appeared on screen for 124th of a second - "DANCE OF THE HOURS" - One of the funniest pieces of animation Disney artists ever did - Studied anatomy of classical dancers - Combination of caricature and observation - Four sections of the dance built around the times of day, each with its own graphic signature: Vertical/horizontal, S curve, Bubbles/circles, Zigzag - "NIGHT ON BALD MOUNTAIN" - Animated by Bil Tytla (Dumbo, Stromboli) - Ave Maria adds greeting card prettiness - Shadow falls on graves and ghosts arise from it, weird, warped movement - Photographed reflection off curved mirrors to give strange sense of movement - Technically as advanced as it was artistically, first film to use directional sound - Mixed reviews - Cost 2.25 million, lost money on its release

"A WILD HARE" (1940)

- The beginning of WB as we know them - Better animation all around - The characters are thinking and acting on their thoughts - More solid animation - Films have a structure - The WB theme song actually has words and a name - "the merry go round broke down" - Used actual carrots for the carrot sound but Mel Blanc hated carrots

Era of Animation Toys

- Toys based on the notion of persistence of vision: if your eye is presented with a series of images interrupted by black your eyes will perceive this as motion - Flipbooks: become popular around the end of the civil war - Mutoscope: mechanical flipbook, sequential photographs were set in a ring attached to a crank that when turned flipped the pictures, invented by Edison - Zoatrope: cylinder that spins on a base with a series of images on it, when you spin the cylinder the wall acts like a shutter, produces simple animation - Praxinoscope: similar to the zoatrope but had mirrors, produces a reflected image which meant more than one person could see it at a time, made animation last up to 15 min

Iwerks Animation Studio

- Ub left Disney in 1936 to work for Pat Powers and signed exclusive deal to start own animation studio - A lot of rumors that Iwerks was the genius behind Disney's success, wanted to challenge Mickey's popularity - The Iwerks studio only mildly successful - Cartoons and characters never caught on, poor storytelling, no sense of comedy - "SPOOKS" (1932) - Flip the Frog series - Makes no sense - Doesn't have the structure Disney had in his early on cartoons, doesn't have nuttiness of Betty Boop Snow White short - Introduced a new character and got rid of Flip - Iwerks characters lack identifiable personalities - Not a great cartoon director, he was at his best when he was tinkering and experimenting at Disney - "BALLOON LAND" (1935) - Bizarre, bad 2-strip color process - MGM not interested, ended distribution contract in 1934 - Artists began to leave Iwerk's studio - Went back to Disney in 1940, stayed until death in 1971, but never reestablished a relationship with Walt

James Stuart Blackton

- Vaudeville performer - Founded Vitagraph studios in 1897 - "The Father of Animation," first to use stop-motion and drawn animation - "THE ENCHANTED DRAWING" (1900) - Trick film - Shot chalk drawings, sketches a face, cigars and a bottle of wine, appears to remove drawings as real images - "HUMOROUS PHASES OF FUNNY FACES" (1906) - Earliest example of animation - Uses stop-motion and stick puppetry, drawing and chalk - Live-action effects

Friz Freeleng

- WB director who had amazing sense of timing, always ensured gag had maximum impact - Absolute silence followed by most frenetic action - Calm moments make active moments that much wilder and more humorous - "BIRDS ANONYMOUS" (1957) - Spoof of AA - Use of shadows, blinds, silhouettes - Great fun, one of Mel Blanc's best performance as Sylvester undergoing agonies of bird withdrawal - More polished, subtle and effective animation - Film has a strong structure, gags building to climax at the end, gets funnier and funnier - "SHOW BIZ BUGS" (1957) - Dancing difficult to animate, movement complicated - Animation much subtler, can see variations of expression, how well-timed it is - Freleng often pitted Bugs against Yosemite Sam "HARE TRIMMED" (1953) - Bugs intervenes in something that doesn't affect him - Polish of animation - When Bugs dresses up as Granny, he imitates her walk

Walt Disney

- Went to art institution in Kansas City, worked as a commercial artist, came back from WWI and got a job at a film ad company - Befriended Ub Iwerks, the two taught themselves animation together - Created "NEWMAN LAUGH-O-GRAMS" (1921) - Series of short films, bold, experimental - Borrowed $15,000 from investors to build a portfolio - "PUSS N' BOOTS" (1922) - "ALICE'S WONDERLAND" (1922) - Reversed cartoon gimmick of cartoon in real world, instead place live action character in an animated world - Moved to LA, producer Margaret Winkler impressed with Alice and sent Walt a contract for a series, thus creating the Walt Disney Studios

"THE THRIFTY PIG" (1941)

- When America entered WWII Hollywood animators devoted themselves to war effort - Line between entertainment and propaganda gets very thin during the war - Best of the 3 Little Pig remakes

Emil Nolan

- Worked with Raoul Barré to build first animation studio: The Barré-Nolan Studio

Rotoscope

A device that projects and enlarges individual frames of filmed live action to permit them to be used to create cartoon animation and composite film sequences