Comments on: The Rover Boys Backgrounds

by: Daniel

Tue, 22 Nov 2005 07:15:03 +0000

Yeah, those UPA backgrounds are terrific. Amazingly graphic (even for today) and great colors too. I’d love to see Rover Boys myself. Nice find.

by: Amid

Mon, 21 Nov 2005 04:18:31 +0000

Thanks for the thoughtful comment Ward. And thanks for writing Shannon — nice to know who owns these gems. Unfortunately I don’t know where anybody can see the film. I’ve never seen ROVER BOYS either, though I’ve seen the film’s color styling boards and some model sheets from it. There’s dozens of UPA industrial/training films and hundreds of the studio’s commercials that are essentially lost, and the only way to see them is if you know film collectors who have prints (which is how I’ve seen a lot of them). The funny thing is that you could release most of these films too since they’re public domain.

by: Shannon

Fri, 18 Nov 2005 15:23:08 +0000

Yup, I’m the proud owner of these bgs. Thanks Amid, for giving a little background on who was responsible. I’d love to see the short.

by: Jason

Fri, 18 Nov 2005 14:16:17 +0000

Those plane designs are something else! Great blog Amid.

by: Ward

Fri, 18 Nov 2005 05:38:20 +0000

The hangers are a great example of the artist(s) allowing the viewer’s brain to “fill in the blanks,” so to speak. When I look at this UPA background, I immediately think of two-color printed spot illustrations that were found in cookbooks and pamphlets and other various ephemera of the time. It’s interesting to see how this translates to film, considering that the print artists were doing a lot of the implied negative/positive space stuff out of necessity, to give the illusion that there was more to their illustrations than the limited palette gave initially gave them. I’d love to see The Rover Boys. Any idea where to view it — some compilation, or anything?