Rod Scribner: The Lost Duchess (1956)
Rod Scribner in 1962 at Playhouse Pictures
Rod Scribner (1910-1976) is generally considered one of the great all-time animators. The animation that he created at Warner Bros., particularly under director Bob Clampett, is classic in every regard. What many don’t know about Scribner, however, is that he was also one of the great stylized animators of the 1950s. Scribner had an innate understanding of design and of how to move around highly stylized characters in innovative ways. This put him heavily in demand during the decade, and he animated commercials at many studios including Animation Inc., Storyboard, Playhouse Pictures, John Urie and Associates and United Productions of America (UPA).
From approximately 1956-1958, Scribner worked in-house at UPA, where he directed and animated three shorts for THE BOING BOING SHOW (”The Lost Duchess,” “One Wonderful Girl” and “The Armored Car”) as well as animated dozens of commercials and the studio’s new theatrical titles. The frame grabs below are from “The Lost Duchess,” in which Scribner offers his distinctive take on the conventional big-nosed/eyes-on-the-side-of-the-head characters and devises a completely original way of moving these characters around.
(click on images for larger versions)
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His work is a great example that just because you’re using “limited” animation, this is not an excuse for making dull unimaginative animation. Flash/Web animators in general could learn a lot from these works.
Comment by Daniel Poeira — July 30, 2006 @ 8:35 pm
Amid this stuff is amazing. I’m disgusted someone has not done a more compiled work about Scribner. I find his work the most memorable of the Warners animators. I often think of him and his work in comparison to the animators of Japan (Shinya Ohira and Masaaki Yuasa espically) whose sole interest is to do nothing but animation. I hope you will be the man or someone to unearth this man’s passionate animation history.
Comment by noah — July 30, 2006 @ 11:00 pm
Daniel - Agreed. A lot could be learned from Scribner’s work. The question though is, Does anybody today want to learn? Judging from most of the Flash I see nowadays, not too many folks are interested in improving themselves and pushing to the next level.
Noah - There’s now a Rod Scribner blog HERE. Perhaps the blog can lay the foundation for a serious look into Scribner’s life and career. Or at least inspire somebody to properly document his work.
Comment by Amid — July 31, 2006 @ 2:10 am
Hey, thanks for putting this stuff up! I’ve been dying to see these things for years. Unfortunately, seeing these screenshots makes my desire to see them even more feverish. By the way, if you have any Scribner information or research that you aren’t using/want to share, I’d be happy to put it up on the Scribner blog.
Comment by Rod Scribner Project — August 6, 2006 @ 2:49 am