Cartoon Modern

In the world of animation, you can’t get Punk’d, only Barrier’d. For those who aren’t aware of the meaning of this new verb I just made up, to be “Barrier’d” means that animation historian and critic Michael Barrier has reviewed something you’ve done related to the world of animation. And if you’re familiar with Mike’s reviews, you know it’s guaranteed to be interesting and thought-provoking. In this instance, Barrier has reviewed my book CARTOON MODERN. There’s a lot to chew on in his appraisal and at some point, I’ll think of a more appropriate response, but in short, I agree with some of the points he makes and vehemently disagree with other things he says in there. All in all though, I’m incredibly flattered that Mike took the time to write such a thoughtful review of my book. (Thanks Mike!) This discussion about the merits of animation design wouldn’t have even happened a couple decades ago so definite progress is being made in the recognition of Modern animation artists and their body of work, even if we don’t always reach the same conclusions.

One of favorite designer ‘discoveries’ while working on CARTOON MODERN was the work of Lew Keller (1912-1996). It’s hard to believe that an artist of his caliber has been so thoroughly neglected over the years. Here’s the few things that I know about him: Keller started at Disney around ‘39-40. He most likely left during the strike though it’s unclear what he did for most of the ’40s. In the late-1940s, he ended up designing TV commercials in New York for Shamus Culhane and Tempo Productions. There’s a few examples of his commercial designs in Culhane’s autobiography TALKING ANIMALS AND OTHER PEOPLE. Based on these images, one might assume that Keller was a pretty poor artist, but in fact, he was a superb draftsman.

Ca. 1951-1952, he began to work at UPA, where he was the primary designer of the animated segments in the live-action feature THE FOUR POSTER (1952). As best as I can make out, he left UPA after this project and worked elsewhere for the next few years. He has credit as co-art director on the classic John Sutherland educational film A IS FOR ATOM (1952) and he also designed numerous commercials for Ray Patin Productions in the mid-1950s. By 1954 however he was back on staff at UPA, where he worked until the end of the 1950s, followed by a short stint at Disney, and ultimately joining Jay Ward’s in the early-1960s.

Keller worked on a wide variety of projects while at UPA. He directed and designed a number of shorts for the BOING BOING SHOW, including the classic “Miserable Pack of Wolves,” and he also designed the theatrical short GERALD MCBOING BOING ON THE PLANET MOO. He was the co-director of UPA’s last theatrical series “Ham and Hattie.”

Below are some of Keller’s concept pieces for THE FOUR POSTER (1952). The animation for these segments was directed by John Hubley, and while the final film doesn’t exactly look like this, Keller’s design presence is felt strongly in the animation. There’s a couple more of Keller’s pieces in the book.

I can’t stop looking at these drawings. What really stands out to me is how beautifully every element is designed and how elegantly the scenes are composed. One could spend days breaking down the design in these drawings. For example, look at the man being dragged into the room by his wife. You can’t fake a drawing like that.

The finished film takes Keller’s designs and goes even further, with incredible backgrounds by Paul Julian, great animation by Art Babbitt and stellar direction by Hubley. From a design standpoint, it is one of UPA’s great achievements; it’s too bad that the film has never been released onto home video or dvd.

(Click on pics for larger versions. The Keller photo in this post is from the collection of Keith Scott. The drawings are from the collection of Mike Glad. If anybody out there has more info about Lew Keller, please do share.)

Here’s something that I’d completely forgotten I had until I was looking through some files last night. Around 1960, SLEEPING BEAUTY background stylist Eyvind Earle formed his own company Eyvind Earle Productions. The first commercial he produced was the one below for Chevrolet. He decribes the project in his autobiography HORIZON BOUND ON A BICYCLE. It was a 2-minute commercial that he made in two weeks for $16,000. Apparently, a lot of it was painted on black glass under camera, along with manipulation of photo cut-outs of the cars, according to Earle’s description. I’m assuming that the original spot is in color but having never seen it, I can’t say for sure. In any case, these stills look pretty interesting. Has anybody seen the actual commercial?

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Below is an invitation flyer from the collection of Michael Sporn. The flyer, from 1956, advertises a screening put together by New York animation studios to show reels and clips of their work. I’m not sure who the screening was targeted towards—ad agencies and art directors or the general public, but I’m sure they showed some great work.

The flyer itself is designed by designed Paul Kim, a designer/director who I understand is still alive. Unfortunately I was unable to find him, and none of his colleagues from that era have any idea of how to get in touch with him. The most interesting aspect of the invitation is the list of participating studios, which gives a pretty clear indication of how many commercial animation studios were operating in the New York area in the mid-50s.

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Yesterday I mentioned that I wasn’t a big fan of the early Hanna-Barbera backgrounds and I wanted to be a bit more clear about why I think those paintings are weak. I recognize that they were created under strict production schedules which limited the artists’ ability to create quality work. Even though they were created in a rushed manner, they’re still stronger than a lot of the backgrounds being painted for today’s shows. But when I discuss them, I’m looking at them in context of the period that they were created—the 1950s—and compared to the rest of that era’s modern backgrounds, they are among the most generic and boring of the bunch.

Below is an example of a late-1950s H-B TV series background. I could have chosen any other one to illustrate this piece, but this one seems like an above-average example from the period. There is nothing inherently wrong with the painting. It has the typical sponge/roller/airbrush techniques common to background painters of the time, and there’s nice bold outlines on the objects. But after one glance, you’ve seen it all. There’s nothing to it; everything is spelled out bluntly in the painting: trees are green, rocks are brown, road is mud-colored. Color and design are used in a pedestrian literal manner that removes all visual interest from the scene. Jules Engel used to say, “Good paintings make you tingle.” There’s not a tingle to be found in this painting.

Now compare it to this painting of trees by Walt Peregoy from Disney’s PAUL BUNYAN. Here is a background that’s exciting! Peregoy is working with even less than the H-B layout. He doesn’t have rocks to create contrast, just a bunch of random trees in a forest. But Peregoy attacks the concept and make it his own. I doubt he was even working from a layout here. They probably just needed a generic tree background and Peregoy was enough of a designer to run with that. Who else would have thought that sharp cutting triangular shapes, colored blue, with a crazy paint-splatter technique would create a dense, woodsy forest effect?

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Or how about this painting by Peregoy. His sense of color is exciting as hell, and his smart use of values frames the scene and draws our eye to the center. Note how Peregoy doesn’t succumb to painting formulas. His approach to painting this tree scene is completely different from the prior painting. A background painter has to be as much of a designer as the layout artist that he’s following.

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In PAUL BUNYAN, it’s easy to tell which backgrounds were painted by Peregoy and which were painted by Eyvind Earle. Despite the different approaches, their backgrounds work well together. Today’s filmmakers make a fetish out of consistency in production design but this film is a great example of how contrasting styles in a film can actually generate greater visual excitement.

Below is an example of an Eyvind Earle background (which I found on Michael Sporn’s blog). The composition of the village is amazing; Earle manages to create the impression of a bustling village scene with a minimalist, nearly abstract approach.

Sure, there’s plenty of Fifties animation design on this here blog, but I’m not the only person writing about this amazing period in animation history. Many other artist-bloggers are also discussing various aspects of Fifties animation design on their blogs. Here’s a few recent posts from other bloggers that are worth checking out:

Michael Sporn has posted some frame grabs from THE INVISIBLE MOUSTACHE OF RAOUL DUFY, a 1955 short directed by Aurelius Battaglia at UPA. The film was written by experimental filmmaker Sidney Peterson. While the short aired on THE BOING BOING SHOW in 1956, I believe it was produced earlier for another purpose. In an interview with Peterson, he said that he’d been working with MoMA to create projects which would enhance the public’s understanding of modern art. Peterson said, “I hit upon the idea for children’s films about artists, films maybe for television, which would be cast in the form of fables. I wrote three such scripts for which UPA did the animation: THE MOUSTACHE OF RAOUL DUFY, MERRY-GO-ROUND IN THE JUNGLE (about Henri Rousseau), and DAY OF THE FOX: THE LEGEND OF SHARAKU.” I’ve never been able to find any record of MoMA being involved in these productions, but it sounds like the films may have been completed before production had even begun on the BOING BOING SHOW.

The modern technique of the 1950s was so pervasive that it was even applied to the cheapest TV productions of the time. Kevin Langley has made a couple posts of background paintings from early Hanna-Barbera television cartoons. The backgrounds were painted by Fernando Montealegre and Art Lozzi and Bob Gentle. While the bgs have some good ideas in them, on the whole, they feel rushed and cheap. I can imagine the painters at H-B had to paint dozens of these a week to keep up with the breakneck production schedules, and the hastiness shows from the generic color palettes to the uninspired technical execution of the paintings.

Dan Goodsell has posted four model drawings from a 1950s Ray Patin commercial. I scanned a few of these in for the book but ended up not using them because there was far stronger work available from the Patin studio. At the time, we didn’t know which artist had drawn them or what they were for. Dan recently discovered that they were made for a Campbell Kids Clubhouse commercial, which can be viewed HERE. As you can tell from the finished commercial, the type of rendering that the artist used in these drawings was utterly useless for the purpose of animation. That time would have been far better spent had they focused on the design and construction of the characters. Nevertheless, the animator(s) of the commercial do a terrific job of creating beaver characters with strong designy shapes and appealing animation.