When I first started this blog in 2005, there wasn’t a whole lot online about Fifties animation. Recently, however, a number of animation directors have been posting about design-oriented ’50s cartoons on their blogs. Here’s a roundup:
Ren & Stimpy creator John Kricfalusi discusses the modern color in the 1954 Disney short Donald’s Diary.
Michael Sporn offers a nice set of frame grabs from UPA’s animated inserts for the 1956 TV special Our Mr. Sun.
Ward Jenkins offers this incredible Flickr set of pre-production art and stills from the 1951 Tex Avery-Tom Oreb collaboration Symphony in Slang. The cleaned-up 35mm frame scans are particularly impressive.
Hey, thanks for the mention, Amid! Right now, I have it where only my Flickr contacts can download higher res versions of these images in that SLANG set. If anyone wants the larger images, let me know and I’ll change it to make it available to everyone for a limited time.
Comment by Ward — December 17, 2007 @ 10:45 am
Sorry to post this off-topic, but I couldn´t find a direct e-mail. Just to note that canadian jazz pianist Oscar Peterson passed away today, December the 24th. He wrote and performed the music to a great animation classic, Evelyn Lambart and Norman McLaren’s 1949 “Begone Dull Care”. I can´t imagine this classic with another soundtrack but the one he recorded. It´s an amazing movie, even today.
Comment by Daniel Poeira — December 24, 2007 @ 4:04 pm
cool site..thanks for sharing this stuff!
Comment by Riffo — January 12, 2008 @ 10:34 pm
I love this work… i trained my young eyes and grew my love of cartoons whilst laying in front of the TV watching the likes of Mr. Magoo and the Pink Panther. Though I must say, while I love Mr. John Kricfalusi and his blog, he typifies a growing knee-jerk reaction amongst the grumpy, jaded, and overly-influential against modern times and tools. Are there really no artists of note happily working in todays studios using digital tools? Chips on shoulders are one thing, but the Ren and Stimpy debacle was, what, a decade ago now? Lets hear it for artists and designers using their eyes and brains in tandem, free from bitterness and silly prejudice …. I love my box of 1950’s Stabilo 4B’s, but I also love my wacom tablet…..
Comment by john — January 17, 2008 @ 1:44 am
I only found this blog today and just added it to my favorites. This is amazing.
Comment by Frank — March 9, 2008 @ 9:51 pm
Dear Amid. I finally bought Cartoon Modern. Damn good book, mate..Congratulations!
Comment by Oscar Grillo — July 22, 2008 @ 8:34 am
Awesome stuff!
Love your works men!
Comment by Sergio Melero — August 8, 2008 @ 7:58 am
Yo! Can we get some more cartoon modern up in this place or what?!
Bring it!
Comment by Harley — August 28, 2008 @ 2:11 am
I love this style, and the related style of comic book artists like Bernie Krigstein and Alex Toth. It has had such a powerful impact on modern design that people are influenced by it who haven’t traced it back at all.
I don’t know if you’d call it a throw-back, but I love the graphic design of a Russian short called Passion of Spies, linked below. Interestingly, they do very full, Fleischer-style rotations of this graphic look.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w4hrHC1vjdM
About my favorite modern proponents of the style are animation BG painter Bill Wray (the modern Maurice Noble),lowbrow artists like Shag, and especially Glenn Barr, and the illustrator/animation designer Brandon “Ragnar” Johnson. I believe he works completely in vector, these days.
http://symptomatica.blogspot.com/
I love the Cartoon Modern book, and it has an honored place on my reference shelf!
Comment by Tobin — September 27, 2008 @ 8:53 am
this blog is really boss!!!!!!!!!! Symphony in Slang is one of my favourite cartoons. I havent seen it for ages~~~~
Comment by zia — March 2, 2009 @ 11:33 pm
For me, I think the older the cartoons look, the cooler it is. Being a freelance graphic designer I am always look at art to give me inspiration, and this certainly has. The vintage look (vintage for me!) is something I could apply to new designs as well as the texture. If you look closely at all of these, there is texture present. I know this may sound like an odd example, but back when the 90’s Nickelodeon cartoons were popular and then suddenly the 2000’s came, the cartooning style changed slightly. It became more crisp, refined lines, and it just changed the cartoons for me. They were no longer 90’s, they were 2000’s. That’s when I stopped watching because the feel and emotion of watching something that had a certain style was gone.
Comment by Lauren — September 28, 2009 @ 12:20 pm
Love the color language. Very usefull to know, the same for background, atmosphere and mood’character.
Comment by Rémi Crosasso — December 23, 2009 @ 2:06 pm