Cartoon Modern

Here’s another spot produced by John Hubley’s Storyboard. The highlight here is Rod Scribner’s genius animation. I’ve pulled some frame grabs if you want to look at the drawings more closely.

The commercial was directed by Stan Walsh, who later became the co-founder of Quartet Films. The idea for the spot was conceived by John Hubley and Robert Guidi, one of the best known West Coast graphic designers of the time. Guidi is a somewhat forgotten figure nowadays, as most mid-century West Coast designers are with the exception of Saul Bass, but he was big during the ’50s and ’60s. Guidi co-owned the highly successful design studio, Tri-Arts, and he was the primary album cover designer for the Contemporary jazz label.

Here’s the first clip that I’ve managed to upload to YouTube. It’s the opening and closing titles that Rod Scribner animated for UPA’s last theatrical series “Ham and Hattie.” He probably animated this sometime around 1957. Scribner is obviously having a lot of fun animating these characters, which he designed himself. Note how he really pushes the graphic construction of the faces. Most animators of the period had a tendency to treat the “big nose/eyes-on-the-side design” as a flat shape, but Scribner isn’t afraid to make the design dimensional (especially in the tallest character) and show the construction of the character in 3/4 and front views as well as the standard side view.

PS - There’s a bit of a glitch in the middle of the video. I’ll try to make sure that doesn’t happen again.

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)