History of Re-Animation

Street of Crocodiles releasaed in 1986 by the Brothers Quay (not to be confused with the Brothers Grimm or Bray Studios although they may have descended from either or both) is a black and white stop motion animation with a somewhat eery feel. Some of the stop motion movements are the smoothest and most well done that I have ever seen. They have obviously worked hard and perfecting their technique and it is a quite beautiful animation to watch. That being said it is rather creepy, I can easily seen viewers having nightmares about it and kept waiting for baby doll headed centaur to appear to suck out my soul. Regardless it was quite well done.

The Hedgehog in the Fog  released in 1975 by Yuriy Norshteyn appears to be a Russian (Soviet?) animation that has similarities to the  animated bugs of the early age of animation. It's not bad, but some what weird. The face of the hedgehog looks something like the mouths of Clutch Cargo and there's a part where he loses his raspberry jam and uses a glowing fish skeleton to light he attempts to find it. Not to mention a strange owl paparazzi that follows him.  I wonder if something is lost in translation from the initial Russian a dog version of Michael Bolton finds and returns his raspberry jam. He's in the fog because he sees a pale white horse and wonders if it will die if it lies in the fog. Perhaps this is drug themed animation as the hedgehog while in the haze appears to breathing rapidly in various spots. I'm probably not it's target audience.

The Mind's Eye: A Computer Animation Odyssey released in 1990 by Odyssey Productions and Miramar Productions on VHS (this is a medievalish plastic film type of recording medium somewhat akin to parchment and recorded by nerds (a modern sect of monks)) and laserdisc which is the T-Rex ancestor to modern cds and dvds.  Seriously, they were the size of a small house and ancient.  I actually watched this movie on a friend's laserdisc player (it came with the player) because he wanted to show off the "intense resolution of his laserdisc player" and actual laserdisc version of movies were insanely expensive. I remember being not overly impressed, and thinking to myself that computer generated graphics were so inferior to other types that there would be no way this would ever catch on.  In my defense technology greatly improved and the creators greatly improved their skill sets as time went on. I would imagine most people watching this today would be similarly unimpr...

Science Ninja Team Gatchaman  released in 1972 by Yoshida and the Americanized version Battle of the Planets is one of the first two Japanese anime series I remember watching as a kid (the other one being Star Blazers an Americanized version of Space Battleship Yamato). I identified with Gatchaman the most because one of the Americanized names of the lead characters was Jason. So in episode 1 there's this guy who appears to get the team together (it was in Japanese without subtitles so I'm guessing) who looks a lot like Magnum P.I. Science Ninja Team Gatchaman defeat a guy who looks very effeminate (I think the villain was revealed to be a woman later in the series if I remember correctly) and the villain takes orders from a superior whose screen com image looks like a crow (very bird themed animation series). Some of the more unique things I remember about the series was the bird theme, the ship was the Phoenix, could become the Fiery Phoenix and had a solar powered weap...

Abandoned Little Cat Tora released in 1947 by Kenzo Masaoka is a wonderfully cute animation that foreshadows and potentially inspired Hello Kitty. I've never quite understood the Japanese fascination with cats, but I've always liked it. I'm sure there is a reason for it, I'm just not aware of what it is. This animation is very much like the chibi (small body) style and very much kawaii (cute). Although there are parts that are a little disturbing like when the mother cat person pulls the canteen off the child almost breaking it's need until the canteen come free and the cat child drops to the ground. The singing is some what operatic in quality and the animation as whole has a stylistic component very much like the musical movies of Bing Crosby and Danny Kaye. The version was not in English but the story is easy enough to follow through the actions of the various cats, an abandoned cat is found by a mother cat with three kittens, taking home, where one of the ...

Paddington released in 1975 by an avid model train collector was adapted from books, utilized a teddy bear stolen from his daughter's room and a bunch of model train props. When he didn't have the model train props and couldn't afford to buy more, he drew what he needed on poster board, cut it out and folded it for his stop motion animation (not having any friends, no one was able to tell him to seek help and he continued to make more of these).  Disclaimer: I'm not sure that any of that is true, but it looks like it. Paddington was made for the BBC which is notorious for making content to fill its many channels with content good or bad. In the United States it was used as filler when a station had nothing to broadcast that anyone was willing to watch. As a kid I remember this coming on and after a few minutes of waiting for it to become entertaining, then realizing that it would never become entertaining because that was not it's goal, turning off the TV and goi...

Gerald McBoing-Boing was released in 1950 by United Productions of America (UPA) and was produced by Robert Cannon and was adapted from a story by Dr. Seuss. The artistic style is much simpler and more sketch like than the realistic far more detailed animation that the Walt Disney studios were creating. Walt Disney had the multi plane camera and in order to compete and be profitable UPA had been experimenting with different styles.  What the animation lacks in color and details are more than offset by the rhythmic prose of Dr. Seuss, cute word play and intriguing story line whose ending is not so readily apparent. This makes for an animation that is entertaining and cute while not as cinematically beautiful as one of Disney's animated features. I found it to be quite good and accomplishing in it's goal to entertain.  This new look they created would become widely copied and utilized in the coming years. UPA had been founding by former Walt Disney staff members w...

The Rabbit of Seville released in 1950 by Warner Brothers is an excellent example of the cartoon brilliance of Chuck Jones. Since the dawn of animation there have been two distinct "genetic lineages" of animation the artistic (most often abstract) side exemplified by Oskar Fischinger and Lye and the comic slap stick for the masses side represented by Bray Studios, Warner Brothers, and Walt Disney. In the Rabbit of Seville Chuck Jones is able to bring the two together in an almost seamless merging to created a brilliant example of both and bring artistic musical representation to the general masses. Bugs Bunny and Elmer Fudd perform their typical antics but in an symphony of cartoony silliness that both satisfied the antic craving child in you and the intellectual side at the same time. While retaining the symphonic artisticness Chuck Jones can still deliver comic punches with the barest of character expressions and movements showing how he has truly mastered the medium....

So in the spirit of classic Disney cartoons, I made a quick character, Billy Bull, the bull farmer. Body was based off reference images of Clarabelle Cow and the overalls/pitchfork based off an outfit from a Disney cartoon where Mickey Mouse was a farmer.

Bimbo’s Initiation released by Talkertoons (Max Fleischer) was rather unique in that it had a more spooky and ominous theme to the animation. Bimbo (the term Bimbo in the 1920s was mostly associated with men who liked to fight) is walking down the street when he falls into a manhole and into a secret society where one of the members ask if he want to be a member. An interesting side note is that as he falls into the manhole his main animation rival, Mickey Mouse makes a cameo from Walt Disney studios appears to lock the manhole in an attempt to eliminate his rival (it sure looks like Mickey Mouse, curious if there is a back story about that). Bimbo refuses the bearded Society member's offer and then journeys through rooms and dangers (not unlike an Indiana Jones movie) until finally at the end the bearded member takes off its disguise to reveal it's actually Bimbo's love interest Betty Boop. Bimbo then agrees to join and dance with the Secret Society of Betty Boop clones....

Koko's Earth Control was released in 1928 by Max Fleischer who had invented the Rotoscope, a device that by tracing motion picture footage of human movement allowed for animation to be more lifelike. This led to Koko's animations be far ahead of their time in fluidity an realism. Koko's Earth Control also experimented with lighting effects quickly switching between an image of lightning and it's negative to simulate the cartoon apocalypse Koko's dog Fitz triggered by pulling the lever to destroy the world. Many of the elements of the story are common tropes today but were rather innovative and novel at their time. The animation also used live action shots showing the real world's reaction to the apocalypse. Koko and his dog Fitz were highly polished character at this point and were proving quite popular with audiences.  This animation used a lot of key frames and repeated movements back and forth in a sort of simulated "double take" much like  Wins...

Farmer Alfalfa Sees New York released in 1916 by Bray Studios was one of several early animation series this one being done by Paul Terry who worked at Bray Studios somewhat under duress. The film is an excellent example of early cel animation, the use of clear celluloid film with the character only which is then used over a separate (and often more detailed) background image. Bray studios would make stock series of actions for their characters to speed up the process of making animations to increase production and reduce the costs. The characters in Farmer Alfalfa are very stereotypical, the scam artist looking for out of towners to swindle, the girl who gets Alfalfa Farmer drunk to take his money, the goon who takes him to a rigged poker game, even the poker players. This wasn't just an easy way to make a character, it allowed those character and their already drawn animations to be used in many different films and series. Stereotypical based characters also make for an easier to...

The Old Mill a Walt Disney Studios animation by Wilfred Jackson that was released in 1937 is an excellent example of just how far Walt Disney had progressed since Steamboat Willy. It's use of water color backgrounds and cel animation is an excellent example of the pioneering techniques that would be the standard of Walt Disney feature animated movies that would fuel the "golden age" of animation. Virtually every element that defined the signature Walt Disney product is in the animation, the storytelling and application of human emotion to animals such as fear, contentment, without over humanizing them would be used in all of their animated movies and is a common trope about Disney princesses. Gone on the over the top noodling of the actions of the characters and the unrealistic qualities of the initial animations just ten years prior. This is a studio that is coming of age and is confident about its techniques with the animation almost challenging others to try equ...

Walt Disney's Steamboat Willie is one of the first early animations to exhibit many of the qualities modern viewers expect in an animation. The movement was fluid, if not anatomically correct but the noodling of the joints and bodies are still done in modern animations and were a common animation technique of the time, which could easily be seen to have evolved from the earlier use of silhouettes and quickly drawn then re-drawn chalk techniques in common animators. With the addition of sound (and Disney's choice of it) it set the stage for the whimsical repeating cartoon antics of a main character and his opponent in this case Mickey Mouse and Pete (other examples; Bugs Bunny and Elmer Fudd, Popeye and Bluto, etc). This basic story plot and two characters opposing each other would be the staple for animated shorts for decades to come. The animation is an excellent example of the silly cartoon violence that would eventually come under fire half a century later as promoting vi...

Oskar Fischinger Optical Poem is an early abstract animation set to Franz Liszt's Second Hungarian Rhapsody using  paper cutouts and stop motion. While the animation might not seem ground breaking to an audience today, it was all made before the creation of computers and software. The concept and techniques used by Fischinger in his abstract musical animations would look right at home with modern digital animations of music players such as iPods, mobile phones, tablets, and visual players like Zune only they were made over sixty years prior to that technology's existence. Introduction screen explaining to the audience what was to follow. However even with modern technology Optical Poem's animations and shapes are far better and tightly synced to the music, notes, and emphasis of the various instruments than modern software appears to be able to simulate making Optical Poem a beautiful abstract visual illustration of music in motion. Fischinger's use of...

Winsor McCay in a still from his first animated movie, Little Nemo. One of the first and most successful early animated movies, Gertie the Dinosaur is distinctly different from other animations of the period. One of the most likely reasons is that Winsor McCay was already a professional and well established artist and quite talented being best known for his popular comic strip Little Nemo. Prior animations were less fluid and did not display the knowledge and appreciation for movement, muscle and bone structure that make Gertie the Dinosaur so much more believable than the other animations.  Many of the others were not as detailed most likely due to the medium and method that was used in their production whereas with Gertie, Winsor McCay hand drew each frame (although his assistant traced many of the backgrounds). It may have been the first animation to use key frames and used many of the same sequences (such as the nodding "yes" and shaking head "no") repeat...