Farmer Alfalfa Sees New York (1916) Bray Studios

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 connect with story as the viewers can identify with the concept of those characters with little to no background story.

This technique of stock animations and their reuse to make series and serial animations would be used even more so and pushed farther by a later company Filmation Associates in making Saturday morning cartoons for television such as He-Man and the Masters of the Universe to market products and toys.

 
A little more about the situation with Paul Terry and Bray Studios, Paul Terry admired his older brother who was a newspaper cartoonist, and wished to do the same. He did work for every major newspaper in San Francisco until moving to New York in 1913 where he later saw a viewing for Walter McCay's Gertie the Dinosaur and decided to learn and do animation. He applied for a patent on the process he used in making his animations (which involved cel animation) but after the wife of John Randolph Bray saw an ad for Terry's animation in a paper she recruited him to Bray Studios by telling him they would shut him down unless he came to work for them.





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