Six Authors In Search of a Character: Part 3, The Historical Roots of Animation Industrial Practice in the Silent Era

The creation of coherent behaviour in animation got off to a slow start, as did animation itself. Regular production of animated shorts didn’t begin in earnest until 1913, more than a decade after live action studios were releasing films on a regular schedule. By the time regular animation production existed, the larger film industry and its audience had well-developed expectations regarding costs, film lengths, and release schedules. As animation always comprised a minority of film releases and didn’t generate enough box office revenue to influence the motion picture industry, the animation industry had no choice but to adapt to prevailing conditions if it was to survive.

Those conditions had a major impact in how animation production was organized, that in turn had a major impact on how character behaviour in animation developed. While there was a unity between performer and character in live action, this unity was discarded in animation as soon as it became a studio-produced medium. This lack of unity continues to be a fact of life in animation, though the industry has taken steps to control its effects.

In its initial, pre-studio, stage, animation was presented to audiences purely as a novelty. The fact that objects could move of their own accord or drawings could come to life was sufficient to satisfy audiences.

There are at least two surviving Edison films from 1905 that feature object animation. How Jones Lost his Roll utilizes animated title cards and The Whole Damm Family and the Damm Dog has a scene of stop motion where the dog’s body assembles itself (Crafton, Emile 130-31).

J. Stuart Blackton’s Humorous Phases of Funny Faces (1906) is the earliest known example of drawn animation. Blackton was one of the founders of Vitagraph in 1898, a major early film production company (Musser 253-54). His background included time spent as an artist for the New York World newspaper and he himself was the subject of several Edison films in 1896 that photographed him drawing (Musser 120-21). These films led to opportunities for Blackton to perform a sketching act in vaudeville (Musser 121). Blackton continued to use his art skills at Vitagraph, including a film called The Enchanted Drawing (1900) that did “not use frame by frame cinematography, but instead borrows Mèliés stop-action tricks” (Crafton, Before 52).

In Humorous Phases of Funny Faces, the film’s title draws itself on the screen. This is followed by Blackton’s hand sketching a man on a chalkboard. When the man is complete, a woman character is drawn on screen without the evidence of a human hand. The man’s eyes animate to look at the woman and he wiggles his eyebrows. She winks at him. Eventually, the man smokes a cigar and the smoke obliterates the image of the woman. Blackton’s hand then re-enters the frame and erases the chalkboard.

While the behaviour here is extremely rudimentary, the characters do interact with each other and the audience has no trouble understanding their behaviour. Blackton is the first known case of a film animator creating character behaviour through his drawings. As he was the sole artist working on the film, the behaviour is undiluted Blackton.

Humorous Phases also includes a man tossing an umbrella and a clown and dog that appear to be chalk drawings but on closer examination are actually animated cut-outs. There is another drawn animation segment of a man and a woman that appear to have been shot in reverse. These other segments don’t contain much in the way of emoting.

The film, as a whole, has no narrative. It is similar to vaudeville sketch acts where the audience watches an artist draw, but adds the novelty of the drawings coming to life.

Despite Blackton’s history as an artist and his experiments with animation, it was clearly a minor part of Vitagraph’s output. By August 1907, the studio was releasing at least two new films a week, most being half reels (Musser 473). While Blackton was also involved with the 1907 release The Haunted Hotel, a film that used stop motion animation of objects (Musser 471), animation was simply one genre of many at Vitagraph, and nowhere near a majority of its output.

As Donald Crafton writes,

“Between 1908 and the first world war animation was gradually defined as a cinema genre by Emile Cohl and Winsor McCay…. Before then it was a “special effect” and not unlike other effects such as irises and lap dissolves. But with these artists, the technology began to be associated with recurring dramatic situations, narrative structures, iconography, and expectations concerning content” (Before 9).

Vitagraph would play a role in the distribution of animation by Winsor McCay, perhaps the most influential of the first generation of animators. McCay, like Blackton, was a newspaper artist. At the time of his first animated film, he was working for the New York Herald, where he was the author of several comic strips: Little Sammy Sneeze, Hungry Henrietta and Little Nemo in Slumberland (Crafton, Before 93-98). Also like Blackton, McCay had appeared in vaudeville, doing a sketch act entitled “The Seven Ages of Man” (Crafton, Before 98).

McCay’s animated film Little Nemo (released by Vitagraph in 1911) is similar to Humorous Phases in that it has no narrative and is built on the novelty of drawings coming to life. Indeed, the first drawn image of the animation is the character of Flip from the Nemo comic strip with the words “Watch Me Move” written over his head. The character of Impy is assembled out of falling cylindrical pieces and Nemo is assembled from lines that animate in from off-screen. Nemo draws the Princess character, who then starts to move.

A live action prologue was filmed, showing McCay making a bet that he could do 4,000 drawings to make an animated film, perhaps the first time that an animated film was publicly defined by the amount of work necessary to create it.

(This is not a complete copy. Sorry.)

McCay used the film in his vaudeville appearances (Crafton, Before 98) as he did two later animated films, How a Mosquito Operates (1912) and Gertie the Dinosaur (1914) (Crafton, Before 110). The live action prologue to Mosquito is lost (Crafton, Before 107) but the prologue for Gertie survives. It once again shows McCay taking a bet that he can bring a dinosaur to life through a series of 10,000 drawings. In the vaudeville version of the act, McCay stood to the right of the screen and interacted with Gertie by barking orders that she (usually) followed. For the filmed version, McCay’s commands were used as intertitles.

Gertie is perhaps the first successful animated character. She comes across as easily distracted and somewhat stubborn. She exhibits fear and sorrow with personality touches like scratching her head with the tip of her tail. Except for her size and strength, she behaves in a manner familiar to anyone with a house pet, alternately cute and stubborn.

Blackton and McCay both had day jobs, so to speak, so animation was not their main occupation. Neither ever attempted to do a series of animated films with a regular release schedule. The one animation pioneer who did attempt this was Emile Cohl.

Cohl was an established illustrator in France who also wrote poetry and two comedies for the stage (Crafton, Before 64). He was associated with a group known as The Incoherents, whose philosophy was “iconoclastic, antibourgeois, antiacademic, and violently antirational” (Crafton, Before 64). His first contact with films seems to have been in 1908, when he started contributing scenarios to the Gaumont company in Paris (Crafton, Emile 93). Those scenarios were for a variety of genres, including chase films, comedies and fantasies (Crafton, Emile 119). He was promoted to directing at Gaumont, and his output included comedies, documentaries and dramas, though he specialized in animation. In late May or early June of that year, he completed his first animated film Fantasmagorie (Crafton, Emile 93).

Like Humorous Phases, Fantasmagorie begins with the hand of the artist creating a drawing. Fantasmagorie appears to be an improvised film, with images succeeding each other with very little logic. There is metamorphoses animation, with objects turning into other objects. A man turns into bottle that turns into a flower and then the flower’s stem turns into an elephant’s trunk. While the character of a clown appears throughout the film, Cohl is clearly more interested in the transformations and the succession of images than he is in having the clown or any of the other figures on screen emote.

All three of these animation pioneers attempted to find short cuts due to the amount of work animation required. Blackton resorted to using cut-outs in Humorous Phases in order reduce the amount of drawing that had to be done. Cohl exposed each drawing in Fantasmagorie for two frames, not one, in order to only do 8 drawings per second instead of 16 (Crafton, Before 61). McCay developed the use of “reverse and repeats” and “cycles,” both techniques for using drawings more than once in order to create more footage.1 In addition, he hired an assistant named John A. Fitzsimmons who traced the background McCay created onto every animation drawing of Gertie the Dinosaur (Maltin 4).

As Donald Crafton points out,

“By far the greatest disadvantage was the length of time required to complete a film, which seemed, in 1908, like an eternity. In November Cohl had less than 200 meters of released film to show for seven months of hard work. [At 16 frames per second, this is less than 11 minutes of screen time.] This amount normally represented three to five days of shooting for a typical Gaumont film. And the three films had netted only 750 francs for the artist” (Emile 140).

After his initial three films of drawn animation, Cohl “could no longer sustain the heroic effort that their production demanded” (Crafton, Emile 141) and was forced to shift to other animation techniques such as object animation, puppet animation and cut-out animation in addition to padding his films with live action. Using only a camera operator as an assistant, he completed animated segments for “about four films each month” (Crafton, Emile 120). By using these techniques, he was able to create over seventy films in a three-year period, almost all of them containing animated sequences (Crafton, Emile 151). This level of productivity separates Cohl from Blackton and McCay and prepared him to produce the first animated series with continuing characters, The Newlyweds.

Traveling to Fort Lee, New Jersey, to work for the Éclair company, Cohl completed thirteen films based on George McManus’s comic strip The Newlyweds between March 1913 and January 1914 (Crafton, Before 83). While this is a prodigious output for an animator working alone, Cohl failed to meet Éclair’s release schedule of a new film every two weeks (Crafton, Before 83). Unfortunately only one film in this series has survived, and it shows that the series was made with both drawn and cut-out animation (Crafton, Emile 164).

The use of continuing characters was a natural outgrowth of the star system that was developing in live action. While actors did not receive billing in early films, audiences still came to recognize them from their repeated appearances. Performers and studios began to capitalize on the audience’s interest by using actors as a marketing tool. Years before The Newlyweds series, the IMP company lured both Florence Lawrence and Mary Pickford away from Biograph with the promise of screen credit and then advertised the presence of these performers to the movie going audience (Mast 122).

Lacking live stars, animation’s equivalent strategy was to use continuing characters. Newspaper comic strips featured characters already known to the movie-going audience in their original drawn form and in live action movie adaptations. In 1901, Edison made films based on Happy Hooligan (Musser 316) and in 1904 based on Buster Brown (Musser 357). The newspaper strips also provided gags and a drawing style, so they were a logical source for animated films.

The use of continuing characters was a turning point in animation’s popularity. As Donald Crafton notes, “A survey of the trade press shows that before the 1913 Newlyweds series [sic] animated films were sporadic novelty items; after the commercial success of the Éclair films animated series popped up like mushrooms" (Before 86).

The problem was that an animator working by himself could not maintain a steady release schedule. The answer was to create animation studios. In the period immediately following The Newlyweds, two studios sprang up, both focusing on series with continuing characters.

Raoul Barré and Bill Nolan opened a studio in the Bronx that produced a series for the Edison studio called Animated Grouch Chasers starting in 1915.

“Assembly-line techniques were developed in which employees were trained for one specific task. Barré himself eventually acted only as coordinator and supervisor. With many apprentices working on a single cartoon, it was necessary to schematize the drawing style to maintain uniform consistency. To save time, each drawing was sometimes photographed three or even four times to “stretch” the footage, often resulting in jerky and repetitious movements on the screen” (Crafton, Emile 177).

This was a seminal moment for animation. Rather than follow a theatrical performance model, where an artist would be cast as a character for the length of a film, the studios followed an industrial model where the character’s activity was broken into parts so that it could be produced by many hands on an assembly line. This decision, made almost one hundred years ago, has shaped animation production ever since.

In general during this decade, animation studios were preoccupied with the creation of technology that would aid them in production. Barré is credited with the invention of pegs and a punch system to register drawings (Crafton, Before 194). This allowed the spatial relationship between successive images to be fixed, whether on an artist’s drawing board or underneath a camera. Bill Nolan figured out how animation could simulate a tracking shot or pan by moving a long piece of background art under a character that was walking in place (Maltin 11).

John Randolph Bray opened a studio after he showed Charles Pathé his initial film The Artist’s Dream. By 1916, Bray was delivering 1 film a month with a crew of 9 cartoonists, 30 assistant artists and 4 camera operators (Barrier, Hollywood 17). Bray created the character of Col. Heeza Liar, a blowhard adventurer, to star in the cartoons that debuted in 1914. The character ran for about five years and was then revived in 1922 (Canemaker, Bray 28).

Bray also saw animation in industrial terms; Donald Crafton has described Bray as the Henry Ford of animation (Before 137). He patented several animation processes and combined his patents with those created by Earl Hurd. The two controlled the process of tracing characters onto clear celluloid, so that the background art did not have to be redrawn on a frame-by-frame basis, as was the case in Gertie the Dinosaur. Instead, the background showed through the clear celluloid anywhere not covered by an opaque character. It was responsible for speeding up production and allowing for more elaborate background art.

The industrial model was adapted due to one of the hard economic lessons of the film business. Film was paid for by the foot, regardless of what images were on the film (Crafton, Before 28). Because frames of animated films were produced more slowly than live action, the studios were in a more precarious financial position. With a fixed income per foot of film, studios were focused on developing efficient ways to produce and deliver films more than they were focused on creating characters who behaved in a consistent fashion.

Dick Huemer recalled working under Barré in 1916 at a later studio that produced Mutt and Jeff cartoons. The studio had a staff of five animators who turned out a 450 foot film per week. The creative atmosphere was relaxed in the extreme.

“We were given a portion of the picture, over a very rough scenario. Very, very sketchy, no storyboards like we have today, nothing like that. The scenario would probably be on a single sheet of paper, without any models, sketches or anything. You made it up as you went along. You were given a part of the picture and you did what you wanted. If it was a picture about ice skating, you took a scene of somebody on ice skates and you used your own gags and made it all up” (Adamson, AFI 12).

The casual nature of creating the films was not restricted to one studio. Newspaper publisher William Randolph Hearst opened a studio in 1916 to create animated cartoons from his comic strips. Walter Lantz was an animator there at the time.

“We didn’t have any theories that we discussed in those days. I’d just animate a scene, and say to Nolan, “Look, Bill, I’m taking ‘em up from the left and you pick ‘em up from there.” And he’d animate a scene and tell the next animator, “I’m taking ‘em out from the right and you pick up the action from there.” And that’s how we turned out cartoons” (Peary 193).

I. Klein was hired to work with animator George Stallings at the Hearst studio in 1918. The lack of concern for how films were put together even affected individual scenes. Klein recalled that animators left important details of their own scenes to be done by other artists.

“The drawings that Stallings flipped were in pencil. My job, he explained, was to ink them. Offhand, that sounded as if I were to trace over his pencil lines. It was not that simple. The faces and bodies were without features or any other details beyond the animated action. I had to ink in the features of the characters directly, without further pencil drawing. I was given a model chart of the Captain, the Inspector, Mama and Hans and Fritz” (Klein 30).

The use of assistants changed somewhat in the 1920’s. Rather than have assistants add detail to an animator’s drawings, their jobs were shifted to creating drawings from scratch. In the animation process, the drawings that define the shape of a movement are referred to as “keyframes” or “poses.” The animator would be responsible for these. They might be drawings 1, 5, 9, etc. Other drawings serve to connect the keyframes together and these drawings are referred to as “inbetweens.” They would be drawings 2, 3, 4, 6, 7, 8, etc. Starting in the 1920’s at the Fleischer studio, Art Davis was assigned to draw inbetweens for animator Dick Huemer. The job classification became known as inbetweener and Huemer estimated that Davis would do 75% of the drawings in a scene (Adamson, Fleischers 25). Huemer was the Fleischers best animator and Davis was assigned to help increase Huemer’s productivity.

These tight deadlines, division of labour and the casual approach to story and characters worked against any kind of coherent characters in the films of the time. While studio animation existed for 15 years before sound altered the production processes, only one character emerged from the period who can be said to have developed a consistent personality: Felix the Cat.

Felix was the work of Otto Messmer, an employee of the Pat Sullivan studio. Messmer started in the animation business in 1915, just as studios were getting off the ground. He was working for Sullivan by 1916, when he contributed to a dozen animated cartoons based on Charlie Chaplin (Canemaker, Felix 38). Messmer recalled that, “Chaplin sent at least thirty or forty photographs of himself in different [poses]…and we copied every little movement that he did” (Canemaker, Felix 38).

By 1916, Chaplin had already enlarged film comedy’s vocabulary and would continue to do so into the 1920’s. Perhaps Chaplin’s greatest contribution was acting that was far subtler than earlier performers who mugged and waved their arms. It’s significant that Messmer spent time attempting to match Chaplin’s gestures in animation as Felix would later achieve the reputation of the best character in silent cartoons.

Messmer created Felix in 1919, though the cat wasn’t named Felix until his third film (Canemaker, Felix 56). In the film, Felix woos a female, despite the attempted interference by humans. Canemaker describes Messmer’s style as having “a coolly detached yet determined protagonist, who uses his brain and the magic of metamorphosis to solve problems; the simple, direct pantomimic acting; dry wit expressed through visual puns” (Felix 18).

Initially, Messmer was able to avoid the assembly-line nature of the studio as he was the sole animator on the Felix series until 1924. In that year, when the release schedule was doubled to a cartoon every two weeks, guest animators were brought in to help. Bill Nolan and Raoul Barré each worked on Felix at separate times as guest animators (Crafton, Before 310-12).

“The crew worked on only one film at a time, on a two-week schedule, but naturally there was a lag between the various phases of production. The animators were ahead of the inkers and blackeners, and the cameraman might be behind half a film, or even finishing work on the previous one. This system differs from, say, those of the Terry or Fleischer studios, where subcrews worked on two or three films simultaneously. The reason is evident: The Assembly line was essentially an extension of Messmer. It was linear so that he could control the operation completely and efficiently” (Crafton, Before 314-317).

Crafton should have added stylistically as well. Messmer’s tight hold on Felix provided him with a consistent personality, perhaps the major key to his popularity with audiences. Felix was the first merchandising phenomenon to come out of the animation industry; there were Felix toys, dishware, comic strips, clocks and popular songs (Canemaker, Felix 4).

In many ways, Felix was the prototype for what animated characters would become in the sound and TV eras, especially in terms of presenting a coherent persona to audiences. Because Messmer controlled his character more tightly than the filmmakers who made Mutt and Jeff or Krazy Kat, he was able to counteract some of the fragmentation introduced by the assembly-line system. This was still a far cry from the unity of a theatrical or film performance, but Messmer demonstrated that with a strong guiding hand, a small crew of artists could be made to work in a consistent fashion, giving the appearance of a character having a unique, individual mind.

This approach continued to be used in the sound era, though at times the creative force was the producer, the director or a lead animator. However, while a variety of approaches evolved, they all involved someone leading a crew. The speed animation was produced prevented the possibility, in most cases, of a single person controlling a single character’s behaviour in a studio setting.

Three other issues affected the status of character behaviour in animation during this time period: source content, artistic lineage and the length of films.

The content of live action film was based on a variety of sources. Some were based on comic strips, such as Porter’s Dreams of a Rarebit Fiend (Edison, 1907), but others were based on historical subjects (The Execution of Mary, Queen of Scots; Edison, 1895), novels (Uncle Tom’s Cabin; Lubin 1903), plays (Passion Play; Lubin, 1898) operas (The Barber of Sevilla; Mèliés, 1904), and popular genres (Adventures of Sherlock Holmes; Vitagraph, 1905 and The Great Train Robbery; Edison, 1903). By contrast, the content of early animated films was based on the vaudeville genre of the sketch act (Humorous Phases of Funny Faces and Fantasmagorie), comic strips such as The Newlyweds and Mutt and Jeff, and the circus, with McCay playing an animal tamer in Gertie the Dinosaur.

I mention this specifically because the range of content that live action drew from had a more developed sense of characterization than the source material for animated films. Because the source material for animated films was based more on novelty and gags than live action films, animation prior to Disney was not nearly as concerned with characters behaving in a consistent fashion.

There is also the issue of artistic lineage. Many of the actors for live action came from vaudeville and the theatre, so playing a role was their stock in trade and they entered films as experienced performers, though they had to adjust their technique for the camera. In the theatre, they had the benefit of working with more experienced performers and had the entire tradition of acting to draw on. Most importantly, they had direct contact with an audience, allowing them to gauge their success as performers.

Many of the early animators had worked as cartoonists for print media. They were not academically trained, so they were ignorant of art history. They were not used to creating narratives longer than a Sunday comics page. They found themselves in a medium where art now had to move, but there was no tradition to draw on and no predecessors to learn from. They had no experience of an audience’s presence, so relied more on personal judgment.
As a result, their goals were more modest than experienced actors’. The animators’ only goal was to get a laugh. This is why a Mutt and Jeff cartoon could be split among several animators with no concern for the lead characters behaving in a consistent fashion.

At the time the animation industry was developing the capability of hitting a regular release schedule, the live action industry was increasing the length of films. Where one and two reel films had been the standard in the first decade of the 20th century, the succeeding decade saw many producer, directors and stars move into films longer than two reels. Dramas by D.W. Griffith (The Birth of a Nation), Thomas Ince (Civilization), William S. Hart (Hell’s Hinges) and John Ford (Straight Shooting) are examples of this trend.

Comedy, as a genre, was slower to expand into longer lengths. While Mack Sennett directed the feature Tillie’s Punctured Romance in 1914, it really wasn’t until the 1920’s that comedians like Chaplin, Arbuckle, Lloyd, Keaton and Langdon moved from one and two reelers into feature films.

During this time period, animated films stayed at less than a reel in length. The shift to longer films put pressure on live action narratives and characterizations to be more complex in order to hold the audience’s attention. Because animated films remained short, they did not experience the same pressure.

At the same time film lengths were increasing, the live action film business was migrating away from New York and New Jersey and moving to California. The animation industry remained in New York, physically separate from the major part of the business. In addition, while major live action studios were growing in the 1920’s (the merger of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer; Warner Bros. buying Vitagraph and First National Pictures), animation studios remained small and independent. The artistic advances being made in live action acting and storytelling had little effect on animation, as animation studios were separated by distance and the lack of close business relationships (except for distribution) with the larger film world.

Given all these things, it isn’t surprising that characters in silent animation were underdeveloped and that animators were not concerned with the lack of unity in how a character behaved.

Six Authors In Search of a Character: Part 2, Introduction

In live action film, we think of the actor as being central to a role. Marlon Brando is Vito Corleone in The Godfather. We understand that the script, direction, lighting, costuming, etc. all contribute to our perception of the character, but while we can’t quantify how much Brando contributes, we have a gut feeling that he is responsible for the majority of the impression that the character makes on us. Replace him with another actor and the character is different. It’s Brando’s body, voice and movement whenever the character of Vito Corleone is on screen and most of all it is Brando’s brain driving it all.

In other cases, such as the James Bond films, we can easily see how changing the actor affects the character. Sean Connery is different than Roger Moore, Pierce Brosnan, etc. If you use the TV series Bewitched as an example, two different actors, Dick York and Dick Sargent, both played the role of Darren Stephens yet nobody confused them. They were different while playing the same character.

Imagine watching a dubbed film. The on-screen actor has performed the role in the usual way. The voice actor, adding his or her voice after the visuals have been created, is constrained in several ways. The timing and the emotions are dictated by what’s on the screen. The voice actor has no control over the visuals and has to work within their limitations if the dubbing is to be successful. The on-screen actor has no control of the sound that will come from his or her character in the dubbed version. Neither actor has control over the character; the unity of actor and character which audiences take for granted has been broken. The single character has become a collaboration.

While dubbing is fairly common, let’s extend the problem. Assume that a production has a tight shooting schedule. In order to meet the schedule, a producer hires several actors who closely resemble each other to play the same character. This way, several scenes can be shot simultaneously on different sets. As the actors will be photographed simultaneously, how can the character’s behaviour be defined? If the actors are each allowed their own interpretation, it’s unlikely that their various scenes will cohere into a consistent whole. The only solution would be to establish the character’s behaviour before the actors step before the camera, but while that may minimize the variations, there is no longer any hope of unity.

While this is a ridiculous way to shoot a live action film, it is the standard method of creating an animated feature or television series. It stems from a basic difference between the two forms. One of the fundamental aspects of live action film and video is that motion is observable in the real world and recorded in real time. Ten seconds of continuously recorded film or tape captures ten seconds of motion. In animation there is no observable motion to record. The motion is constructed from still images a frame at a time. The illusion of motion only exists when these images are displayed rapidly. As the creation of these images does not occur in real time, ten seconds of animation might represent a day’s or several week’s worth of effort.

By itself, this fact would not necessarily change the nature of creating an animated character. One animator could be responsible for a character for the length of a film much as a single actor performs a role in live action. However, because animation is forced to fit into formats and release schedules that were created for live action film and TV, animators rarely have this luxury. The speed at which animation must be created to accommodate the marketplace has, to a great extent, determined the structure of animation production and defined how animated characters are realized.

Producers have found it more efficient to spread a character among several animators in order to speed up production. As this inevitably leads to a lack of consistency in a character’s behavior, much of the control of characters has been shifted to pre-production, further eroding the animators’ influence. The contrasting needs for efficiency and coherence in the portrayal of animated characters are irreconcilable and continue to shape the creation of animated films.

Pinocchio Part 9A

I mentioned in Part 8A that Stromboli's orchestra is suggested by just showing the bell of a horn and remarked how economical that was. I've since stumbled on a model sheet at animationarchive.net that shows the decision to economize was not the initial approach.

This sequence, where Geppetto leaves his home to search for Pinocchio, is short and deceptively simple. It actually is important for defining what the movie is about. One of the main questions every filmmaker has to ask is, "What is important?" What needs to be shown and what needs to be left out? This sequence, due to its brevity and humour, definitely establishes that Geppetto's problems are not what concerns this movie. Pinocchio is the focus.

It doesn't have to be this way. One Hundred and One Dalmatians downplays the puppies to focus on the adult animals. The puppies don't really become a part of the story until they're found by Tibbs the cat, an adult involved in the search. In this way, Dalmatians resembles The Searchers, where we don't see Debbie after her capture until Ethan and Martin find her. It is possible to make a film that concentrates on both parties in a separation, which is what Finding Nemo does by following both Marlin and Nemo.

Pinocchio fudges things about Geppetto in this sequence. We never see him leave the house until he decides to search for Pinocchio. Yet we can tell by the dinner, including cake for Cleo, that Geppetto must have gone to the market during the day. Realistically, Geppetto must interact with the rest of the village at some minimal level, but for the purposes of this story, he must be seen as a recluse to justify the creation of a wooden son and the decision to abandon Pinocchio at the front door.

Animation-wise, this sequence is cast by character. Except for scene 2, where Jack Bradbury and Fred Madison appear, all of Geppetto is done by Babbitt, all of Figaro is by Larson and all of Cleo is by Lusk. Geppetto's sadness is conveyed by his bent back, but the scene is dominated by Larson's Figaro. The cat's anticipation for dinner, his lying about his intentions and his disappointment at being thwarted are all vividly realized by Larson. Scene 15, in particular, is an excellent piece of acting.

Paprika

There's an article in the N.Y. Times about Paprika, the Japanese animated feature that will open in N.Y. and L.A. on May 25. The article quotes director Satoshi Kon, whose other films include Perfect Blue, Millennium Actress and Tokyo Godfathers.

“In Japan not just children but adults in their 20s and 30s will chose anime and manga as a means of escape from their real lives,” Mr. Kon said, referring to the thick, novelistic Japanese comic books. “But I think there is a danger too. If you go into that world, it is very vivid and colorful and seductive, but there are big traps within that, particularly if you let your real world deteriorate as a result.”

“On television and through the Internet people are being seduced by the sweetness of illusion and the sweetness of dreams,” Mr. Kon continued. “It is necessary to have that relief, because without it life is too difficult. But I think the amount of fantasy that people are being fed through the media has become disproportionate. I believe in a balance between real life and imagination. Anime should not be just another means of escape.”

You can see the trailer for the film here.

Pinocchio Part 9

Six Authors In Search of a Character: The Collaborative Nature of Performance in Animated Films (Part 1)

I'm going to start printing my Masters thesis here. Except it isn't a thesis anymore, it's an MRP (Major Research Paper). The difference is that an MRP does not have to be defended. The switch was made because family business took me away from Toronto and I wouldn't have been available to defend until the fall, which would have cost me additional tuition.

I'm starting with a list of works cited. I don't expect anybody to read this, but when I print the body of the paper, I can link back to this entry for anybody looking for more information about a quote or a piece of information. Some of the weblinks in this list have expired but some are still active.

Works Cited

Abel, Glen, “Raging Bull.” The Hollywood Reporter, 3 February 2005.

Adamson, Joe. “Chuck Jones Interviewed.” The American Animated Cartoon: A Critical Anthology. Ed. Gerald Peary and Danny Peary. E.P. Dutton: New York, 1980.

---. “Joe Adamson Talks With Richard Huemer.” AFI Report Summer 1974: 10-17.

---. “Working for the Fleischers: An Interview with Dick Huemer.” Funnyworld Winter 1974-75: 23-28.

Alda, Alan. Never Have Your Dog Stuffed and Other Things I’ve Learned. New York: Random House, 2005.

Allan, Robin and Dr. William Moritz. “James Algar.” Walt’s People Volume 3. Ed. Didier Ghez. Xlibris: Philadelphia, 2006.

Bailey, Steven. “Interview with Chuck Jones.” Chuck Jones Conversations. Ed. Maureen Furniss. University Press of Mississippi: Jackson, 2005.

Barbera, Joseph. My Life in ‘toons: From Flatbush to Bedrock in Under a Century. Turner Publishing, Inc: Atlanta, 1994.

Barrier, Michael. “Art Babbitt.” Walt’s People Volume 3. Ed. Didier Ghez. Xlibris: Philadelphia, 2006.

---. “David Hand.” Walt’s People Volume 1. Ed. Didier Ghez. Xlibris: Philadelphia, 2005.

---. “The Moving Drawing Speaks,” Funnyworld Summer 1978: 17-37.

---. “Frank Tashlin.” Walt’s People Volume 2. Ed. Didier Ghez. Xlibris: Philadelphia, 2006.

---. Hollywood Cartoons: American Animation in Its Golden Age. Oxford University Press: New York, 1999.

---. “What’s New.” Michael Barrier.com.

Barrier, Michael and Bill Spicer. “An Interview with Chuck Jones.” Funnyworld Spring 1971: 4-19.

Blair, Preston. Animation. Foster Art Service: Tustin, undated.

Blanc, Mel with Philip Bashe. That’s not all Folks! Warner Books: New York, 1988.

Beck, Jerry, ed. Animation Art. Flame Tree Publishing: London, 2004.

Cabarga, Leslie. The Fleischer Story. Revised Edition. DaCapo Press: New York, 1988.

Canemaker, John. Paper Dreams: The Art and Artists of Disney Storyboards. Hyperion: New York, 1999.

---. Felix: The Twisted Tale of the World’s Most Famous Cat. Pantheon Books: New York, 1991.

---. “Profile Of A Living Animation Legend: J.R. Bray.” Filmmakers Newsletter January 1975: 28-31.

---. Treasures of Disney Animation Art. Abbeville Press: New York, 1982.

Cawley, John and Jim Korkis. How to Create Animation. Pioneer Books: Las Vegas, 1990.

Cohen, David S. “New techniques make visual effects more actor-friendly: Actors' chops meet techno shop.” Variety. 11 December 2006.

Crafton, Donald. Before Mickey: The Animated Film 1898-1928. MIT Press: Cambridge, 1982.

---. Emile Cohl: Caricature, and Film. Princeton University Press: New Jersey, 1990.

Culhane, John. Disney’s Aladdin: The Making of an Animated Film. Hyperion: New York, 1992.

Culhane, Shamus. Talking Animals and Other People. St. Martin’s Press: New York, 1986.

Dobbs, G. Michael. “Billy West: The multi-talented star of Ren and Stimpy and Doug.” Animato Spring 1994: 41-42.

---. “Face Behind the Voices: Don Messick – Man for All Toons.” Animato Winter 1995: 27-28.

---. “Sid Raymond: The Return of Baby Huey.” Animato Spring 1994: 38, 63.

Finch, Christopher. The Art of Walt Disney: From Mickey Mouse to the Magic Kingdoms. Harry N. Abrams: New York, 1973.

Furniss, Maureen. Art in Motion: Animation Aesthetics John Libbey & Company Limited: Sydney 1998. Reprinted 1999.

Ghez, Didier. “Andreas Deja.” Walt’s People Volume 3. Ed. Didier Ghez. Xlibris: Philadelphia, 2006.

Giddins, Gary. Natural Selection: Gary Giddins on Comedy, Films, Music and Books. Oxford University Press: New York, 2006.

Gray, Milton. “Perspectives on Animation.” Funnyworld Spring 1971: 43-45, 54.

Hanna, Bill with Tom Ito. A Cast of Friends. Da Capo Press: Cambridge, 2000.

Harryhausen, Ray and Tony Dalton. Ray Harryhausen: An Animated Life: Adventures in Fantasy. Aurum Press: London, 2003.

Jones, Chuck. “Animation is a Gift Word.” AFI Report Summer 1974: 27-29.

Jurgens, Joe. “The Inner Daffy: Chuck Jones and the Creative Process.” Chuck Jones Conversations. Ed. Maureen Furniss. University Press of Mississippi: Jackson, 2005.

Kaufman, J. B. “Friz Freleng.” Walt’s People Volume 2. Ed. Didier Ghez. Xlibris: Philadelphia, 2006.

Kaufman, Sarah. “Tapping A Gold Mine of Motion: Dance Form Gives 'Happy Feet' a Boost -- And Vice Versa.” Washington Post. December 17, 2006.

Kaytis, Clay. “Show 016 - Burny Mattinson, Part One.” The Animation Podcast.

Kerr, Walter. The Silent Clowns. Alfred A. Knopf: New York, 1975.

Klein, I. “A Vision of Katzenjammers.” Funnyworld Spring 1972: 29-31.

Korkis, Jim. “Bill Justice.” Walt’s People Volume 3. Ed. Didier Ghez. Xlibris: Philadelphia, 2006

---. “Jack Hannah.” Walt’s People Volume 1. Ed. Didier Ghez. Xlibris: Philadelphia, 2005.

---. “Ward Kimball.” Walt’s People Volume 2. Ed. Didier Ghez. Xlibris: Philadelphia, 2006.

Lyons, Mike. “Mushu Debut: An Interview with Mulan Animator Tom Bancroft.” Animato Spring 1998: 96-98.

Maltin, Leonard. Of Mice and Magic. Revised Edition. New American Library: New York, 1987.

Mast, Gerald. A Short History of the Movies. Pegasus: New York, 1971.

Musser, Charles. The Emergence of Film: The American Screen to 1907. History of the American Cinema Volume 1 to 1907. University of California Press: Berkeley, 1994.

Neuwirth, Allan. Makin’ Toons: Inside the Most Popular Animated TV Shows and Movies. Allworth Press: New York, 2003.

Peary, Danny. “Reminiscing with Walter Lantz.” The American Animated Cartoon. Ed. Gerald Peary and Danny Peary. E.P. Dutton: New York, 1980.

Peet, Bill. An Autobiography. Houghton Mifflin Company: Boston, 1989.

Province, John. “Bill Peet.” Walt’s People Volume 3. Ed. Didier Ghez. Xlibris: Philadelphia, 2006.

Rasmussen, Thorkil B. “Eric Larsen.” Walt’s People Volume 3. Ed. Didier Ghez. Xlibris: Philadelphia, 2006.

Rowley, Stephen. “Serkis Performer.” Cinephobia. January 15, 2006.

Scott, Keith. The Moose That Roared: The Story of Jay Ward, Bill Scott, a Flying Squirrel and a Talking Moose. Thomas Dunne Books: New York 2001.

Serkis, Andy. The Lord of the Rings Gollum: How We Made Movie Magic. Collins: London, 2003.

Shale, Richard. “Ward Kimball.” Walt’s People Volume 5. Ed. Didier Ghez. Xlibris: Philadelphia, 2007.

Solomon, Charles. Enchanted Drawings: The History of Animation. Alfred A. Knopf: New York, 1989.

---. “The Penguins and People Look Great, but Are They Animation?” New York Times. January 7, 2007.

Strzyz, Klaus. “Art Babbitt.” Walt’s People Volume 3. Ed. Didier Ghez. Xlibris: Philadelphia, 2006.

Sullivan, Wes. “Dale Oliver.” Walt’s People Volume 3. Ed. Didier Ghez. Xlibris: Philadelphia, 2006.

---. “Volus Jones.” Walt’s People Volume 3. Ed. Didier Ghez. Xlibris: Philadelphia, 2006.

Thomas, Frank and Ollie Johnston. Disney Animation: The Illusion of Life. Abbeville Press: New York, 1981.

White, Tony. Animation From Pencils to Pixels. Focal Press: London, 2006.

Andrew Loomis in German

Andrew Loomis was a commercial artist who worked in the 1920's to the 1950's. In addition, he was a teacher and the author of a much sought-after series of art instruction books such as Fun With a Pencil, Figure Drawing For All It's Worth, Creative Illustration, Three Dimensional Drawing and Drawing the Head and Hands. The books are all out of print and command high prices on the used book market. There are two Walter Foster editions that are highly abridged versions of the books, but they are disappointing to anyone who has seen the originals.

It turns out that Figure Drawing For All Its Worth is still in print in Germany and can be ordered from Bud Plant for $29.95 U.S. Definitely worth owning and a bargain to boot.

The Labrynth Bookstore in Toronto

For years, Dan and Jessica Merisanu have brought their books on animation, illustration, manga and art instruction to various locations around town and now they have a permanent home. The Labyrinth Store is located at 386 Bloor Street West, near the Spadina subway and carries books that are unavailable anywhere else in Toronto. You can find information on their hours and contact info here and their blog lists new material that they carry.

I'd point out that their store location is in an area full of excellent bookstores within a 10 minute walk. Across the street is BMV, a large used and remaindered bookstore. West on Bloor is Book City, one of the better independent book chains in Toronto. Further west on Markham Street is The Beguiling, one of the leading alternative comics shops in North America, and Mirvish Books on Art, a store specializing in fine arts books. If you're an art book lover and thinking about a trip to Toronto, you can make The Labyrinth your first stop of many.

Right & Wrong: Morality and the Story Structure of Pinocchio

(This article is based on a paper given at the first conference of the Society for Animation Studies, held in Los Angeles, California in 1989 and was later printed in Animato #20.)

Pinocchio (1940), the Disney studio’s second feature-length cartoon, presented story problems that were in stark contrast to those of the studio’s first feature, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937). In that film, the source material was a short fairy tale documented by the Brothers Grimm. The primary story challenge lay in fleshing out the tale to sustain a feature film. With Pinocchio the situation was reversed: the novel by Collodi was lengthy and chock-full of incident. The challenge was to choose which incidents to preserve or adapt, and to find a way to structure them. The studio used Pinocchio’s ongoing moral education as its approach to each segment of the film.

The problems that Pinocchio’s characters must deal with are different from those in other Disney films. In Show White, Cinderella, and Sleeping Beauty, the main characters are victims of injustice who are eventually restored to their rightful places. In Dumbo, the main character is an outcast who triumphs over a birth defect. These characters are innocent of wrongdoing and have done nothing to warrant the problems they face. In Pinocchio, the characters Pinocchio, Jiminy Cricket and Geppetto are faced with dilemmas, and their own actions result in them becoming victims of evil. Only by behaving in a moral fashion can they avoid or escape evil. While they eventually learn to act correctly, the triumph over evil is never final. Each decision exposes them again to the possibility of victimization, so each decision must be morally based.

The film is structured around three episodes of capture and escape, each more dangerous than the last: Stromboli’s birdcage, Pleasure Island and Monstro’s belly. In each case, the failure to know the difference between right and wrong results in a character being captured. The consequences of wrong decisions literally move the character away from their own humanity and towards a more primitive state. In each episode, the character that knows the difference between right and wrong is the one who is able to effect the escape of the others.

Geppetto is a lonely woodcarver who lives an isolated existence. Throughout the film, he interacts with only four characters, three of whom are animals: Cleo the fish, Figaro the cat, and Monstro the whale. His isolation is softened somewhat by his work, which recreates the diversity of the outside world. His clocks and music boxes display domestic animals and people in various roles and occupations. Ducks, sheep, birds and bees are all featured. Society is represented by a church bell-ringer, a mother spanking a child, musicians, dancers, hunters, butchers, and a drunk. However, none of these creations are capable of interaction, and Geppetto feels the lack of human companionship. For this reason, he creates the puppet Pinocchio. His wish upon a star is that Pinocchio “might be a real boy.”

His wish is granted by the Blue Fairy, who brings Pinocchio to life but does not make him human. That advanced state must be earned by learning the difference beween right and wrong. As Pinocchio has no idea what the difference is, Jiminy Cricket is pressed into service as his conscience.

Pinocchio’s first morning begins with a multiplane tracking shot, starting on church bells and featuring the town awakening. We see birds, tradesmen, mothers, and children. In short, we are looking at the clocks and music boxes of Geppetto’s workshop made flesh. The shot concludes by focusing on Geppetto’s residence as the door opens and Pinocchio prepares for this first day at school. One would think that Geppetto would accompany his new son, guiding him and protecting him in a world Pinocchio has never experienced. However Geppetto sends Pinocchio on his way alone and returns to his isolation. It is a mistake that all the characters in the film will live to regret. Eventually, Pinocchio will be responsible for drawing Geppetto out of his workshop but it will be under much more troubled circumstances.

Jiminy Cricket also fumbles his responsibilities on this morning. Having slept late, he reaches Pinocchio after Honest John and Gideon, two small-time crooks, have convinced the puppet to become an actor. Their motivation is to sell him to a puppeteer named Stromboli. While Jiminy informs Pinocchio that he should go to school, Pinocchio ignores him and marches off with the two villains.

To his credit, Jiminy pursues Pinocchio, but after seeing Pinocchio become a success on stage he doubts his own advice. “Maybe I was wrong,” he says. “What does an actor need with a conscience anyway?” Jiminy decides to give up his role as conscience and seeks out Pinocchio to wish him luck.

Pinocchio’s success is an illusion. While he is popular with the audience, Stromboli, the puppet master, sees him as a slave and locks him in a wooden birdcage to prevent him from returning home. Having made the wrong moral decision, Pinocchio has forfeited his ability to control his own fate. This will also be a consequence of the traps to come.

When Jiminy arrives, he unsuccessfully attempts to pick the birdcage’s lock. Pinocchio tries to take the blame for the situation, but Jiminy doesn’t let him. “It was my fault,” Jiminy says, “I shouldn’t have walked out on you.” His doubts about Pinocchio’s choice and his abandonment of Pinocchio have rendered him powerless to free Pinocchio. In this film, only those who are morally right have the power to take positive action.

As no one has the moral high ground, it falls to the Blue Fairy to intercede. When she does so, Pinocchio fails a moral test that reveals another aspect of punishment in the film. When the Fairy asks for an explanation, Pinocchio lies. As he does, his nose grows. It not only grows, it becomes more tree-like. With each successive lie, it sprouts leaves, buds, flowers, and a nest with two birds. With the final lie, the leaves fall and the birds fly away.

In Snow White, the characters’ inner states are expressed through the surrounding environment. As Snow White flees the Hunstman, her own fear and shock are mirrored in the threatening trees that surround her. When the Queen transforms herself into a hag, the room spins around her. When the dwarfs pursue the Queen, a thunderstorm is a measure of their rage and is the instrument of her death.

In Pinocchio, it’s not the environment but the characters’ own bodies that reflect their inner states. If Pinocchio is balanced between being a creature of wood and flesh, it is clear that with each lie, he becomes more a tree and less a person. Throughout the film, when a character makes a bad moral decision he reverts to a more primitive physical state. Moral transgression equals physical regression. As the Blue Fairy comments, “a boy who wont’ be good might must as well be made of wood.” With this reprimand, she frees Pinocchio from the cage and sends him on his way.

As Pinocchio and Jiminy run home to Geppetto, Pinocchio is once again stopped by Honest John and once again put on the wrong road. This time, he’s headed for Pleasure Island, where, as Honest John says, “every day’s a holiday and kids have nothing to do but play.” These events are so similar to Pinocchio’s first encounter with Honest John that Jiminy feels compelled to mutter “here we go again” to the audience. But this time, there is a crucial difference. Jiminy has learned from the first trap and will not falter again. He has no doubts this time that he is right. His moral certainty will enable him to free Pinocchio from the film’s second trap, Pleasure Island.

The Coachman who takes the boys to the island is kidnapping them, though all the boys go willingly. It is a place where kids can run wild, indulging themselves in all the vices that polite society frowns on. Smoking, drinking, vandalism, fighting, and pool playing are the activities of choice on the isle, and there is no shortage of what the Coachman refers to as “stupid little boys” who are anxious to take advantage of the opportunities.

The penalty the boys pay for making the wrong decision is to become donkeys, losing all vestiges of their humanity in the process. The Coachman then crates them and sells them. As Pinocchio was poised between tree and human in Stromboli’s birdcage, the boys are posed between animal and human on the island, and the balance is tipped irrevocably to the animal. Again, moral transgression equals physical regression, and like Pinocchio in the birdcage, their lack of morals has lost them the ability to control their own destinies.

Jiminy is committed to sticking by Pinocchio this time. The verbal and physical abuse he takes at the hands of Lampwick, Pinocchio’s new-found companion, causes him to walk away in anger, but he never doubts the rightness of his position. It’s this moral strength that is crucial in altering Jiminy’s role in the second escape. Where he was once powerless to open a lock, he now discovers the fate of the boys and is able to guide Pinocchio to an escape route before it is too late. Pinocchio avoids turning completely into a donkey, but has a donkey tail and ears as evidence of his wrong-doing.

The two escape by jumping off a cliff into the ocean. Pinocchio hesitates, but Jiminy urges him on, explaining that it’s the only way out. When they reach the shore, they head straight for Geppetto’s shop, and this time they are not sidetracked. Unfortunately, Geppetto is not there. A bird sent by the Blue Fairy drops a note explaining that Geppetto was out searching for Pinocchio and has been swallowed by Monstro the whale.

It is finally Pinocchio’s turn to exhibit some moral strength. He immediately takes off to rescue his father. Jiminy is frightened by Monstro’s reputation, but Pinocchio is undeterred. When they reach the water’s edge, Pinocchio shows none of his previous reluctance to jump in. Pinocchio’s correct decision has entitled and empowered him to be Geppetto’s rescuer. Significantly, Jiminy remains outside Monstro when Pinocchio finds Geppetto, and is a passive observer of the rescue. Pinocchio’s internal conscience has developed to the point where Jiminy’s guidance is no longer needed.

As the boys of Pleasure Island had their humanity submerged into their donkey bodies, Geppetto is submerged within Monstro, the film’s third and most dangerous trap. Like the boys, Geppetto fails to distinguish between right and wrong. On Pinocchio’s first morning of life, Geppetto sent him off to school alone. While Geppetto yearns for human interaction, he is only willing to imitate the superficial aspects of it in the same way his woodcarvings imitate only the superficial aspects of village life.

The film’s climax contains a series of reversals. Where the moral movement within the film has thus far been one of regression, it now turns to progression. As Pinocchio frees Geppetto, he literally and morally extracts the human from the animal. Geppetto is free of Monstro, and Pinocchio has asserted his humanity over his donkey characteristics.

Ironically, the tool used to accomplish this is fire. During Pinocchio’s first night of life, he naively set his finger on fire and looked at it with delight. Geppetto realizing the threat, grabbed Pinocchio and extinguished the flame in Cleo’s fishbowl. The elements of fire and water now reverse their functions. Pinocchio builds a large fire, causing Monstro to sneeze and expel them. Where fire was the threat and water the means of rescue, fire now rescues the characters and water threatens them.

The fire enrages Monstro, and he attempts to kill Pinocchio and Geppetto. He destroys their raft and leaves them swimming for their lives. In another reversal, Geppetto again seeks to separate from Pinocchio. This time he is motivated by fatherly love and not apathy. He urges Pinocchio to save himself and swim for shore, as he is too weak to do so. Pinocchio is not about to sacrifice his father for his own freedom and pulls him beyond some rocks to a cove that Monstro cannot reach. Geppetto is safe, but Pinocchio drowns in the rescue.

Having learned the difference between right and wrong and having acted in a moral fashion, Pinocchio has earned the right to become human. The Blue Fairy revives him, and all traces of his wooden and animal selves vanish. Humanity has triumphed over lower states of being.

Pinocchio and Geppetto celebrate, and Jiminy leaves, claiming that, “this is where I came in.” But it really isn’t. While the joy of Pinocchio’s first night has been recaptured, the characters have developed a stronger moral base. Pinocchio has been transfigured by his moral growth. Though the characters have seen their dreams come true, it has taken far more than just wishing on a star. It has taken the ability to tell right from wrong in a world where morality has very tangible implications.

What type of morality does this film champion? Pinocchio’s initial dilemma between going to school or going on the stage implies a sort of middle-class, Boy Scout morality. I think the film’s choice of school has to be seen in the context of the film’s later choices. Morality is not an abstract system that has to be adhered to for its own sake. Morality in this film clearly represents the opposites of selfishness and selflessness. Will a character indulge himself with no regard for the others in his life, or will he act in a way that strengthens his relationship with his loved ones? The film sees morality as a structure for strengthening the bonds between parents and children and between friends. It is this aspect of the film that gives it its emotional power and prevents it from degenerating into a lecture on proper behavior.

The villains in this film are immoral because they are so self-indulgent. Their search for gratification threatens everyone they come in contact with. Their moral choices do not support others; they exploit others. Unlike those of other Disney movies, Pinocchio’s villains are not neutralized or destroyed. Honest John, Stromboli, the Coachman, and Monstro all live on to continue being evil and to prey on the morally weak.

It is the task of each character in this film to constantly assert his morality through his decisions. Behaving in a moral fashion is the only way to avoid becoming a victim of exploitation, to maintain ties to loved ones, and the only way to become truly human.

Persepolis

Persepolis is Marjane Satrapi's graphic novel about growing up during the Iranian revolution and her exile from Iran in the aftermath. It's a great book and one that is being made into an animated feature in France. (There are other clips from the film available here, here and here. Like the above trailer, the dialog is in French.)

Satrapi is involved in the creation of the feature and not only is it drawn animation in her own style, the film will be (gasp!) black and white like the original graphic novel. There couldn't be a stronger contrast between this film and the forthcoming Tin Tin films mentioned below. I can only hope that Peter Jackson and Steven Spielberg see Persepolis at the earliest possible opportunity.

Chuck Jones' Strangest Cartoon. Ever.

Now Hear This (1962) is a hard to find (and to watch?) cartoon directed by Chuck Jones at Warner Bros. You might describe it as his version of Porky in Wackyland done in a post-UPA style. In any case, thanks to YouTube, you now have an opportunity to see it.

Tintin Done Right

Steven Spielberg and Peter Jackson have announced that they're making several films based on Herge's Tintin using motion capture. Variety reports that,

Jackson said WETA will stay true to Remi's original designs in bringing the cast of Tintin to life, but that the characters won't look cartoonish.

"Instead," Jackson said, "we're making them look photorealistic; the fibers of their clothing, the pores of their skin and each individual hair. They look exactly like real people — but real Herge people!"

Show of hands. How many people choose which movies to go to based on whether they can see skin pores?

DreamWorks bought the film rights from Herge Studios in Brussels, Belgium. Company is led by prexy Fanny Rodwell, Remi's wife when he died in 1983.

"We couldn't think of a better way to honor Herge's legacy that this announcement within days of the 100th anniversary of his birth, May 22, 1907," Rodwell said.

Now I understand. There's no better way to celebrate Herge's 100th birthday than by taking the cartooning style he developed, the "ligne clair" school which has influenced generations of cartoonists, and adding all the details that Herge was too stupid to include. What a shame that Herge didn't live long enough to see his work corrected. I look forward to the day when Spielberg and Jackson have their work corrected as well.

Digital Distribution: Movies and Music

Scott Kirsner has contributed an article to Release Print about the state of digital distribution for movies. He admits that

Digital distribution, circa 2007, resembles a high-concept science fiction script: conceptually intriguing, potentially feasible, but not quite part of the fabric of reality.

The New York Times Magazine has an article called "Sex, Drugs and Updating Your Blog," which talks about how musicians are using digital distribution to build audiences.

Both these articles deal with creative people attempting to cut out the middle men and go straight to audiences and I'm intrigued with the differences between the two fields. Music has the advantage of being produced faster and cheaper than films, which allow musicians to regularly add new material and build an audience. Musicians are also interacting more heavily with their audiences than filmmakers are. The Times article talks about Jonathan Coulton, who has uploaded a new song weekly and personally answers dozens of emails a day from fans. John K. has developed quite a following through his blog, but based on the posted comments, he's not committed to answering every question that comes his way. If you're aware of anyone in animation or film who has taken this further than John K, let me know.

One of the major differences between music and film is the personal appearance angle. Concerts and club dates are a major revenue stream for musicians, where personal appearances by actors or directors might goose attendance at a screening but don't generate revenue separately the way music sales and personal appearances do.

Finally, there are the physiological and psychological differences between music and film. Sight is our specie's primary sense, so we're able to use our hearing while engaging in other activities. Music can accompany our activities in a way that films never can. A teacher of mine, Bob Edmonds, once said that there was no visual equivalent to whistling.

Furthermore, there's an emotional difference between music and film. A lot of animation is based on humour, but a joke won't be as funny the 20th time you hear it as it was the first time. By contrast, the 20th time you hear a song, it may be more satisfying than the first. Music grows on us while humour, stories and films tend to go stale.

I'm fascinated with how all of this is developing. I desperately hope that animators figure out a way to make the web work for independent production. The goal shouldn't be to become the next George Lucas and get rich. The goal should be to do the work you want to do and make enough money from it to live. Coulton, the musician, is making a middle class living. Can animators do the same? Maybe the web will never be as friendly to animators as it is to musicians, but the rules are still being written and there's enormous potential to change how animators live and work for the better.

Tony Rosato

Some of you may remember Tony Rosato from his time on Saturday Night Live or from SCTV. I had the pleasure of directing Tony as a voice actor in the animated TV series Monster By Mistake, where he played the father, Tom.

Some voice actors nail their performance on the first take and others need a few takes to warm up. Tony was one of the latter. He always provided a wealth of possibilities and my job (and the job of the other directors) was to gently guide Tony into the interpretation we thought best. You never had to worry about Tony coming up with a good reading.

It was also a pleasure as a writer to know that Tony would improve any comedy scene he was handed. Thinking of him while I sat at the keyboard made writing funny scenes for his character that much easier.

It seems that Tony has slipped between the cracks of the criminal justice and mental health systems, as this article details. I haven't seen Tony since 2003, but I have enormous respect for his abilities and genuine fondness for him as a person. I hope that his situation gets straightened out and that he gets the help that he needs and deserves.

Pinocchio Part 8A

The highlights of this sequence are Bill Tytla's Stromboli and Frank Thomas's Pinocchio. Tytla gets ownership over Stromboli in a way that few animators get control of characters in this film. The few Stromboli shots that Tytla didn't animate are handled by his assistant Bill Shull.

W.C. Fields was reported to have said at the premiere of the film that Stromboli moved too much. There's something to be said for that. Stromboli is a broader character than anyone else in the film. He changes emotions almost instantly and Tytla's animation successfully portrays Stromboli's volatility. My problem with Stromboli, for all his animated flair, is that his emotions are simple and shallow. There's no subtext to the character. It's possible that Tytla got carried away by style over substance or that he hoped to disguise Stromboli's lack of complexity with some extremely complex animation. There are very severe shape changes, fast timing and strong lines of action in the animation

It's interesting that Stromboli is conducting an orchestra, yet the only part of it that is shown is the bell of a tuba. While Pinocchio is famous for its elaborateness, the filmmakers also have the ability to suggest something with great economy.

Frank Thomas doesn't get as much control of Pinocchio as Tytla does Stromboli, but he makes a strong impression with his scenes. He balances out Pinocchio's bravado, clumsiness and cluelessness as Pinocchio starts out cocky and then finds himself barely able to keep up with the other puppets. Thomas gets strong appeal out of making Pinocchio knock-kneed. We empathize with a character who is clearly in over his head.

One of the interesting things about Frank Thomas's Pinocchio is how Thomas handles lip synch. Pinocchio has no teeth but does have a tongue. However, it's been added to supply some depth to the mouth. Thomas does not animate it to help form sounds; he leaves it on the bottom of the mouth. As a result, if you watch Pinocchio's mouth closely, the synch is hardly exact. Scene 16 contains several obvious examples.

Ollie Johnston continues with Pinocchio struggling to keep up until the tone changes with Woolie Reitherman's scenes. Reitherman's animation needs to be praised in this sequence. We know from his work on Goofy that he has a flair for broad comedy. The Russian puppets (referred to as "bomb throwers" in the draft!) are hilarious when they're kicking themselves in the heads and Pinocchio is every bit as funny booting himself in the rear. Reitherman gets the climax of the sequence with the Russian puppets whirling around and Pinocchio getting caught up in the chaos.

It's odd that animators like Babbitt and Larson are used on puppets in this sequence. Since they were in charge of Geppetto and Figaro respectively, why not use them to do more scenes on those characters? I can only assume that the two animators needed work at the time these shots were ready.

This sequence has strong echoes of Chaplin's The Circus, where the Tramp causes audience laughter without ever really understanding why. What happens in that film and this sequence by accident is funnier than anything the characters plan.

From a story standpoint, Pinocchio's success surprises Jiminy and causes him to question his opinions and his role as Pinocchio's conscience. That has repercussions in the near future. Now that we're reaching the first of the film's three traps, I'm going to interrupt the mosaics with an article I wrote in 1989 about morality and how it affects the story structure of this film. Look for it in the next day or two.

Munro

This is a delightful short written by Jules Feiffer and directed by Gene Deitch. Feiffer worked in animation in the 1950s at Terrytoons and it's a sad commentary on the state of the business then that they let him get away. Who knows if things would be any different today?

Besides his weekly comic strip, Feiffer also went on to write novels (Harry the Rat With Women), plays (Little Murders), movies (Carnal Knowledge) and children's books (The Man in the Ceiling). The film accurately mirrors Feiffer's expressive drawing style.

This film was also a turning point in the life of Gene Deitch. His desire to make it led him to producer Bill Snyder, who promised Deitch funding if Deitch would go to Prague and oversee another of Snyder's projects. Deitch ended up staying in Prague, where he lives and works to this day.

This film is very much in the UPA mold. Deitch worked at UPA, so it's not surprising that he found the story attractive or that he embraced Feiffer's design style. Like many UPA films, it relies on a narrator and satire more than it creates believable characters. However, the film is charming and the satire still works; the bureaucratic mindset hasn't changed much in the intervening years. Here is Stephen Colbert's "truthiness" years before he invented the term.

Pinocchio Part 8

Disney in Montreal

I was in Montreal last weekend to see Once Upon A Time Walt Disney: The Sources of Inspiration for the Disney Studios at the Museum of Fine Arts. The exhibit runs until June 24 and if you've been thinking about going, I highly recommend it.

The show features European artwork that may have influenced the Disney films, with the emphasis on Disney design and background art. There are Disney originals by Gustav Tenggren, Mary Blair, Kay Neilson, Joe Grant, Claude Coats, David Hall, Salvador Dali, and Eyvind Earle. The show also includes cel and background set-ups, multiplane paintings on glass, maquettes and well-chosen clips on video screens. For example, the shot moving over the village from early in Pinocchio was playing on a video loop right next to the original background painting, allowing you to understand how the use of the camera and cropping resulted in what's on screen. My only disappointment was that there were very few animation drawings. There were four from Plane Crazy by Ub Iwerks, four from The Band Concert by Les Clark, one from "Night on Bald Mountain" by Bill Tytla, one from The Country Cousin by Art Babbitt and one of Cruella from One Hundred and One Dalmatians by Marc Davis.

There were also video monitors playing clips from other film sources, such as Faust (1926), Frankenstein (1931), Dr. Jeckle and Mr. Hyde (1932), and King Kong (1933) showing scenes side-by-side with the Disney scenes they influenced. Destino was playing in a continuous loop surrounded by development art by Dali and John Hench.

The non-Disney art was equally impressive. There was a 47 second praxinoscope animation by Emile Reynaud which I hadn't seen before and which includes some very good acting. I wish that I knew more about Reynaud as I think that he might have been as much of an innovator as Winsor McCay, though his work isn't as well-known. This was my first time seeing originals by Heinrich Kley (in colour and black and white) and Beatrix Potter.

In addition, there was a separate floor with pop art that had been influenced by Disney.

There's a 350 page catalog with English and French editions available at the museum. If you order it, make sure you specify which language you want.

The exhibit was almost too much to absorb in a single visit. If I lived in Montreal, I don't doubt that I would have visited the exhibit several times.

This is the only North American stop for this exhibit and there's nothing like looking at originals. You will know several of the pieces on exhibit here from various books, but the reproductions can't compare to the originals. This is even true for the animation drawings. If you're looking for an excuse to go away for a weekend, it will probably be a while before this much Disney artwork is on display again. Catch it while you can.

Anniversary

The rant below is a fitting way to mark this blog's first anniversary. Thanks to all of you for stopping by. A special thanks to Hans Perk, whose animation drafts have made a lot of this blog's content possible.

More on Brando

(If you haven't seen On the Waterfront, please don't watch the clip. See the whole film first. This scene won't have the same impact out of context and seeing this clip will ruin the experience of watching the film. If you have seen the film, click and refresh your memory.)

Marlon Brando - On the Waterfront

I've had a request to go deeper into the Brando thing, so I will. The first thing I want to say is that it takes more than acting chops to produce a result a great as Brando produces. The role has to be crafted a certain way.

There are three types of conflict: character vs. character, character vs. circumstances and character vs. self. The first is the most obvious and it's where most animated films live. It's just good guys and bad guys. These characters may be very entertaining, but unless there's also the other kinds of conflict, they remain shallow. Cruella de Vil is beautifully designed and animated, but she's a flamboyant piece of cardboard. There is nothing complex about the character. She has attitude and nothing else. The same is true for characters like Shere Khan and Capt. Hook. All these characters have one track minds and the writing and acting challenge is to find a way to make them interesting to watch. It's not easy and I'm not minimizing the creativity and effort that goes into these characters, but ultimately they are simplistic.

The above Brando scene, on the surface, is also character vs. character. Rod Steiger wants Brando do something and Brando isn't sure what he wants to do. Steiger decides to let Brando go rather than force the issue. But the scene is far richer because it is also character vs. situation and most importantly, character vs. self. Steiger can't acknowledge that he sacrificed Brando's career for profit. Steiger pulls a gun on Brando even though he loves him. Ultimately, he can't go through with using force and lets Brando get away. Steiger is balanced between loving Brando and manipulating him and the scene revolves around what Steiger will do.

Brando is torn between what Steiger wants him to do and what he dimly perceives is right. He knows that Steiger has betrayed him in the past and caused him great pain, but he still loves Steiger. His position leaves him with no self-respect and he senses that he's got to change if he's going to survive, but he knows that changing is going to be painful and dangerous.

It's not simply who's stronger or more clever. Each character has to make decisions that define who he is and each knows it. Each decision has a huge moral implication. Is there a scene anywhere in animation that is as complex as this one? That's not a rhetorical question. If there is, I'd love to know about it.

Many actors would have played this scene less effectively than Brando and Steiger, but at least they would have had something to work with. Brando was in many films where the writing couldn't support his abilities and the results are not effective. There has to be a well-developed role before an actor can do his or her best work. Being Brando or as good as Brando isn't sufficient.

In animation, there are two things working against the possibility of a scene like this. The first is that the writing isn't ambitious enough. I'm not saying that every animated film has to aspire to the power of this scene, but not enough of them do. Children's entertainment has been dumbed down and made morally simplistic. Family films are more complex, but because children are part of the audience, the film makers are afraid to upset children or present characters who are beyond a child's understanding. The cost of animated features is a powerful incentive to not offend or confuse potential customers.

(In animation's defense, large budget live action films have fallen into the same trap. The live films that have avoided this are lower budget and released in time for Oscar consideration. They're delicacies that are only in season for a few months a year.)

The second problem is that even when animators are cast by character, they're still sharing the character and so developing a complex personality is next to impossible. That's one reason why voice actors are so important in holding a performance together. Brando was unique, as are all good actors. It's impossible for several animators to be unique in the same way. Instead, their uniqueness has to be sanded down into something closer to average so that their scenes can fit together.

Are there animators who are capable of a performance like Brando's? Perhaps. But the story material isn't there and the industry isn't structured to give animators the chance. In essence, we've limited the writing possibilities and put animators on a short leash, so it's no wonder that the gap between animated and live acting is so wide. And to be clear, I'm not arguing for animation that imitates Brando's acting. What I'm looking for is animated acting that creates the same powerful effect on audiences as Brando's.

I mentioned Gollum because the character was conceived with the same level of complexity as those played by Brando and Steiger. Gollum is also torn between choices that have moral implications. Anyone familiar with Tolkien's books knows how the film will end, but Gollum's success on film comes from how convincingly the character wrestles with his choices.

For Peter Jackson and Andy Serkis, this type of character is part and parcel of what they do. Serkis has played Shakespeare, who fills his plays with characters of this type. Hamlet, MacBeth and Othello all have to make morally difficult choices that determine their fates. For animation, this kind of character is rare or non-existent. A character's choices are usually unambiguously good or evil.

There is room for all kinds of animation and all kinds of animated content. I'm not arguing for a single standard. But what future does a medium have when it voluntarily abandons the aspiration to create work that compares with the best of other art forms? That's what animation has done and it's why there's no animated equivalent of Brando.

Where's Our Brando?

Eva Marie Saint and Marlon Brando
in On the Waterfront

Turner Classic Movies ran part 1 of a documentary on Marlon Brando last night, along with several of Brando's films. Part 2 of the documentary airs tonight followed by more Brando films.

Watching the clips, I asked myself if anyone in animation was the equivalent of Brando. Maybe Bill Tytla or Glen Keane, but in each case, they weren't served particularly well by the industry. When Tytla left Disney, he lost all chances for worthy roles. Keane had a good role with the Beast, but Alladin, Pocahontas and Tarzan are thin by comparison.

I'm very aware of the constraints placed on us by business people, though I often wonder if we haven't helped with the ropes while we were being bound. I frankly don't think that there's been an animator as good as Brando and I don't think that animators even aspire that high.

Maybe the animated character to come closest to Brando is Gollum. I think that it's significant that he was a character in a live action film and at least some of his performance came from a live actor. Animation artists just aren't thinking in these terms and it's one of the reasons we're stuck at the kiddie table.

Pinocchio Part 7A

I don't mean to let so much time pass between posting the mosaic for a section and the commentary, but things do get in the way. If you're looking for the mosaic for part 7, you can find it here.

There is some confusion here as to credits. I have listed Tom Oreb for scenes 42 and 43, but I was browsing through Jack Kinney's book and he mentions a Frank Oreb. I'm pretty sure that I've got the credit wrong and the scenes belong to Frank. I also made that mistake for section 1.6, scene 42. My apologies.

On page 27 of the original edition (and maybe later editions) of Disney Animation: The Illusion of Life, there are drawings of Jiminy at the bottom of the page that Frank and Ollie credit to Ward Kimball. These drawings appear to come from scenes 41 and 42. However, the draft says that these scenes are by Milt Kahl. In this case, I have no idea who is right.



Finally, there's been debate about Shamus Culhane's animation of Honest John and Gideon. Culhane is not credited for any scenes here, but his assistant Norm Tate is. On page 193 of the hardcover of Talking Animals and Other People, Culhane prints a drawing that looks like it should be from scene 19. However, it doesn't match the finished frames. Pinocchio is picking up an apple, not his book as in Culhane's drawing, and Honest John's pose is similar, but not exactly the same. This doesn't really do anything to clarify the situation, as there's no way of knowing how much of Culhane's work survives in the final animation. I should also point out that Marvin Woodward is credited with Pinocchio in this scene, so Culhane would not have done that character in any case.

I took Les Clark to task in Part 6 for how he drew Pinocchio's face when he wasn't smiling. Marvin Woodward has similar expressions in scenes 16-19 and 22 and makes Pinocchio's face more attractive than Clark was able to. I'll be curious to see if Clark has any later Pinocchio scenes and whether or not he got more comfortable with drawing the character.

This is the first sequence of the film where layout was supervised by Ken O'Connor. While there have been bravura crane shots earlier in the film, O'Connor is much more aggressive in his use of camera angles in shots that include character animation. Preston Blair does scene 53, a high angle shot of three characters singing and dancing. The numbering of that shot is so out of whack with the surrounding shots that it appears that the shot might have originally been the climax to the sequence. Hugh Fraser and Phil Duncan animate the low angle scene 27 and Sam Cobean does the worm's eye and bird's eye views of scenes 30 and 31. I don't envy the animators on those shots as the drawing challenges are tremendous. I'll bet that a lot of profanity was aimed in Ken O'Connor's direction by these four animators.

Animation wise, this is another sequence where there is relatively little animator consistency. Each character is handled by multiple animators, sometimes in consecutive shots. When I look at a sequence like this, there's no question in my mind that the acting had to have been worked out before the animators started drawing or the characterizations would not be consistent. This sequence introduces the fox and the cat, so it's not like the animators had another sequence to refer to. Whether it was Disney himself, the board artists, the character layout artists or directors Luske, Sharpsteen or Hee, somebody (or everybody) had to nail down the performances or they would have been all over the map. As good as the animation is here, the animators didn't make the major contribution to the performances.

Bill Watterson on School, Work, Art and Commerce

As this is the graduation season, I'd like to point you to a commencement address that Calvin and Hobbes cartoonist Bill Watterson made to the students of his alma mater, Kenyon College, in 1990. Included are these thoughts:

It's surprising how hard we'll work when the work is done just for ourselves. And with all due respect to John Stuart Mill, maybe utilitarianism is overrated. If I've learned one thing from being a cartoonist, it's how important playing is to creativity and happiness.

and these:

I tell you all this because it's worth recognizing that there is no such thing as an overnight success. You will do well to cultivate the resources in yourself that bring you happiness outside of success or failure. The truth is, most of us discover where we are headed when we arrive. At that time, we turn around and say, yes, this is obviously where I was going all along. It's a good idea to try to enjoy the scenery on the detours, because you'll probably take a few.

Thanks to Jason Kim for posting this.