Papa Yogi: George Nicholas

Limited animation done right
Here's a good Yogi cartoon animated by George Nicholas and laid out by Walter Clinton.


The drawings and animation are cartoony and stylish at the same time. It show hows when you don't force (good) artists to trace model sheets you can get unique and funny cartoons - even when they only cost $3,000 for 6 minutes.

One thing I love about the earliest HB cartoons is that there are so many combinations of layout artist, animator and background painter. None of them are forced to a strict standardized look and the constant random mix of artists makes all the cartoons look different. Accidental experiments. This shaking up of the creative elements from cartoon to cartoon really works when you are using good artists- and especially when they came from different classic studios. George Nicholas was from Disney, Walt Clinton from MGM's Tex Avery cartoons and it's fun to see the mix. I'm not sure where BG painter Joe Montell came from, but his style is different than Lozzi and Monte's so that's neat too. I wish I could see Dan Gordon's storyboard drawings. I have xeroxes of a few of his HB board panels and they are really fun and lively. I'm sure he influenced the final look of Papa Yogi as well.

I think the people who hate HB might be thinking of the more standardized bland looking cartoons that came so shortly after this. There are a lot more of those than the few good ones that makes me like them.

Papa Yogi is a 2nd season cartoon- 1959-60, the year after the Huckleberry Hound Show came out. This season's cartoons are somewhat slicker than the first season. They actually have some animation in them. The first season used a lot of popping from still pose to still pose - like colored animatics. The year after this for some odd reason, everything fell apart in the HB kid cartoons. Yogi looks like hell all of a sudden. Maybe because they put their best people on The Flintstones, I'm not sure. Maybe the Yowp blog will explain it to us one day.

http://yowpyowp.blogspot.com/

Yowp is celebrating the great June Foray's birthday this week.

Johnny Hart and Specific Characters

SPECIFIC CARTOON PERSONALITIES ARE RARE BUT SPECIAL

One of the things about Hart that really influenced me is how specific some of his characters were. Most cartoon characters are pretty simple stereotypes, but the kind of cartoons I respond to most are the ones with the most unique personalities - and the artists who are able to draw the personalities, not just write them.

Popeye, Bugs Bunny, Yogi Bear, some Peanuts characters..there really is only a handful of complex characters in our whole history. Specific is naturally funny.

WHAT IS A SPECIFIC PERSONALITY?

What do I mean by specific?



I could also say a character who has a few traits that you would never think to put together, some odd contradictions and some random unrelated traits. That's how real people are.

Most people don't analyze things into their separate parts. If they did, they would realize that many things and people they think of as whole entities are really mishmashes of odd parts. We glue the mismatched parts in our heads and don't question them. The most interesting people are the ones with the most mishmash.

SIMPLE CARTOON PERSONALITIES

Think of how many generic cartoon stereotypes there are.
The big dumb strong guy. The little mean guy. The wiseacre. The normal guy. The 'tude guy. The assertive modern girl. None of those characters make up whole characters. There aren't enough mismatched unrelated traits.

Animation has the worst history of shallow characters. Mickey, Sneezy, Grumpy, Happy, etc. Characters who either have no trait at all, or just one.

JOHNNY HART'S RANGE OF SPECIFICITY

Johnny Hart has characters that range from the completely generic to the most specific.

B.C. has no personality.

Thor is a frustrated inventor who sometimes has a way with girls. Not enough to make a full character.

Peter is a snooty know-it-all. We've seen that many times.

Curls is sarcastic.

The cute girl is the cute girl. That's it.

The fat Broad is more interesting. She is a man-hunter. She loves men but also wants to dominate them. She hates snakes and beats them to a pulp.

Hart's most specific characters though, have the oddest traits.

CLUMSY CARP

Clumsy Carp is clumsy. By itself, not much of anything.

He also is an ichthyologist - he studies fish, especially rare prehistoric ones. He spends hours a day with his head under water watching the odd fish go by.

WILEY

Wiley is the oddest, most specific character of all. He has the most unique and unrelated traits:

He is a poet.
He hates water - actually fears and is repulsed by it.

He is scraggly and has a peg leg.

He is superstitious. Superstition is one of the funniest traits a human can have and Hart really draws superstitious fear and outrage with great conviction.

He distrusts anything new - especially women. The very fact that women are so appealing makes him distrust them. When Hart combines Wiley's phobias it's really funny.

I always wondered - how did Hart decide on these weird combinations of traits? They work great and real people are like that, but it's not usual to see it in cartoons. Did he just sit down and make a list of these traits and build a character around them? Or did he draw Wiley first and then come up with traits for him?

Other specific characters in comics and cartoons tended to evolve. Popeye wasn't quite as weird as he became later. Bugs evolved over a few cartoons. The Peanuts characters started as generic characters and little by little grew specific odd traits. Linus is insecure and needs to clutch his blanket. We accept that as normal now, but how did Schultz come up with that? Schroeder was just a small kid but then started playing the piano. I can't remember whether Lucy sprung into character full blown or whether she evolved.

Hart and Schultz' comics are not as funny as the best animated cartoons, or Don Martin comics, but they have something else that we instinctively crave in entertainment- characters that seem real - and by real, that usually means unexpected combinations of odd traits. We read those comics because we like to follow the adventures of the characters. We don't need a belly laugh every step of the way. The weirdness of the personalities and how they play off each other is entertainment.

CARTOONISTS ARE AT A DISADVANTAGE TO ACTORS IN CREATING CHARACTERS

When live actors create specific characters for TV and movies, they bring a lot of themselves to the character. Even if the script doesn't create fully blown personalities and quirks in the writing, an interesting actor can fill in the gaps with his own idiosyncrasies, look and voice.





We in cartoons have to come up with it almost from scratch and that's why cartoon characters in general are pretty stereotypical and simple compared to live characters. So when someone like Johnny Hart comes along and creates specific characters from scratch, it's mighty impressive.

STEREOTYPICAL GROUPS MADE UP OF UNRELATED RANDOM TRAITS

You could take this idea of unrelated odd traits a step farther and think of whole groups of people who are stereotyped. Like, you're either a "democrat" or a "republican". When you actually list the beliefs and traits that make up either group, you can find a lot of unrelated randomly selected attributes that the poor members have to believe and accept in order to belong to their chosen stereotype.

Republicans believe in Guns and Jesus - 2 completely incompatible philosophies.
They believe in "right to life", until you grow up and then they send you to get your head blown off. They believe in unrestrained capitalism, even though a huge chunk of their group are poor rednecks who are the last to benefit from this belief.
Like Joe the Goddamn Plumber. Republican radio hosts have hard rock music for their intros. Someone explain that one to me. Shouldn't they only have country music?


Democrats believe in defending the rights of the poor, but wouldn't be caught dead hanging out with any of them. They also believe in political correctness and not offending other groups - even though the poor people they defend are probably the least politically correct people in the country.You could make a long list of the beliefs and traits of any group of people and find totally random unrelated parts that make up the whole we recognize as the group.

Why Cartoon Animation Steered Off Course

It happened in the late 40s.

ANIMATION GREW FASTER THAN ANY ART FORM IN HISTORY

From the 20s and through the 30s animation exploded as an art form. From simple stick figures to a whole new discipline that took advantage of a visual element that was never possible before - movement.

A few animation "principles" were developed and refined within less than a decade!

IT WAS THE MOST APPEALING OF ALL VISUAL ARTS

Animation, born of the also recent invention of cartoon art and comics was a whole new way of looking at the world.

ITS WHOLE POINT WAS TO DISTILL THE FUN - LEAVE OUT THE BORING PARTS

It took all the boring parts out of life and just left the fun parts. It was fun to look at and fun to watch move. It told funny, ridiculous stories. It was the ice cream of the arts and because of it became the most popular of all the visual arts. Most people like fun - except executives who prefer market research.

To me the first half of the 20th century could be known as "The Cartoon Age" just as well as "The Jazz Age" or "The Age Of Progress".

IT WAS NOT CONSIDERED ART- IT WAS MERE "ENTERTAINMENT"

Astoundingly, this unbelievable new creative medium didn't get much respect - surely because it was so inventive and obviously directly enjoyable by so many people.

Some comic strips artists were respected (and made tons of money) but animators - who were doing a much more sophisticated form of cartoon got paid less and no respect. Most animators, excluding Walt Disney, were practically anonymous - unlike their comic strip counterparts who were rich and famous.

ANIMATION ARTISTS CAN'T DRAW AS WELL AS ILLUSTRATORS AND GET LESS RESPECT

Even the best draftsmen of animation's Golden Age couldn't draw as well as the average illustrators from the same period and I think many suffered an inferiority complex because of it.

This was probably mostly Walt Disney's fault. His own inferiority complex was contagious and poisoned much of the rest of the business.

He diverted almost everyone away from their natural cartooning instincts and made them all want to create "quality" rather than fun. Quality meant animating things that other mediums could do better and much more easily, like:

More detail
Human proportions
Elaborate special effects
Spectacle
Crying
Tribes of Naked Babies

None of these things lend themselves naturally to animation. They just make the work harder and eat away precious time that could be better spent being imaginative and doing what only cartoons and animation can do.

But creative cartoons and impossible magical animation don't get respect, remember. They just generate tons of money for the studios that release them - who in turn crap on the artists who made all the money for them.


ANIMATION ARTISTS TOOK MOVEMENT FOR GRANTED BECAUSE THEY WERE SO GOOD AT IT

Animators too busy comparing themselves unfavorably to illustrators, comic strip artists, live action movies and other related forms of art didn't realize how wonderful and unique their own skills were. The things you could only do in cartoons and the crazy amount of skill the animators developed in performing them came so natural to them that they didn't think much of them.

ANIMATION FIGURED OUT ITS BASICS BY 1940 - then stopped

What we think of today as "animation principles" were pretty much figured out by 1940 and nobody invented any new ones after that. For a few more years, they developed and refined this handful of techniques and produced the best animation in history.

ANIMATION LEADERS AIMED MORE AT THE DRAWINGS THAN THE MOVEMENT BY THE MID 40S

While most animation leaders stopped developing new techniques in movement itself, they instead started thinking about "improvement" coming only from the drawings themselves. Different studios and leaders approached this in different ways, but all of them slowed down or reversed the tools that made animation its own unique art form.

DISNEY - MORE COMPLICATED DESIGNS - SAME MOTION PRINCIPLES AND FORMULAS

Disney kept designing more and more complicated or "realistic" characters. They didn't change the way they moved them so much, just made it harder to move them.

Taller proportions-long legs. Much harder to move convincingly.

More detail - the more details on a character, the slower and more difficult it becomes to animate the character. More effort is expended on just not making jerky mistakes than on making the characters fun and entertaining. For 25 years, Disney's characters became harder and harder to draw, but the animation hardly varied at all. The characters moved the same way the simpler characters did - according to old Disney formulae.

Other animators see how technically well animated these elaborate Disney features are and know the incredible effort that went into them and are impressed. This doesn't automatically impress laymen or the audience though.

CHUCK JONES - LESS ANIMATION, MORE CLEVER AND STYLISH POSES

Chuck Jones developed his own unique drawing style and humor and year by year, toned down the animators' input or directed it to point to Chuck's poses and expressions. By 1948 he was making his funniest cartoons, but the animation was less inventive and fun for its own sake than just a couple years earlier.

By the late 50s the animation had become completely stiff and Jones' drawing style tastelessly out of control.

UPA - MORE LIKE RESPECTABLE MAGAZINE CARTOONS - STYLIZED - LESS ANIMATION

Magazine cartoonists drawing for Punch or The New Yorker got a lot more intellectual respect that cartoons from the "funny papers" or animation. Don't ask me why. The UPA artists drifted towards these graphic styles and abandoned creative movement - and definitely funny drawing almost altogether.

IN GENERAL - MORE TALK, LESS WALK

By the late 50s most non-Disney cartoons were left without clever and fun motion. Instead they traced back layout poses to make evenly timed inbetweens. The characters talked a lot more than they moved.

Disney continued doing elaborate movement because they could afford to and they believed still that that was what animation should do - it should move. At least!

But it was mostly movements you had already seen before in previous features.

The exception would be the imitation UPA cartoons they did - the ones you see imitated in all the "Art of Pixar" books.

These flattened Disney cartoons look to me like a misunderstanding of the UPA philosophy. Disney made harsh looking cold designs, but animated them very fluidly as if they were still animating Mickey and Donald. It's definitely clever (the first time!) but not very entertaining - except to Cal Arts alumni.

CLAMPETT LEFT WARNER BROS. IN 1946

All growing art forms need bold charismatic talented leaders. Clampett was the biggest most influential leader in funny cartoons for the first half of the 40s and everyone imitated him - even Disney was obviously influenced.

His cartoons were constantly inventive and he wasn't a total slave to the "Disney principles". He more than anyone, kept expanding the medium of impossible movement (animation) and dragged the rest of the business along with him while constantly creating and developing characters.

Then at the peak of his inventiveness and the peak of the Golden Age - he up and left!

Some say he was fired, he says he quit. But I think this single event in animation history was the most catastrophic thing we've ever endured. His momentum carried Warner Bros. for a few more years even as they gradually slowed down, but it created a hole in the art form that has never been filled.

TEX AVERY LAST LEADER TO KEEP UP CARTOONY ANIMATION

Tex Avery was the last leader to continue doing cartoony inventive animation, but he had less influence than Clampett because he didn't create characters. He made gag cartoons based on funny ideas rather than stories about funny personalities.

History has decided to award him the creation of Bugs Bunny, somewhat arbitrarily in my opinion - but how could it be that someone who created the greatest animated cartoon character in history could never again create even 1 character that the public really wanted to follow?

TEX DIDN'T CREATE CHARACTERS AND THE PUBLIC WOULD RATHER STICK WITH LESS FUNNY CHARACTERS THAN MORE FUNNY CONCEPT CARTOONS

Tex still made some of the funniest cartoons ever, but we remember Chuck Jones, Hanna Barbera and Disney more. - because we associate them with casts of characters. Most humans would rather watch continuing adventures with characters they are familiar with than a series of brilliant one-shot cartoons. Of course we love star characters the best, but we'll even take less charismatic continuing characters if there aren't any stars around.

It's a natural impulse for us to bond with friends. We bowl with our neighbors and party with them - even if they are not the most interesting folks in the city. Today's networks have come to realize this. They will leave a boring series on the air long past the period where they aren't getting ratings - because the audience will soon get used to the characters and accept them and even believe they are entertaining. Especially since there is no competition.

THE END
Tex was the last guy to uphold cartoon animation's roots, but he wasn't enough of an influence by the 50s to halt the ever more decadent trends that the rest of his colleagues were following.

Progress died and even worse - cartoons as a unique form of entertainment and art died.

1st Season Rocky and Bullwinkle - Great Design and Style

They had some really good layout artists and designers on the first episodes of Rocky and Bullwinkle.


Here are some images from the first and 2nd episode. I don't who the designer/layout artist is, but he is topnotch.

His drawings have all the classic principles -

PRINCIPLES OF GOOD CARTOON DRAWING

PLUS

Style

Design

Every pose he does of Bullwinkle is different in the details. They all follow the general idea of Bullwinkle-the basic shapes, the basic proportions, yet the artist experiments with the specifics in every single pose.

You can describe Bullwinkle's designs in general terms-with adjectives.
He is tall and thin
He has a long neck
short skinny legs
knobby knees
A furry peanut shaped torso
His head is made of two shapes, a small rounded cranium and a larger droopy nose and muzzle.
Goofy eyes

The exact dimensions of all these adjectives is not set in stone. A great designer can play with the proportions, angles and specific details and still make the characters recognizable.

There is no tracing of model sheets.

The artist messes around with the specific details to keep everything organic, alive....and artistic.

FUNCTIONAL FIRST, STYLE AND DESIGN 2ND

The variations on the general theme of Bullwinkle are not totally arbitrary either. The artist makes sure his poses are functional first-they tell the story, they show us the emotion of the character, they act and they are perfectly staged so we can tell what's going on.

http://johnkstuff.blogspot.com/2007/01/functional-drawings1-draw-with-purpose.html

These variations from "model" are done with extreme control, guided by instinct and taste.
Today, this seeming freedom can be misinterpreted as having no rules. An amateur artist who considers himself a designer ends up drawing anarchic shapes that don't fit together, what we sometimes call "wonky". It's a misunderstanding of the 50s style of design.

EPISODE 1








Note that the characters evolve from the first episode to the second. The first episode drawings are fun and creative, but by the 2nd, the artist is comfortable with characters and is in "the zone" He now understands them intimately and is able to be a lot freer with the designs and poses.

EPISODE 2
Totally clear staging and silhouettes.

I love the way they drew Rocky back then too. He's so much more appealing and streamlined than the lumpy disjointed thing he became.The proportions of many famous cartoon characters tend to get evened out with time. They lose fun, spontaneity and life.Yikes!

The mouth animation is really creative and fun in this early stuff.

These 2 close ups of Bullwinkle have completely different proportions, but does the viewer notice?

His nose is turned down above, and up below. Why not?

I love the odd proportions-the tiny hands compared to the giant head. Great designers use strong contrasts in their shapes and sizes.
The shapes in this image are fantastic. So much thought! Look at the way Rocky's eyes are angled apart at the top.
His skull slopes back and the eyes follow that plane.
The interesting angles in his flying cap.
The organic cube.
The keys that splay outward at bottom.

This artist is very observant and creative at the same time.


How cool was Boris?
I also like the thick itchy lines. I wonder what they inked the cells with? It must have been done by an artist too, because it's done with such flair.

Genius!

I really like this UPA closed eye theory. It's abstract yet still drawn to wrap around the face.

Wow!

This stuff is pure cartoon candy.





You know who this artist reminds me of?

George Baker. It's a crunchy angular sort of style that still has underlying great drawing principles. I loved the covers of these comics when I was a kid. Still do!


Super crunchy!
Goddamn I like these drawings.

If you gotta do limited animation, use great drawings I always say. They don't cost that much. Just hire real designers and don't step on them.



I recommend this dvd with a big warning:

It has some great drawings here and there.
The Fractured Fairy Tales are generally good design and well animated.
Some of the bumpers are really clever and beautiful

BUT!

The people who put this out really did a number on the cartoons.

DVNR
Different voices! - In some cartoons the voices have been changed!
Rerecorded music
The wrong title sequence-it's not the first season title sequence which was really cool.

I can't understand the logic of messing with classic film and TV. Especially when they market it as "original" - "The complete First Season" which is a flat out lie.

If they know that collectors want the films untouched by executives, why do they waste the money changing everything?