Solid Ivory - Axe Sequence

Here's a sequence from one of my favorite Lantz cartoons: Solid Ivory.
It shows a perfect combination of good direction and animation happening at the same time. You don't always find these two skills in the same film. When they are working together its cartoon magic.
The director (Dick Lundy) did the overall timing and cutting. It looks like it's mostly on a 10x beat - a "march beat". Same beat I used for the "Happy Happy Joy Joy" song. 10x beats evoke a feeling of nervous energy. Don't ask me why.
Within that beat, it has a good variety of contrasts in the timing. Some things happen fast, and other things are slower or more evenly timed. It all adds up to visual melody.
The animation is very cartoony and elastic. It's full of principles but they are all subservient to the gags. You're not thinking to yourself "My, what wonderful squash and stretch", or "How beautiful is that overlapping action?" as you might in "Lady and The Tramp" or "Cats Don't Dance" where you can admire the motion on a technical level, but it all seems just too conscious of following all the animation rules and tricks for their own sake.
These Lantz cartoons are aimed mainly at kids (or grown up cartoon freaks like me). They aren't as funny, witty or layered as WB cartoons were, but that's fine. It gives the kids and purists what they want - crazy but controlled action and gags, slapstick, violence and loads of life. LIFE! - which seems to be missing from cartoons today. Modern cartoons don't seem to be "alive" anymore no matter how much money is spent on them. They look "manufactured" instead. Like committees of zombies get together and read all the rules to each other then put the cartoon together with tape one rule at a time.
Woody doesn't have a boatload of personality, but he has a huge reservoir of motivation and energy - like most kids - before the world of serious dull adults wears it out of them.
This is pure fun for fun sake - made with love, instinct and lots of superhuman skill.



http://www.cartoonthrills.org/blog/lantz/47SolidIvory/woodyAxe24xsmall.mov

Even the camera moves had life in the old cartoons! They are organic (as if the viewer is actually following the action with his human head and eyeballs) - unlike today's inhuman mathematical camera moves calculated on dead uncaring computers. Look at the great camera shakes in the scenes where Woody slams into the wooden shack.

I'm going to put up shorter clips from this to illustrate some of the principles and concepts I've talked about in previous posts.

Wanna know the best way to learn animation? Study frame by frame the animation in classic 30s and 40s cartoons. Like these Woody Woodpeckers:



Or any of the cartoons I organized for you here:


CLASSIC CARTOON SHORTS FROM THE GOLDEN AGE

GET YER BASICS WITH RUBBER HOSE CARTOONS

DISNEY CLASSIC FEATURES

Harvey Kurtzman - Opposing Poses, LIFE

Harvey Kurtzman is one of my top favorite cartoonists. I could go on forever about his skills, but I'll start with just a couple important ones to do with character. His characters seem alive. Motivated from within. They aren't tracings of model sheets, or awkward accidental poses.

Here are a couple tools he uses to achieve this.

His characters each individually have direct poses and lines of action, but he goes a step further.

He composes each line of action and silhouette so that the characters dynamically oppose each other. They aren't parallel or mirror images of each other.

Their poses work together to create a composition and contrasts in their attitudes and respective total energies. The character with the stronger pose has more energy and is generally the focus of the panel. The other character is generally reacting to the more dynamic one. He will have less energy - which is described by a less dynamic pose - or line of action.
Harvey makes his characters' poses compose together. The negative shapes between them are beautiful and functional, as they help you see the contrasts in their attitudes.


This quality of being able to draw characters that seem completely alive and moving and progressing emotionally from pose to pose is a rare talent - too rare. It's what you need to be an animator. Kurtzman would have been a natural animator.


You don't see many comics that have this much life. We've come to accept much comic art as being stiff, using repetitive poses and appearing smug in their stagnant repetitiveness.
Sadly, this has crossed over into modern cartoons-expensive ones at that! And leagues of fans defend this stagnation as somehow being an artistic choice, rather than just a lack of knowledge or extreme conservatism. Life essence is now considered "too cartoony".
If you want to improve your posing, life and compositions, then you need this cartoon bible in your library, and you should copy the poses as an exercise every morning before you start your regular work. Then apply this quality of living characters to your own drawings and watch them come to life too.

Animation Book Library

Classic Cartoon History

Here are some great books on classic cartoons. I put them roughly in order of the periods.

Maltin's book is a great overview of all the studios. You can tell he really loves his subject. He gives you a good feel of what was going on at all the various Golden Age studios.

The first real animated cartoon character star. I think everyone since owes a huge debt to Otto Messmer and Felix. We are using techniques, ideas and cliches today that began with this creation. Felix is truly the father of cartoony cartoons.

Wait'll you read the ugly true life story!

Walt Disney's silent cartoons.

To me, The Fleischers had the most creative studio of the 1930s. They invented all kinds of techniques never again equaled, and made the first cartoons with fully developed personalities that contrasted and played off each other.

This is a really interesting book about that genius-jack-of-all-trades, Ubbe Iwerks. It also has great stories about the many stars that worked with him, including Grim Natwick, Irv Spence, Bob and Chuck, Shamus and more.

There are about a zillion books about the history and growth of the Disney Studio. They are all very biased towards Disney's own historical account of animation (which basically discounts all other studios). Even so, The Art Of Walt Disney is a very inspiring book and is as good as any of them.

A good overview of the Warner Bros. cartoons, with lots of great production art -especially background paintings.

Celebrating decades of fun with the greatest cartoon star in history.

Jerry Beck's history of Tweety and Sylvester includes the back stories of their first appearances without each other.

A warm look at the Looney Tunes Studio from someone who was there. It's refreshingly absent of politics and critical opinions. Martha gives you the feeling that it was a really fun place to work and all the people were great. Makes you wish there was a funny cartoon studio today.

Chuck Jones wrote an autobiography...twice! The first one has more original drawings from the actual cartoons. By the middle of the first one, he got the idea to trace over his old drawings to update them to his more modern angular style, and by the second book, almost all the drawings were updated retracings of the old ones. So get the first if you like the original drawings of the characters from the 40s and 50s.

Strangely, after writing the same book twice, he forgot both times to talk about his cohort and biggest influence - Bob Clampett. Thank God that there are Blogs to fill in the gaps!

A hugely inspiring book! This book completely changed my way of thinking about cartoons. Joe really thought about the cartoons he loves most and d his thoughts clearly and with lots of fun.

Great interviews with Tex and Mike Maltese too.

A too often forgotten studio and its story. Walter Lantz produced lots and lots of fine wonderful cartoons. His studio was a swinging door for top animators from other studios and the combination of styles that came together in this melting pot found room for creativity and ideas that could not have happened at other studios.

I get these two books mixed up, but if I remember correctly, they both have lots of large sized production art in them and tons of great model sheets.

We all love Mary Blair of course and this is the best source for her work. The book suffers from dark printing and too small images of her paintings, but where else can you find them all together?

Canemaker gives us an exciting glimpse into the preproduction art from Disney cartoons (which is more inventive than many of the final cartoons!)

Preproduction art for Disney cartoons never made.

Amid is more intense than any UPA fan ever! This book is chock full of great production and preproduction art and has history of many long forgotten stylized studios of the 1950s and 60s.

Post-Classic Cartoons

The story behind the bravest man in modern cartoons.

Instructional




The original Preston Blair book is the best "how to" animation book ever written. Beware of the million imposters!

The Illusion Of Life is largely a propaganda book to teach us that no one else ever made any cartoons that were worth a damn and that Disney created everything, BUT it has a great section on the 12 priniciples of animation which every animator and fan should know.

Reference

A synopsis of every single Warner Bros. cartoon for uber-nerds like me and you.

I have the first edition of this book, full of hilarious spelling and grammatical errors, but I love every page. It lists the most obscure cartoon series and every damn episode!

This is where I first found a complete list - in order of every Yogi Bear cartoon! I know you all need that.

I haven't seen this one, but imagine it is similar to the encyclopedia, except about the creators, instead of the cartoon characters.

Fun

Jerry knows why we really like cartoons. because they are fun, and these books are designed to let us in on some long lost thrills.

David Gerstein put out a great compilation of Otto Messmer's Felix The Cat comics from the early 30s.


Now curiously, where is a book on Clampett?