Author Archive

Wednesday, June 7th, 2023

RefPack052: Sports, Slapstick, Dinosaurs, Cartoony Music And More!

Reference Pack

Every other month, Animation Resources shares a new Reference Pack with its members. They consist of e-books packed with high resolution scans video downloads of rare animated films set up for still frame study, as well as podcasts and documentaries— all designed to help you become a better artist. Make sure you download this Reference Pack before it’s updated. When it’s gone, it’s gone!


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The latest Animation Resources Reference Pack has been uploaded to the server. Here’s a quick overview of what you’ll find when you log in to the members only page…

PDF E-BOOK
Willard Mullin

Willard Mullin Dailies 1941-1946
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New York Daily World-Telegram
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Willard Mullin was a genius at depicting the human form in motion. His characters seemed to spring off the page with life and vitality. Mullin’s characters ran the gamut from heroes to everyman characters. His influence extended far beyond the newspaper world to cartoonists like Jack Davis and the Disney animator John Sibley. For animators, Mullin’s sketches are a revelation because they appear to be already in motion. His knowledge of anatomy merged perfectly with the spirit of the action to create gesture drawings of the highest order. Best of all, his drawings are steeped in fun. They encapsulate the spirit of casual camradery shared by all of the sports fans in the bleachers on a sunny afternoon.

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Rite Of Spring

Two Visions Of Prehistoric Times
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Rite Of Spring From Fantasia (Disney/1940) / Bolero From Allegro Non Troppo (1976)

From beginning to end the environments and animals in "Rite Of Spring" look real, not at all like an animated cartoon. Disney’s artists worked with paleontologists and were clearly influenced by the work of Charles Knight, a wildlife artist who worked with the American Museum of Natural History in the early decades of the 20th century to reconstruct the way the prehistoric animal skeletons on display may have looked when they were alive. Disney’s animated depiction of this ancient world is experiential, a lot like a theme park ride.

Allegro Non Troppo

Bozetto’s telling of the story of the dinosaurs has meaning and satirical comment that leaves the audience thinking. Starting out with a satirical gag- life on Earth starts with littering in outer space- the music starts and life emerges from the primeval ooze… or at least from high fructose corn syrup! Bozetto doesn’t just stick to the animals seen in museums, he creates his own creatures. They develop an edge that allows them to flourish for a time, only to be replaced by an animal that develops and even better edge on survival. The music propels the entire piece forward as an inevitable progression, which interestingly enough represents evolution much better than Disney’s "Rite" did.


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A Quiet Glade

A Quiet Glade
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Boris Dyozhkin / Soyuzmultfilm, Russia / 1946
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"A Quiet Glade" starts off as a typical three bears cartoon. They look for a quiet place to hang their hammocks and nap, but noisy woodland creatures prevent that. It seems as if Dyozhkin discovered this story was too thin to sustain a whole cartoon, so halfway through, he introduces a soccer game with rabbits. The fast action perfectly suits Dyozhkin’s style of snappy timing, and this sequence established the format for many of his films to follow. Make sure to still frame through this film to break down the timing of the action.

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Lotte Reiniger

Silhouetten Opernhaus: Carmen
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Lotte Reiniger / Germany / 1933

Lotte Reiniger is one of the most important figures in the history of animation. She made the oldest surviving animated feature film, The Adventures of Prince Achmed, she pioneered the merging of animation and music, and developed a multi-plane camera stand over a decade before anyone in Hollywood built one. This film is a fantastic example of the way Reiniger merged motion and music seamlessly. Her puppets never feel flat or stiff, and their movements never feel limited. In fact, the characters are able to dance, run, jump and act as well as any animated character in any technique of animation.


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The International

Revolt Of The Toys
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Hermina Tyrlova / Czechoslovakia / 1947

Hermina Tyrlova isn’t mentioned often when people refer to female animators, but her impact on the art form in Czechoslovakia was significant. "Revolt Of The Toys" is unique among her work because it combines live action and animation. It’s also unique because of its use of violence. Tyrlova said that she didn’t care for the American style of animation, with its slapstick pratfalls. She preferred to animate characters as objects existing in their own worlds outside of our awareness of them. Her films aren’t overtly political like those of her contemporaries. Instead, they are targeted to children and exhibit a sense of discovery and wonder, rather than gags and action. Even though this film is different from her other work in many ways, it is still an excellent example of her simple, appealing design style and clever stop motion techniques.

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Pies Kot I

Dog, Cat And… Ep 5
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Alina Maliszewska / Studio Miniatur Filmowych, Poland / 1972

In this Reference Pack, we are sharing another short cartoon from a series produced by Studio Miniatur Filmowych, Pies, Kot I… which translates to Dog, Cat And… The episode is titled "Tape Recorder". These cartoons are almost devoid of dialogue with the focus on loose, funny animation. In fact, the drawings are often hilarious on their own, even removed from their context within the gag sequence. The facial expressions are well observed, and the poses employ clear silhouettes that form funny graphic shapes.

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Hustle Punch

Hustle Punch
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Curated by JoJo Baptista
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Eps. 1 & 3 / Toei, Yasuji Mori (1965)
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Hustle Punch is a funny animal TV series created by Yasuji Mori, who directed The Little Prince And The Three Headed Dragon, (which we featured in a previous Reference Pack) as well as illustrating children’s books. He was a senior artist at Toei and mentored many animators who went on to do great work, including Hayao Miyazaki (who worked on this series), Isao Takahata, Yasuo Otsuka and Yoichi Kotabe. Mori was responsible for the cute animal designs in several Toei features and Hustle Punch was clearly influenced by the early television cartoons from Hanna-Barbera.


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Harold Lloyd

For Heaven’s Sake
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Sam Taylor / 1926
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In past Reference Packs, we’ve featured Buster Keaton and Charlie Chaplin, but there is another slapstick comedian who deserves mention alongside them… Harold Lloyd. I’m happy to introduce him to you with one of his most action-packed features, "For Heaven’s Sake". You will want to take note of the staging of the scenes. Every one is crystal clear and puts across its point lightning fast. The exposition doesn’t drag because it is full of gags that reveal both the personalities of the characters and their relationships to each other. The comedy builds as the film progresses, culminating in one of the most suspenseful thrill sequences ever put on film. Watch it through once, and then go back through it, analyzing the nuts and bolts that make it work. There’s a lot of great techniques in here for animators willing to take the time to mine it for ideas.

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Breakdowns

Impact
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Curated By David Eisman
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Animation Resources Board Member, David Eisman discusses a subject that occurs all the time in animated cartoons… impacts. Impact is the result of an accelerated force coming into contact with a stable form– be it character or object– and then transferring that force to generate some form of reaction. It can be divided into five stages – anticipation, action, point-of-contact, follow-through, and settle. Moreover, impacts can be linked together, wherein the point-of-contact of the initial impact becomes the anticipation of the secondary impact.

AUDIO PODCAST:
Animated Discussions Podcast

Cartoony Music With Skip Heller
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Animated Discussions 011 / Hosted by Davey Jarrell with Stephen Worth and Skip Heller
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Back in 2007 when the Animation Archive was still under the umbrella of ASIFA-Hollywood, Stephen Worth sat down several times with musician Skip Heller to talk about cartoony music for the A-HAA Podcast. Each time, they chose a musician and explained how their music related to cartoons, playing a representative bit of their music. There were five segments altogether and they were a lot of fun. We’ve combined them all into one podcast for Animation Resources members.

Skip Heller is a remarkably versatile musician. He’s performed in every style imaginable. He’s composed for symphony orchestras, played country music and blues in honky tonks, performed in jazz trios and punk bands and did music for both Dexter’s Lab and Flintstones On The Rocks. A true renaissance man with deep roots in the history of his medium, no one knows more about this kind of music than Skip.


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ANNUAL MEMBER BONUS ARCHIVE
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Available to Student and General Members

  • E-BOOK: All The Funny Folks
  • VIDEO: Two Films By Charlie Bowers: "He Done His Best" and "Wild Roomer"
  • VIDEO: Popeye in "Puppet Love"
All The Funny Folks

ANIMATION RESOURCES ANNUAL MEMBERS: Reference Pack 020 is now being rerun and is now available for download. It includes a PDF e-book of high resolution scans of a newspaper all-star jam, two imaginative short films by comedian/animator Charlie Bowers, and a great Popeye cartoon in HD! These downloads will be available until July 1st and after that, they will be deleted from the server. So download them now!

Charlie Bowers

If you are currently on a quarterly membership plan, consider upgrading to an annual membership to get access to our bonus page with even more downloads. If you still have time on you quarterly membership when you upgrade to an annual membership, email us at…

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membership@animationresources.org

…and we will credit your membership with the additional time.

Popeye Puppet Love
Click to access the…

Annual Member Bonus Archive
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Downloads expire after May 1st, 2023


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Whew! That is an amazing collection of treasures! At Animation Resources, our Advisory Board includes great artists and animators like Ralph Bakshi, Will Finn, J.J. Sedelmaier and Sherm Cohen. They’ve let us know the things that they use in their own self study so we can share them with you. That’s experience you just can’t find anywhere else. The most important information isn’t what you already know… It’s the information you should know about, but don’t know yet. We bring that to you every other month.

Haven’t Joined Yet?

Check out this SAMPLE REFERENCE PACK! It will give you a taste of what Animation Resources members get to download every other month!

Sample RefPack

CLICK TO DOWNLOAD A Sample RefPack!

Animation Resources is a 501(c)(3) non-profit arts organization dedicated to providing self study material to the worldwide animation community. If you are a creative person working in animation, cartooning or illustration, you owe it to yourself to be a member of Animation Resources.


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Animation Resources is one of the best kept secrets in the world of cartooning. Every month, we sponsor a program of interest to artists, and every other month, we share a book and up to an hour of rare animation with our members. If you are a creative person interested in the fields of animation, cartooning or illustration, you should be a member of Animation Resources!

It’s easy to join Animation Resources. Just click on this link and you can sign up right now online…


JOIN TODAY!
https://animationresources.org/membership/levels/

PayPalAnimationAnimation Resources depends on your contributions to support its projects. Even if you can’t afford to join our group right now, please click the button below to donate whatever you can afford using PayPal.


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Thursday, June 1st, 2023

LAST CALL! RefPack051: A Peek At The Early Anime Downloads

People who aren’t members of Animation Resources don’t understand how comprehensive our Reference Packs are. Over a couple of weeks, we are posting what each section of our current RefPack looks like. Today we are sharing the Early Anime section. If you are a member of Animation Resources, click on this post to go to the Members Only page. If you aren’t a member yet, today is the perfect time to join! Our current Reference Pack is one of our best yet, and General and Student Members get access to a special Bonus Archive with even more material from past Reference Packs.

What are you waiting for?
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Early Anime

Lately, Animation Resources board member JoJo Baptista has been researching the early history of Japanese animation. He has searched out video copies of 1960s anime to add to our Animation Archive. Over the past year, he has accumulated hundreds of hours of rare television programs. We will be will be sharing some of them with you in our Reference Packs. Our members have asked us to share complete films and publications with them, not excerpts, so we will be sharing complete half hour episodes with you. We don’t claim that everything here is great. But there are great bits. You can sift through them and discover the gems for yourself.

SD VIDEO:
Big X

Big X
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Curated by JoJo Baptista
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Eps. 41 & 50 / TMS, Osamu Tezuka (1964)
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Big X was created by Osamu Tezuka, and it was the first television series produced by TMS (Tokyo Movie Shinsha). It debuted on August 3rd, 1964 and 59 episodes were made, of which only 22 survive. The story involves a Nazi secret weapon that is smuggled out of Germany by surgically implanting a card with the formula inscribed on it into a young man named Shigeru. Years later, Shigeru is living in Tokyo. The card is discovered in his body and is removed. Nazi sympathizers steal the card, and a serum from the formula is made by the grandson of a Nazi scientist. It turns out to be a drug that turns a man into a giant. Shigeru’s son Akira recovers the drug and uses it to fight various evil doers and monsters.

Big X

Big X was one of the very first television cartoons made in Japan. The process hadn’t been established yet and it shows in this show. The staging from scene to scene is completely random. A downshot will be followed by an upshot, characters face left in one shot and right in the next, perspective is off with the character level in a completely different plane than the background, lipsync consists of randomly exposed “gum chewing” cycles that aren’t always lined up to the beginning or end of the dialogue, and there are reuse scenes and camera errors everywhere. There’s absolutely no direction or context to anything that happens on the screen in Big X.


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Big X

But although there isn’t anything in this show to learn in the way of technique, it does a good job of what it intends to do… give kids a half hour of weird fun. While Tezuka’s manga is plot heavy, the animated adaptation is almost completely without continuity. It resembles early Van Beuren cartoons in that it appears to have not been storyboarded. Sequences must have been handed out to animators to do whatever they want with. Every animator seems to have his own idea of what kind of show they were making, and styles vary from cut to cut. These styles have considerable appeal, and randomly juggled throughout the half hour, at least they give everyone something to like.

Big X

Not everything is poorly drawn though. In episode 41, there are several scenes of the main character that are animated volumetrically in good perspective (see the scene that starts at 21:27.) There are also character designs that are drawn in a very funny style (see 02:39, 06:18, 08:44). These designs are even animated funny (10:03, 18:09).

Big X


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Episode 50 starts out with a sequence that seems to be influenced by UPA’s Mr. Magoo feature, 1001 Arabian Nights. There’s another strange perspective shot and a very odd walk cycle at 03:24. At 07:21 the whole cartoon shifts to a parody (?) of Disney, along with lots of random cuts that don’t play out long enough or hook up with each other. At 12:59 there’s a funny sequence with squirrels (or are they monkeys?) At 17:58 there is a dragon lifted straight out of Sleeping Beauty.

Big X

The individual moments succeed in sustaining audience interest, but don’t look for context or putting across character’s personalities or a story here. If I had to pick one word to describe this show, it’s “slapdash”. But there’s enough enthusiasm and fun to make it sort of worthwhile. The animators on this series had lots of big ideas without the experience nor the resources to pull them off. But they take a valiant stab at it and create something fun, even if it is primitive and random. The fact that the main character pokes himself with a hypodermic needle in the title sequence pretty much guarantees this series won’t be re-run ever again.

Big X

I’ll have more early Japanese TV series to share with you in our next Reference Pack.

REFPACK051: Big X Ep. 41
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MP4 Video File / SD / 25:55 / 186 MB Download
 
REFPACK051: Big X Ep. 50
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MP4 Video File / SD / 25:56 / 217 MB Download


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Animation Resources is one of the best kept secrets in the world of cartooning. Every month, we sponsor a program of interest to artists, and every other month, we share a book and up to an hour of rare animation with our members. If you are a creative person interested in the fields of animation, cartooning or illustration, you should be a member of Animation Resources!

It’s easy to join Animation Resources. Just click on this link and you can sign up right now online…


JOIN TODAY!
https://animationresources.org/membership/levels/

PayPalAnimationAnimation Resources depends on your contributions to support its projects. Even if you can’t afford to join our group right now, please click the button below to donate whatever you can afford using PayPal.


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Wednesday, May 31st, 2023

LAST CALL! A Peek At The International Downloads

People who aren’t members of Animation Resources don’t understand how comprehensive our Reference Packs are. Over the next couple of weeks, we will be posting what each section of our current RefPack looks like. If you are a member of Animation Resources, click on this post to go to the Members Only page. If you aren’t a member yet, today is the perfect time to join! Our current Reference Pack is one of our best yet, and General and Student Members get access to a special Bonus Archive with even more material from past Reference Packs.

What are you waiting for?
Download Page
JOIN TODAY!
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International Animation

The world of animation is much bigger than it might appear to us at first glance. We are all familiar with the films we grew up with, but Hollywood wasn’t the only place that produced great cartoons… Poland, Japan, Russia, China and Europe all have their own traditions and a rich history of animated film making. Animation Resources’ archive contains many foreign films that are rarely seen in the United States. We feature a sampling of interesting animation from around the world in each Reference Pack.

SD VIDEO:
Khitruk Stompy

Stompy
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Fyodor Khitruk / Soyuzmultfilm, Russia / 1964
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In previous Reference Packs, we shared Fyodor Khitruk’s adaptation of A. A. Milne’s stories about Winnie the Pooh. This time, we are sharing one of Khitruk’s early films, “Stompy”.

Khitruk Stompy

Fyodor Khitruk was a Russian Jew who studied graphic design in Moscow at the OGIS College For Applied Arts. He joined the staff of Soyuzmultfilm in 1938, learning his craft by animating in over 200 films until he was given the opportunity to direct his first film, “The Story Of A Crime” in 1962. This film was a huge success and inspired the artists at Soyuzmultfilm to abandon the hyper-realistic style the studio was known for and explore graphic stylization, not unlike the effect UPA had on Hollywood animation. His films tend to be leisurely paced, but not slow, and the motion of his characters is always carefully observed and relatable.

Khitruk Stompy

Khitruk made both adult satire and children’s films, like “Stompy”. This film has some narration, but it isn’t necessary to understand it to follow the action of the film. Khitruk’s design in this film is brilliant, especially the use of flat areas of color surrounding lush textures. It makes you want to reach out and pet the characters.

REFPACK051: Stompy 1964
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MP4 Video File / SD / 9:25 / 247 MB Download


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Karel Dodal

Mystery Of The MK204 Turning Point
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Karel Dodal / Prague, Czechoslovakia / 1934

In one of our previous Reference Packs, we included two commercials from Czechoslovakia. This time, we feature a very early animated commercial by Karel Dodal.

Karel Dodal

The history of animation in Czechoslovakia goes back to the 1920s. Karel Dodal, not only produced advertisements like this one (some featuring Felix the Cat), but also puppet and experimental films. The notes that came with this film were sparse and all in the Czech language, so we don’t know much about them. If you have information about Dodal you can share with us, please drop us a line.

Karel Dodal

We hope to have more Czech animation to share with you in future Reference Packs.

REFPACK051: Mystery 1934
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MP4 Video File / SD / 3:28 / 40 MB Download


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The Breakdown

The Breakdown
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Klaus Georgi & Lutz Stutzner / DEFA, East Germany / 1988

The DEFA studio (Deutsche Film-Aktiengesellschaft) was independently established in the Soviet Occupied Zone in 1946 to produce propaganda films with the intent of re-educating the East German populace, who had just emerged from under the Nazi rule. A year later, control of the studio was taken over by the Socialist Unity Party, a Stalinist political group, and many of the original founders were ejected from the governing board. The studio got absorbed by the government when the German Democratic Republic was established in 1949. The ideological oppression discouraged most talented filmmakers from working at the studio, and by the time Stalin died in 1953, only 50 films had been produced. Within a couple of years of the end of Stalinism, DEFA began to grow exponentially, and between 1955 and 1992 when the studio closed, DEFA produced over 800 animated films.

The Breakdown

Lutz Stutzner was trained as a designer of posters. While attending school in Dresden, he met Otto Muller the head of the DEFA animation studios, who encouraged him to apply as a trainee at the studio. He rose to the position of director and teamed with Klaus Georgi who had helped to establish the animation division at DEFA. Georgi directed over 80 animated films in a variety of techniques: cel animation, cut outs, silhouette and puppet animation. When the Berlin Wall fell, many of the state owned businesses were liquidated, including DEFA. Lutz Stutzner was instrumental in organizing efforts to rescue important artifacts and film elements from East German film studios from being dispersed.

The Breakdown

Originally, the film ended with a procession of tanks following the motorcade, but state censors forced them to alter the gag to just infer military vehicles, rather than fully depicting them. Even so, the animation division enjoyed much more of a “hands off” treatment from the government censors than the live action filmmakers at DEFA. This kind of political satire would never have been allowed in one of their live action productions.

REFPACK051: The Breakdown 1988
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Professor Balthazar

Professor Balthazar in “The Rise And Fall Of Horatio”
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Zlatko Grgic / Zagreb Films, Croatia / 1967

In a previous Reference Pack we featured several Maxi-Cat mini-cartoons by Zlatko Grgic, a Croatian animator who later emigrated to Canada to join the Canadian Film Board.

Professor Balthazar

Grgic is best known for his series of cartoons featuring the character Professor Balthazar, an old man who solves problems for his friends by creating inventions with a magical machine. Produced between 1967 and 1973, the series ran all over the world. Its silent pantomime with voice over narration made it easy to translate to other countries. It aired everywhere from New Zealand to Romania to Zimbabwe. In the United States it was featured on Chuck Jones’ television program, Curiosity Shop.

Professor Balthazar

Altogether there were 59 episodes of Professor Balthazar produced between 1969 and 1978. We will be sharing more with you in upcoming Reference Packs.

REFPACK051: Professor Balthazar Ep. 02
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MP4 Video File / SD / 7:57 / 121 MB Download

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Animation Resources is one of the best kept secrets in the world of cartooning. Every month, we sponsor a program of interest to artists, and every other month, we share a book and up to an hour of rare animation with our members. If you are a creative person interested in the fields of animation, cartooning or illustration, you should be a member of Animation Resources!

It’s easy to join Animation Resources. Just click on this link and you can sign up right now online…


JOIN TODAY!
https://animationresources.org/membership/levels/

PayPalAnimationAnimation Resources depends on your contributions to support its projects. Even if you can’t afford to join our group right now, please click the button below to donate whatever you can afford using PayPal.


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