Please Help! Animation Resources depends on your contributions to support its services to the worldwide animation community. Please contribute using PayPal.
Project Angels
John Kricfalusi, Mike Van Eaton, Rita Street, Jorge Garrido, Andreas Deja, John Canemaker, Jerry Beck, Leonard Maltin, June Foray, Paul and John Vinci, B. Paul Husband, Nancy Cartwright, Mike Fontanelli, Tom & Jill Kenny, Will Finn, Ralph Bakshi, Sherm Cohen, Marc Deckter, Dan diPaola, Kara Vallow
Project Heroes
Janet Blatter, Keith Lango Animation, Thorsten Bruemmel, David Soto, Paul Dini, Rik Maki, Ray Pointer, James Tucker, Rogelio Toledo, Nicolas Martinez, Joyce Murray Sullivan, David Wilson, David Apatoff, San Jose State Shrunkenheadman Club, Matthew DeCoster, Dino's Pizza, Chappell Ellison, Brian Homan, Barbara Miller, Wes Archer, Kevin Dooley, Caroline Melinger
Project Volunteers
Gemma Ross, Milton Knight, Claudio Riba, Eric Graf, Michael Fallik, Gary Francis, Joseph Baptista, Kelsey Sorge-Toomey, Alexander Camarillo, Alex Vassilev, Ernest Kim, Danny Young, Glenn Han, Sarah Worth, Chris Paluszek, Michael Woodside, Giancarlo Cassia, Ross Kolde, Amy Rogers
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, starting today with the Featured 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.
Wonder 3 Curated by JoJo Baptista Ep.01 Three Beings From Outer Space (1965) / Ep.43 Mice From The Universe (1966) Download this article
Wonder 3 was unique among early Anime TV programs. Although it did appear serially as Manga, it was conceived and designed from the first as a television show. Created by Osamu Tezuka, it was the first show produced by his studio, Mushi Productions. In this program, Tezuka cast his animators as characters, the way Disney Studios did it, This allowed the animators to create and refine specific walks and gestures for the characters. 52 episodes were broadcast between June 6th, 1965 ad June 27th, 1966.
The plot of the first episode establishes the characters and situation. The Galactic League sends three investigators to Earth to determine if recent nuclear testing poses a threat to the universe. The investigators are named Bokko, Bukko and Nokko, and they are authorized to destroy Earth if they feel it is necessary. They disguise themselves as a rabbit, a horse and a duck and land on Earth to investigate. They become trapped in a mountain fire and are rescued by a kind-hearted boy name Shinichi. They travel in a large vehicle called a Big Wheel, which is capable of traveling at very high speeds.
Tezuka’s designs are brimming with appeal. The Wonder 3 in particular are a trio of wonderful contrasting shapes. Also, not to be ignored is Koichi, the older brother of Shinichi, who sports a black suit, which really highlights the angular, graphic poses he strikes. This series is produced quite economically, with very limited animation, held drawings and even jump cuts to keep the story going. I would argue that it’s the charm of Tezuka’s style that really holds my interest throughout each episode as opposed to the production values. Tezuka is really masterful at employing a simplistic vocabulary of graphic shapes to make everything read clearly.
The second episode I’m sharing comes much later in the series. The story is very simple. Strange space aliens arrive at Earth intending to conquer it for their planet. They disguise themselves as mice, and enlist the help of the Earth mice to attack humans. The Wonder 3 defend the Earth against the attack, and the battle is won when Rokko takes the form of a cat.
There’s some scenes with runaway space aliens conversing with each other through the window of their space ship, as their leader devises a plan to blend in on earth. The drawings of the silhouetted aliens are really fun. Nokko goes up against the leader at 18:47 and quickly scrambles to create inventions to foil the leader. The leader strikes some great cartoony poses as each of his attempts are thwarted. Lots of entertainment value with so few drawings!
I’ll have more early Japanese TV series to share with you in our next Reference Pack.
Animation Resources is asking our membership to consider donating to help us establish a video podcasting studio to be able to present seminars, interviews and informal updates live streamed on YouTube and Facebook. Our goal is for 25 of our members and supporters to donate $100. If you donate $100, we will provide you with a coupon code for a free membership to give as a gift to a friend or peer, or we can credit your donation to sponsor two students for a one year student membership.
By helping others, you help yourself.
Please consider donating using the PayPal Donate Button below. For more information on our Video Podcasting Fundraiser, see the article Animation Resources Needs Your Help.
Animation Resources depends on your contributions to support its projects. Even if you can’t afford to donate $100 or join our group right now, please click the button below to donate whatever you can afford using PayPal. Every little bit helps.
After you have donated, drop us an email at sworth@animationresources.org and let us know if you would like a discount code for a free membership, or if you would like us to sponsor students with your donation.
Raising the bar with our live streaming initiative will make things better for the whole art form. Don’t stay on the sidelines. Be a part of Animation Resources and join our team to build the foundation for the future of animation.
Animation Resources’ Live Streaming Project is nearing its goal. The bulk of the cost is being covered by the dues paid by members, not direct donations from the public. This impacts whether we make our live streamed seminars and screenings public, or reserve them strictly for viewing by members of Animation Resources. It would be nice to make out programs available to everyone, but ultimately, the people who support the project will be the people who benefit from it.
To date, we have raised $370 of our goal of $2,500. Seven students or educators will receive free one year memberships because of these donations. Please CONTRIBUTE USING PAYPAL if you can, or you can donate on Facebook, here… FACEBOOK LIVESTREAM FUNDRAISER.
UPDATE: June 23rd, 2022
A week ago, Davey Jarrell, David Eisman and Stephen Worth met to begin making plans for the equipment, software and online accounts necessary to bring our online streaming project to fruition. We have a shopping list of equipment ready and we’re researching the technical aspects of producing livestreamed programs.
One of the hurdles to overcome is the way video hosts like YouTube and Facebook handle copyright. Animation Resources is a 501(c)(3) non-profit educational organization, and as such, we are allowed broader Fair Use provisions. But public video sharing sites aren’t set up for organizations like us. They don’t provide for Fair Use. This is going to limit what we can stream publicly. However, if we stream from our own server, we can take advantage of our non-profit classification to provide educational screenings and seminars that would not be able to streamed from YouTube or Facebook.
We are looking into a package called Streamyard, which is able to stream live video from multiple sources to both Facebook and YouTube, as well as to a streaming portal on the Animation Resources website. The best part is that Streamyard will also record our stream so we can prep it as a downloadable file for our Reference Packs. This would allow us to stream non-copyrighted material to Facebook and YouTube, and Fair Use educational programming to our own website.
Our problem at this point is one that we have faced since the beginning of the Animation Archive… bandwidth costs. Serving video to a large audience is costly, and the general public isn’t used to paying for content from the web. Animation Resources shares our Reference Packs, which consist of large downloadable files with our members, rotating in a new RefPack every other month. If we shared all of these RefPacks publicly all the time, the monthly bandwidth costs would exceed our income almost immediately.
It would be possible, both legally and technically to host our Fair Use programming on a public page on our website, rather than one behind the Members Only login, but if we were to do that, we would need more support from our non-member followers. We need to keep expenses within our means, but as a non-profit, every cent donated is used to bring more valuable educational content to you. We hope you will seriously consider JOINING Animation Resources, and CONTRIBUTING to this project.
FUNDING CHALLENGES
Many people, even our own members, don’t realize that Animation Resources and The Animation Archive are not funded by grants or large corporate sponsors. All of our operating funds come from the annual dues of our members. As a 501(c)(3) non-profit, the money we raise is used exclusively for our projects, and the amount of income from dues dictates what we can and can’t do as an organization. Over the past decade, we have been serving the worldwide community of animators, cartoonists and illustrators, and our membership numbers have steadily increased; but not at a rate that allows us to do everything we want to do.
OBSOLETE TECHNOLOGY
We’ve been forced to cut corners. The last time we bought a new computer was in 2004. Since then, we have been making do with equipment donated to us by members. We’ve been using a G5 Mac as our digitizing computer since the Animation Archive Project was established in 2004. Our first one burned out long ago, and a member donated his old one to take its place. We finally retired this computer when a Mac Mini from 2007 was donated last year. We are still using the Apple Cinema Display from 2004. We currently have two iMacs and a MacMini, all of which are over seven years old. They have served us well, but the time has come to buy a current computer that is capable of taking our organization to the next level.
AN EXCITING NEW PROJECT IN THE WORKS
Board Members Davey Jarrell and David Eisman have been working on a new project to benefit our members and the general public, a live streaming initiative, but our current equipment isn’t capable of filling the needs of the project. We need your help to raise the funds to purchase a new computer.
THE GENESIS OF THE PROJECT
Before COVID, we hosted events in the Los Angeles area. Along with Advisory Board member, Steve Stanchfield we produced a screening at the Egyptian Theater in Hollywood that was very successful. Our Animation Creative League hosted programs with guests like animator Eric Goldberg and Twilight Zone writer George Clayton Johnson. The members who attended got a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to learn from people who are at the top of their fields.
Due to the pandemic, we have been unable to host in-person gatherings; so Program Director Davey Jarrell has been conducting monthly get-togethers in Discord. These have been recorded and edited to serve as downloadable podcasts in our bi-monthly Reference Packs. Davey has produced some amazing programs… an analysis of Chuck Jones’s timing techniques on the Grinch special, a panel discussion on the proper use of reference, and interviews with professionals like Joe Murray, Lenord Robinson and Craig Bartlett.
Our Discord Discussions are very popular, but they are limited to audio only. We don’t have the facilities to live stream video. Davey has teamed up with David Eisman to spec out what is needed to be able to live stream speakers and films from multiple locations to audiences on YouTube and Facebook. We want to be able to interact with the live audience in real time so they can ask questions and participate in discussions. Davey and David are also looking into recording the live streams and editing them to produce programs that can be shared in our Reference Packs and syndicated to schools and other animation organizations. This would take the wonderful programs we produce beyond the confines of Los Angeles to the whole world.
WHAT WE WOULD LIKE TO DO
Davey and David have plans to do virtual screenings of rare films from our collection, seminars on storyboarding and acting, profiles of great artists illustrated with film clips and original artwork, and informal virtual get togethers where artists can come together to socialize and share information.
As I said before, our most recent computer is over seven years old. It just isn’t capable of doing what we need to do. In addition, we need sound equipment, cameras and lighting. We’ve gone as far as we can with the money we have, but it isn’t enough to get this project started. We’ve allocated all of our current funds to the project and we have come up short of the figure we need to get the live streams rolling. We will need more money down the road for this live streaming initiative to reach its full potential, but right now we need at least $2,500 to get it started. In the past, as the President of the organization, I’ve reached into my own pocket to help fill Animation Resources’ funding shortfalls, but right now, I’m afraid I’m not able to do that.
We could do a Kickstarter or GoFundMe campaign, but those are a lot of work, and with our small group of volunteers, a project like that would inevitably take resources away from our important job of curating and producing content of interest to artists. We have decided to turn to our members and social media followers for help.
HERE IS WHAT WE ARE ASKING…
We would like 25 of our followers to donate $100 apiece. That wouldn’t be a burden on anyone, and it would get us started. In return, we will give you a discount code for a free one year membership in Animation Resources. If you aren’t a member yet, you can use it to join us and find out for yourself how important this organization is. If you are already a member, you can gift the coupon code to a friend or colleague and share the wealth of inspiration with the people around you. More members mean a more solid financial footing for our organization. We’re confident that once more people see what we are doing, they will want to sign up to be ongoing annual members. If you don’t have anyone you would like to gift a membership to, let us know and we will use the credit to give free memberships to two worthy students in our Sponsor A Student Program. If you can’t afford $100, please donate what you can. Every little bit helps.
If we reach our goal, we will do two things… 1.) We will increase the number of rerun Reference Packs on our Annual Members Archive Page from three a year to six a year. This means that annual members will be able to download a different Reference Pack every month! …and 2.) We will live stream many of our programs, open to the general public, and after the stream is over, we will format it to go in a Reference Pack, so members can download them and save them forever.
If you’ve been thinking about signing up for a membership and haven’t gotten around to it yet, this is the time to join. If you have no money at all right now, share Animation Resources with your friends and encourage them to join. Print out our brochure (see above) and give it to people you think would benefit from what we have to offer. We don’t just want donations… we want new members to share our treasures with. Members are even more important to us than money.
You can donate right now using this PayPal button…
After you have donated, drop us an email at sworth@animationresources.org and let us know if you would like a discount code for a free membership, or if you would like us to sponsor students with your donation.
Raising the bar with our live streaming initiative will make things better for the whole art form. Don’t stay on the sidelines. Be a part of Animation Resources and join our team to build the foundation for the future of animation.
Thank you,
Stephen Worth and the Board of Directors of Animation Resources
As a special thank you to our annual General and Student members, we have created a special page where we will archive past Reference Packs. There will be at least four reruns of complete RefPacks per year.
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…
Esquire was the leading "gentleman’s magazine" of its day. Great writers like F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemmingway wrote for the magazine, and the Esquire staff included a stable of illustrators and cartoonists that represented the best in the field. Even though it was founded in the height of the depression, the publishers spared no expense to produce a first class product. The cover price was fifty cents, many times the price of any other magazine on newsstands at the time. Hugh Hefner began his career as a copy editor at Esquire in the late forties, and it’s clear that his vision of what Playboy would become was greatly influenced by Esquire.
In 1937, the staff of Esquire prepared a prototype copy of a proposed cartoon annual containing the best cartoons from the first few years of the magazine’s publication. However before the book could be printed, the project was cancelled and the prototype was put on the shelf. Twenty years later, they finally did publish a book honoring the great work of the Esquire art staff, but it was a much different selection of cartoons. Animation Resources was given access to the one-of-a-kind prototype of the 1937 book, and we will be sharing it with our members in this, the first of two e-books. We hope you find it to be useful.
Ladislas Starevich created the first puppet animation film in 1912 and continued to work in the medium for half a century. He was born in Russia to Polish parents in 1882 and emigrated to France soon after World War I. Assisted by his wife, who made the costumes for the puppets, as well as his daughter and son, Starevich produced a large and varied filmography. We are presenting the most famous of his films, "The Mascot", which Terry Gilliam has cited as one of the ten greatest animated films of all time.
"The Mascot" (1933) is a technical marvel, with sophisticated puppet armatures, a wide variety of techniques, and fantastic subject matter. Starevich simulated motion blur in this film by smearing vaseline on a glass plate between the camera and the puppet. He also broke new ground by rigging the puppets so they could move slightly while the shot was being exposed. This technique predated Jim Danforth’s "Go Motion" in the Star Wars films by almost 50 years! We have deinterlaced this film and encoded it at an increased bitrate so you can step frame through the animation and study the animation. Starewich often created a seamless blend of several different techniques in a single shot. It’s fascinating to look at the work frame by frame to discover the secrets behind the cinematic magic.
"The Mascot" was edited and reformatted several times over the years. It is rarely seen with the original soundtrack and running time, but Animation Resources obtained a copy of the film as it was first released and we are proud to be able to share that with you. If you would like to see more films by Starevich, let us know on the Animation Resources Facebook page.
Two Fleischer Screen Songs “Tune Up And Sing” (1934) “Let’s All Sing Like The Birdies Sing” (1934)
When the Hayes Office took aim at risqué humor in the movies, Fleischer’s Betty Boop cartoons were square in its crosshairs. The difference between the 1933 Betty Boop cartoons and the ones from 1934 is stark, and the series never really recovered from the blow. The Screen Songs weren’t hit nearly as hard, but you can still see that when it comes to gags, punches are being pulled. To add insult to injury, when these cartoons were syndicated to television in the late 1950s, the live action celebrity cameos and singalong sequences were usually cut out, and that is the case with the two examples we are sharing in this Reference Pack. But because of the way the cartoons were constructed, the edit isn’t too noticeable and they play well as short cartoons.
In the home video era, the Fleischer Screen Songs cartoons are missing in action. Only a tiny handful have been released. Animation Resources would like to thank our Advisory Board Member, Steve Stanchfield for sharing these rare films with us.
Get your friends to join Animation Resources! More members mean we can bring you more special downloads.
Animation Resources is asking our membership to consider donating to help us establish a video podcasting studio to be able to present seminars, interviews and informal updates live streamed on YouTube and Facebook. Our goal is for 25 of our members and supporters to donate $100. If you donate $100, we will provide you with a coupon code for a free membership to give as a gift to a friend or peer, or we can credit your donation to sponsor two students for a one year student membership.
By helping others, you help yourself.
Please consider donating using the PayPal Donate Button below. For more information on our Video Podcasting Fundraiser, see the article Animation Resources Needs Your Help.
Animation Resources depends on your contributions to support its projects. Even if you can’t afford to donate $100 or join our group right now, please click the button below to donate whatever you can afford using PayPal. Every little bit helps.
After you have donated, drop us an email at sworth@animationresources.org and let us know if you would like a discount code for a free membership, or if you would like us to sponsor students with your donation.
Raising the bar with our live streaming initiative will make things better for the whole art form. Don’t stay on the sidelines. Be a part of Animation Resources and join our team to build the foundation for the future of animation.
Please Help! Animation Resources depends on your contributions to support its services to the worldwide animation community. Please contribute using PayPal.
Please Help! Animation Resources depends on your contributions to support its services to the worldwide animation community. Please contribute using PayPal.
Please Help! Animation Resources depends on your contributions to support its services to the worldwide animation community. Please contribute using PayPal.
by 
