Archive for the ‘refpack’ Category

Monday, May 12th, 2025

Bonus Archive Update: A Ton Of Amazing Material For You!

Bonus Download

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 a new rerun of a complete RefPack between the new ones.

ANNUAL MEMBER BONUS ARCHIVE
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Available to Student and General Members


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REFPACK033: April / May 2020

PDF E-BOOK
Blaeksprutten

Blaeksprutten (Cuttlefish)
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1912-1913 Christmas Annuals

The Scandinavian countries (Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Finland, & Iceland) have contributed many traditions to the celebration of Christmas around the world: Christmas trees, elves, reindeer, advent calendars, and even Santa Claus. But one of the most unique holiday traditions in Scandinavian countries is the "Christmas book flood". Catalogs are distributed of special books and magazines, and people order them as gifts for friends and family. More books are sold in this part of the world between November and December than the rest of the year. Scandinavians are among the most literate people in the world. Amazingly, 1 in 10 Icelandic residents is a published author. The holiday tradition of giving books as holiday gifts is so ubiquitous, Scandinavians don’t even recognize it as a tradition. They assume all countries buy special books for Christmas.

In addition to books, Norwegian publishers put out annual Christmas magazines, the earliest of which date back to the mid 19th century. These early annuals featured sheet music, stories, humorous cartoons, satirical gossip about local public figures and recipes, and they were usually presented in a horizontal format to set them apart from monthly and weekly periodicals.

Blaeksprutten

In Copenhagen, a satirical Christmas annual magazine called Blaeksprutten was launched in 1889. The title translates to Cuttlefish, and the idea was that the writers and artists who worked for the magazine had their "tentacles" in all aspects of life in Denmark. The magazine blended both the tradition of the Christmas annual and the satirical magazines flourishing around the world at the time. Beautifully printed, the magazine featured catty theater reviews, humorous stories and poems, and sentimental music; and it was illustrated with panoramic "birds eye view" shots of Danish villages bustling with life, fanciful subjects in lavish color, caricatures and line drawings in ink. The principle artists in the beginning of the 20th century were Alfred Schmidt, a well known caricaturist and poster designer; painters Paul Gustav Fischer and Axel Nygaard; line artists Sven Brasch and Gerda Ploug Sorenson Sarp; and fashion illustrator Gerda Wegener. Blaeksprutten is still being published every Christmas after 125 years.

This publication is pretty much unknown in the United States, but Animation Resources has been working to collect a sampling of these hard-to-find magazines to share with its members. We hope you find it useful to your in your studies.

REFPACK033: Blaeksprutten 01
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Adobe PDF File / 124 Pages / 812 MB Download

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Annual Member Bonus Archive
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DVD QUALITY VIDEO:
Polish Animation

A Collection of Polish Animation
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"Dumpling" Lucjan Dembinski (1959) / "Beyond The Wood, Beyond The Forest" Wladyslaw Nehrebecki (1961) / "The Little Quartet" Edward Sturlis (1965) / "A Little Western" Witold Giersz (1960)

In one of our previous Reference Packs, we discussed how The Wan Brothers’ "Havok In Heaven" perfectly adapted the format of the animated feature to reflect the art and culture of China. This time we are presenting a couple of films that show how film makers halfway around the globe used animation to reflect a distinctly Polish point of view.

Polish Wycininki
Wycinanki: The art of paper cutting

Tell A FriendTell A FriendLucjan Dembinski’s "Dumpling" and Wladyslaw Nehrebecki’s "Beyond The Wood, Beyond the Forest" both are styled after traditional Polish folk art.

The folk art form known as wycinanki (pronounced vee-chee-non-kee) originated in the Ukraine at the end of the 15th century. Shepherds would cut designs out of bark and leather, and artists would paint colorful floral patterns on furniture, beams and walls of homes. The art of wycinanki paper-cutting for holidays became very popular in the mid-1800s, and regional styles developed. The tradition still continues with skilled artisans competing to create the most beautiful patterns.

Polish Animation

Wladyslaw Nehrebecki, who is best known for the television series "Bolek and Lolek", became interested in the peasant art of his native Poland, and teamed up with a Polish folk art museum to adapt the designs to animation using paper cut outs. The result was "Beyond The Woods, Beyond The Forest". Beautifully composed using a wide screen format, the bright colors and simple shapes are skillfully animated, essentially bringing wycinanki to life. Puppet animator Lucjan Dembinski also mined this rich well of inspiration with a film called "Dumpling" that translated wycinanki designs into three dimensional stop motion animation.

Hopper's Nighthawks

Too often we take culture for granted. As film makers, we look to other films for inspiration instead of seeing the creativity that surrounds us. Obviously in the United States, we don’t have anything like wycinanki, but that doesn’t mean that we can’t draw on our culture for inspiration. Roy Lichtenstein saw comic books as fine art, Andy Warhol painted Campbells soup cans and Edward Hopper created an incredibly powerful image of a diner in the city late at night. Who’s to say that modern highway interchanges, television, neon signs, computer screens or billboards aren’t American equivalents of cultural folk art. As you watch these films, think about the unappreciated man-made beauty that exists in the place you live and try to incorporate that into your work. I guarantee you it will be a lot more engaging and interesting than recycling the same old tired animation tropes and done-to-death styles.

REFPACK033: Dumpling (1959)
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MP4 Video File / SD / 9:44 / 118 MB Download

REFPACK033: Beyond The Wood,
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Beyond The Forest (1963)
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MP4 Video File / SD / 9:55 / 186 MB Download

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Annual Member Bonus Archive
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Polish Animation

In RefPack 032, we shared a simple film called "Beach" that Edward Sturlis made in 1964. The following year, he made a fantastic puppet film called "The Little Quartet". It’s interesting that Sturlis moved so effortlessly from hand drawn animation to stop motion. He must have seen himself as an animator, not a person who just draws or makes puppets. The two skills might be different from a technical standpoint, but the principles of creating personality and displaying it through timing and movement are the same. A lot of current animators define themselves as 2D or CG or Stop-Mo, but an animator is an animator. Sturlis proves it. As you watch this film check out the wonderful musical timing and expressive posing. It’s pure genius.

Edward Sturlis
Edward Sturlis at work in his studio

Witold Giersz is a towering figure in Polish animation. He pioneered the art form in Poland as early as 1950 and went on to produce fifty films. Michael Sporn’s "Splog" has a great interview with Giersz that you really should make a point of reading. That blog post will give you a sense of his work and biography. But I would like to focus on a specific aspect of his technique here…

Polish Animation
"Rooty Toot Toot" / John Hubley / UPA (1951)

In the past decade or so, there has been renewed interest in "modern animation". Books have been written on artists like Mary Blair and studios like UPA. Highly stylized animation is de rigueur for title sequences of CGI features, often looking more expressive and appealing than the film itself. Television animation and internet cartoons are produced with programs like Flash using libraries of modular virtual puppets designed with the flair of the 1950s cartoons and early 60s TV animation. But even though it’s nicely designed and colored, modern stylized animation always seems to look flat compared to films like "Rooty Toot Toot" and even some of the television commercial reels Animation Resources has shared here in the past. Why is that?

Polish Animation

If you analyze Witold Giersz’s film "A Little Western" you will spot the missing element. The film looks deceptively simple— flat featureless shapes, abstract textured blobs for backgrounds, simple bold primary colors. But behind that simple surface, there is a magic trick being performed.

Still frame through a few scenes and you will see simple, elegant flat shapes. Play it in motion and those flat shapes turn into solid volumetric forms. How can it be two dimensional and three dimensional at the same time? The secret is the fourth dimension of time and space. Ward Kimball once said that the art of animation doesn’t exist in individual drawings. The art is in the differences between the drawings. The way those flat shapes change from one to another is the secret that gives it form. Look at Grim Natwick’s animation of the courtroom scene in "Rooty Toot Toot" for another brilliant example of fourth dimensional animation. The characters exist as two dimensional shapes which reveal their three dimensional volume only when they move. Think about that as you watch "A Little Western".

REFPACK033: The Little Quartet (1965)
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MP4 Video File / SD / 9:44 / 118 MB Download

REFPACK033: A Little Western (1960)
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MP4 Video File / SD Widescreen / 5:27 / 112 MB Download

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DVD QUALITY VIDEO:
Columbia Cartoons

Three Early Columbia Cartoons
"Scrappy’s Expedition" (1934) / "Railroad Rhythm" (1937) / "Happy Tots’ Expedition" (1940)

I want to make it clear from the outset that I don’t think these cartoons are very good from an entertainment standpoint. The gags aren’t particularly funny, the characters are devoid of personality, the stories don’t make a whole lot of sense, and they contain subject matter that ranges from completely obsolete to downright offensive. "Scrappy’s Expedition" features caricatures of radio stars that few people today will recognize. The Kate Smith caricature is accompanied by a song from 1917 that must have seemed out of date even in 1934 when the film was first released. There’s inappropriate sexual innuendo sprinkled in everywhere. A ship’s whistle behaves like a stereotypical gay man, and in "Happy Tots’ Expedition" the characters ride on a rocket in a blatantly phallic manner repeatedly sliding under other characters’ butts. "Railroad Rhythm" takes discomfort to a whole new level with stereotypical Eskimos rubbing noses and an incredibly insensitive caricature of character actor Steppin Fetchit as a chimpanzee… So why am I sharing these awful cartoons with our members?

Columbia Cartoons

Ancient pop culture trivia and long gone derogatory depictions of people from different races and cultures might be a subject for study by social scientists and historians, but they should hold no interest for film makers designing animation for modern audiences. The content of these old scratchy cartoons— specifically the gags, plots and characters— just don’t translate to our modern era. Creating cartoons like this today is a wrong-headed thing to do. But that doesn’t mean that there’s nothing to learn from these films, and it doesn’t mean that breaking them down and studying them is wrong.

Columbia Cartoons

A film maker sees films differently than audiences do. The audience expects to be entertained. A film maker is looking for techniques he can learn from. Even though these three cartoons are about as entertaining as watching paint dry, they do have value. There are some scenes that are brilliantly animated, particularly when it comes to the animation of rain, water and smoke; as well as the rendering of the scale and perspective of large vehicles like ships and trains.

In "Railroad Rhythm" still frame through the scene where the train dives under the tracks at 2:58. Notice how the train digs down in front in to avoid hitting the characters, while the momentum of the cars behind causes them to bunch up. The force from the rear drives the front of the train down into the dirt. As soon as the engine and coal car clear the scene into the hole, the animator creates a repeating cycle of passenger cars to save on pencil mileage, and turns his attention to the locomotive bursting through the tracks on the other side. The engine flexes like rubber back onto the rails and off screen, while incredibly well tracked layers of steam, rubble and railroad ties fly in all directions. Throughout all this, the characters tied to the track strain at the ropes holding them until the train clears the scene leaving a hole and rubble behind. This animation is every bit as complex as anything in a Mickey Mouse cartoon, and it’s even more amazing when you realize that the density of nitrate cels meant that all of this animation had to be accomplished on just three layers. Any way you slice it, it’s a brilliantly organized bit of animation.

Columbia Cartoons

"Happy Tots’ Expedition" was clearly intended to emulate the style of animation Disney created for "Snow White", but it does it in a totally bizarre way. Instead of "Squash and Stretch" and "Overlapping Action", the Columbia animators employ "Drag and Droop" and overlap the overlap until the characters wiggle like jello. It’s completely unprincipled— solid forms defining bone structure stretch like taffy, just like the soft fleshy jowls and chin wattles. At one point the animator misinterprets the King’s jowls as a mustache, and the ink & paint department dutifully corrects it by painting the mustache flesh colored. The King’s robe swirls around in random S curves like a cobra. Head and eye proportions change from frame to frame. Hook ups between scenes are sometimes totally wrong. Still frame through the scene at 3:18 with the cyclops take; or even worse, check out the drawings in the mustache scene at 4:39. The topper gag really does top everything that came before with one of the most obscene sequences ever to get past the Hayes Office.

As you still frame through this cartoon you’ll find a million hilarious drawings. But it’s hard to know whether it was supposed to be funny in that way or not. It might be a devastatingly sharp parody of Disney animation with extreme overlap, rubbery squash and stretch and butt joke after butt joke… or perhaps it’s a crew of inexperienced animators making a high splat on the wall. Either way, it’s worth taking a close look at and puzzling out what the animators might have intended.

I hope you won’t dismiss old films because they don’t live up to modern tastes. As a film maker, you shouldn’t be studying films for their content. You should focus on how they were made. If you do that, even bad films can make you think and inspire you to go on and make much better films yourself.

Many thanks to Steve Stanchfield and Thunderbean Animation for sharing these rare films with our members.

REFPACK033: Scrappy’s Expedition (1934)
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MP4 Video File / SD / 6:47 / 125 MB Download

REFPACK033: Railroad Rhythm (1937)
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MP4 Video File / SD / 6:35 / 124 MB Download

REFPACK033: Happy Tots’ Expedition (1940)
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MP4 Video File / SD / 6:21 / 112 MB Download

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Annual Member Bonus Archive
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Downloads expire after July 2025

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. These bonus downloads expire after May 1st, 2025.


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Whew! That is an amazing collection of treasures! 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.

THIS IS JUST THE TIP OF THE ICEBERG!

Animation Resources has been sharing treasures from the Animation Archive with its members for over a decade. Every other month, our members get access to a downloadable Reference Pack, full of information, inspiration and animation. The RefPacks consist of e-books jam packed with high resolution scans of great art, still framable animated films from around the world, documentaries, podcasts, seminars and MORE! The best part is that all of this material has been selected and curated by our Board of professionals to aid you in your self study. Our goal is to help you be a greater artist. Why wouldn’t you want to be a member of a group like that?

Membership comes in three levels. General Members get access to a bi-monthly Reference Pack as well as a Bonus RefPack from past offerings in the in-between months. We offer a discounted Student Membership for full time students and educators. And if you want to try out being a member, there is a Quarterly Membership that runs for three months.


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https://animationresources.org/membership/levels/

FREE SAMPLES!

Not Convinced Yet? Check out this SAMPLE REFERENCE PACK! It will give you a taste of what Animation Resources members get to download every other month! That’s 560 pages of great high resolution images and nearly an hour of rare animation available to everyone to download for FREE! https://animationresources.org/join-us-sample-reference-pack/

Sample RefPack

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Monday, February 10th, 2025

What’s In Animation Resources’ Reference Packs?

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IF YOU’RE NEW HERE, BOOKMARK OUR PAGE. THERE’S LOTS TO EXPLORE HERE!

Animation Resources is a 501(c)(3) non-profit educational organization dedicated to serving the self study needs of animators, cartoonists and illustrators. If you are a creative person with an interest in the field, we hope you will choose to become a member of Animation Resources. Every other month, members are given access to a high resolution e-books, still framable animated films, podcasts and documentary films— all curated by the Board of Animation Resources.

Dollar Days

This year, we are trying something new to encourage new memberships. You can join for a one week trial membership for only A DOLLAR! Yes, you get access to everything our annual members get for seven days for only a buck. (Click here for the details on our Dollar Days.) What are you waiting for?

This sample Reference Pack is designed to give you an idea of what Animation Resources has to offer its members, and this is the best time to join. Here is what you’ll get when you join…

  • Every other month, you will receive a brand new Reference Pack which consists of high resolution downloadable e-books packed with fantastic artwork, rare animated films from our collection, documentaries, podcast discussions and more!
  • For our annual members, we have even more. Inbetween RefPacks, we rerun a past RefPack in our Bonus Archive. This means that every year, as an annual member you will be receiving 12 full Reference Packs a year, instead of just 6! This only applies to General and Student membership, not Quarterly members. So if you are on a quarterly billing cycle, you might want to consider cancelling your Quarterly membership and re-joining as a General member.
  • We also host “Animated Discussions” Events as members only video programs. Past Podcasts are archived along with our Reference Packs and on the Bonus Archive page for annual members.
  • Every year or two, Animation Resources provides more benefits for its members, and we occasionally raise our dues a little to allow us to continue to expand our offerings. But if you join today, we promise that General Membership dues will never increase as long as you maintain your membership.
  • General Membership is just $95 a year. For students and full time educators, it’s just $70. Are the annual dues too much to spend all at once? We also have a Quarterly Billing Option where you are billed $30 every three months. You can cancel your membership at any time on the Membership Account Page.(Quarterly Membership does not include the Bonus Archive.)
  • If you aren’t convinced yet that Animation Resources Membership is one of the best deals for artists, JOIN for a one week trial membership for only a buck! See the Dollar Days Page for details.

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

Reference Pack

Best of RefPacks 1 to 50

Over the past decade, Animation Resources has shared over 50 Reference Packs with our members. We have assembled two e-books and two video podcasts highlighting a few of the treasures our members have been able to download. During Members Appreciation Month, we will be sharing these e-books and podcasts with the general public. We hope they inspire you to join us and be a part of building the foundation for the future of animation.

DOWNLOADING INSTRUCTIONS: Below are the links to the sample Reference Pack. To download the files, RIGHT CLICK on the link (Mac users OPTION CLICK) and select SAVE TO DISK. We are delivering high resolution files to you. When you click, it might take several minutes to finish the download, so please be patient. If the link doesn’t work, refresh this page and try again. It’s best to download the files one at a time, rather than all at once. This will avoid timeouts.

PLEASE NOTE: This material may be protected by copyright and is provided to supporters of Animation Resources under Fair Use provisions for critical analysis, educational and reference purposes only. Permission to copy and print is granted for personal use only and these files are not to be distributed or shared with others. All rights reserved. After the period of availability, these files will be deleted from the server and may never be offered again. Downloading of this material constitutes agreement to these terms.

PDF E-BOOKS:
Best of 25

Best of The E-Books
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A Sampler of the First 10 Years of RefPack E-Books

The creative world of animation has its roots in the art of cartooning, and the history of cartooning extends back centuries. Over the past decade, Animation Resources’ e-books have included thousands of pages of classic cartooning, illustration and art instruction, ranging from 16th century woodblocks to newspaper comics from the 1920s, to powerful political cartoons from around the world, to complete courses teaching the fundamentals of cartooning and caricature… all designed to broaden the horizons of both professional and student artists.

This pair of e-books gather together some of the highlights from the first 50 members only e-books. It is provided to the general public to give prospective members an idea of what they will receive when they join. Members and volunteers are the lifeblood of our organization and we appreciate everything that the hundreds of people who have contrinuted to our efforts have accomplished. These e-books are dedicated to them.

Best of RefPack 1-25 E-Book
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Adobe PDF File / 377 Pages / 1.56 GB Download

Best of RefPack 26-50 E-Book
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Adobe PDF File / 187 Pages / 530 MB Download


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VIDEO PODCAST:
Best of 25

Best of Videos 1 to 50
Sampler Reels of the First 10 Years of RefPack Animation Videos

Some people are under the mistaken impression that animation is a genre, best suited for children’s cartoons. They think that specific established styles and techniques are the only way cartoons should look. It’s easy even for animators to fall into the trap of making cartoons that look just like all the other cartoons on TV and in theaters. But Animation Resources encourages film makers to think of animation as a medium, capable of breaking new ground by doing innovative and great things. We encourage our members to think outside the box by sharing unique examples of powerful animated film making that exploit the best aspects of the medium.

In the past decade of Reference Packs, Animation Resources members have had an opportunity to see rarely seen films of all types, from century old silent shorts, to stop motion puppet films, animation from China, Poland, Japan and Russia; animated commercials from the early 1950s; classic theatrical cartoons; experimental animation and rare industrial training films… Our intent is not to bring back a “golden age” of animation. We encourage artists to build on the past as a foundation for surpassing it.

This pair of reels gather together some clips of the highlights from the first 50 members only Reference Packs. They are provided to the general public to give prospective members an idea of what they will receive when they join.

Best of 1-25 Video Reel
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M4V Video File / SD / 48:06 / 456 MB Download

Best of 26-50 Video Reel
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M4V Video File / HD / 1:48:43 / 2.58 GB Download

PLEASE NOTE: These video files are large. Please download them one at a time to avoid timeouts.


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Bonus Download

During alternating months between Reference Packs, we’ll be including a bonus video or e-book from one of our past Reference Packs for our annual members (General and Student Memberships only). This time we are sharing a book and two rare wartime training films!

PDF E-BOOK:
Plastic Man

Jack Cole’s
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Plastic Man
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Issues Nos. 1, 2 & 3 (1943)

Jack Cole’s “Plastic Man” debuted in Police Comics in 1941 and was an immediate hit. Cole’s offbeat humor and Plastic Man’s ability to take any shape gave the cartoonist the opportunities to experiment with text and graphics in groundbreaking manner, helping to define the medium’s vocabulary, and making the idiosyncratic character one of the few enduring classics from the Golden Age to modern times. Plastic Man gained his own title in 1943.

This PDF e-book contains the first three issues of Plastic Man comics and includes a biography of Jack Cole. It is optimized for display on the iPad or printing two up with a cover on 8 1/2 by 11 inch paper.

REFPACK001: Plastic Man
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Adobe PDF File / 183 Pages / 245.5 MB Download


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DVD QUALITY VIDEO:
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Private Snafu Gas

REFPACK001: Private Snafu in Gas
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Army/Navy Screen Magazine (1944)

The Private Snafu training cartoons were produced by Warner Bros for the War Department during WWII. “Gas”, which deals with the importance of having an operating gas mask handy, was directed by Chuck Jones and written by Ted “Dr Seuss” Geisel. The voices were by Mel Blanc and Billy Bletcher.

REFPACK001: Private Snafu in Gas
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M4V Video File / 4:43 / 77.5 MB Download

This DVD quality MP4 file is provided courtesy of Thunderbean Animation and is included in HD on Private Snafu Golden Classics.


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DVD QUALITY VIDEO:
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Van Beuren Circus Capers

Aesop’s Fables: Circus Capers
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Van Beuren Studios (1930)

Disney admitted that in the 1920s, his goal was to produce cartoons as good as the Aesops Fables series. However after the Fables introduced a boy and girl mouse that bore a strong resemblance to Mickey and Minnie, Disney filed suit and had the cartoons pulled from theaters. This cartoon is one of the most blatant Mickey ripoffs, and one of the funniest.

REFPACK001: Circus Capers
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M4V Video File / 9:13 / 230.5 MB Download

This DVD quality MP4 file is provided courtesy of Thunderbean Animation and is included on Uncensored Animation from Van Beuren.


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Members Appreciation

For the past decade, Animation Resources has been serving artists working in the fields of animation, cartooning and illustration. Our volunteers and members have pulled together to raise the bar for our art form, and it’s time to celebrate… It’s Members Appreciation time again!

During the month of February, Animation Resources expresses our appreciation for to members with a very special Reference Pack, and we invite you to become a member too. For the next 30 days, we will be sharing reasons why you should join us. Our benefits of membership far exceed the cost of our annual dues.

Dollar Days

This year, we are trying something new to encourage new memberships. You can join for a one week trial membership for only A DOLLAR! Yes, you get access to everything our annual members get for seven days for only a buck. (Click here for the details on our Dollar Days.) What are you waiting for?

You can find out what our members get at the Member Appreciation Page. It’s easy to join. Just click on this link and you can sign up right now online…


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

Members Appreciation Month

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, August 7th, 2024

RefPack058: Another Reason Why You Should Join Animation Resources Today!

TOO LATE! You missed this one. Join Animation Resources today so you never miss another great Reference Pack.

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!


MEMBERS LOGIN To Download

JOIN TODAY To Access Members Only Content


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 Volume 3
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New York Daily World-Telegram / 1941-1946
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Willard Mullin wasn’t just the greatest sports cartoonists of his day, he is one of the greatest cartoonists of all time. For RefPack058 Animation Resources has dug deep into its collection of newspaper cartoons to assemble a fantastic e-book packed with incredible images that haven’t been seen in over half a century.

Mullin produced six cartoons a week, and they were printed large across a full page in the sports section. They usually were centered around the likeness of a famous athelete or a humorous depiction of a team mascot. Mullin was called upon to draw every form of animal as a team mascot, except perhaps elephants and donkeys, which were relegated to the editorial pages. He was famous for creating the character known as the Brooklyn Bum. Sporting a tattered and patched suit of clothes, a stub of a cigar and a big belly, the Bum perfectly represented the rough and tumble Brooklyn Dodgers.

The volunteers of Animation Resources have taken great pains to restore these crumbling scraps of newsprint to their original condition. You won’t find this material anywhere else.

SD VIDEO:
Jim Tyer Stuffy Durma

The Milton The Monster Show
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Episode 1 / Four Stuffy Durma Shorts 1965

Hal Seeger’s Milton The Monster Show is pretty typical of mid-1960s TV cartoons- nothing much to set it apart from the other shows crowding the Saturday Morning airwaves. But sprinkled in to a few episodes are some real gems. Seeger jobbed out the animation of the Stuffy Durma shorts to the legendary Terry-Toons animator, Jim Tyer. From the look of them, Tyer animated them all by himself. It’s very simple television animation, but it’s full of delightful Tyer touches that raise it up above the other segments in the show.

It’s easy with limited to animation to get carried away with the mechanics of breaking off limbs and mouths and eyes and forget the joy of movement. This is especially true of library based Flash cartoons. With Stuffy Durma, Tyer reminds us of the value of special poses, even ones that only appear on the screen for two frames in fast action. If you are trying to create quick, inexpensive internet cartoons, there isn’t a better group of shorts to study than this.


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SD VIDEO:
Bruno Bozetto

Mr. Rossi At Camping
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Bruno Bozzetto / Italy / 1970
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Bruno Bozzetto is an Italian animator known for his parody of Fantasia titled Allegro Non Troppo. His other feature films include a superhero parody called VIP My Brother Superman and a spaghetti western parody titled West And Soda. Bozzetto’s work is often satirical and political in nature, championing the common man and lampooning government inefficiency and oppression.

Bozzetto’s most famous character is Signor Rossi, an everyman figure he featured in many animated shorts and three feature films, Mr. Rossi Looks For Happiness, Mr. Rossi’s Dreams, and Mr. Rossi’s Vacation. In the short film we are sharing today, Mr. Rossi takes a camping trip and ends up dangling from a mountain crag.

Bozzetto’s work is not as well known in the United States as it should be, but it is recognized and appreciated across Europe. We think you’ll find a lot to inspire you in Bozzetto’s work.

SD VIDEO:
Czech Theatrical Commercial

Two Czech Theatrical Commercials
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Adi The Raccoon 1931 / Hannibal In Virgin Forest 1932

Animation Resources’ digital archive recently received a batch of early Czechoslovakian animated films. Among them were these two animated commercials. We tend to think of commercials as being primarily from the television era, but in the 1930s, a great deal of advertising animation was produced for theaters. These two shorts are interesting examples, and they illustrate how influential Disney and Fleischer cartoons were, even in Europe.

The history of animation in Czechoslovakia goes back to the 1920s. I believe the two films we are sharing with you here are by Karel Dodal, who not only produced advertisements (some featuring Felix the Cat), but also puppet and experimental films. The first advertisement, "Adi The Raccoon" looks very much like a contemporary American Mickey Mouse ripoff. The second one, "Hannibal In Virgin Forest" shows the influence of the Fleischer Betty Boop and Bouncing Ball cartoons. The notes that came with these films were sparse and all in the Czech language, so we don’t know much about them. If you have information you can share with us, please drop us a line.


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Scayrecrow

The Scayrecrow
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Ashley Thorpe / UK / 2008

Not too long ago we shared Ashley Thorpe’s feature film, Borley Rectory. Today we share one of the experimental shorts he made leading up to his feature, "The Scayrecrow".

Although on the surface this film sometimes feels like a live action film, it is actually animation, composed and visualized from the ground up. As you watch it, you have to keep reminding yourself that none of this exists in reality. It’s convincing without being overly realistic. Visually, the film is gorgeous with artfully composed shots and effective cinematics. It’s efficient too, with cascading images to make up for low frame rates and animation and live action used for the things they each do best. The collage technique creates an effective mood to put the story across. "The Scayrecrow" is a brilliant example of "thinking outside the box" and if the art of animation is to progress, it needs to push the boundaries of what an animated film can be.

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Chingo Muchabei

Chingo Muchabei Ep. 18 & 21
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Daikichiro Kusube / TMS – A Production / Japan / 1971

Chingo Muchabei is a slapstick comedy series based in 17th century Japan. The titular character is a freelance samurai who peddles umbrellas to support himself. The heir to the lordship of the province, Bokemaru is believed to be dead, but in fact he lives and Chingo Muchabei serves him. Lord Toyotomi discovers that the true heir to his province is alive and sends a bumbling ninja named Kaburezukin to kill him. But Chingo Muchabei foils him at every turn, using his umbrellas as weapons.

The two episodes we are presenting this time involve Sumo Wrestling and a haunted house full of Yokai Monsters, which are themes that always seem to make for good subjects for cartoons. The historical time period isn’t adhered to completely. You’ll see modern ideas thrown in for the sake of gags, and the tone of the show is pretty goofy with lots of fun expressions.


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Monty Banks

Play Safe
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Monty Banks / 1927
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From a 21st century perspective, we tend to focus on the parts of the past that we know about and assume that is all that there ever was. When it comes to slapstick comedy from the silent era, we think of Chaplin, Keaton and Lloyd, but there were more slapstick clowns worth studying. One of these was Monty Banks.

In the past, we shared Harold Lloyd’s classic thrill comedy Safety Last. Monty Banks worked in the same genre of film making, and Play Safe is a great example. The film follows the basic cinematic structure set by Keaton and Lloyd- establishing a solid story premise up front and gradually building gags up to a big climax involving elaborate stunts. Banks was equally adept at the scenes involving the personality of the character and the big slam-bang finishes. Like Keaton and Lloyd, Banks did most of his own stunts, and at times they were quite dangerous. He became seriously injured when he was dragged over a cliff by a car. There are several sequences in the train chase where a miscalculation could have easily resulted in instant death.

Take some time and analyze the shots and angles and see if you can apply the techniques to your own work… without the risk of death!

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Breakdowns

More Pickups
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Curated By David Eisman
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Animation Resources Board Member David Eisman presents a continuation of the "pickups" theme introduced in Reference Pack 056. There is always more to say about any given topic, and there is an ad-infinitum of possible breakdowns to choose from. While each respective article endeavored to explain the basic structures of important animation concepts, these “pickup” articles will, instead, add addendums that can be used to enhance the reader’s understanding of the formal and informal principles of animation. While it is not necessary to have read the articles from previous reference packs, the context provided will certainly be helpful in understanding the lessons from this article. Nevertheless, basic context and explanations of the concepts will be provided as pretext before analysis of the individual breakdowns. The concepts and principles discussed in this particular article are motion frames, resistance, pans, hand articulation, head turns, and impact.


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DVD QUALITY VIDEO:
Momotaro

Momotaro’s Sacred Sailors
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Seo Mitsuyo / 1945

In 1939, due to the outbreak of WWII, Japan banned all foreign movies. This provided a boon for the Japanese film business, which stepped into the gap and ramped up production of domestic wartime training films and propaganda. The Japanese Navy contracted with Director Seo Mitsuyo to create a feature length animated film to promote the draft, and give support and encouragement to children whose fathers had been taken up into military service.

However, Momotaro’s Sacred Sailors failed to accomplish its goals. By the time it was completed most Japanese men of age to serve had already been drafted. The movie was finally released immediately following a series of allied bombings that had effectively destroyed movie exhibition in Tokyo. Within a few months, almost nothing remained from the making of the film. Allied bombers had destroyed both the studio building where the film was produced, and the home of the director where thousands of production sketches were being stored. In September, the Japanese surrendered, and a purge was undertaken to destroy all traces of propaganda before the US occupying force arrived. The prints of this film, and many others were shredded and burned. The film was effectively wiped out of existence.

In the years one solitary print of the film lay hidden in the warehouse, while animation in Japan flourished and grew and became an important part of Japanese culture. When the dusty film cans were discovered in the back of a warehouse in 1984, they were restored and exhibited. But this time, instead of being dubbed a creative and commercial failure, Momotaro’s Sacred Sailors was recognized as the first of a long line of Japanese animated features, and as the film that established the animation business in Japan.

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Rhapsody of Steel

“Rhapsody Of Steel”
John Sutherland / 1959

John Sutherland’s studio was very influential in the mid-1950s, employing some of the best designers in the business. This film is no exception. Legendary stylists Eyvind Earle (Sleeping Beauty, Pigs is Pigs) and Maurice Noble (Duck Dodgers, How The Grinch Stole Christmas) collaborated on Rhapsody of Steel, and you can see evidence of both of their hands everywhere in this film. (Earle in the landscapes and textures, Noble in the bold primary and secondary colors…)

Rhapsody of Steel

Time Magazine said of this film…

Rhapsody of Steel, a 23-minute animated cartoon that cost $300,000, is one of those rare industrial films with enough specific quality and general interest to play the commercial circuits. In the next few months it will be shown as an added attraction in several thousand U.S. movie houses. Made by former Disney Staffer John Sutherland, Rhapsody sets out to tell a sort of child’s history of steel from the first meteor that ever hit the earth to the first manned rocket that leaves it, and most of the time Moviemaker Sutherland proves a slick entertainer and a painless pedagogue. Unhappily, the music of Oscar-Winning Dmitri Tiomkin, who is probably the world’s loudest composer, bangs away on the sound track like a trip hammer. But the picture’s pace is brisk, its tricks of animation are better than cute, and the plug, when the sponsor slips it in on the final frame, is modestly understated: “A presentation of U.S. Steel.”

As always, many thanks to Steve Stanchfield for sharing his treasures with us. If you haven’t already, check out the videos at his Thunderbean Animation Store at Amazon.

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…and we will credit your membership with the additional time. These bonus downloads expire after June 1st, 2024.


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Whew! That is an amazing collection of treasures! 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.

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Animation Resources has been sharing treasures from the Animation Archive with its members for over a decade. Every other month, our members get access to a downloadable Reference Pack, full of information, inspiration and animation. The RefPacks consist of e-books jam packed with high resolution scans of great art, still framable animated films from around the world, documentaries, podcasts, seminars and MORE! The best part is that all of this material has been selected and curated by our Board of professionals to aid you in your self study. Our goal is to help you be a greater artist. Why wouldn’t you want to be a member of a group like that?

Membership comes in three levels. General Members get access to a bi-monthly Reference Pack as well as a Bonus RefPack from past offerings in the in-between months. We offer a discounted Student Membership for full time students and educators. And if you want to try out being a member, there is a Quarterly Membership that runs for three months.


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