September 28th, 2022

Members Click Here Membership Email Join Us!

Animation: Ralph Bakshi’s Phone Doodles

Ralph Bakshi

Today, I hope you’ll allow me to tell you about someone I have had the honor of working closely with. He’s my hero too. If anyone ever creates a Mount Rushmore of animation, his head should be right up front, grinning with a stub of a cigarette in his mouth– Ralph Bakshi.

Ralph Bakshi

I did a panel discussion with Ralph at the San Diego ComicCon a couple of years ago. You can find it linked in the article, Advice From Ralph Bakshi. The subject of our discussion was what it means to be an artist and cartoonist in today’s world. Whether you’re lucky enough to be able to make a living doodling, or if you still dream of being paid to create, you need to heed Ralph’s advice. He is the real deal.

If you’re an artist working in animation, whether you know it or not, Ralph Bakshi is the reason you’re here. Don’t believe me? Throw your mind back to 1970. Look at what the animation business had turned into… Disney was cranking out Robin Hood, a film without a single new idea. On TV, Filmation was lowering the bar so Hanna Barbera could play “quality limbo” with them. Animation was dying, animators were choosing retirement over flogging the dead carcass of the art form they loved, and it looked like it the situation would never get any better.

Ralph Bakshi

Enter Bakshi. With his first three films, he turned animation upside down. He showed that it wasn’t just a medium for big bears with Phil Harris’s voice and crappy sitcom characters in outer space. His films shocked and terrified people… they were crass and sloppy. They were made on a shoestring, and sometimes it showed. But they had something honest to say, and that got noticed. Ralph showed that animation- the most collaborative art form ever- could be an intensely personal medium.

Ralph Bakshi

Ralph’s first three films- Fritz the Cat, Heavy Traffic, and Coonskin- came totally out of the blue. They are the animation equivalent of Louis Armstrong’s Hot Fives. Great old time animators like Irv Spence, Manny Perez, Ambi Paliwoda and Virgil Ross were offered the opportunity to cut loose and make films that weren’t just cats chasing mice and dogs chasing cats. These films dealt with what it meant to be an artist, the battle of the sexes, race relations, and the unsenimentalized realities of urban life. They were improvisational and had no rules.

Ralph Bakshi

These three films, made in the darkest of the dark ages of animation, offered a glint of hope for what animation could become. If all you’ve seen of Ralph’s work is Lord of the Rings and Fire and Ice you don’t know what I’m talking about here. All of the adult targeted animation you see in the US today has its roots in Ralph’s example in these three films. They stirred up controversy and caused riots at screenings back in the day, but now they seem to us like they could have been made yesterday, not three decades ago- except for the fact that today’s world has trouble accepting brutal honesty when it comes to politically charged topics. Ralph has never been one to pull punches.

Ralph Bakshi

Ralph Bakshi

In the 1980s, Ralph did for television animation what he did for theatrical features, blowing the lid off of CBS’s Saturday morning schedule with Mighty Mouse: The New Adventures. Ralph took a chance on the ideas of a kid named John Kricfalusi, and set up the studio after the unit structure model used at Warners. Stories were written with storyboards again. Artists were cut loose to create cartoons. Without Mighty Mouse, there never would have been Ren & Stimpy or The Simpsons. The artists who worked on Mighty Mouse have gone on to lead the TV animation industry.

Ralph Bakshi

Ralph is an absolute genius when it comes to spotting raw talent. He can take a kid straight out of school and turn him into a pro faster than anyone else. Every film had its "graduating class" of kids. Those kids now populate the animation business on every level, from the hotshots at Pixar and Disney to the creative sparks at Warners. I know of Bakshi alumni who are top dogs at Dreamworks and the CGI companies too.

Ralph Bakshi

Ralph Bakshi

As a filmmaker, Ralph is one-of-a-kind. He doesn’t make films for executives… he doesn’t even make films for a specific audience. He makes them for himself. You can count the number of animators capable of using this unweildy medium for personal expression on one hand and still have fingers left. Ralph is one of them.

Ralph Bakshi

But Ralph is not only the greatest living animation artist. He is the catylist that has more than once pulled the industry out of a hole so deep people had just about given up on cartoons. For that alone, he deserves the respect of any and all animators, whether they like his work or not.

Ralph Bakshi

If this business needs anything right now, it’s another go round with Bakshi. The era of shi-shi “distressed” animation desks complete with faux wormholes, and middle management producers driving Jaguars paid for by their bonus checks is over. That was great for the people lucky enough to hook up to the gravy train while it lasted. But times have changed. The people left standing will be the ones who REALLY CARE about the medium of animation.

Ralph Bakshi

You can take my word for the fact that no one loves cartoons more than Ralph. Sit down and ask him about Jim Tyer. (Ralph was Tyer’s assistant…) Listen to what he has to say about Spence or Maltese or any of the other old timers he brought in to work on his films. Ralph lives and breathes animation. His drawings are imbued with the whole history of the medium. He announces his retirement every once in a while, and swears off cartoons forever, but it’s in his blood. Just count the days till the bellowing voice out of the blue hollers “BAKSHI’S BACK, YOU BASTUHDS!” over the studio intercom again.

Ralph Bakshi
Ralph Bakshi

It’s time for Ralph to rent a warehouse, fill it full of kids with big dreams, raw talent and lots of ideas and crank out a film. It doesn’t even matter if it turns out fantastic or crappy. It’ll be a shot in the arm to the whole business, and it just might lead to something even better. I know I’d love to be a part of it. –Stephen Worth

Ralph Bakshi
Visit Ralph’s web page… RalphBakshi.com.

Buy Me At AmazonUNFILTERED: The Complete Ralph Bakshi isn’t one of those "art books" with postage stamp sized pictures floating in oceans of tasteful white space and huge text blocks of scholarly blather that crowds out the images. It’s just pictures, pictures and more pictures… along with just enough text to put them in context. The book is organized to show Ralph’s career from his earliest days at Terry-Toons, to his groundbreaking features, to his revolutionary TV work, to his most recent fine art paintings. Even if you think you know all there is to know about Bakshi, this book will grab you by the lapels and shake you and show you things you’ve never seen the likes of before. Click through the link to pick up the Bakshi book at Amazon.

Stephen Worth
Director
Animation Resources
.

FacebooktwitterredditpinterestlinkedinmailFacebooktwitterredditpinterestlinkedinmailby feather
Share on Tumblr

Posted by admin @ 12:43 pm

September 27th, 2022

Members Click Here Membership Email Join Us!

Voice Acting: Mel Blanc on Advertising

Voice Actor Mel Blanc

There’s one aspect of animation that I haven’t dealt with much yet- Voice Acting. My own research in this area is pretty limited. I hope sometime in the future, a specialist in this field will contribute their expertise to the Archive to curate this important aspect of cartoon filmmaking.

Voice Actor Mel BlancVoice Actor Mel BlancBut that doesn’t mean that we don’t have any interesting material dealing with voice acting at Animation Resources. Eric Graf stopped by with a wonderful treasure the other day… An LP record pressed by the production company of legendary voice actor, Mel Blanc. It’s a recording of a speech by Blanc at the 1966 Annual Awards Luncheon of the Station Representatives Association. Titled “Mel Blanc Takes A Humorous Look At Commercials: Past, Present and Future (Who The Hell Is Mel Blanc?)”, this record is a hilarious glimpse at both the advertising industry and a little known aspect of the career of one of the most famous voice actors of all time.

Who The Hell Is Mel Blanc?
(Mel Blanc Associates/1966)

(AAC Audio File / 32kbps-44.1kHz / Mono / 25 minutes / 6.25 mb)

Thanks for bringing this by Eric!

Stephen Worth
Director
Animation Resources

Animated CartoonsAnimated Cartoons

This posting is part of the online Encyclopedia of Cartooning under the subject heading, Animation.

FacebooktwitterredditpinterestlinkedinmailFacebooktwitterredditpinterestlinkedinmailby feather
Share on Tumblr

Posted by admin @ 2:03 pm

September 25th, 2022

Members Click Here Membership Email Join Us!

RefPack047: WWI Cartooning. Commercials and Animation From Around the World

YOU MISSED IT!

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…

Bruce Bainsfather Fragments From France

At the Western Front, Bruce Bairnsfather began drawing cartoons based on the life of soldiers in France. He sent some to The Bystander magazine and the editors began to publish them under the title “Fragments From France”. The casual tone of these cartoons and the tendency towards gallows humor initially drew criticism from government leaders. They thought that Bairnsfatherโ€™s work was vulgar and demeaned the British army, but the soldiers themselves embraced the series, recognizing its honesty and humor.

Commercial Reels

Animation Resources has shared many commercial reels with its members in the past, but these two are among the best. The first one includes spots from New York studios, including UPA New York, and it features animation by Grim Natwick and Tissa David. The second reel is a particularly good one. It’s from John Hubley’s studio, Storyboard Productions. The credits at the beginning are a virtual who’s who of animation… Art Babbitt, Emery Hawkins, Bill Littlejohn and Rod Scribner. And like many of Hubley’s other productions, it includes top name artists from the world of jazz… Duke Ellington, Benny Carter, Tal Farlow, Shelly Manne, Red Norvo, and Shorty Rogers.


MEMBERS LOGIN To Download

JOIN TODAY To Access Members Only Content


Winnie The Pooh

In our International section, we share the last installment of Fyodor Khitrukโ€™s adaptation of Winnie The Pooh. This series was produced at roughly the same time as the Disney films, but they couldn’t be more different. On a trip to California, Khitruk paid a visit to the Disney Studios where he met Woolie Reitherman, the director who had won an Oscar for Disneyโ€™s version of โ€œWinnie The Poohโ€. Reitherman admitted to Khitruk that he liked Khitrukโ€™s films better than his own.

The Enchanted Boy

In the years immediately following the end of WWII, Russian animation progressed rapidly. By the mid 1950s, the quality level had caught up with the peak standards in the West. One of the most successful films produced by Soyuzmultfilm during this period was “The Enchanted Boy”. This featurette is rarely seen in the West and has never been translated into English.

Cow On The Moon

We’re happy to introduce films from the acclaimed Zagreb Films studio to our Reference Packs. In the early 1950s, an American film called The Four Poster was screened in Yugoslavia (now known as Croatia). It wasn’t a particularly successful film, but it included animated sequences by John Hubley at UPA. Animator Dusan Vukotik had read an article on UPA in Graphis magazine, and along with Vatroslav Mimica, he decided to create animated films in that style. One of the earliest of the Zagreb films was “Cow On The Moon”.

Ersatz

A few years later, Vukotik took the animation style of “Cow On The Moon” several steps further in a film called “Surogat” (aka: “Ersatz”, “The Substitute”). “Surogat” was a sensation worldwide, winning at film festivals in Bergamo Italy, Belgrade Yugoslavia and San Francisco, among many others. In 1962, it won an Oscar for Best Animated Short Film, the first film produced outside of the United States to be awarded that honor.

Circus

Now we shift from Croatia to Poland. Poland was the birthplace of puppet animation before World War I with the films of Wladyslaw Starewicz. But little of that tradition remained after the devastation of World War II. In the late 1940s, Poland built back its culture of animation from scratch, and by the mid-1950s Polish puppet animation had achieved a high level of quality. “Circus” by Wlodzimierz Haupe was one of the first Polish puppet films from this era to receive worldwide acclaim.

Tango

When we think about animation techniques, we think of hand drawn animation, computer generated imagery, and puppet animation, but all of these are basically the same thingโ€” animation. What is the element that defines what animation is? What do all these techniques share? Artists who think outside the box, like Zbigniew Rybczynski are the ones who shine a light on the magical element that makes animation animation… time.


MEMBERS LOGIN To Download

JOIN TODAY To Access Members Only Content


Pirate Prince

Animation Resources’ Board Member, JoJo Baptista shares two episodes from a particularly rare Japanese TV series from the 1960s. Kaizoku Ouji, or Pirate Prince, was a comedy adventure series created by Shotaro Ishinomori (Cyborg 009, Sabu and Ichi Detective Stories) and produced by Toei Animation. It ran from May 2nd, 1966 to November 28th, 1966.

Dementia

Normally, this section is devoted to comedy… after all, the title of this topic is “slapstick”. However, this time I’m going to expand the definition of what this category covers beyond comedy to visual storytelling. Live action silent films in our modern age are a very rare thing. Audiences have been conditioned to expect exposition conveyed through dialogue. Silent psycho-dramas are almost non-existent. In order to find psychosis expressed purely visually, you have to go all the way back to The Lodger or The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. Today I’m going to introduce you to a psycho-drama you’ve probably never heard of, let alone seen.

Motion Frames

Animation Resources Board Member, David Eisman analyzes another batch of breakdown clips, this time focusing on Motion Frames. The traditional inbetween is one that bridges the gap between extremes without any additional features. Motion Frames are inbetweens meant to efficiently craft the illusion of speed and momentum using distortion and the addition of new elements. Whereas an animator may need many traditional inbetweens and a high frame rate to create the illusion of speed, they may only need one or two Motion Frames to achieve the same effect. There are arguably three distinct categories of Motion Frames: dry-brush blurs, multiples, and smears.

Animated Discussions Podcast

We have a new podcast this time too… Lenord Robinson has worked in the animation industry for over 40 years. An animator, storyboard artist, character designer, producer, and director, Lenord has helped bring many of your favorite properties to lifeโ€” The Black Cauldron, Fox and the Hound, Muppet Babies, Tiny Toons, Animaniacs, and Bobโ€™s Burgers, to name a few. He has lived through many technological changes in the animation industry, changes that left many veteran artists by the wayside, such as the transition from paper to Cintiqs, as well as the rise of CG animation and the fall of theatrical hand drawn animation. You can hear all about Lenord’s work and career advice in this episode of Animated Discussions.

Our Podcasts section always contains the five most recent entries in our Animated Discussions series hosted by Davey Jarrell, with the balance of the episodes archived on the Annual Member Bonus Archive page.


MEMBERS LOGIN To Download

JOIN TODAY To Access Members Only Content


Esquire

The Annual Member Bonus Archive features an e-book on the leading “gentleman’s magazine” of its day, 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 magazineโ€™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.

The Mascot

“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!

Screen Songs

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.


MEMBERS LOGIN To Download

JOIN TODAY To Access Members Only Content


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.


MEMBERS LOGIN To Download

JOIN TODAY To Access Members Only Content


Live Streaming Project

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.

25 x 100

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.

PayPalAnimationAnimation 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.

Donate Today

Or you can donate on Facebook, here…
FACEBOOK LIVESTREAM FUNDRAISER

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.

FacebooktwitterredditpinterestlinkedinmailFacebooktwitterredditpinterestlinkedinmailby feather
Share on Tumblr

Posted by Stephen Worth @ 10:34 am