AnimationResources.org - Serving the Online Animation Community AnimationResources.org

September 16th, 2011

Exhibit: Illustration Jump Page

Please Note: We are in the process of reformatting and reuploading these posts. Bookmark this jump page and check back regularly to see what’s new. Thank you for your patience.

Modern Illustration Artzybasheff

Animation Resources isn’t just an archive OF animation… it’s an archive FOR animators. There’s a subtle but important distinction there… One of the aspects of modern animation that could stand improvement is design. Too many current animated films ignore the importance of appealing design, or lean too heavily on the designs of other animated films. There’s absolutely no reason why every princess, king or mouse should look like princesses, kings and mice from previous films. There’s a wide world of design inspiration to be found in the history of illustration. Here’s just a sampling of the important material related to illustration contained in the Animation Resources Database…

CLASSIC ILLUSTRATION

Classic Illustration Kay Nielsen

One of the primary projects of Animation Resources is to gather together the reference materials that inspired the artists who made animated cartoons in the golden age. It’s a little known fact that every animation studio had a library of children’s books for the reference of the background painters and designers. Rare editions of Rackham, Dulac and Wyeth sat on the shelves at studios in both New York and in Hollywood. Many great children’s book illustrators worked for a time in animation, including Kay Nielsen, Gustaf Tenggren and Willy Pogany.

BLAND TOMTAR OCH TROLL: John Bauer’s Trolls (Bauer Biography) / Einar Norelius 1929, 1934, 1944 & 1949 (Norelius Biography)

KAY NIELSEN: East of the Sun and West of the Moon / Twelve Dancing Princesses and Hansel & Gretel

ARTHUR RACKHAM: Grimm’s Fairy Tales

EDMUND DULAC: Hans Christian Anderson / Poe’s Poetical Works and Tanglewood Tales

MILO WINTER: Aesop For Children

FELIX LORIOUX: Fables de la Fontaine and Le Buffon des Enfants / Tales From Perrault

GUSTAF TENGGREN: D’Aulnoy’s Fairy Tales, Good Dog Book, Small Fry And The Winged Horse / Heidi – Wonderbook – Juan & Juanita / Grimm’s Fairy Tales (See also Gustaf Tenggren under Golden Book Style below.)

WILLY POGANY: Willy Pogany’s Drawing Lessons / Mother Goose

OTHER CLASSIC ILLUSTRATORS: W. Lee Hankey’s Deserted Village / Maxfield Parrish’s Arabian Nights (1909) / N. C. Wyeth’s Legends of Charlemagne / Mabel Lucie Attwell’s Peter Pan and Wendy / Frank Reynolds Paints Pickwick / Monks By Eduard von Grutzner / Boris O’Klein’s Dirty Dogs of Paris / Reginald Birch and St. Nicholas Magazine / Gustave Dore

MODERN ILLUSTRATION

From the 1920s through the late 1950s, magazines featured the work of some of the top talents in the art world. Leindecker, Artzybasheff, Szyk and Hurst were all great artists whose work has a lot to offer today’s cartoonists and character designers. Thanks to Archive Supporters Mike Fontanelli and Kent Butterworth, we have been able to bring many of these great names to your attention.

BORIS ARTZYBASHEFF: As I See: Neurotica, Machinalia and Diablerie

LAWSON WOOD: The Monkey Painter

WARTIME PROPAGANDA: Arthur Szyk: The New Order / WWI & WWII Propaganda Posters / Aviation Illustrators

COLLIERS MAGAZINE: 1930s & 40s Colliers Illustrations, Advertisements, Ink Wash Paintings / and WWII Era Illustrations

CORONET MAGAZINE: Bugs Bunny: A Hare Grows In Manhattan 1945 / Disney’s Casey At The Bat / Harper Goff’s Blood On The Moon / Norman Rockwell: The People’s Painter

VANITY FAIR MAGAZINE: The Genius of Miguel Covarrubias

GOLDEN BOOK STYLE

Mary Blair

Thanks to a generous donation by Animation Resources supporter John Kricfalusi, we are able to share the beautiful work of the great artists who made a fortune for Western Publishing’s Little Golden Book line. The style was created by Disney concept artist, Gustaf Tenggren and reached its peak in books by Mel Crawford. Many animation artists moonlighted as children’s book illustrators… among them Norm McCabe, Harvey Eisenberg, Mary Blair and J. P. Miller.

GUSTAF TENGGREN: Tenggren’s Tell It Again Book: Genesis of the Golden Book Style / Sing for Christmas / The Little Trapper (See also Gustaf Tenggren under Classic Illustration above.)

FEODOR ROJANKOVSKY: Frog Went A-Courtin’

TIBOR GERGELY: A Day In The Jungle / “Watch Me! Said the Jeep” and “The Red, White and Blue Auto”

MARY BLAIR: Mary Blair’s Baby’s House / Little Verses / The New Golden Song Book

MEL CRAWFORD: Rootie Kazootie Joins The Circus

AL WHITE: Rocky & His Friends and Huck Hound Builds A House

RECORD ALBUMS & MOVIE MEMORABILIA: 50s & 60s LP Covers / Bozo And His Rocket Ship / Ernesto Garcia Cabral: The Greatest Cartoonist You’ve Never Heard of Before! / Fantastic Mexican Lobby Cards

ADDITIONAL BIOGRAPHIES

INBETWEENS ARTICLES

Jean-Gabriel Domergue: Granddaddy of All Pinup Artists

FINE ART PRINTS

VISIT OUR GALLERY OF FINE ART PRINTS

Animation Resources in association with Imagekind is proud to present a collection of fine art prints representing some of Kay Nielsen’s greatest work- illustrations from the classic book, East of the Sun and West of the Moon. Produced on demand from high resolution archival scans, these prints are carefully color corrected for maximum image quality and fidelity to the original book. Visit the Kay Nielsen Gallery at Imagekind to see all the available images.

Labeled: classic illustration, exhibit, golden book, illustration, jump page, magazine, modern illustration |

Share on Tumblr

Posted by Stephen Worth @ 10:00 pm

September 16th, 2011

Exhibit: Eugene Zimmerman Jump Page

Eugene “Zim” Zimmerman was born in 1862 in Switzerland, and his family emigrated to the United States when he was seven. As a poor immigrant, Zim witnessed the “melting pot” of American culture first hand. His depictions of ethnic minorities were pointed, but honest and well observed. Although he is pretty much forgotten today, he was very well known in his time, and his humor captured the essence of turn-of-the-century America.

Zim was the founder of the so-called “Grotesque” school of caricature, and was one of the first caricaturist to incorporate exaggerated cartooniness not only in the faces of his subjects, but in the bodies as well. Zim worked for Puck and Judge, the two top humor magazines of their day.

Zim was a prolific artist, with more than 40,000 illustrations published in his lifetime. He retired from Judge in 1897 and founded the American Association of Cartoonists and Caricaturists. He was also a writer and teacher. His columns ran in Cartoons magazine during the early years of the century, as did ads for his landmark correspondence course in cartooning.

For more biographical information on Zim, see the Animation Resources biographical entry… Eugene "Zim" Zimmerman

ZIM: ONLINE EXHIBIT

Zim’s Cartoons & Caricatures Part One

For the first time in nearly a century, Eugene "Zim" Zimmerman’s legendary 1914 cartooning course is available again in a four-volume e-book edition. Lavishly illustrated with nearly 1,000 B&W illustrations and 22 full page color plates, this landmark course deserves a place in every cartoonist’s collection.

Edited by Stephen Worth and with a foreword by Ralph Bakshi, these books cover a broad range of subjects, from practical advice for aspiring artists to philosophical musings on what it means to be a cartoonist. Zim’s infectious sense of humor and vividly observed caricatures leap off the page. This drawing course may just be the keystone document of American cartooning.

ORDER VOL 1 IN OUR ONLINE STORE!

REVIEWS

Eddie Fitzgerald: Uncle Eddie’s Theory Corner

JOIN TODAY!
For a limited time, the three remaining volumes of the e-book edition of the Zim Course are being offered to Animation Resources subscribers as a benefit of membership. JOIN NOW and collect the whole set!

VISIT OUR GALLERY OF FINE ART PRINTS

Animation Resources in association with Imagekind is proud to present a collection of fine art prints representing some of Eugene Zimmerman’s best work. Produced on demand from high resolution archival scans, these prints are of sufficient quality to be printed all the way up to poster size without any image degradation. Visit the Zim Gallery at Imagekind to see all the available images.

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

Labeled: exhibit, jump page, zim |

Share on Tumblr

Posted by Stephen Worth @ 9:59 pm

September 16th, 2011

Exhibit: Adventures In Music Jump Page

Dave Brubeck

When I was a kid, I always loved the “Wonderful World of Disney” show. It seemed that every show had the word “adventure” in the title. At Disneyland, Walt built a whole land around the concept of “adventure”. Today, I hope to be able to pass along to you a little of my excitement about early to mid 20th century music. I want it to be just as much fun as shooting hippos on the jungle cruise, so let’s all call it an Adventure!

Music has been a part of cartoons since before the dawn of sound. In 1925 Max Fleischer’s Bouncing Ball cartoons were the first to be animated to a musical beat. The action was syncronized so theater organists and audiences could play and sing along with the characters on the screen. The merging of animation and music was a smash hit, and soon all cartoons were timed to music.

Music shares an indescribable magic with animation. It’s hard to describe in words exactly why certain walk cycles or pantomime gags are so wonderful. Music is a source of non-verbal delight as well. The rhythms and pacing of cartoons often mirror the construction of popular music with a statement of theme followed by variations, culminating in a restatement of the theme and a big finish. If you think about it, the best cartoons are inseparable from music.

Below are links to the entire series of posts on this topic. Feel free to jump into the comments and join in the conversation.

I’m going to start out with a classic Disney animated short that attempts to outline the families of musical instruments with an emphasis on the importance of rhythm to music. They made a sequel to it called “Melody” a year later, but they never got around to making the logical third installment, “Harmony”. Maybe someday, someone will pick up where they left off and complete the trilogy.

Here is “Toot Whistle Plunk and Boom”…

ADVENTURES IN MUSIC

This series of posts originally appeared as part of my guest blogging stint on BoingBoing.

Other Music Related Articles

Leopold Stokowski: Artist of the Past, Artist of the Future
Bill Evans on the Creative Process and Self Teaching
Eric Larson on Music and the Animated Picture

I hope these articles inspire you to investigate new types of music and integrate what you discover into your film making. Music and animation are Siamese twins. Think of them as a team from the very start of planning your film. Adding music like wallpaper as the final step the way modern television animation is often scored is a total waste of a great opportunity.

Stephen Worth
Director
Animation Resources