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April 4th, 2023

Illustration: Maxfield Parrish’s Arabian Nights 1909

Today I’m sharing a classic book from my collection by illustrator Maxfield Parrish.

Parrish was one of the most successful artists of the golden age of illustration. It is said that during the depression, there were more Maxfield Parrish prints hanging on the walls of American homes than there were American homes!

The book I’m featuring today was done early in Parrish’s career, but it contains all of the aspects of his style that would make him famous… the electric blues set off of bright sunset oranges, the dramatic lighting effects, the amazingly lifelike natural shapes and patterns contrasted with large flat areas of color, and the total control of the mechanical aspects of offset printing… if you look carefully at the foliage in the image with the urns on either side, you can see that the painting was pasted up from several pieces. Bud Plant’s website has an interesting article on how Parrish used the four color process. Check it out.

Stephen Worth
Director
Animation Resources

This posting is part of a series of articles comprising an online exhibit spotlighting Illustration.

Labeled: aladdin, arabian nights, illustration, maxfield parrish |

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Posted by admin @ 9:45 am

April 3rd, 2023

LAST CHANCE To Download!

LAST CALL FOR DOWNLOADING OUR SPECIAL TENTH ANNIVERSARY REFERENCE PACK!
https://animationresources.org/membersonly/

During Members Appreciation month, Animation Resources shared more with its members at one time than any other time in its history. Two e-books totaling over 500 pages, two videos running 2 1/2 hours in length, a three hour podcast on the history of cartooning in the West and Japan… a huge collection of treasures that you can’t get anywhere else. All of this sums up what Animation Resources has been doing for the past decade.

It’s about to be removed from the server.

Our Reference Packs are only available for two months. After that, they are removed and replaced by a new Reference Pack. If you haven’t downloaded our tenth anniversary Reference Pack yet, NOW is the time to act. You can join online now and download it right away. If you wait until next week, it will be gone forever.

Animation Resources is doing important things. Its members are benefitting from the great reference material and they’re becoming stronger artists. WHY AREN’T YOU A MEMBER YET?

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

Labeled: Uncategorized |

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Posted by Stephen Worth @ 12:43 pm

April 3rd, 2023

Animation: Disney’s Artist Tryout Book

Today, we scanned another fascinating document from the collection of Clair Weeks. This is the "Disney Studios Artist’s Tryout Book" from 1938. It provides a valuable overview of the production process and description of the various job categories. You will definitely want to print this out and study it carefully.

Here are some quotes from this booklet that you might find interesting…

STORY MEN must be able to draw. The stories are not written but are visualized in sketch form.

The value of an animator is dependent upon his ability to dramatize and caricature life, and to time and stage his characters’ actions in an unusual and interesting way. An animator must be a showman- he must know how to entertain an audience, to present a gag, to picture dramatically an ordinary incident. Above all, he must be a sure and skillful draftsman.

THE DIRECTOR must have complete knowledge of every phase of animation, have executive ability and outstanding dramatic talent. He must be familiar with practically all of the Arts… To date, all directors have arisen from the ranks of the Studio, sometimes through story work, but more often through animation. Because of the complexity of animation it seems that this will continue to be the case.

All inking and painting of celluloids, and all tracing done in the Studio is perfomed exclusively by a large staff of girls known as Inkers and Painters… This is the only department in the Disney Studio open to women artists.

The original brochure was in very poor condition, with tears and waterstains throughout. I’m sure that this was carried around in Weeks’ back pocket for quite a while. But Photoshop can work miracles, so these scans ended up looking better than the original.

In case you haven’t noticed, Animation Resources has become "an embarassment of riches". We are doing very important work here. I hope you will support our project any way you can.