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February 6th, 2023

COMING SOON!

Animation Resources 10th Anniversary

Wednesday is a very important day! It’s the day Animation Resources is launching its Member Appreciation Month. This year’s event is extra important, because this year marks our 10th anniversary and our 50th Reference Pack!

In honor of all this, Animation Resources has pulled out all the stops to share with everyone the treasures in our archive. Here are the things you’ll be able to see beginning on Wednesday:

• We have prepared two huge downloadable e-books with a sampling of the best of the e-books in our fifty RefPacks. Totaling over 550 pages, these two books will be available for download by the general public.

• Animation Resources’ Board Member, David Eisman has edited over 2 1/2 hours of clips of videos we’ve shared with our members over the past decade. It includes classic animation, foreign films, anime, documentaries, slapstick comedy and more! These two videos are introduced by Davey Jarrell and will be streamed many times over the next month, and will be available for download by the general public.

•Davey Jarrell and Stephen Worth have completed a monumental audio podcast that has been in the works since 2007. In it, Stephen traces the history of cartooning through time step by step from the present day all the way back to the 15th century. And if that isn’t enough of a leap, Steve then traces the history of cartooning in Japan from the 12th century back to the present! This podcast is almost 3 hours long and it’s packed with breadcrumbs for you to follow. The cartoon history podcast will be streamed multiple times over the next month, and will be available for download by Animation Resources members.

• Between February 8th and March 17th, we will have live streams of the Best of RefPack 1-25 video, the Best of Refpack 26-50 video and the Cartoon History podcast. And beginning Sunday February 19th, we will be hosting a series of three Discord Discussions where you can meet the people behind the scenes at Animation Resources and find out more about the 10th Anniversary offerings.

• On Sunday March 19th, we will be hosting an online party in our Discord server. Everyone is invited to join us in celebrating our tenth anniversary. Mark it on your calendar and come visit with all of us then.

We will have more information on all this starting on Wednesday, and we have more surprises too, so keep your eyes peeled for our announcement.

We want to offer a big THANK YOU to our members and volunteers for supporting our important work over the past ten years. Without you, none of this would be possible.

Labeled: member appreciation month |

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Posted by Stephen Worth @ 11:03 am

February 3rd, 2023

Magazine Cartoons: The Father of the Disney Style- T. S. Sullivant

T S Sullivant T. S. Sullivant is one of the most important cartoonists in the history of the medium. He pioneered many of the elements of anthropomorphism that we now take for granted. The general public may not be familiar with his name, but animators sure appreciate his work. (See Eddie Fitzgerald’s first article on Sullivant and his second. Also see, Andreas Deja’s blog… T.S. Sullivant Part One and Part Two) The influence of Sullivant’s animals (along with the work of Heinrich Kley…) can be seen in many of the Disney features.

Sullivant was born in 1854, and didn’t begin cartooning professionally until the age of 32. His cartoons appeared in Life and Puck during the 1890s, and in Judge around the turn of the century. William Randolph Hearst signed him to an exclusive contract in 1904, and his mastheads populated by cartoony animals appeared on the top of the Hearst comics pages until 1907. Sullivant returned to Life magazine in 1911, and remained there until his death in 1926.

Sullivant’s pen and ink style doesn’t really suit itself for reproduction on a computer screen, but I have made large versions available of all of these images. Just click on the picture to see it larger.

Labeled: animal, design, disney, t. s. sullivant |

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Posted by admin @ 1:15 pm

February 2nd, 2023

Animation: A Drawing Lesson From Walter Lantz

Walter Lantz was one of animation’s pioneers. His career in animation went all the way back to 1917, when he was an assistant working at the Hearst cartoon studio under the supervision of Gregory LaCava. He became a director for Bray, creating the Dinky Doodle series, where he appeared in live action alongside the animated title character.

He moved to Hollywood in 1927 and worked for a time as a gag man for Mack Sennett and Hal Roach. A friendship with Universal studio chief, Carl Laemmle led to Lantz heading up his own studio at Universal. For the nearly half a century, Lantz produced great cartoons starring Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, Andy Panda, Woody Woodpecker and Chilly Willy. He won ASIFA-Hollywood’s highest honor, the Winsor McCay Award in 1973.

Animation Resources supporter, Rich Borowy has been hard at work digitizing vintage television tapes from his personal collection for the Archive Database. Here is an example of the treasures he is contributing. This is an episode of the prime-time Woody Woodpecker Show from 1964. In this episode, Walter Lantz gives the kids in the audience a basic drawing lesson by showing a few of his staff artists at work. Included in this clip are Paul J. Smith and one of the few female animators from the golden age of animation, LaVerne Harding.

Walter Lantz Woody Woodpecker Show

The best part about this program is that it includes the original commercials… and they are all animated! There are Kellogg’s spots by Lantz’s own studio starring Woody, as well as examples from Hanna-Barbera and Jay Ward.