Snoppyquop and Animated Cartoons

Winsor McCay invented the animated cartoon character. At least he did in a syndicated newspaper story, first published March 22, 1924.

This unbylined feature story gives a capsule version of the making of cartoons (silent in those days, of course) and opens with a couple of historical notes.

The story is one of the componants of a children’s page (complete with its own masthead) offered to newspapers by some syndicate. There are stories (some historical or instructional), jokes and a comic strip. Also included is a panel titled “Snoppyquop.” It has a relationship to the story below. The artist is Feg Murray, a sports cartoonist known in later decades for “Seein’ Stars,” a newspaper feature with caricatures of people in Hollywood, accompanied with a biographical caption.

The drawing with the fake film strip is signed “Wm. Roberts.” I wonder if he’s Bill Roberts who animated and directed at Disney. He had been an animator at the Carlson studio in New York in 1919.



HOW FIRST ANIMATED CARTOONS WERE MADE
Animated cartoons do not move! Of course, they appear to move, but that is only an illusion. The action in an animated comic is produced because the cameraman shows still pictures of the different stages of a certain movement in such rapid succession that you think you see the movement itself.
Gertie, a dinosaur, had the distinction of being the first animated cartoon heroine. Windsor McCay [sic], an artist, about fifteen years ago hit upon the idea of making moving cartoons, so he worked out the story of Gertie, a prehistoric animal, who walked along a bank, only to be hit on the head by a cocoanut which a monkey in a tree threw at him. Mr. McCay went to about ten times as much work as was necessary in making this cartoon series, for each picture he made was a separate drawing with a background sketched in. He also attempted to figure out the action by mathematics. Said he: “If the monkey pitches the cocoanut when the dinosaur begins to walk forward, where will the dinosaur be when the cocoanut strikes him?” It was just like a problem in arithmetic and took a great deal of figuring to get the answer.
The animated cartoonist today would work the action backward. He would first make the sketch of the cocoanut hitting, then draw the picture just before it hit, then the one previous to that, till he had worked back to the first one, where the cocoanut started to fly through the air. And the pictures today of the action would be drawn on celluloid and each photographed over one single picture of the setting which was drawn on paper. Moreover, only the part of the picture which, moved would be redrawn each time. If the head moved, the same body would be kept for all the head movements.
Wallace Carlson had an animated cartoon which created a sensation in 1914 during the time the Boston Braves played the Philadelphia Athletics for the World Series title. He showed moving cartoons of the games as they were played each day within twenty-four hours alter they took place. Such a great deal of work is involved in the making of an animated cartoon that people marvelled how this stunt was done. The truth of the matter is that the drawings had been made weeks ahead with two endings for each picture. If the Braves won, the other ending was thrown away. Any unusual plays that were made on a certain day were quickly drawn up and inserted.
In an ordinary movie a foot of reel is shown per second. There are sixteen pictures to the foot, so you can figure out the number it would take to make a story lasting ten minutes on the screen. In animated pictures, however, each drawing is photographed twice, so that the artist makes eight pictures for a foot of reel. Animateds can be a little more jerky than ordinary pictures and it only makes them funnier. If one person by himself made the entire drawings for one of the weekly animated animal stories you see on the screen, it would take all his time for about ten weeks. But the artists who produce these have helpers. With a dozen workers and by using the present celluloid method, the cartoonist is able to turn out an animated funny for each week’s theatre audience.
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Now you know how animated cartoons are really made. The artist is a Snoppyquop, consisting mainly of a bottle of ink. Ideas come into his head out of an old jug, and he draws with his finger, which is a pen. When he draws one “frame” on the movie film before him, he turns the crank and up moves another. He draws the next one a little different, and then cranks her up again. That's what’s the matter with the movies, they’re run by cranks. His nose throws a little light on the subject of his work, but doesn’t if he sneezes, for then he blows his fuse out. He can’t go on turning put work forever, either, for he's limited in ideas, ink and film.