This is part of the exterior of the school; there’s a quick pan to the right to a window but I can’t get the colours of the frames to match, so I can’t snip them together.
Next, the bedrooms of typical high school boys Woody and Buzz. There isn’t a clear one of Buzz’s in the cartoon (Buzz’s phone is cordless, except in close-up).
The Hanna-Barbera cartoon studio was known for having TV characters go past the same building or tree or light socket over and over. The background loop was generally fairly seamless. But at the Lantz studio, they couldn’t do it right with higher budgets. Below are two consecutive frames. Notice how the background jumps.
Still, that’s minor. This is still one of Paul J. Smith’s finest cartoons, helped by a fine story and some good designs.
Smith's first few years are at least decent, if not memorable, and the designs here on the backgrounds and characters just dip a toe into UPA-land -- slightly stylized but not completely flat and modern. It's about a year after Avery left, when Lantz went all-in on the new-look designs, that both the visual and story aspects in Smith's cartoons fall off the edge of the planet, never to be seen again.
ReplyDelete"But at the Lantz studio, they couldn’t do it right with higher budgets. Below are two consecutive frames. Notice how the background jumps."
ReplyDeleteI had the impression they ran out of background paper to do a longer pan and had to make due with what they have with a single pan just with a close-up.
You well know that at Hanna-Barbera, where they weren't throwing around money, they had repeating backgrounds all the time. None ever started repeating half-way in the middle of the drawing like in this cartoon. There's no excuse for it.
ReplyDeleteI bet.
Delete