Making Felix

The most popular cartoon character just before the advent of sound cartoons was likely Felix the Cat. Songs were written about him and there seems to have been a fair bit of Felix merchandise. He displays a nice arrange of emotions in his pantomime shorts and the various writers of the cartoons came up with interesting and funny ways to morph drawings on screen.

A book called Masters and Masterpieces of the Screen (1927) includes a short section of making animated cartoons, and Felix is the one highlighted. It would be nice to know who the animator is in the picture accompanying the article.

Sound crippled Felix. The Sullivan studio dallied on talking cartoons and soon Felix lost his distributor. By the time music and tacky vocal effects were added to some silent Felix cartoons, he was distributed via states’ rights and soon disappeared from the screen, his place taken by a host of new talking/singing characters.

Animating Hand-Made Pictures
As in Early Experiments, the Cast is Sometimes Manufactured

"ANIMATED DRAWINGS" are a form of moving picture that has several uses. In educational and scientific work, diagrams and other drawings are animated to furnish explanations, as, for example, in portions of the astronomical picture on the eclipse of the sun. Important news items are also sometimes explained on the screen with the aid of animated drawings. The most common form, however, is the animated cartoon comedy, a short film, in which all the action was originally drawn, and in which each frame (separate little picture of the original film) was taken separately by the camera man.
When it is remembered that there are sixteen frames to one foot of film, or one second of time, in an ordinary moving picture, it will be seen that the studio that prepares one of these small movies has a good bit of work cut out. The studio that puts out Pat Sullivan's "Felix, the Cat" pictures, one each two weeks, states that it requires the labor of fifteen people for that time to make one of the little pictures that occupy about seven minutes' time on the screen.
Different studios have adopted special devices for holding their drawings in absolutely exact position and for using cameras and lamps to the best advantage. In general, the method is something like this : The scenario is finished. The artist hands a schedule of scenes to be made to each of the various animators employed. In addition, he gives them sketches of each scene, showing the action started which they are to continue. The sheets on which the sketches are made are punched with two or more holes, so that they are held in exactly a certain position by pegs on the drawing board. All the other sheets used, including the celluloid pictures and backgrounds finally photographed, are so punched and can be fastened in exactly the same position.

Each animator carries on the action given him, first reading his sequence over carefully to see if he can plan any additional funny business to make it more entertaining. The next sheet following the first will show the action slightly advanced from the first position, say a quarter of an inch if it is supposed to be slow, or half an inch if it is faster. It is necessary that each of them make from one hundred to two hundred a day. When these are finished, they are handed to a tracer, who traces on transparent celluloid sheets (cels) of the same size the outline of the drawing. Another tracer follows and fills in the blacks. The celluloid is then turned over and the whole figure is painted in with a gray opaque water color. The celluloid sheet will be photographed over a sheet which carries a background for the picture, and the blocking in of the whole picture with water color is necessary to prevent the background from showing through.
When finished, these celluloid sheets are sent to the camera man, together with a chart showing how many exposures are to be made of each. The background to be photographed with the scene is fastened down just as the sheets have been in the drawing. This will remain in place through the scenes where it is used. Then the celluloid sheets are taken, one at a time, fastened down over the background, and photographed, each being removed to make place for another.

The motion-picture camera is suspended at about three feet above the picture, and strong Cooper Hewitt vapor lamps, so arranged that the light is concentrated on the picture, are employed. Everything ready, the camera man presses a foot pedal, automatic and motor-operated, and takes one picture. The sheet must be removed, another put in its place and another picture taken. It takes a long time to complete a movie in this fashion, and the photography occupies a large part of the time.
There are many varieties of combinations of animated drawings with other things, as with a regular photographic movie film, such as one sees in the clever "Out of the Inkwell" pictures, and it is easy to fancy a vast number of uses for them aside from these straight cartoons.
Germans are reported as deploring the comparative failure of what they consider the chief film of the season, made by cutting out the figures to be photographed in silhouette, and occupying an artist for years. Of that, we can judge if it is shown here. C. W. Taylor.