Friday 28 September 2018

Popeye in the 3D Cave

Every time I watched the Popeye/Ali Baba cartoon (and I saw it over and over when I was a kid in the ‘60s), I was always amazed by the scenes in the cave with the 3D backgrounds, wondering how they did it. As you likely know, the process was used elsewhere in the cartoon and gave a wondrous feeling of depth.

You can’t get the effect from looking at still frames, but you can see the detail in the backgrounds.



Popeye the Sailor Meets Ali Baba’s Forty Thieves is still an impressive cartoon after all these years. It’s a toss-up whether the first colour two-reeler, Popeye the Sailor Meets Sindbad the Sailor, is better. Willard Bowsky (head animator) and George Germanetti get screen credit on both; Orestes Calpini also gets an animation credit on this. The background people toiled in anonymity.

2 comments:

  1. Oh...Way back in the day, my brothers and I used to watch in amazement as our afternoon kid's host ran the Max Fleischer versions with the 3D look. Still so impressive, even today.

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  2. Oh, yeah! I remember this episode. This show taught kids to eat healthy in order to become strong and fight bad people. I actually started eating spinach after it. I am going to show this cartoon to my kids as well. Soon they will finish all the series by Andy Yeatman on Netflix.

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