The Merriest of Genii

Max Fleischer took out a patent on the rotoscope in 1915 and within a few years he found a good use for it. The first “Out of the Inkwell” cartoon was released as part of the Goldwyn-Bray Pictograph on September 30, 1919. Yet Moving Picture World reported on June 7th that year there had been a preview of Fleischer’s life-like cartoon clown “a couple of months ago.”

The rotoscope brought about animated movement that had never been seen before. Here is an article full of praise from the New York Times of February 22, 1920. Part of this was quoted in Donald Crafton’s book Before Mickey, but let’s take a look at the whole story. The writer is unbylined.

THE INKWELL MAN
MANY persons have been delighted by the little black-and-white clown who, one of the merriest of genii, occasionally comes out of Max Fleischer’s inkwell. He has been seen most frequently on the screen of the Strand Theatre, where after a long period of anonymity among other numbers of the Topical Review, he has at least won his own place on the program.
This little inkwell clown has attracted favorable attention because of a number of distinguishing characteristics. His motions, for one thing, are smooth and graceful. He walks, dances and leaps as a human being, as a particularly easy-limed human being might. He does not jerk himself from one position to another, nor does he move an arm or a leg while the remainder of his body remains as unnaturally still as—as if it were fixed in ink lines on paper. Also he has an exciting habit of leaving his own world, that of the rectangular sheet on which he is drawn, and climbing all over the surrounding furniture.
The neat appearance and movements of the clown, and his defiance of the laws of pen-paper-and-ink, led an investigator to Mr. Fleischer at the Bray studios, where the little fellow is being made. It was learned, first, that, whereas most animated drawings are made with four or five separate pictures for each foot of film, there are fifteen or sixteen drawings of the clown in each film foot. This means, of course, that his arm, say, in going from a horizontal to a vertical position, does not make the complete movement in one or two jumps, and so appear to move jerkily, but is pictured at four or more points of its progress and seems to make the whole movement without interruption. Patience and pains, therefore, account for much of the clown’s naturalness. But not all. There is another reason.

Mr. Fleischer explained that many pen-and-ink drawings were made from the imagination. An artist, for example, will simply sit down and, with a certain character in mind, draw the figures that are to make it animated. If he wants an arm to move he will draw the figure several times with the arm in the positions necessary to give it motion on the screen. The probability is that the resulting movement will be mechanical, unnatural, because the whole position of his figure’s body will not correspond to that which a human body would take in making the same motion. With only the aid of his imagination an artist cannot, as a rule, get the perspective and related motions of reality.
Mr. Fleischer does not draw his clown from imagination. He draws him from life. A real man dressed as a clown poses for him in the principal positions to be assumed by the animated figure.
But how about his climbing and running all over the room? Some think that in the scenes with obviously real backgrounds, a cut-out figure or a doll is substituted for the drawing, but neither is the case. The figure who slides down table legs and climbs into chairs is drawn, just as he is when he remains on his sheet of paper. Mr. Fleischer prefers not to make public the full explanation of how the trick is down, but it may be said that a certain method of superimposing the drawings of the clown upon photographs of the real background are employed. Spectators may be assured, therefore, that no dummy substitutes for the clown when he takes his hazardous journeys around a room.
The clown is the result of a number of years’ work by Mr. Fleischer and also J.R. Bray, President of the company which bears his name, and with which Mr. Fleischer is associated. Some fifteen years ago both Mr. Bray and Mr. Fleischer were employed in the art department of the Brooklyn Eagle. Mr. Bray decided to “go into the movies,” and invited Mr. Fleischer to join him, but the latter at that time preferred to stay where he was. He lost track of Mr. Bray for about twelve years, and then learned that he was making a success of his venture. Also he had begun to observe animated drawings on the screen, and felt that he could improve on them. So he set to work, and for two years he and his brother struggled with the first out-of-the-inkwell man. When their set of drawings was complete Mr. Fleischer took it to Mr. Bray, who liked the subject and its execution. The two men then co-operated to make the drawing still better, and at the end of six months had achieved gratifying results. Developments have followed, and now 300 feet of film showing the clown can be made in three weeks by the combined work of four or five men. It may be seen that a somewhat tedious and expensive process still preceded each emergence of the clown from the inkwell, but those at the Bray studios feel that he is worth while in more ways that one, and they promise that he or some creditable successor will continue to appear from time to time.

A year after this article, Max and Dave Fleischer set up their own studio and worked out a distribution deal with Margaret Winkler. The Fleischers then set up their own distribution arm, Red Seal, the failure of which we documented in this post.

The watermarked screen grabs are courtesy of silent film historian and archivist Tommy Stathes. The frames shown, from a 1924 short called “A Trip to Mars,” are from one of his DVD releases. He doesn’t seem to update his web site all that much but you can find out more here.