We don’t talk a lot about non-American animation on the blog, as the focus is mainly on theatrical cartoons that appeared on TV in the 1960s (and a little earlier).
However, I enjoy much of the stylised artwork you can see on animated commercials and industrial films of the ‘50s, and not just from the United States.
Here’s a nice example in a 1959 commercial film for British Petroleum called The Key to Efficiency. When you think of British animation, Halas and Batchelor come to mind. This short was made by someone else. The designs are derivative of UPA but I quite like them. Frank Cordell’s score matches the action quite well.
I have not been able to find much information about this cartoon but this blog has intelligent readers who may know something.
It's interesting how midcentury animated industrial films, like animated commercials of the time, are so clever, entertaining, and arty--often more so than theatrical animation. Maybe because commercials and industrials invariably had larger budgets than the increasingly stingy studios grudgingly allowed their cartoon units.
ReplyDeletePart of the reason may be that the major cartoon characters were developed before 1950, so the designs weren't of the "modern" type. The best they could hope for was to get something new-looking into backgrounds.
DeleteI'm not crazy about the box-head design for Granny that Hawley Pratt came up with.