Bringing Cartoons to Life

There’s always been a curiosity, it seems, about how animated cartoons were made. News and magazine stories have appeared over the years outlining the process.

This syndicated piece was plucked out of the Independent of January 3, 1920. The frames of Ko Ko the clown by Max Fleischercame with the story, as did the other drawing.

BRINGING CARTOONS TO LIFE
By Jerome Lachenbruch
Independent Magazine
When the little animated cartoon figures jiggle across the motion picture screen to caricature our foibles and then suddenly fade away after ten minutes of silent, artificial hilarity, it is difficult to beleive that it has taken longer to make them than to make a five reel feature picture.
The conception to the final presentation of an animated cartoon idea on the screen covers a period of about seven weeks, whereas pictures photographed from life are often finished in five weeks. About a dozen artists assist the creative cartoon artist in the mechanical work of preparing the cartoons for the camera. Slow as the process still seems to be, an idea of the development of the process is evidenced from the fact that one of the first cartoons made by Mr J. R. Bray, the pioneer in this phase of screen humor, consisted of 16,000 individual drawing, which took ten months to draw and but ten minutes to reel off on the screen.
Boiled down to essentials, the making of an animated cartoon comprises five fundamental processes. These are, first, a series of original drawings; second, tracing of the drawings on transparent composition plates: third, the chemical process by which the cartoon figures on the plates are rendered opaque against a background; fourth, the method of photographing; and fifth, the development of the photographic negative.
Before going into the details of each process, it must be remembered that animated cartoons are a series of drawings that are photographed individually. The photographing process is an application of the kodak use of the roll film which is turned for each succeeding exposure.
The animated cartoon of 500 feet consists of from 1,200 to 1,500 original drawings. These are made by the artist who conceives the "story". The success of the picture depends more on his ability to gage the number of different drawings necessary to represent a single action that upon his draughtsmanship. He often draws detached heads and legs, which are superimposed on detached bodies to make a complete figure. For instance, if the artist wishes to show a figure turning his head and crossing his legs, he does not draw a series of pictures showing the full figure in different poses. Instead, he first draws the body, then on another sheet the head and the legs. Next he draws a bead turned toward the audience, and then makes a drawing of the legs, crossed. One drawing of the body suffices for both poses. When these reach the photographer, they are assembled according to directions and exposed in the proper order. The same body is exposed in every photograph because it does not move; and those parts which change position are superimposed and fitted to the basic drawing.
All drawings are made on transparent paper and may be photographed several times in different parts of the cartoon. Thus, drawing No. 17 may be a head which is used in connection with the headless body, figure No. 29, and also with figure No. 45, or even with a combination of two other drawings. By this method, time has been saved in drawing the individual pictures and the process of making animated cartoons placed on a practical basis.
When all the drawings have been made, a series of backgrounds, such as houses, streets, churches, etc., are drawn to aid in telling the story. After these are finished, all the drawings are then sent to the copying room, where they are traced upon a thin transparent composition plate which is made by a secret chemical process. The reason for using a transparent plate is that two or more plates must often be photographed, one placed on top of the other, to form a single picture.

Moreover, it is often necessary to photograph three plates together, two of which form a figure, and the third a background. As the figures are drawn only in outline, they would permit the background to show through unless treated in some way to render them opaque. This difficulty is overcome by coating the drawings on the plates with a specially prepared substance which has no effect on the chemical composition of the plate itself. Consequently, the part of the background covered by the figure does not show when photographed.
The photographic process itself is carried out with the same materials used in photographing a motion picture with living characters: but, the method of using the camera for animated cartoons is quite different.
In ordinary motion picture photography a reel of negative film 400 feet long is placed in the camera, which is mounted on a tripod and can be swung in a semi-circle on a horizontal axis. As the story is acted on the studio stage the reel is turned by the camera man, who operates a crank attached to the camera. But in photographing the animated cartoon, the same camera with the same film is fastened above a table on a rigid frame, the lens facing downward. The camera man sits at the table and, according to the numbers marked on the pile of plates beside him, exposes them in successive order. Instead of turning the crank by hand, a mechanical arrangement consisting of a slender chain revolving over a sprocket and a set of gears carries the control of the camera shutter to a pedal below the table. This is operated by the camera man's foot. The contrivance is so regulated that when a plate on the table is exposed to the camera, the photographer presses the pedal, the photograph is taken and the reel of film turned about one inch, thus revolving the unexposed part of the negative into position for the next photograph. In this single pressing of the pedal the shutter is automatically closed after the photograph is taken. Furthermore, an indicator records the exact number of photographs made. In short, picturizing the animated cartoon consists of taking 1,200 to 1,500 individual still-life photographs.
After these have been made, the negative film is sent to the developing laboratory, where it is treated the same as other motion picture films. That is, the negative is reprinted on another film called a positive. The positive is not sensitive to light and will keep indefinitely. Finally the positive print is sent to the editing room, where the cartoon is clipped, and individual pictures taken out or placed in a different order, so that the story may be told more smoothly. The strips cut out are pasted into the film again with a cement that fuses with the celluloid film and does not reveal where the picture has been pieced.
During the war a new use for the processes employed in making animated cartoons was developed by Mr. J. F. Leventhal of the Bray Corporation. Mr. Leventhal applied the cartoon process to technical drawings and evolved an entire course of instruction on the construction of bombs. This was used in the West Point Military Academy and re suited in reducing a course of instruction that formerly consumed twenty-four teaching hours to fifteen minutes . By means of the animated technical drawing, the most complete mechanical apparatus can be explained graphically with a consequent reduction in the time required for its study and an immeasurable increase in interest on the part of the students.

Throwing the Bull

You may remember a scene from Señor Droopy where Droopy twirled a bull overhead and it passed in front of the camera in perspective. The cartoon was released in 1949. Popeye did the same thing in Bulldozing the Bull nine years earlier.

Here are some of the drawings.



Willard Bowsky and George Germanetti get screen credit.

No Wampum, Just Moths

Woody Woodpecker hasn’t got the money to buy an Indian maiden a headdress. All his carry-around safe has in it are two moths, who are resentful he’s interrupted their tristing.



There’s no story credit on this cartoon and Lantz’s skeleton post-shutdown crew of Paul Smith, La Verne Harding, Don Patterson and Ray Abrams get the animation credits.

TV Comedy Deserts New York

It was just a matter of time. And technology.

When network television began its rise in the fall of 1948, programmes could only be broadcast live from New York City as far west as Chicago. The lines didn’t go as far as the West Coast. Furthermore, stars on the West Coast, who had moved there from New York in the mid-1930s for film work and took their network radio shows with them, couldn’t broadcast live to the East. They had to fly to New York to do television or suffer filming their live shows in Hollywood on kinescope (a camera pointed at a TV set) and shipping the murky films back to New York for broadcast.

Both methods were completely unsatisfactory. Network radio was dying and television was replacing it, but stars didn’t want to disrupt their careers with constant trips to New York (or move there) to do television, and they didn’t like of being viewed in constrasty, muddy kinescoped images.

Some of the stars saw a solution, at least until the coaxial cable allowed live trans-continental broadcasts was invented. They talked about it in this Associated Press story of February 15, 1951.

Comedian Revolt Aimed at TV Rigors in East
Most Dislike Being Uprooted From Homes on Coast
By BOB THOMAS
HOLLYWOOD—(AP)—The "revolt of the comics" today appeared to be hastening Hollywood's bid for bigtime contention in the television industry.
This is no organised rebellion. It is a growing distaste on the part of several top comedians for the rigors of doing television shows in New York. All of the men I polled have homes here and most of them are engaged in movie work. They dislike being uprooted for the strenuous life of eastern TV.
Furthermore, several of the comics are against "live" video, preferring to offer their efforts on film. Bob Hope is one of these.
"Why not take advantage of cutting?" he inquired. "Doing a show on film would cut out the sloppiness. As it is now, everything on television is a rehearsal. It's like playing your show in New Haven.
"The same thing happened in radio. People realized you can get a much better show on tape than you can broadcasting 'live.'"

Hope indicated he would do no more TV shows in New York. He has completed his first series and is signed by NBC for 10 shows a year, starting this Fall. "By that time, the cable will be in and I can do my shows from here," he said.
Abbott and Costello, who recently made their TV debuts, also favor films. They have one more eastern show to do and have turned down "fabulous" offers to do more.
"It's too much work," declared Lou Costello, the fat one. "Why, it's supposed to take eight days to prepared a one-hour show. When I was there, they had three guys follow me around to see that I didn't leave the rehearsal.
A and C plan to make their own half-hour TV films, "rehearsing one day and shooting the next."
Danny Thomas favors "live" shows, but also would like to do his from the West Coast. Says he: "It just doesn't make sense for us to disrupt our family lives just because of television. It would be different if all of us made our sole living from TV. But we have other things to do, too."
"This is one case where the mountain will have to come to Mahomet."
Red Skelton, who has not yet made his TV debut, told me: "You couldn't get me to New York on a bet." He plans to start a TV series in October and he will film a half-hour show bi-weekly in Hollywood.
Jack Benny is an advocate of "live" shows but would like to do his stint from Hollywood. He has trekked to New York for two shows this season. Eddie Cantor is reported eager to do his show from here on film. Jack Carson is also anxious to return to Hollywood with his program, in order to pick up motion picture offers. George Burns and Gracie Allen were the first comedy stars to switch their show from the east coast to Hollywood. Alan Young's has emanated from here since its inception. A new addition will be the Amos 'n' Andy show which will start here this summer.
Hollywood's challenge to New York's TV supremacy grows daily.

The situation soon became a moot point. On September 4, 1951, utilising a combined coaxial cable and microwave relay system, the Bell Telephone System made live, coast-to-coast broadcasting a reality, with 94 of the 107 TV stations across the U.S. airing an address by President Harry Truman live (the other 13 stations did not have microwave access). Eddie Cantor quickly announced he would originate 10 of his Colgate Comedy Hour appearances from West Coast studios after September 30th (Broadcasting-Telecasting, Sept. 10, 1951). The stars didn’t have to leave Hollywood for New York City any longer.

Interestingly, it didn’t stop some of them from going with the expensive prospect of filming their shows, notably Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz, who insisted on film. They may not have realised it at the time, but film created instant little gold mines. Filmed shows could be run again. And again and again. For decades in some cases. While waiting for the coaxial cable to reach the west, TV invented the network rerun.

Slang Surprise

Symphony in Slang was, in a number of ways, a risky experiment for Tex Avery and his crew.

The cartoon is really one gag—that colloquialisms can have a double meaning. Avery and gagman Rich Hogan had to find a way to keep doing the same gag and fill six minutes of screen time without losing the audience. Some attempts were hokey. Some were pretty imaginative. But Avery and Hogan succeed simply by the pace of the cartoon not letting up.

The other risk was on a more aesthetic level. In this cartoon, Tex decided to chuck the Disney-style characters that Preston Blair and others drew so beautifully for him, as well as a lot of the Disney-style animation. Tex decided to try limited animation. There are scenes that are simply a background drawing with a punny drawing. There are other scenes that are nothing more than one body part in cycle animation or eye blinks, something that came to dominate TV animation a few years later.

It all works very well.

Here’s a scene which is pretty much standard animation. You can see the anticipation in betweens before the take.



Then the pun, drawn in full animation. “Mary had a bunch of little ones.”



Walt Clinton, Grant Simmons and Mike Lah animated on this cartoon, released in 1951.

Hey, It's the Warner Bros. Shield!

My all-time favourite gag in a Bob Clampett cartoon? When I was a kid, I could easily tell you. It’s when the Warners shield appeared out of nowhere with the Do-Do bird on it in Porky in Wackyland.

Note how it’s just a speck in the second frame below. In this third, if you blow it up, you can see it’s a mini-Warners shield.



Some frames.



And around it turns and it’s on to the next gag.



Norm McCabe and Izzy Ellis are the credited animators.

Gas and Bag

How does someone who wowed them on the stage in the Bathtub Gin era do the same thing 45 years later with a generation demonstrating in the streets against war and suspicious of anyone over 30?

That’s a question Jack Benny had to answer, along with a myriad of other performers who had been big names with the parents of TV viewing young adults.

In a lot of cases, they pulled a variation of an old vaudeville staple. They went on stage in a ridiculous outfit. Except in this case, ridiculous meant someone in his 50s, 60s (or older) dressing the way someone in their late teens or early 20s was. It was good for a cheap laugh in vaudeville and it was good for a cheap laugh on TV. The trouble was—how do you fill the next 25 minutes?

In Jack Benny’s case, he did what he did through his radio career, mainly in the ‘30s—he put on a parody of a popular film. So it was in 1968, Jack Benny burlesqued “The Graduate.” To further show how up-to-date he was, he tossed in “The Odd Couple” for good measure. And he borrowed a song title from 1967.

Here’s Jack on the promotional circuit in an Associated Press story published on November 13, 1968.

Benny Says His Bag Good
By BOB THOMAS
HOLLYWOOD (AP)—Mr. Benny was indisposed. Old blue-eyes had picked up the grippe during an engagement in Las Vegas and sounded more like Rochester than Jack Benny.
Still, he was able to receive a visitor at his penthouse apartment and talk about his favorite subject, show business. The particular piece of show business that concerned him at the moment was his first television special of the season, "Jack Benny's Bag," which appears on NBC next Saturday night.
"You'll like it; it's great," he said with customary confidence. "It may be the best special I ever did—I would at least put it in the same class with the show I did with the chimps.
"I'll show you how up-to-date the show is—I'm doing a takeoff of 'The Graduate.' The other shows steered clear of it because they were scared of the censors. But I've got Phyllis Diller playing the Anne Bancroft role. When I make love to her, I defy anyone to consider it sexy.
"I've got Lou Rawls and Eddie Fisher singing the Simon and Garfunkel song, 'Mrs. Robinson.' I never thought that Simon and Garfunkel would give me permission, but I asked them and they said I could use the song for nothing. Imagine—for nothing!

"Rochester is back, and I open the show with him. I shouldn't tip this off, but it's so great. After he talks to me on the telephone, he turns back to his poker game. And there's Walter Matthau dealing the cards, and Jack Lemmon fussing around the apartment!"
The special is sponsored by Texaco, for which Benny has appeared in spot commercials. He had some words to say about them:
"Some of my friends in the business say to me, 'Jack, why do you do commercials? It isn't like you.' My answer to them is, 'Frank Sinatra, who is the king of our business right now, in terms of what he can earn—Frank Sinatra goes on TV and sells beer. I mean, he makes the pitch himself. Well, if Frank Sinatra can do that, I can do some spots to sell gas.'
"But I wouldn't do it if only the commercials were involved. The thing is, Texaco also pays me a lot of money for my television specials. It's all tied in together, and it makes a lot of sense."
Benny has another special to do this season and may sign for more next year. If so, he plans to eliminate other engagements. At 74, he continues to make a wide variety of appearances—night clubs, concert dates, etc.
"If I get the specials, I'll cut down, especially in Las Vegas," he said. "That's how I got this cold, working two shows a night. If they'll let me do one, then I'll go back. But it just gets to be boring, the two shows every night. "But of course I'd never quit. What would I do? What would I have to talk about?"

It would appear the Groovy Generation liked the show. The special took a National Nielsen rating of 25.2 and a share of 48% of the audience. NBC-TV selected it as an entry in the Montreux Film Festival. The old vaudevillian was number one again.