Educated Fish
An evening pause: I especially like the worm’s imitation of Mae West.
On a more serious note, these old animated films provide a very real window into the culture that existed in America in the 1930s. If you want to know where we are going, compare this to today’s art.
Hat tip James Mallamace.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
James Mallamace– good suggestion.
Mr. Z.; excellent point about; “these old animated films provide a very real window into the culture that existed in America in the 1930s.”
Animation in the 1930’s was neck-deep with culture, and they weren’t written exclusively for children.
Personally, I prefer Bob Clampett over Fleischer, but I’ve seen them all. Ordinary people with extraordinary talent, telling universal stories, in the height of the Depression.
–a nice color Popular Science short, from 1939.
Max Fleischer: Stereoscopic Rotary Process for Animation
https://youtu.be/qmUsSN0tdo8
(6:19)
“Fleischer-patented a three-dimensional background effect called “The Stereoptical Process,” a precursor to Disney’s Multiplane Process.
-This technique replaced the usual (1 to 3) flat-plane, drawn and painted cartoon backgrounds, with a circular 3-D scale-model background — a diorama — in front of which the action cels were positioned and photographed. As the character, say, hustled down a city street, the camera operator would rotate the diorama a click with each frame. The result was a constantly changing perspective of converging parallel lines that gave an amazing sense of depth.
– The process worked most dramatically with pans or tracking shots; for static shots, traditional drawn backgrounds sufficed. It was used to great effect in the longer format Popeye cartoons Popeye the Sailor Meets Sindbad the Sailor (1936) and Popeye the Sailor Meets Ali Baba’s Forty Thieves (1937).”
Walt Disney explains-
MultiPlane Camera Animation; Camera & Process
From Wonderful World of Disney, February 1957
https://youtu.be/YdHTlUGN1zw
(7:20)