Illustration: Kay Nielsen- Twelve Dancing Princesses

This post is just the tip of the iceberg... see reason number 6 on our The Top Ten Reasons To Support The A-HAA for links to more great posts about golden age illustration.


Kay Nielsen was born in Copenhagen, Denmark in 1886. His first success as an illustrator came with the book we digitized for inclusion in our media database today... "The Twelve Dancing Princesses". Nielsen differed from his contemporaries, who were steeped in the European tradition, by following the lead of artists from the art nouveau movement like Aubrey Beardsley, as well as Persian and Asian art.

Nielsen's interests shifted from book illustration to design for the theater; and in 1936, he was brought to Los Angeles to design a production at the Hollywood Bowl. He decided to join the Disney Studios as a concept artist and made a significant contribution to "Fantasia". In fact, you can see early precursors of the designs for the Pastoral Sequence in a couple of the illustrations from "Twelve Dancing Princesses" below.

The ASIFA-Hollywood Animation Archive was fortunate to obtain a first edition of "Twelve Dancing Princesses" to digitize. The vivid colors and sharp details in this vintage book do justice to Nielsen's genius better than the fuzzy, faded reproductions in later collections do.

Nielsen's pen and ink drawings are just as beautiful as the color illustrations. If you would like to see all the images from this book, stop by the ASIFA-Hollywood Animation Archive anytime during office hours.












For more beautiful illustrations by Kay Nielsen, see Twelve Dancing Princesses and East of the Sun and West of the Moon.

See also, Arthur Rackham's Grimms Fairy Tales, Edmund Dulac's Edgar Allen Poe, Dulac's Tanglewood Tales, Gustaf Tenggren's Wonderbook, Monks By Eduard von Grutzner, N. C. Wyeth's Legends of Charlemagne, Maxfield Parrish's Arabian Nights, Frank Reynolds Paints Pickwick, and John Bauer's Bland Tomtar Och Troll

Thank you
Stephen Worth
Director
ASIFA-Hollywood
Animation Archive

5.13.08
.

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Illustration: Gustaf Tenggren's Little Trapper

This post is just the tip of the iceberg... see reason number 3 on our The Top Ten Reasons To Support The A-HAA for links to more great posts about Golden Book illustrators.


Gustaf Tenggren was born in Sweden in 1896. Throughout the 1920s, he illustrated children's books and fairy tales in a richly detailed style similar to Arthur Rackham and Kay Nielsen. In 1936, Walt Disney brought Tenggren to Hollywood to work on Snow White & the Seven Dwarfs. His designs for the Dwarfs' cottage and the forest were directly incorporated into the film by the layout artists.

The experience of working at Disney changed Tenggren's artistic outlook. He abandoned the European illustrator style for a simpler, more direct, stylized approach. He illustrated the most iconic Golden Books... The Poky Little Puppy, The Saggy Baggy Elephant, The Shy Little Kitten and The Tawny Scrawny Lion, and he continued to paint for Western Publishing until his death in the early sixties.

Tenggren's Golden Books are exemplified by bold, clear compositions; a harmonious use of color and masterful rendering of a variety of textures. This book, The Little Trapper, is one of Tenggren's least often seen titles. Published in 1950, several years before DIsney's Davy Crockett popularized the coonskin cap, this book includes some disarmingly beautiful paintings.











For more incredible illustration by Gustaf Tenggren, see Gustaf Tenggren's Tell It Again Book, The Genesis of the Golden Book StyleD'Aulnoy Fairy Tales and The Good Dog Book, Tenggren's Grimms Fairy Tales Part One and Part Two, Heidi, Wonderbook and Juan & Juanita, Sing For Christmas, and Small Fry and the Winged Horse.

See also... Einar Norelius' Bland Tomtar Och Troll 1929 and 1934, John Bauer's Bland Tomtar Och Troll 1917, More Norelius and Bauer, Arthur Rackham's Grimm's Fairy Tales Part One and Part Two, Kay Nielsen's East of the Sun and West of the Moon and Hansel & Gretel, Dulac's H.C. Andersen Part One and Part Two.

Stephen Worth
ASIFA-Hollywood
Animation Archive

5.12.08
.

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Filmography: Betty Boop in Snow White

This post is just the tip of the iceberg... see reason number 7 on our The Top Ten Reasons To Support The A-HAA for links to more great cartoons to study.


Many classic cartoons have been released to home video since the introduction of VCRs. Some transfers from film to tape have been good, but too many have utilized techniques that compromise the cartoons. At the ASIFA-Hollywood Animation Archive, we are always on the lookout for the best sources to use for digitizing. We came across an example that illustrates how much you may be missing when you view a cartoon on home video.

Snow White is probably the best known title in the Betty Boop series. It has been released on home video twice... first in the Betty Boop Collectors' Edition, and later in the Definitive Collection box set. Chuck Pennington, who has been digitizing video for the archives, noticed some interesting differences between the way the cartoon was framed on the two sets. In the earlier set, the image is cropped to include the top of the frame. About 15% of the frame at the bottom is eliminated. The later set is the exact opposite, with 15% of the top cropped off. Chuck determined that the aspect ratio of this particular cartoon is not the standard for 35mm sound films, but an earlier format where the larger silent aperture was used with the left side of the frame cropped to allow for the optical soundtrack. This resulted in an almost square format. To present the entire image on the TV screen, letterboxing bars on the right and left would be needed.

By combining the two transfers into one, Chuck was able to restore the film to its proper aspect ratio. This isn't a simple thing... syncronizing the frames and balancing the exposure between two different transfers is very difficult. But Chuck's work is amazing. The line between the two versions is almost imperceptable. He also added a slight letterbox all around the image to prevent any of it from being cropped off when viewed on a television set. Here is a Quicktime movie of the restored full frame video.


Betty Boop in Snow White
(Corrected Aspect Ratio /Quicktime 7 / 20 MB)

If you compare this full frame version to others you may have seen, you will clearly see how important the extra bit of screen real estate is. Details at the top and bottom of the frame, like the mouse that pops up from the drop drawer of Bimbo's longjohns and Betty's head as she rolls down the hill in the snowball, fall into the area that isn't included in both transfers. Compositions that don't make sense in the cropped version look perfect in the full frame one. The Fleischer artists utilized every bit of the screen, and any cropping reduces the effectiveness of their work.


Full frame from Betty Boop Collectors' Edition Laserdisc

Full frame from Betty Boop Definitive Edition Laserdisc

Both frames combined
If you would like to view the full frame version of Snow White, it is available at the ASIFA-Hollywood Animation Archive on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 1pm to 9pm. Thanks to Chuck Pennington for his great work.

PLEASE NOTE The text and media files on the ASIFA-Hollywood Animation Archive Blog are not to be duplicated, redistributed or hosted on other websites without the prior written permission of the Board of Directors of ASIFA-Hollywood.

If you enjoyed this cartoon, see these previous postings... I'm Forever Blowing Bubbles, Mariutch, Swing, You Sinners, You're Driving Me Crazy, Ko-Ko the Clown in Jumping Beans, Popeye in Li'l Swee Pea, Grim Natwick in New York, Nat Falk's "How To Make Animated Cartoons" Part One: History of Animation, Part Two: The Cartoon Studios, Part Three: How Cartoons Are Made, Part Four: Drawing For Animation and Part Five: How To Animate.

Stephen Worth
Director
ASIFA-Hollywood
Animation Archive

05.09.08
.

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Biography: Al Capp 2- A CAPPital Offense

This post is just the tip of the iceberg... see reason number 2 on our The Top Ten Reasons To Support The A-HAA for links to more great posts about print cartoonists.

"They always want me to say who is the best writer in America today, and I can't think of any name but Al Capp... One of the symptoms or diagnostics of literature should be that it is read, that it amuses, moves, instructs, changes and criticizes people. And who in the world does that more than Capp? I think Capp may very possibly be the best writer in the world today." -John Steinbeck, 1953

PLAYBOY: John Steinbeck once described you as "possibly the best writer in the world today". What's your reaction to that?

CAPP: I revere John Steinbeck far too deeply to question his literary judgment!" --Playboy Interview, 1965

"Not many people know that I worked with Al Capp for a year at Terry-Toons on a cartoon adaptation of Fearless Fosdick. Capp is one of the great unsung heroes of comics. I've never heard anyone mention this, but Capp is 100% responsible for inspiring Harvey Kurtzman to create Mad magazine.

Just look at Fearless Fosdick- a brilliant parody of Dick Tracy with all those bullet holes and stuff. Then look at Mad's "Teddy and the Pirates", "Superduperman" or even "Little Annie Fanny". Forget about it. Slam dunk. Not taking anything away from Kurtzman who was brilliant himself, but Capp was the source for that whole sense of satire in comics. Kurtzman carried that forward and passed it down to a whole new crop of cartoonists, myself included.

Capp was a genius. You wanna argue about it? I'll fight ya, and I'll win." -Ralph Bakshi, 2008

Li'l Abner's "ideel"- Fearless Fosdick- first made his bullet-riddled debut in 1942. As everyone knows, Capp's famous strip-within-a-strip began as a direct parody of Chester Gould's classic newspaper comic, Dick Tracy. But like all of Capp's creations, it soon developed into a multi-leveled satire of contemporary American society at large.


Fearless Fosdick provided a running commentary on, among other things, the lowly lives of policemen, the capriciousness of the general public, and the thankless role of society's "heroes". With Capp, as with Chaplin, there's always a social subtext to the fun, which in my opinion, separates the men from the boys in comedy. These themes are very much in evidence in our first Fosdick story pick, "The Poisoned Bean Case"...


"The Poisoned Bean Case" is, simply put, one of Capp's masterpieces. It seems to be a special favorite with fans too, both for its astronomical body count and its sheer outrageousness. Believe it or not, this blood-drenched parody ran in family newspapers in the fifties, in Eisenhower's America, on Sundays, no less!

In the following brilliantly demented pages, no one is spared Capp's merciless needle. From the venality of the justice system to the crookedness of the media; from the corruption of big business to the fickleness and stupidity of a complacent populace. The diabolical plot, which concerns product tampering, presages the 1982 Tylenol case by some 30 years.


As a cautionary note to readers encountering this story for the first time: you are hereby warned. It's impossible not to get swept up in the maelstrom of fury that's about to be unleashed. "The Poisoned Bean Case" doesn't so much unfold, as simply detonate! For comics fans who like their irony dark, raw and relentless- we proudly present Al Capp at or near the peak of his powers...


Fearless Fosdick in...
THE POISONED BEAN CASE











TO BE CONTINUED...

Let me know what you think of this article in the comments.
-Mike Fontanelli, 2008


For more on Al Capp, see... Al Capp Part One: Li'l Abner Without Apologies, Gene Byrnes' Complete Guide To Cartooning: Part One- Newspaper Comics and People On Paper (MGM/1945)

See also, Boodie Rogers' Babe Comics Part One, Part Two, and Part Three; Basil Wolverton On Cartoon Sounds Part One and Part Two; Jack Davis in Mad magazine, Jack Kirby in Not Brand Echh Number One, Marie Severn in Not Brand Echh Number Two, Forbush Man in Not Brand Echh Number Five, Parody: Whack Comics Part One and Part Two; Basil Wolverton's Powerhouse Pepper; Milt Stein's Supermouse Comics No. 4; Virgil Partch's Wild, Wild Women; Here We Go Again and Man The Beast; George Lichty's Grin and Bear It; Milt Gross Sunday Pages Part One, Part Two and Part Three; and Jim Tyer Funny Animal Comics

Stephen Worth
ASIFA-Hollywood
Animation Archive
..

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