Happy Halloween!

On Halloween night at the stroke of midnight, you'll want to revisit these spine chillers from our not-so-distant past...


Hittin' The Trail For Hallelujah Land (1932)


Weird Creepy Awful Spooky Ghastly Comics (1953)


Swing, You Sinners (1930)


Edmund Dulac's Edgar Allen Poe


Sci Fi and Horror Mexican Lobby Cards

Thanks
Stephen Worth
Director
ASIFA-Hollywood
Animation Archive

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FREE EBOOK: Zim's Cartoons and Caricatures Part 09 of 20

Before we get to today's post, a couple of announcements... We will begin deleting the earlier posts in this series next week, so if you haven't downloaded them yet, do it now. Also, we have only 15 sets of the Zim Cartooning Course left. We may not be able to get more copies before Christmas, so if you hope to have them under your tree, order now. Thanks!

This is the ninth of twenty posts where we plan to post a complete set of high resolution scans of Zim's Cartoons & Caricatures, or Making The World Laugh (1910). These 100 pages are packed with great cartoons, helpful drawing tips, technical information and business advice for the aspiring cartoonist. Most importantly, Zim passes along his unique philosophy of life, and offers a shining example of how an artistic career as a caricaturist can be incorporated into a person's lifestyle. At the time this book was written, Zim had thirty years of experience under his belt, and had attained the highest level in his field. For more information, see the Zim's Cartoons & Caricatures page.

Every week, we will post five more pages, but they will be deleted from our server after 30 days, so download them while you can. To save the images to your hard drive, right click on the image (or CONTROL click if you are using a Mac) and select "SAVE IMAGE AS". To see all of the currently available pages, see the ZIMEBOOK Tag.





If you haven't downloaded previous entries, please do so immediately. I am going to start expiring links to earlier posts soon. Check back next week for more pages from this rare book.


If you enjoy this ebook and would like to see more, consider purchasing Zim's Correspondence School of Cartooning, Comic Art & Caricature, a complete course in cartooning available in two volumes. The books are beautifully printed and include more than 700 pages with nearly 1,000 B&W illustrations and 22 hand-tipped color plates. Proceeds from the sale of this course goes to support the ASIFA-Hollywood Animation Archive. For more information, see the Zim Online Exhibit page.
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Illustration: Bozo And His Rocket Ship

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 50s children's book illustrators.


In 1946, a young producer at Capitol Records, Alan Livingston was assigned the task of developing a children's line for the fledgling record company. He came up with the idea of a read-along record and book set featuring a circus clown named Bozo. The album, Bozo At The Circus sold over a million copies, and helped to push Capitol to the top of the charts.

Livingston went on to create read-along sets featuring DIsney, Lantz and Warner Bros characters, but the most successful line was the Bozo series. Voiced by Disney story and voice man, Pinto Colvig with music by Billy May, Livingston wrote and produced Bozo On The Farm, Bozo And The Birds, Bozo Under The Sea, and this one... Bozo And His Rocket Ship. All of the sets were re-released in the LP era, but this one was heavily edited, for obvious reasons. In this album, Bozo makes a survey of just about every ethnic stereotype imaginable. But that isn't the reason we're presenting it here. We're featuring the wonderful work of the illustrators, Norm McCabe and Cecil Beard.

McCabe was an animator at Warner Bros in the 30s and directed in the early 40s. After the war, he turned to commercial work and illustration. He returned to cartoon animation in the mid-1960s, animating the titles to The Pink Panther. He continued to work in the business until his death in 2006. Cecil Beard was an animator and story man at Disney and Columbia. He worked on the Fox & the Crow comic books with Jim Davis in the late 40s, and as an illustrator for Western Publishing in the 1960s. He passed away in 1986.

The most striking thing about these images are the compositions. Notice how the white of the page is used and how small windows in the backgrounds open onto other environments. There's some really clever use of perspective and depth cues here. Enjoy!





















If you found this to be useful, see also... Rojankovsky's Frog Went A Courting, Tibor Gergely's A Day In The Jungle, Gustaf Tenggren's The Little Trapper, Uncle Remus Stories Part One and Part Two, Little Verses Part One, Part Two and The New Golden Song Book Part One, Part Two and Part Three, and Huckleberry Hound Builds A House.

Thanks
Stephen Worth
Director
ASIFA-Hollywood
Animation Archive
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Filmography: Gandy and Sourpuss in Aladdin's Lamp

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.


Over at John Kricfalusi's blog, All Kinds of Stuff, John posted an appreciation Gandy Goose and Sourpuss- the cartoon comedy team that were one of the inspirations for Ren & Stimpy.

I've long thought that the Gandy Goose cartoons are underappreciated. They're funny, well animated and have a great deal of variety. The early ones, in particular "Doomsday", have lavish production values. "Aladdin's Lamp" is a typical wartime short featuring the duo, and it includes a great jitterbug dance sequence by Carlo Vinci. Vinci's hand is evident throughout this short.









Gandy Goose & Sourpuss in
Aladdin's Lamp (Terry/1943)
(Quicktime 7 / 14.5 megs)

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 found this post to be interesting, you'll also want to check out our... Profile of Carlo Vinci, The Training Of A Golden Age Animator, Carlo Vinci Notes, The Terry-Toons Studio Tour, Tytla and Terry: Jeckyl & Hyde Cat, The Temperamental Lion 1940, Catnip Capers 1940, Jim Tyer's Barnyard Actor 1955 and Terrytoons Lobby Cards

Many thanks to John Kricfalusi for donating this great cartoon to our archive.

Stephen Worth
Director
ASIFA-Hollywood
Animation Archive
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