Animation History Round-Up #5

The animation history round-ups have become one of my favorite types of posts to do on Cartoon Brew. It is always eye-opening to see the wealth of classic material that appears on-line on a regular basis. The cartoon history being posted online is about as grassroots as an effort gets, lots of various people (animation historians, the families of artists, and students and fans of the art form) coming together to share things from their collections without any specific agenda. There’s also no financial incentive here, only the desire to help one another and the art form grow and prosper. It will be exciting to see how the new generation of artists learns from this material and pushes the art form even further forward.

• Powerful Dumbo storyboards by Bill Peet are matched only by powerful Dumbo animation by Bill Tytla.

• Rare drawings by Playboy cartoonist (and former Disney story artist) Eldon Dedini (via Flog!)

• Animation director Ward Jenkins examines the Tex Avery-Tom Oreb classic Symphony in Slang (1951).

• A Virgil Ross-animated pencil test of Bugs Bunny from A Hare Grows in Manhattan.

• The wonderful commercial animation of animator Jack Schnerk can be seen in the reel below as well as the second and third reels on YouTube. Director Michael Sporn offers some memories of working with Schnerk on his blog.

• “It is a well-known fact at Disney’s that a man has to love an animal thoroughly before he can draw it well,” says this 1942 article from Nature magazine about the making of Bambi.

• Animation director Bob Jaques offers an appreciation of Jim Tyer’s animation in the 1946 Popeye cartoon The Island Fling.

Previously on Cartoon Brew:
Animation History Round-Up #1
Animation History Round-Up #2
Animation History Round-Up #3
Animation History Round-Up #4