ANIMATOR PAINTS NURSERY LIKE 1930’s CARTOON

Cartoon film collector Joe Busam recently post this slide show of his progress painting a nursery, in the style of a generic early-1930s cartoon, for his soon to be born grandson. Joe told me the backstory on this home project:

When daughter Susi asked me to paint a mural for the nursery, she requested 1930s cartoon characters. Specifically she wanted the style of the Harman & Ising WB cartoons. We both have always love them for their style and unique energy. However she didn’t want recognizable characters. Once we established a theme I went to work researching the cartoons for barnyard animals. I then put together the farm kids who are actually the two main characters from Pagan Moon in disguise. Originally the color scheme was going to be based on two strip Technicolor. As it turns out Susi liked the original B&W layouts so much that when I added color it seemed anti climatic to her. Full spectrum color turned out to be too much. In desperation, I added a tint to the original B&W art and that clicked with both of us. Now that I see it enlarged on the wall I think it was a wise choice. More colors would have been pretty overpowering.

Busam is an animator at the PPS Group, a commercial production house in Cincinnati, Ohio. He also works in digital film restoration/preservation and last year produced a dvd, Monster Kid Home Movies, which has received a lot of positive reaction.I’d love to be able to hire him to do my whole house this way.(Thanks, Joe Dante and Tim Lucas)