The Shadows Move – G.B. Animation
In this very short sequence only eleven drawings – Ginger Nutt does not simply move, he is made to ACT his movement with every drawn line.
history
The Shadows Move – the 1940s
Len Lye’s early experimental cartoon work using Publicity Pictures facilities resulted in TUSALAVA, released in 1928. EXPERIMENTAL ANIMATION appeared in 1933 while he was employed by the G.P.O. film unit.
The Shadows Move – the 1940s
Interested in trying an animated puppet film series promoting Horlicks, J. Walter Thompson’s advertising agency sent Gerard Holdsworth to Holland to talk over possibilities with George Pal.
The Shadows Move – the 1940s
When the Blitz began, HOPPY and his wife would sit up nights filling in cels. They were often accompanied by their close friend Police Superintendent MOORE who lent a hand.
The Shadows Move – the 1940s
JACK JACKSON, the popular band-leader who became a celebrated disc-jockey on radio after the war, took time off from his music and his A.R.P. warden duties and animated a series of food-flashes for the Ministry of Food.
The Shadows Move – the 1940s
ANSON DYER made ROBBIE FINDS A GUN (B/W – 1946), WHO ROBBED THE ROBINS (1947) , and a three part serial SQUIRREL WAR (1947).
Bugs Bunny Signs Up
Warner Bros were committed to attack the German Nazi party before any other Hollywood studio. After their representative in Berlin had been kicked to death by storm troopers they had broken off all dealings with Germany, and, as supporters of Franklin Roosevelt since 1932, they backed him against the isolationists.
Contemporary British Animation in 1983
Bugs, of course, was not alone. The feeling in America at this time was viciously anti-Japanese and permeated every medium. An extraordinary article in Time magazine in December 1941 entitled ‘How to tell your friends from the Japs’ gives a few rules at thumb to differentiate the Chinese – friends – from the Japanese.
The Shadows Move – the 1930s
The Shadows Move
Part Two
Ken Clark continues the story of British Animation.
When, in 1935, Anson Dyer and Archibald Nettlefold opened Anglia Films Ltd., Dyer filled the art rooms with the best talent he could find, headed by two Danes: Mykleson and Myller. Len Kirley, Laurie Price, Sid Griffiths, Spud Murphy, Lesley Manners, and Charles Stobbart the cameraman were key personnel. Charles was a cousin of the famed screen actor Charles Laughton. It was Jorgan Myller who designed the first in a series of Operatic Burlesques entitled ‘Carmen’. The film had a certain panache, style and pace, and involved full animation much to the dismay of Dyer who was visibly taken aback by the enormous stack of animated drawings.
The Shadows Move – the 1930s
Alas, although Dyer’s idea had been quite sound, and they believed it to be a ‘sure fire’ hit, they had overlooked one significant point. The characters, the stories and backgrounds were excellent, and even the muted results of the Dunning 2-Colour System were tolerably acceptable, but no one had anticipated the effect that the ponderous beat of the verses would have on the action. Holloway’s lugubrious delivery of the lines of the monologue worked perfectly well on stage and radio; but when the artists came to animate the Sergeant walking ‘on the beat’, they found they needed 48 drawings to complete each steps The pace was pedestrian in both senses of the word, though many cinemagoers preferred it to the frenetic pace of imported productions.