Published between 1982 and 1995
Almost concurrent with the setting up of Anglia Films a Daily Express newspaper strip cartoonist named Roland Davies thought it would be a good idea to produce a cartoon film series featuring his character ‘Steve the Horses. In 1936 he opened a studio, enlisted the aid of fledgling artists from the Ipswich School of Art, and later took on a young Ronnie Giles.
Jazz in Animation – Experimental
By Antoinette Moses.
Even more than mainstream animation, the experimental animators have been influenced by jazz. One can trace its fusion back to Guillaume Apollinaire who wrote in the Paris Journal in 1914: “One can compare coloured rhythm to music… We thus will have beyond static painting, beyond cinematographic representation, an art to which one will quickly accustom oneself and which will render its followers infinitely sensitive to the movement of colours, to their interpenetration, to their fast and slow changes, to their convergence, to their flight etc.”
It is possible to get a lot of spirals and curvilinear designs which I was never able to get by cutting off the masking tape; then spraying bleach into the place where the groove was. I made short samples of that sort of material. As I say, less than half of all that stuff is in my possession at this point. I also made alternate versions of a great number of scenes.
I was manipulating cutouts and working with fluids, very much as they are used in the light shows. I had an oil bath on a level tray with the light below. I put dye into the oil until it was deep red, and then used red-blind film in the camera. With my finger or with a stylus, I could draw on this thin bath of oil; and then would push the oil away and the light would shine through so I could draw linear sequences very freely; and by selecting the weight and thickness of the oil, I could control the rate at which the line would erase itself, so that it was constantly erasing with a constantly fresh surface to draw on.
The Shadows Move
Part One
KEN CLARK HAS SPENT MANY YEARS RESEARCHING THE HISTORY OF BRITISH ANIMATION. IN THIS ARTICLE HE LOOKS BACK TO THE BIRTH OF THE ANIMATION INDUSTRY.
Dr. Mark Roget’s paper ‘Explanation of an optical deception in the appearance of the spokes of a wheel seen through vertical apertures’ was presented to the Royal Society on 9th. December 1824. It dealt with a strange phenomenon: the persistence of vision, prompting the invention of a large number of rotating toys.
In the peace that followed, Dyer, ‘Poy’, and J.A. Shepherd each made three films for a Cecil Hepworth series; Philip Philm Phables. Dyer stayed with Hepworth to make six Shakespearean Burlesques; while Buxton went his own way and introduced series of MIFFY cartoons and BUCKY’S BURLESQUES.
Illustrations for The Shadows Move.
The Grasshopper Animators
Part Three
THE FINAL PART OF THIS SERIES BY KEN CLARK TELLS HOW THE GROUP SOLVED THE MAMMOTH TASK OF ANIMATING THE BATTLE OF WANGAPORE.
When Sir J. Athur Rank’s film Empire ran into financial trouble, he was forced to close down uneconomic enterprises. G.B. Animation at Cookham was one of the Units that came under the axe. A move which effectively prevented a new series of coloured cartoons from reaching the cinema screens. Titled MAGICAL PAINTBOX, they were to have been a fully animated extension to Henry Stringer’s MUSICAL PAINTBOX series.
Each frame of the sound-track was numbered, then pulled slowly past the playback head of a track reader and each synch frame noted on the dope sheet; this included the start and finish of dialogue, sound FX, musical interludes and scene changes.
The completed dope sheets clearly showed the number of frames required for each scone, the action in words, and the frames on which tight synch was necessary.
In 1966 the Group moved to Shelton Street, home of the School of Film Technique. But with declining membership and minimal finance, a few years later the remaining stalwarts formed a limited company called Teamwork Films. They moved to Neal’s Yard and carried on in much reduced circumstances, relying for their existence on sponsored work. Eventually the venture failed leaving John Daborn with the few remaining group assets.