Baker's Animation Showcase

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Re: Indie Animation Showcase

Post by Mr. Big (?) » Tue Jul 14, 2020 10:40 pm



Here's a Terrytoons character that came out post-Deitch. Hashimoto was created by a Japanese-American animator Bob Kuwahara, and was one of the first Asian characters in American animation that was meant to be portrayed positively, after years of "Yellow Peril" stereotypes that was very much the norm during WWII and immediate aftermath.

A lot of the Japanese customs presented in Hashimoto are fairly accurate, even if some stereotypes are present (such as him being an expert on martial arts). Still, it's nice to see a positive representation of Asian characters, and one created by one of the very few Japanese-American animators working in the animation industry at the time.

Bob Kuwahara wrote and directed a bulk of the Hashimoto cartoons, even animating some of them partially or wholly by himself.

Note that the cartoon above was originally made in CinemaScope, but I could only find the pan-and-scan copy.

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Re: Indie Animation Showcase

Post by Mr. Big (?) » Thu Jul 16, 2020 1:08 am



Ralph Bakshi left Terrytoons in 1967 to take over Famous Studios, which at that point was run by Shamus Culhane, who quit because he saw the writing on the wall that the studio wouldn't last any longer. Sure enough, he was right. Bakshi only lasted 6 months before Paramount decided to close the studio down; he was only able to complete four cartoons (plus one Culhane started but Bakshi finished).

This is one of those cartoons Bakshi was able to complete, featuring kids playing "house", only to take their roles seriously. Winston Sharples, long time composer for Famous (and Max Fleischer before that) does an appropriate organ music that evokes the "soap opera" feel. All the kids were voiced by uncredited child actors.

If you ever wondered what it would have been like if Ralph Bakshi made a Charlie Brown special, this short gives us a clue.

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Re: Indie Animation Showcase

Post by Mr. Big (?) » Sat Jul 18, 2020 5:28 pm



A short from 1980 by Gabor Csupo of Klasky-Csupo, years before his "Simpsons" and Nickelodeon deal. His then-wife, Arlene Klasky, gets a special thanks credit in the end.

It's rather nicely animated, featuring two characters out-dance each-other.

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Re: Indie Animation Showcase

Post by Mr. Big (?) » Sat Jul 18, 2020 8:55 pm



Tex Avery found himself out of job at MGM due to his unit being disbanded, but he quickly found work at Walter Lantz, a studio where he had his first animation job about 20-something years earlier on the Oswald shorts.

Walter Lantz had much smaller budget than MGM, but Avery's humor and timing is unmistakable in the shorts he made there. He only did 4 shorts, unfortunately, but what he did were really fun.

This is one of those 4. The cartoon centers on a man and a dog who gets run over. When given blood transfusion, the doctor mixes up the dog and human plasma, causing the man to start acting like a dog and vice-versa, making the man's wife VERY confused.

Hilarity ensues. Seriously, it's a funny cartoon.

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Re: Indie Animation Showcase

Post by Mr. Big (?) » Thu Jul 23, 2020 4:45 pm



Not a specific animation short persay, but a collection of animation by Bill Littlejohn.

Littlejohn probably holds the record for animating the most comic strips. In his long career he animated Milt Gross's "Count Screwloose" at MGM, Fontaine Fox's "Toonerville Trolley" at Van Beuren in the 1930s (and again in the 1970s on a Christmas special produced by R.O. Blechman), "Doonesbury", and under Lee Mendelson/Bill Melendez, "Garfield", "Cathy", "Krazy Kat", and several in "Fantastic Funnies", including "Broom-Hilda".

However, he's most noted for his work on the "Peanuts" specials, especially the character Snoopy. He was known for animating Snoopy in a really funny way that suited the specials' visual gags. While Schulz never referred to him by name (likely because he didn't know), he did noted his animation in the specials, saying he always knew how to animate Snoopy funny while also keeping him on-model.

Littlejohn animated for Bill Melendez a lot, but he worked at other studios, too, including Jay Ward (he animated the intro for Dudley Do-Right) and John Hubley (the aforementioned Doonesbury special was made by Hubley)

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Re: Indie Animation Showcase

Post by Mr. Big (?) » Thu Jul 23, 2020 11:51 pm



A made-for-TV "Stuffy Derma" cartoon that Hal Seeger produced as part of "Milton the Monster Show" for ABC Saturday Morning. Mainly posting because Jim Tyer animated it.

The theme song explains the premise, but the gist of it is that a hobo named Stuffy Derma inherits $10 million and becomes rich. However, he still maintains his hobo lifestyle even with all the money, so Bradley Brinkley is hired to "give him polish" (as you can tell by Stuffy crying in the end of the intro, he's not exactly a fan of this). His attempts however always fail, especially with Stuffy Derma always bringing in his friends from his hobo days. This came out when shows like "The Beverly Hillbillies" was on the air, so I guess this sort of thing was popular at the time.

There are things I like about Tyer's animation, like how all the butlers and servants are literally 2-dimensional. Whenever they turn around they're rendered like they're flat cardboards:

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I also like how ridiculously long Bradley's neck stretches while the rest of his body is still:

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This episode even has some "shrink takes" that Tyer loved to do:

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Also I just love this:

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Man, I'd kill for this kind of animation in my own work.

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Re: Indie Animation Showcase

Post by Mr. Big (?) » Sat Jul 25, 2020 11:18 am



If I had to name a cartoon from 1969 that was a "meme", I think this would be it.

Marv Newland was taking film classes at the Art Center College of Design in Los Angeles. The film he intended to make, a live-action short, was proving to be too complicated to finish on time, so he spent 2 weeks making this cartoon instead, with a budget of $300 (most of which I'm certain was spent on film and developing costs).

The film wound up starting a career for Marv Newland, working at a variety of animation studios in LA and Toronto before starting his own, International Rocketship Limited, up in Vancouver.

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Re: Indie Animation Showcase

Post by Mr. Big (?) » Sat Jul 25, 2020 2:07 pm



While I'm on International Rocketship Limited, here's one that one of the staff animators, Danny Antonucci made.

Antonucci would become famous for "Ed, Edd n Eddy" but at the time he was known for creating edgy adult cartoons. Supposedly the reason he created the Eds to begin with was because another animator dared him to create something kid-friendly, figuring he couldn't pull it off.

The film itself is largely one-joke, but there's something funny about how the butcher curses and swears, even as he literally falls into pieces.

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Re: Indie Animation Showcase

Post by Mr. Big (?) » Mon Jul 27, 2020 4:36 pm



It's Bugs Bunny's 80th birthday! :party:

To celebrate, here's one of the newer cartoons done in the aftermath of the 50th anniversary. The film was a satire on the marketing blitz the 50th anniversary had.

Warner Bros. didn't care for it and shelved the film from release. It was finally shown in public years later when it aired on Cartoon Network, mixed in with reruns of older Looney Tunes cartoons.

There are some CGI usage here, during the beginning when the backgrounds moved to match the handheld camera effect. The CG backgrounds was traced onto cels and painted.

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Re: Indie Animation Showcase

Post by Mr. Big (?) » Wed Jul 29, 2020 12:20 am



An anti-smoking cartoon made by the National Film Board of Canada, made by Kaj Pindal. Some good animation here, with a grotesque cigarette mascot literally trying to kill a kid, with the help of his minions.

Pat Burns, a long time radio host in Canada, does the voices here. For a while, in fact, whenever the Canadian anti-smoking PSA needed a narrator, Pat Burns was the go-to guy for that.

Which is ironic. I know someone who used to be co-workers with him at the radio station. He said Pat Burns was a chain smoker :-I

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Re: Indie Animation Showcase

Post by Mr. Big (?) » Sat Aug 01, 2020 3:15 pm



A student film by Chris Sanders ("Lilo and Stitch"), made at CalArts, featuring a son helping his dad kill marshmallows.

It's adorable. And silly :allears:

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Re: Indie Animation Showcase

Post by Mr. Big (?) » Sun Aug 02, 2020 7:53 pm

Image
Image

I heard about Dan McLaughlin's 1963 UCLA film "Claude" for a while, but I didn't watch it until this week, when I found a 16mm print of it on eBay and bought it.

It's a 3 minute film about a boy genius whose parents don't appreciate him (his mom and dad repeats "Claude can't you do anything" and "You will never achieve anything" respectively over and over throughout the film), until the boy finally finishes his machine that literally erases his nuisance once and for all.

It's an amusing film with effective minimalist animation. I'll hopefully have it digitized someday, since no copy exists online.

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Re: Indie Animation Showcase

Post by Mr. Big (?) » Mon Aug 03, 2020 5:08 pm



This is interesting. It's a 1972 independent short made by two 17-year olds, John Stern and Steve Adams, a little ditty centering on an art auction.

I have to wonder what kind of help they got, even if the caption said they did all the work. It's a very impressive short for a first-time filmmakers still in high school. The film was shown in film festivals and was eventually distributed by Learning Corporation of America, which distributed films to classrooms, libraries, and other small avenues.

Sadly, I can't find what ever became of Stern and Adams. They seemingly never did anything else after this film.

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Re: Indie Animation Showcase

Post by Mr. Big (?) » Mon Aug 03, 2020 5:50 pm



A student film made by Wes Archer, who would later have a career directing episodes of "King of the Hill", "Rick and Morty", and other shows. I love how the animation is rendered, with what I presume is colored pencil.

Bill Kopp, who would later create shows like "Eek the Cat", "Schnookums and Meat", and "Mad Jack the Pirate" voiced the trucker in the film.

As a bonus, here's a video documenting the restoration of the film from the original 16mm print:

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Re: Indie Animation Showcase

Post by Mr. Big (?) » Thu Aug 06, 2020 5:18 pm



Something transferred from my 16mm collection. In the early 1970s Chuck Jones had a TV show called "Curiosity Shop", which featured live-action segments mixed with animated shorts created for the program, most of them based on popular newspaper strips of the era. One of the strips animated for that show was "The Wizard of Id".

Abe Levitow, long-time animator for Jones, directed. Paul Winchell voiced the King, giving him a voice that's a mix of Dick Dastardly and Gargamel. Don Messick voiced the Wizard and much of the incidental characters.

There are a few moments where they saved money on animation, like how the King observed the going-ons inside a butcher shop, just standing. They reused that shot TWICE.

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Re: Indie Animation Showcase

Post by Mr. Big (?) » Fri Aug 07, 2020 12:16 am



One unusual thing about the early Pink Panther cartoons is a lot of them had extensive dialogues. Not necessarily from the Panther himself (although a couple of cartoons had him speaking), but through other characters.

This is one of those, and oddly it features Mel Blanc doing the voice. Even though DePatie-Freleng spun off from what was left of the Warner Bros animation studio, they rarely used Blanc for voices in their own cartoons. If DFE did use him, it was usually because they were producing new animation with the Looney Tunes cast.

From what I gather, this was because Friz Freleng and Mel Blanc didn't get along very well, hence why he rarely used him in the later years when he was on his own. But here's a Pink Panther cartoon where Blanc is heard extensively, both as the drunk and his wife.

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Re: Indie Animation Showcase

Post by Mr. Big (?) » Sun Aug 09, 2020 3:40 am



Satina has been gaining popularity online lately, and I got a chuckle out of the first episode in the series.

Unsurprisingly, Satina's mom has a lot of fans :-I

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Re: Indie Animation Showcase

Post by Mr. Big (?) » Sun Aug 09, 2020 11:08 pm



I can see the cartoon's main subject to be relatable for some people :v:

Brad Caslor's "Get a Job" is a fun short from the NFB, especially with its animation, which is inspired by the "classic" cartoon style from the 1930s and 40s. Lots of cartoony, bouncy animation.

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Re: Indie Animation Showcase

Post by Mr. Big (?) » Thu Aug 13, 2020 11:43 am



I always loved the idea of portable holes in animation. It's a common gag in older cartoons, but here's one where it makes up the cartoon's story.

In the late 1950s Warner Bros. temporarily closed down their animation studio due to the 3-D craze of the time, only to reopen 6 months later, with all of the staff coming back.

Well, almost everyone. While Chuck and Friz were able to get their animators back, Bob McKimson lost his entire team of animators (long story). So when his first cartoon since the shutdown, "The Hole Idea", was ready to enter the animation production McKimson had no choice but to animate the entire cartoon himself.

McKimson is generally regarded as the weakest director of the three, but he was certainly a top-notch animator, having animated for Tex Avery and Bob Clampett before he got his unit, so that wouldn't be a problem. McKimson largely animated his next few cartoons until he was able to get a new team of animators to work for him.

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Re: Baker's Animation Showcase

Post by Mr. Big (?) » Thu Aug 13, 2020 11:49 am

Also renamed the thread because, technically, a lot of animation I covered here aren't "indie".

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Re: Baker's Animation Showcase

Post by Mr. Big (?) » Thu Aug 13, 2020 11:02 pm



If there's one cartoon from Frederator's Cartoon Hangover that got the most attention it's probably "The Summoning" (I still see fanarts from it), but my favorite from the bunch is this one.

Jonni Phillips is very much active in indie animation, releasing cartoons on her YouTube channel every so often, and she certainly has a quirky style that makes her work worth following. She was still in college at CalArts when she pitched this short to Frederator and it got picked up.

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Re: Baker's Animation Showcase

Post by Mr. Big (?) » Fri Aug 14, 2020 4:40 pm



Another one I like. I don't know much about the creator; this is his only professional animation credit and he doesn't really post much on his Twitter, but I hope he does more things.

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Re: Baker's Animation Showcase

Post by Mr. Big (?) » Fri Aug 14, 2020 11:44 pm



This is my daily struggle. :-I

Jib Kodi is another animator to check out. He's active in the furry community and is worth checking out.

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Re: Baker's Animation Showcase

Post by Princess Flufflebutt (?) » Sat Aug 15, 2020 4:04 am

Here's one I like.
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Re: Baker's Animation Showcase

Post by Mr. Big (?) » Sat Aug 15, 2020 4:28 am

Ooo I remember liking that one! The animator's very active on Twitter.

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Re: Baker's Animation Showcase

Post by Mr. Big (?) » Sun Aug 16, 2020 1:19 am



"Charlie the Unicorn" is hilarious, and it's easy to see why it became an internet sensation. But I always preferred the self-parody that the creator did, "charlie teh unicron", even knowing that it was done to parody what the series would be like if the YouTube commentators wrote the episodes.

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Re: Baker's Animation Showcase

Post by Mr. Big (?) » Tue Aug 18, 2020 5:05 pm

So here's a rarity I acquired today. A week ago I got a note from a friend who has a massive 16mm collection. He decided to sell some he didn't want anymore and offered one to me, a 1960s anime I never heard of before.

Image

The film container says "Strange Animal Heaven", and it was produced by Japan Tele-Cartoons. I have heard of the studio; they were around in the 1960s and produced a few shows that's mostly forgotten, although they had at least one title that's remembered in nostalgic circles: "Marine Boy", one of the early TV anime that got dubbed and released in the US.

The film has no sound, which makes me think it was a workprint. It features a group of animals, drawn in a very Western-style. One wouldn't think it was made by a Japanese studio, but I have seen other works from this studio and they did have this style in many of their works.

Whatever this is, here it is:


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Re: Baker's Animation Showcase

Post by Mr. Big (?) » Thu Aug 20, 2020 4:51 pm



"50,000 Animals" was a series of shorts made by newspaper cartoonist Ryoichi Yokoyama at his studio Otogi Production, which actually has the honor of producing a TV anime series couple years before "Astro Boy", although while Tezuka's show was half-hour, Yokoyama mostly produced 3-5 minute shorts that could be aired every weekday, so as a result they often get overlooked.

The animal shorts generally featured animals in the forest getting into rather surreal cartoon adventures. The soundtrack is very sparse, just utilizing the same piano music playing throughout. I don't know how many Yokoyama made, but they were being produced from 1962 to 1965. Some of those cartoons were released on 8mm for home projection.

In 1970s these cartoons started airing on television as a short, daily miniature anime, broadcast Monday-Friday. The title was renamed "Tales from the Animal Forest" and the soundtrack was redone to add narration, and also to vary much the music heard throughout (although the piano music was retained as the opening titles music). They also had additional episodes made at TCJ Animation Center (now known as Eiken) to bring the number of episodes up to 100.

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Re: Baker's Animation Showcase

Post by Mr. Big (?) » Fri Aug 21, 2020 9:43 pm

In there 1970s there was a worldwide Oil Crisis going on, which made energy conservation and switching to renewable energy a talking point, and naturally there were films made about it.

Christopher Hinton and Brad Caslor ("Get a Job") jumped in on that with a short about a businessman who starts an energy company, using dragon fire, to power a tiny kingdom. Unfortunately dragons lost the ability to reproduce, and the dragon population is shrinking...


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Re: Baker's Animation Showcase

Post by Mr. Big (?) » Sat Aug 22, 2020 2:56 am

I don't know if this is the weirdest licensing ever with "Looney Tunes", but it's up there.

Several episodes of the 1970s Go Nagai anime "Majokko Tickle" had Tweety Bird appearing in the end credits, for reasons I'm not entirely sure. The character was removed and replaced with a generic bear in reruns, but somebody videotaped one of the episodes with the original Tweety credits from the first broadcast:


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Re: Baker's Animation Showcase

Post by Mr. Big (?) » Thu Aug 27, 2020 1:27 pm



Ah Clippit, better known as Clippy. A staple in Microsoft Office for several years, badgering us if we need help writing a letter. Clippy became a butt of a joke, and after a while Microsoft got in on the joke as well.

Such as this. When XP was introduced they commissioned a series of Flash cartoons advertising the fact that Clippy was retired, featuring everyone being glad to get rid of him (they also included a dig at Microsoft Bob as well, another infamous software from the company).

As an icing on the cake, they hired Gilbert Gottfried to voice the character.

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Re: Baker's Animation Showcase

Post by Mr. Big (?) » Fri Aug 28, 2020 2:00 am



Probably weird to share this here, but a HD copy was uploaded by Albino Blacksheep on Youtube, so here it is.

"Demented Cartoon Movie" was very much a viral Flash cartoon in the early 2000s. In addition to its lolrandom humor that was popular online at the time, another novelty factor was its 30-minute running time. Keep in mind that most Flash animation of the era were only few minutes long at most. Having something be 30-minutes during Dial-Up era was nothing short of amazing.

In conclusion, ZEEGY BOOGY DOOG :plonk:

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Re: Baker's Animation Showcase

Post by Mr. Big (?) » Sat Aug 29, 2020 12:21 am



One of the NFB cartoons by Richard Condie. I think a lot of people can relate to this.

One technical aspect I find interesting is when the guy opens the door in the 25 second mark. Normally that would just be painted on cels with flat color, but Condie went through the trouble having it painted to match the background, a bit more complicated process that was rarely used.

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Re: Baker's Animation Showcase

Post by Mr. Big (?) » Sun Aug 30, 2020 1:47 pm



Another NFB cartoon done during the 1970s energy crisis, this one commissioned by the Canadian Department of Energy Conservation. A takeoff on "Christmas Carol", the twist being Scrooge is a nice guy who treats his workers fairly, but is incredibly wasteful with energy, which leads him to be visited by the ghosts.

Directed by Les Drew, a long-time mainstay with the NFB.

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Re: Baker's Animation Showcase

Post by Mr. Big (?) » Tue Sep 01, 2020 12:43 pm



I love Jim Tyer's animation so much.

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Re: Baker's Animation Showcase

Post by Mr. Big (?) » Thu Sep 03, 2020 1:33 am



Another NFB film from Les Drew and Kaj Pindal.

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Re: Baker's Animation Showcase

Post by Mr. Big (?) » Fri Sep 04, 2020 5:05 pm



Another NFB classic, this one winning an Oscar. A black comedy story involving a man having to deal with his dead mailman after he broke his neck due to him not shoveling the snow.

Just a heads up that there's a brief nudity (involving a naked dead guy), but nothing sexual otherwise.

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Re: Baker's Animation Showcase

Post by Mr. Big (?) » Mon Sep 07, 2020 5:07 pm



I'm in the mood for NFB apparently, heh.

This is from the co-director of "Special Delivery", John Weldon. I remember watching this on Cartoon Network about 20 years ago and thinking it was an odd take of "Pinocchio", but I watched it again as an adult, it holds up MUCH better. Just the absurd premise (the woodsman loses his mind for absolutely no reason while asleep, making him think the puppet is alive), and the satirical elements, like in the report card where the puppet got perfect mark on "obedience" and "patriotism", despite failing everything else. DAMN.

And yeah, as you would expect, there's a lot of references to the Disney film, even music alluding to "When You Wish Upon a Star". but it was parodic and different enough to get Disney off their hairs.

This is worth a watch.

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Re: Baker's Animation Showcase

Post by Mr. Big (?) » Fri Sep 11, 2020 5:53 pm



In the late 1950s an animation studio in Mexico did a bunch of these anti-communist cartoons featuring animal characters. The copy above has English voices dubbed in (rather poorly)

At the time Mexico didn't really have an animation industry, so American animators were sent to direct/supervise, training the artists how to animate on the job. This one was directed by Emery Hawkins, who was a long-time animator at Warner Bros. and other studios. There are some technical fuck-ups with this one, which leads to speculation that Hawkins didn't want to direct more after this.

Involvement from American animators aside, there's a pretty strong likelihood the US government sponsored these cartoons to discourage communism in the south of the border.

Ernesto "Ernie" Terrazas would later go to work for Gamma Production in Mexico City, working on "Rocky and Bullwinkle". I imagine a lot of the animators who worked on these cartoons went to work for Gamma on Jay Ward and Total Television shows.

(note: in the YouTube link they say it was released in 1962, but it's somewhere around 1952-56).

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Re: Baker's Animation Showcase

Post by Mr. Big (?) » Fri Sep 11, 2020 9:55 pm



Something Disney probably don't want you to see. This anti-Vietnam cartoon featuring Mickey Mouse (unauthorized) certainly spread around when a copy was uploaded online.

Lee Savage was an animator who later produced numerous segments for "Sesame Street". Lee's son, Adam, became a special effects artist, and then later co-hosted "MythBusters".

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