Humorous Phases of Funny Faces (1906)

(YouTube link above)

I feel for the very first film to kick this topic off would nonetheless have to be a stop-motion film.

So why not start off with one of the very first stop-motion films ever created?

This is [The]Humorous Phases of Funny Faces by James Stuart Blackton which was made over 100 years ago. This was one of the very first films to incorporate the stop-frame technique of changing movements between frames which we now commonly know as stop-motion.

It is very interesting to watch this piece of animation as it makes use of different techniques to bring the characters to life. These include practical effects such as the use of black card rather than physically rubbing out chalk and re-drawing the frame which is common practice for what we now call “traditional animation”.

So what do you think of animation back in the early 1900s?

Bonus: Check out lightning-sketch animation from 1896 that pre-dates stop-motion. You can very clearly see the inspiration for the format that we use today!

Last edited by The Tenacious Brick (February 22, 2018 (09:00am))

Animation back then was so creepy and stylistic. It's wild to take a look back and see how much it's changed.

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"Whatever you do, do all to the glory of God." - 1 Corinthians 10:31b

The Queen chases the protagonists and eventually becomes a monster before being defeated by Bimbo,

Actually Walt was an amazing hands-on producer but not much of an animator. Ubbe Iwerks, Les CLark, Grim Natwick, Norm Ferguson, Freddy Moore, Dave Hand, and some of those early Disney guys (and those later known as the Nine Old Men) really pioneered it. In fact Ubbe (who animated most of the early Mickey Mouse cartoons such as Plane Crazy and Staemboat Willy) had a falling out with Walt. When Walt was asked to draw Mickey in autographs, he'd turn to Ubbe and say "go ahead and draw it" and then Walt would sign it. I can't blame Ubbe for his resentment. Eventually they'd reconcile and Ubbe went on to pioneer the miltiplane camera and a lot of technical developments.

Check out "The Illusion Of Life" for futher reading.

Same goes for "Max" Fleischer. Max was the producer, his brother Dave actually directed the films, and animators like Seymour Kneitel and Roland Crandall did the bulk of the animation. Unfortunately Fleischer went under earlier than disney due to rights issues, which is why a lot of their stuff is in the public domain now, and often times when you find it the original title sequences have been stripped away and replaced with King Features Syndicates and Paramount logos. The real shame is that much of their stuff isn't as well archived or restored as well as other historically important films, due to there not being any copyright holders motivated to spearhead the restoration.

Last edited by thistof (February 27, 2018 (04:22am))

Good point, Walt was great at recognizing people's abilities (sometimes more than they did) and he'd put them in a totally different job where he knew they'd flourish, or he'd pull them off of animation to work on Disneyland, hehe. He was definitely good at motivating people to "plus it" and while he may not have known the solution to doing something deeper than rubber hose animation, for example, he intuitively had an idea of what he was looking for and was able to encourage people to find those solutions. Milosz Forman says in the Amadeus DVD that a good director should know how to do a little of everything, and then hire individuals who are better than him at each of those things. Definitely true of Walt.

I think where it gets tricky is separating the name of the man from the name of the company. I think I read once somewhere that he regretted using his name on the company, since in a way he lost his own identity or something along those lines.

The Beatles' Yellow Submarine (example)

(YouTube link)

So for this weeks showcase, I am taking you to the sixties with The Beatles' very own Yellow Submarine (1968)

Unfortunately the link I've provided only shows an example for the film, in order to watch this you will need to source your own copy.

As we all know The Beatles were the biggest band of their time and have had a massive influence on music, even with todays standards of music. They still hold the record of being the best-selling band in history. With the popularity of the band within the 1960s and the previous success of their feature-films A Hard Days Night and Help (1965), Yellow Submarine came into production.

The idea of this film was to try and bring in a new younger generation by tapping into subjects, themes and music that appealed most to young adults. The film features the four band members and many of their songs, promoting them within the feature itself.

The story stems within the fictional land "Pepperland" and the evil music-hating monsters named the "Blue Meanies" have ventured upon Pepperland. The four band members then are enlisted to save the day.

The most interesting sight from this film looking back is definitely the visuals. The visuals reflect the psychedelic themes of its time. Bright colours and quirky, otherworldly beings are scattered within the film. This film is a very interesting piece to watch due to the outstanding nature of the visuals, though the animation itself isn't so impressive and as innovative as others, the design of the film definitely experiments with a lot of strange themes. This film is a vey good way to inspire thinking outside of the box when it comes to visual aspects of animation, whether it'd be character design or just colours. If you're interested, don't just look at only this film alone but also have a look into psychedelic artwork, filmography and experimental features, they are very interesting to interact with and are often very thought provoking.

Bonus The voice actor who voiced George Harrison for the film had to be replaced half-way through recording as he was arrested for desertion from the British Army of the Rhine in Germany.

Double Bonus! As most LEGO fans will know, the famous title submarine from the film has been created in LEGO form and is available for purchase! A fan pitched the idea to the LEGO ideas service and it was made into a real-life set!

https://shop.lego.com/en-GB/Yellow-Submarine-21306