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more from THE HANGMAN…

© paul julian

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… more recreated pan-BG’s from THE HANGMAN painted by PAUL JULIAN

© mcgraw-hill contemporary films / paul julian

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december 2009 I published the first post about THE HANGMAN. recently I found a print of the short in a decent quality and started to recreate some of the longer backgrounds. LES GOLDMAN and PAUL JULIAN produced the 11 min short in 1964, PAUL JULIAN painted all the backgrounds and character-stills of the film. as you will see in a series of upcoming posts, his paintings are true masterpieces. for UPA and the short THE TELLTALE HEART JULIAN developed a very unique style that he used in this film as well, a style that is influenced by EDWARD HOPPER ( 1882 – 1967 ) and BEN SHAHN ( 1898 – 1969 ).

© mcgraw-hill contemporary films / paul julian

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warner brothers, sept.22, 1951 – release date for the short TWEETY’S S.O.S. directed by FRIZ FRELENG, the beautiful backgrounds painted by PAUL JULIAN. following some captured scenes and recreated BG’s.

© WB

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the recreated backgrounds below, from the 1951 WB short PUTTY TAT TROUBLE, directed by FRIZ FRELENG, were painted by PAUL JULIAN.

© WB

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THE HANGMAN was produced in 1964 by LES GOLDMAN and PAUL JULIAN. using the original poem of MAURICE OGDEN, the eight and a half minute film is basically an ‘animatic’, very interesting stylized paintings by julian with very limited animation.

© paul julian

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a few background recreations from the january 1949 warner brothers released short HARE DO. PAUL JULIAN’S backgrounds in this film don’t have the same quality level as the ones in later productions, as you can see. but his color-palette is already clearly recognizable.

© WB

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the following recreated backgrounds, painted by PAUL JULIAN, are from the 1951 released TWEETY & SILVESTER WB short – TWEET TWEET TWEETY.

© WB

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PAUL JULIAN painted these backgrounds for the 1950 released and by FRIZ FRELENG directed WB-cartoon CANARY ROW.

© WB

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I really like a lot of the WB animated shorts, I love ‘em because they have a different kind of humor. mel blanc’s voice characterisations are funny anyway. but – when you look at a lot of them single-frame-wise, you will find some of the worst drawings, in animation and in BG. lots of very ugly backgrounds, badly painted, wrong shapes, no composition, colors a disaster. they were apparently not done for ‘art’-reasons, just to have something behind the animation. no wonder, only very few BG’s survived. they threw ‘em away. there is such an indredible gap in quality between these BG’s and the disney ones, where you can see that the artists were searching for a special look, were improving their quality, short after short. the only ones from the WB archives where I want to do some ‘restauration’ work are the BG’s PAUL JULIAN did. and even there are a few… well, you will see yourself. just sloppy work! as if they had been in a hurry. this is very interesting for me, because I never really noticed it so badly until I started this archeological restauration work. quality-standard-wise we see a lot of better artwork today. the problem is, most of our s t o r i e s don’t work.

a n y w a y – the recreated ones following are PAUL JULIAN’S backgrounds. he doesn’t have a credit in this short, but his style – even in 1944 – is clearly recognizable. DUCK SOUP TO NUTS, directed by FRIZ FRELENG, a very, very funny cartoon. daffy duck goes over the top…

© WB

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I updated the PAUL JULIAN 1 post from september 26, 2008. tomorrow I will have some more PAUL JULIAN recreated backgrounds.

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WARNER BROTHERS released on april 21, 1945, HARE TRIGGER, one of my favorite WB-shorts. directed by FRIZ FRELENG it featured BUGS BUNNY and YOSEMITE SAM. as you can see in the credits the BG’s were painted by a master – PAUL JULIAN. below is a recreated long pan from the film.

© WARNER BROTHERS

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whenever you watch a warner brothers short from the forties and fifties you can spot backgrounds painted by PAUL JULIAN immediately. they stand out because of the choice of colors and their unique style. JULIAN was a fine artist with exhibitions in art galleries. I quote from the book THE ART OF FRIZ FRELENG – …according to julian ‘backgrounds are used both to stage the character and stay behind the character’…and ‘I did a great deal of special design stuff that I kept hidden and various kinds of staging, taking liberties with perspective, and doing what I could to keep the audience’s attention directed toward the main animation with as much elaboration as I could put behind it. I tried deliberately to build the space around the characters so they were, in effect, working in a kind of tunnel…’ further …when the actual painting commenced, julian concentrated on colors, coordinating his efforts with those of the ink-and-painters…he had two six foot tables and could get the whole six minute picture laid out on the table to make sure everything went together smoothly…
the following 5 recreated pan BG’s are painted by JULIAN, they are from the 1949 WB-short BAD OL PUTTY TAT with tweety and sylvester.
later julian left WB and designed at UPA – THE TELL TALE HEART, another stylistic masterpiece.

© warner brothers