dragons

the screen captured scenes above are from a short 7 VERSIONS OF A FAIRY TALE the hungarian animator and director ATTILA DARGAY ( 1927 – 2009 ) created in the eighties. he started after his art studies in 1948 at hungary’s national theatre in budapest as a scenery painter, from 1957 on he worked as animator and created a number of shorts, in 1976 his first directed animation feature film MATTIE THE GOOSEBOY, followed by THE FOX in 1981 and THE CAPTAIN OF THE FOREST in 1987. the FAIRY TALE short starts with some picture book paintings showing heroic knights fighting dragons and saving the princess, then changes into a very different cartoony style to deal with the same content but in a very different way. the short is beautifully animated and full of great gags.

© attila dargay

speed paintings

from one of my favorite disney shorts – THE TORTOISE AND THE HARE, 1934

© disney enterprises, inc

contrast

the following captured images and recreated backgrounds are from the 1943 WALTER LANTZ – WOODY WOODPECKER short WELL OILED. the earlier posted BAMBI backgrounds are roughly from the same period of time, but what a difference in quality. it is not a style, they are just painted sloppy, as if the painter was not interested at all to come up with some decent look. but – you judge yourself…

© universal pictures

1937

1937 was a good year in terms of disney short releases. there were some of the best – DON DONALD, LITTLE HIAWATHA, MODERN INVENTIONS, HAWAIIAN HOLIDAYS, THE OLD MILL, LONESOME GHOSTS and – CLOCK CLEANERS. the following pretty long recreated pan is from that mickey mouse short.

© disney enterprises, inc

1937 – 1940

some more recreated backgrounds from some of the disney shorts, all painted in watercolor. all of them have a slightly different style. the reason might be the different BG-artists. here we go, starting in 1937 with PLUTO’S QUINPUPLETS.

following is the 1939 DONALD DUCK short, DONALD’S LUCKY DAY.

and one more from a 1940 MICKEY MOUSE short, MR. MOUSE TAKES A TRIP.

© disney enterprises, inc

paul julian 2

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

title cards

© disney enterprises, inc / WB / MGM / paramount / universal

lucky

I am back from the 2 weeks singapore workshop. it was fun and there was a lot of talent in the class of 40. hi to everybody, I will be back soon. here now another recreated long background-pan, from disney’s DONALD’S LUCKY DAY, released jan. 1939. beautifully painted in the watercolor technique of that time.

© disney enterprises, inc

hunters

disney’s DONALD DUCK short THE FOX HUNT was released july 1938. the following recreated extremely long pan is from the opening scene and is 40 seconds long! this is very unusual, it is difficult to plan for layout- and animation-artists. in this case the pan shows the hunters on horses riding out for the fox hunt, the camera leaves them behind and reveals donald with several dogs who is supposed to search for the fox.

© disney enterprises, inc

trailer

this is a recreated background with the corresponding layout for one of my favorite disney shorts – MICKEY’S TRAILER, 1938. the layouts were drawn by a master, I have seen the originals in the disney archives, incredible – flawless. he did the layouts for GOOD SCOUTS too, 1938 as well. and a few more, will check in my archives. never found out his name, unfortunately the layouts for the shorts were not signed. maybe someone out there has an idea…

© disney enterprises, inc