pure beauty 1

the beauty of traditional painted backgrounds in traditional animation of the past – a lost art!

most of these pan backgrounds have been recreated, I used DVD’s and BlueRay’s. in many cases the originals are lost.

© walt disney enterprises, inc
© columbia/UPA © john hubley storyboard prod.
© MGM © WB

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nasty canasta

NASTY CANASTA is the villain in one of my favorite BUGS BUNNY shorts, BARBARY COAST BUNNY. the cartoon, released in july 1956, was directed by CHUCK JONES, animation by ABE LEVITOW, RICHARD THOMPSON and KEN HARRIS, layouts by ROBERT GRIBBROEK, backgrounds PHILIP DE GUARD. below some scene captures.

© WB

paul julian 8

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

paul julian 7

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

© WB

paul julian 5

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

paul julian 4

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

© WB

paul julian 3

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

© WB

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

update 1

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

bedtime

following is the recreated opening pan for the november 1940 WARNER BROTHERS short BEDTIME FOR SNIFFLES, directed by CHUCK JONES, animated by BOBE CANNON. the pretty long pan is in two parts, after the S/N move and a short stop it continues East and stops on one of the roofs.

© WB

style 7

the following six recreated longer background pans are from shorts of three major studios, DISNEY, WARNER BROTHERS and MGM. it’s interesting to compare the different styles and painting techniques – watercolor and gouache.

1 DISNEY – 1936 DONALD AND PLUTO
2 DISNEY – 1937 DON DONALD
3 MGM – 1940 HOME ON THE RANGE
4 DISNEY – 1940 FIRE CHIEF
5 WB – 1948 BACK ALLEY UPROAR
6 WB – 1948 BUGS BUNNY RIDES AGAIN

© disney enterprises, inc
© MGM
© WB