Animation &Animation Artifacts 14 Jul 2007 08:27 am
Tangy Popeye
– AWN currently has on its site an excellent Joe Strike interview with Jack Zander about his career.
Since the Popeye dvd is ready to hit the market (check out the beautiful frame grabs Jerry Beck has posted on Cartoon Brew), I thought this might be a good time for me to post some of the drawings I have from what is probably the last piece of animation Jack did professtionally.
This is from a Tang commercial done at Zander’s Animation Parlour. Instead of doling out the animation, Jack was intrigued with the idea of animating the character. He hadn’t animated Popeye before. (Note, Zander’s Animation Parlour had co-produced The Man Who Hated Laughter for Hal Seeger and King Feature‘s, but Jack hadn’t animated on that Special. So he gave himself the job. Jim Logan, the assistant on the job, gave me the extremes. Here are some from one of the scenes. I’ll post Olive (also in this scene) at another time.
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(Click any image to enlarge.)
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Do you think the assistant asked for a straight on model of Popeye’s face to do the inbetweens?
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I think Jack might have been a bit out of practice when he did this spot. It looks a bit stiff.
By the way, this drawing is an example of how Jack drew
Popeye, straight on. I’m not sure anyone else used this pose.
on 14 Jul 2007 at 8:50 am 1.Mark Mayerson said …
Thanks for pointing out the Zander interview at AWN. I agree with you that the Popeye drawings look stiff. One of the problems with working in TV commercials is that you don’t get a lot of time to get comfortable with the designs before the job is finished.
on 14 Jul 2007 at 11:32 am 2.David Nethery said …
Zander was another top peg guy from the looks of these . That seems to have lasted longer on the east coast than the west coast (although Zander had worked in California at MGM ) . I remember on some Filmation project I worked on in the late 80′s that we used to get all of Doug Crane’s stuff on top pegs and it would drive some of the assistants crazy because they weren’t used to working that way . (didn’t bother me … I started off in my “ignorance” as a top pegger and I still do stuff on top pegs from time to time just be contrary … )
on 14 Jul 2007 at 12:03 pm 3.Michael said …
You’re right that these are Top Pegs. It was always completely illogical to me.
Using the animation stand, the camera operator would lift an overlay to put a changing character cel underneath it. If the OL were top peg, it could be taped down, and the bot peg character cels slide in underneath it, assuring that the top pegged OL wouldn’t rip the pegs or move.
In this scene, Jack has the BG on bot pegs, but both levels of characters are top pegs. It doesn’t make for the best registration. Considering, Jack started in LA before moving to the East Coast, I’d guess things changed somewhere in the 30′s so that the LA animators started working with bot pegs.
Maybe that’s why the NY Union called its newsletter “Top Cel,” because it was the NY way.
on 14 Jul 2007 at 3:39 pm 4.Tom Minton said …
For the most part the west coast studios used bottom pegs, but the Warners animators preferred top pegs for some reason.
on 14 Jul 2007 at 3:54 pm 5.Mark Mayerson said …
Wasn’t the NY union newsletter called “Top Cel”?
on 15 Jul 2007 at 2:25 am 6.Tom Sito said …
Yes, the newsletter was TopCel. We young rebels used to call it Top Soil. Mike, you should create an audio link to your Jack Mercer voicemail.