Animation &Animation Artifacts &Models 15 Jun 2009 07:27 am
Steig’s Delco
- In 1959 Delco Remy batteries featured a spokesman of a character who was everywhere, that year. William Steig designed the tough-kid for the campaign, and he did ads for all the magazines – Look, Life, Saturday Evening Post. This was an obvious offshoot of Steig’s very successful book of cartoons, Small Fry, which was originally published in 1944 but had had quite a bit of success for the cartoonist.
This was years before Steig would write and illustrate his first children’s book.
Naturally enough, there were animated ads done as well.
Here’s a model sheet made for a Delco battery spot for the Bill Sturm studio in 1959. Sturm was an ex-Fleischer animator who moved into the Fletcher-Smith studio and advertising animation in 1947. He had his onw studio as early as 1956.
This model sheet was created, as many feature models are made, by taking clippings of some completed animation. The character was by William Steig, and I’m not sure who did the animation, but Jim Logan did the assisting.
(Click any image to enlarge,)
Too large to take in all at once, let’s break the animation down to its parts:
“Freshie” leans on the battery talking.
Then he starts to push the battery (which is on its own level.)
The skip is broken into levels with the upper half on one . . .
. . . and the lower half on another.
Here’s a scene of dialogue using heads only.
Finally here’s “Freshie”‘s tag line for the spot.
I’m not sure what this chart was used for, unless this was a series of spots, and the art from the first was what they were shooting for in subsequent spots.
Regardless, a lot of work went into this one minute spot. I’m not sure how much Steig gave them to match his models, but I would assume it was substantial (based on other spots he’d done.)
on 15 Jun 2009 at 1:57 pm 1.Jenny said …
Michael, these are great!
I’m wondering: how well do you think Steig was paid for this sort of work? Would it have been what we’d consider a handsome salary today, commensurate with his reputation, or was animation design work for commercials underpaid? He would be a freelancer/subcontractor for Bill Sturm, right? Or would whoever had the account for Delco bring Steig to them?
I’m just curious how this sort of close collaboration would work.
on 15 Jun 2009 at 3:16 pm 2.Michael said …
Steig had built a reputation at the New Yorker and the 2 collections of cartoons: Small Fry and The Lonely Ones. He did a bit of animation design in the 50s and a lot more in the 60s, predominantly working for Elektra in NY.
This campaign came fully formed with Steig attached. He undoubtedly did the character design for the agency and they found an animation studio to handle the animation.
I’m sure he would have gotten a good salary (for the time) from the agency; they were hiring a “star” for his look. I suspect things settled down a bit in the 60s when he competed with a lot of other cartoonists for the work. (I have examples of Saxon, Steinberg and some others.) Of course other designers grew out of the animation industry. RO Blechman, Mordi Gerstein, George Cannata, Jules Feiffer and Ernest Pintoff by doing print work.
I suppose, in the end, to answer the question, I would guess the salary has to do with whether the agency brought the designer in or if they worked for the animation company. Mind you, of course, that this is all speculation.