Animation Artifacts &Independent Animation &UPA 02 May 2011 07:40 am
Hilberman’s Energetically Yours
- Energetically Yours was a film produced for the Standard Oil Company and directed by UPA co-founder Dave Hilberman. Animation production was supervised at both Playhouse Pictures (suprvised by Bill Melendez) and Quartet Films (supervised by Art Babbitt).
The film was designed by Ronald Searle and is, as expected, quite creative. Unfortunately, the copies of the film floating about today are all color deteriorated – everything has turned to a muddy reddish hue. In fact, the artwork for the film was very colorful. Matt Jones’
blog Perpetua (a tribute blog to Ronald Searle) has an excellent piece about Searle and this film. It includes numerous still photos of Searle and Hilberman and gives an idea of the full production.
I’d recently been contacted by David Hilberman’s son, Dan Hilberman. He had a collection of about 50 cells from the film that had been preserved by Mary Cain in a scrapbook. She’s backed each cell with a flat colored piece of paper. _______________Mary Cain’s scrapbook
Dan has sent me scans of these cells, and
I’m going to post them here.
I did some slight adjustments in photoshop. The BG colors often had some cel flash on them or reflections. Some parts of the BG papers also had color deterioration. I replaced all with a flat color and in a couple of cases made a tighter composition. My whole purpose was to focus in on the cel colors. (I made no adjustments to any of the characters or outlines.)
I’d urge you to take a quick look at the cells, read Matt Jones’ blog and watch the pinkish film on YouTube. Then return to see what the colors actually looked like.
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A sample of the color deterioration on YouTube
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Many thanks to Mary Cain for preserving these cells, and to Dan Hilberman for sharing them.
on 02 May 2011 at 10:02 am 1.The Gee said …
The designs for the animals are great.
Got a question about the client though. Perhaps, maybe, possibly someone may know an answer.
Outside of commercials–working through ad agencies mainly–and perhaps for presentation-purposed animation for conferences and trade shows–do major corporations commission animation projects like this these days?
The psuedo-educational cartoons that used to be produced and sponsored by firms which were the last I would expect to embrace animation to convey a message used to commission a lot of stuff.
The ones I’ve seen were always done so well. And they often took complex subjects and broke them down in simpler ways, like explaining economics and elaborate processes.
on 02 May 2011 at 10:28 am 2.Richard O'Connor said …
Searle is one of the few illustrators who is both modern and classical.
He takes the Fifties modern look and imbues it with a 19th Century fullness.
Truly one of the greatest of the greats.
on 30 Jun 2011 at 6:20 pm 3.Matt Jones said …
HOW DID I MISS THIS?!!!!! Fantastic find Michael- request permission to post on the Searle blog please Sir?!
on 01 Jul 2011 at 7:28 am 4.Michael said …
Sure, Matt, you can post it if you like,
on 18 Feb 2014 at 7:39 pm 5.Matt Jones said …
Dear Heidi, I wonder if you would be able to put me in touch with Dan Hilberman or Mary Cain? I’m working on a book about Ronald Searle and would love to get permission to include these scans.
Thanks,
Matt