Animation &Animation Artifacts &Hubley 06 Oct 2011 06:46 am
Babbitt’s Carousel Mime – revisited
- John Hubley appreciated great animation, and consequently hired only the best of animators to work for him. During his commercial heyday in the ’50s Emery Hawkins, Art Babbitt and Bobe Cannon were regulars animating his spots. When he moved to the short subjects, Bill Littlejohn, Babbitt, Tissa David, Bobe Cannon, Barrie Nelson and Phil Duncan did a lot of the work with others such as Ed Smith and Gary Mooney filling the bills.
On Everybody Rides the Carousel, Art Babbitt animated the introductory scene and was displeased with what happened to the very long scene. He left the film and Barrie Nelson took over the character he was animating, the Mime/Narrator of the film.
In five past posts (Sept. 2010) I put up all the drawings of the scene and added a QT movie. Rather than post all those drawings again, I offer the first and the fifth parts of the piece and give you links to the other three if you want to study the drawings more closely.
- John Hubley‘s feature film, Everybody Rides the Carousel, was adapted from Erik Eriksons’ Eight Stages of Man, a Psychosocial Theory of Human Development.
The Hubleys designed the feature (which started out as three half hours for CBS and then was rushed to fill it to 90 min feature length in the final 3 months of production) around a carousel. 8 horsees represented different stages of life. The narrator was a mime we see throughout at the carousel. Art Babbitt was hired to animate him, and things got bad pretty quickly and he left after animating a couple of early scenes. Barrie Nelson completed the character in the show.
John took one look at the pencil test of this scene on a movieola and proclaimed it to me as the greatest animation he had ever seen. It wasn’t long that he took the scene – basically exposed on twos throughout – and asked me to change it exposing it on four frame dissolves throughout. This would extend the scenes and the character and would milk the scenes for everything possible. Art Babbitt was furious and never spoke to John again. For the full story go to this past post.
The scene is about 200 drawings long. I’ll break it into parts and post each part here in about 4 or 5 segments. Here’s the first part. As you can see there are a lot of ½ drawings. Animation extender – it’s a very slow moving character. A lot of poetry.
The QT will be done using Art’s exposure on twos.
1(Click any image to enlarge.
E1
E5
There are five pair of eyes; I give you the first and last.
1½
Lots of half drawings in the scene.
2 
3
4 
4½
5 
5½
6 
6½
7 
7½
8 
8½
9
10
10½
11
11½
12
12½
13
13½
14
14½
15
15½
16
16½
17
17½
18
18½
19
19½
20
20½
21
21½
2121½
22
22½
23
23½
24
24½
25
25½
26
26½
27
______________________
Part 4
Part 5 follows:
- The Hubley feature film, Everybody Rides the Carousel, was adapted from Erik Erikson‘s Eight Stages of Man, a Psychosocial Theory of Human Development.
The Hubley conceit was to make the 8 stages of life as a carousel with 8 horses representing those different stages. The narrator was a mime and was animated, at first, by Art Babbitt, with Dave Palmer as his personal assistant. After animating a couple of early scenes, Babbitt left annoyed. Barrie Nelson completed the character in the show.
For the full story behind the rift between Hubley and Babbitt go to this past post.
The scene is 152 drawings long. This is the final section as the mime comes to rest. It’s a very slow moving character with short quick spurts of movement.
We begin with the last drawing from last week, #123.
123(Click any image to enlarge.)
24
25
26
27
28
29
130
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
141
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
152
The following QT movie represents all of the drawings in the scene
exposed as Babbitt wanted them, on twos.
Right side to watch single frame.
You can watch this scene from the final film here.
