Animation Artifacts &Fleischer &Models 06 Jun 2012 06:06 am
Miscellaneous Models from Fleischer
- Continuing with artifacts from the late Vince Cafarelli‘s collection, here are a bunch of model sheets from a number of different Fleischer Studio productions. I’ve mixed some from the Raggedy Ann shorts, the Stone Age films, the Superman films and one ersatz model from a solo cartoon.
We begin with The Stone Age films. Long before the Fllintstones, there were these inventive shorts about the very same subject, a caveman family living
as though it were the modern day world though they’re still in caveman attire. (Not too different from the Jack Benny caveman in Chuck Jones’ Daffy Duck and the Dinosaur.)
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(Actually, with this model I’m guessing it’s from a Stone Age cartoon.
For all I know, the Fleischers may have tried their hand at Dr. Suess.
There are a couple of models from the Raggedy Ann films. Quite different from the Dick Williams version.
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The Superman cartoons are key to the world of the Fleischer studio and their ultimate attempt at a high quality.
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But of course, it wouldn’t be Fleischer without a hint of racism . . .
. . . or more than a hint. They should have tried Dick Tracy.
Finally, for today, there’s this left over baby. It isn’t labelled, but it looks to be the baby from the “Gabby” cartoon, All’s Well. If anyone out there knows otherwise, please don’t hesitate to leave a note in the comments section. This model sheet is dated 1942, and the cartoon has a 1941 copyright date on it.
There’s an excellent article in AWN about Charles Thorson who designed the characters for the Raggedy Ann cartoon as well as the Stone Age films. He most probably did the model charts. He’d worked at every known studio in the late thirties, early forties and had settled in to Fleischer’s Florida location whn=enthe brothers were let go, and Paramount took over. It was at this point that Thorson decided to move on to comic book illustration.
The article is by Gene Walz who also wrote a biography of Thorson which was publlished as: Cartoon Charlie: The Life and Art of Animation Pioneer Charles Thorson.
on 06 Jun 2012 at 9:51 am 1.J Lee said …
The dinosaur-elephant hybrid is from the Gabby cartoon “Two for the Zoo”. The racist Japanese characture actually ended up being for Famous Studios’ first Superman release, “Japatours”. Since the model sheet was approved 53 days after Pearl Harbor, it’s not a big shock how the character design came out.
on 06 Jun 2012 at 12:28 pm 2.Liim Lsan said …
The ‘Seuss’ one was ‘Two For the Zoo,’ but seems somebody beat me to that.
Actually, if you look, the ‘All’s Well’ baby Model Sheet has ‘May 1940′ written on it. If it was put in with ’1942′ models and that’s where the thing was found, it could probably be a filing error.
(An operation the size and arrangement of Fleischer, if a model sheet disappeared into the wrong bin, it’d be too much beaurocracy to track it down.)
Absolutely loving these! Just further proof to the world that occasionally good art creates itself. (That sheet of the Dinosaur mother is sitting there, pleading to be put into motion.)
on 12 Jun 2012 at 4:08 pm 3.Ricardo Cantoral said …
Funny how today’s action cartoons and these Superman shorts both cheat in the same way; Camera angles and special effects substituting good character animation. However, the Fleischer/Famous cartoons took tremendous effort to make every scene a spectacle, even something as mundane as talking around a desk, as opposed to today’s action travesties which seem to be little more than cheap substitutes for live action.
on 01 Apr 2013 at 3:02 am 4.Fleischer’s “Stone Age” Cartoons | Cartoon Research said …
[...] based character designs all over the production. (You can see some of his Stone Age model sheets at Michael Sporn’s Splog). Dan Gordon, who animated on several of these pictures, would recall them twenty years later to [...]
on 18 Dec 2013 at 11:07 pm 5.Ray Pointer said …
The fourth Model Sheet is of the Rubber-Necked Kango from the Gabby cartoon, TWO FOR THE ZOO, story by Pinto Colvig.