Animation Artifacts &Hubley 09 May 2006 08:07 am
Rabbits Rabbits Rabbits
- Here, for no good reason, is a layout drawing John Hubley did for his film, People People People.
This was a film done for the 1976 BiCentennial about overpopulation. It is told without dialogue – a musical soundtrack – since it was done for USIA and planned to be shown predominantly outside of the United States to non-English speakers.
(Click on image to enlarge.)
It starts out relatively slowly telling the complete history of the United States in four brisk minutes. The film soon picks up speed to the point where scenes are down to 12, 8, and 6 frames apiece, and pans are whipping miles across the screen. All of it is hitched tightly to Benny Carter’s excellent score.
The layout of rabbits curiously foreshadows the work John would do on Watership Down.
That unfortunate feature has small glimmers of greatness; one wonders what could have happened if an artist had directed the final.
I just went to Funnyworld #20 and reread the article by Michael Barrier. I knew there’d be a good bit to quote: “Fortunately, Rosen* left enough of Hubley in the film to permit us to gauge how differently the two men approached the film: Rosen’s rabbits merely bleed; it is Hubley’s rabbits, in their few minutes of screen time, who live and die.”
*The producer turned director who fired John Hubley.
on 09 May 2006 at 10:42 am 1.Janet Benn said …
I was working at the Hubley Studio when this film was being made. John Hubley gave me an opportunity to contribute character designs to this film. This was my first job in animation, and I was so nervous that I could barely draw. Here John took me away from my painting on EVERYBODY RIDES THE CAROUSEL (Hey Mom, I’m getting paid to trace and color inside the lines!)and asked me to try and come up with a character design for the depiction of the importation and migration of many Chinese people into the U.S. to build the railroads. He said he was afraid his drawings would be too stereotypical. He was such a great and generous man. I don’t think my designs were used, as the people in the film at that stage were very teeny and you couldn’t see individual faces, but I was just thrilled to be able to help John Hubley.