Animation Artifacts 25 Jul 2006 07:33 am
Philip Stapp Writes
I’d like to post another article from that same British Film Academy “Journal. ” on the International Animated Film. This was published in 1956.
Philip Stapp writes a survey of animation in the United States. It’s an articulate article that I found worth reading. Stapp‘s view of the animation world is a bit high brow, as were many of the UPA supporters of the time. (It seems there were those that didn’t get UPA and those that got only UPA.)
Stapp was an interesting, creative film maker. He has gained much of his fame for the educational films he did for Julien and Sam Bryan‘s International Film Foundation. This was one of the foremost and most diverse educational film producers which had a strong focus on international geography, history and relationships. Philip Stapp did quite a few films for them, and they show a strong sense of design as a way of clearly illustrating their information.
I initially came upon Stapp‘s name when I did one of my first films; it was also for Sam and Julien Bryan. I was treated like an artist and allowed to do whatever I wanted to do. My job was no more than an illustrated map (a long one), but I did a very complicated affair in trying to get a lot across. Sam Bryan lent me a number of Stapp‘s films to view, and I gobbled them up. I’d like to see more written about Philip Stapp in time. As a matter of fact, it’d be nice to see more written about Sam and Julien Bryan.
Here’s the article.
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on 25 Jul 2006 at 9:17 am 1.Amid said …
Thanks for posting this article Mike. I actually quote from this piece in my 50s book, in the section about Unicorn in the Garden. I thought Stapp’s comments were very perceptive that the films which emulated an illustrator’s style were often less successful than say the films of directors like John Hubley and Bobe Cannon who designed for animation from the ground up. Having said that, I see nothing wrong with translating an illustrator’s work to animation, and I actually say in the book that Unicorn was a very successful translation of Thurber, but I thought Stapp’s observations were interesting too. The only film of Stapp’s that I’ve seen is To Your Health. I wish more of his work was accessible.