Action Analysis &Animation &Animation Artifacts &John Canemaker &Tytla 16 Apr 2013 05:12 am
Tytla’s Hungry Wolf – recap
- With all the recent thought and posts on Bill Tytla, I couldn’t resist revisiting this artwork from the Harman-Ising short, The Hungry Wolf. So here it is.
We’ve seen that Tytla veered his animation style completely toward the “Method” and there is no doubt that he carried that with him even after he left the Disney studio. Unfortunately, he went to the lowest of the low and couldn’t survive any longer as an animator. He turned to direction and had to adapt his use of Stanislavsky to his directing technique.
Unfortunately, the “actors” he was given weren’t up to the task. Those “actors” were the least of the animation industry, those who had learned a lot of bad techniques, ways of cheating and a lack of a deep interest in bringing the souls of his characters to life.
I was surprised to learn that Tytla had worked at a studio that was a bit better than Terrytoons or Paramount right after he’d left the haven of Disney. John Canemaker loaned me a cache of drawings for a Hugh Harman film, The Hungry Wolf, made in 1940 at MGM. It’s not a very good film; the drawings are signed by Tytla, but they have no ladder indication for an Assistant to do the inbetweens. Most oddly, the wolves are shaded in by Tytla. Also take note of the table being animated into place. Are these animation drawings? Is it LayOut posing to give to someone else to animate? And greatest of all, what is Tytla doing at MGM?
Since this would have been completed in early 1942, I can only assume that it was during the strike at Disney that Tytla did some work for Harman in mid 1941. Most probably he was acting as an Animation Director and NOT animating the scene. He worked under Harman, who got credit for directing.
There’s no attempt at distorting or stressing the drawings in any way. I assume the character wasn’t designed by Tytla. It’s similar to a character design that was used in other Harman films.
Here are all the drawings given me by John.
1
7
11
15
19
23
38
52
58
64
70
74
82
88
94
100
.
The following is a QT of the entire scene with all the drawings included.
Since I didn’t have exposure sheets, I calculated everything on ones
(which seems to reflect the timing in the final film) and left however many drawings to the assistant and inbetweener.
Many thanks to John Canemaker for the loan of the drawings. It was great just touching them.
on 16 Apr 2013 at 8:36 pm 1.Shane (Fighting Seraph) said …
I think that video you posted got taken down due to copyright complaints.
Thanks, I removed it too. Michael
on 16 Apr 2013 at 11:27 pm 2.Michael said …
Fanatico, the link didn’t work and I spent soe time trying. Thanks anyway. The film will show up again.
on 16 Apr 2013 at 11:55 pm 3.Nat said …
Interesting, I didn’t know Tylta animated that wolf. No wonder I found the character so appealing animated.
on 17 Apr 2013 at 10:46 am 4.Ray Pointer said …
Tytla’s original drawings have more vitality. That was lost in the Assistant’s clean-ups and the final inking. As for the table, apparently there was a walk and Pan left to bring it in since it does not appear in the initial frame grabs. Thank you for posting these.
on 17 Apr 2013 at 12:18 pm 5.Michael said …
+
I know that Tytla worked in multi-colored pencils. He animated “forces” and each grade level of force would be ina different color. I’d love to see some of those roughs. He apparently redrew everything himself before handing it over to his assistants. You can tell many of his drawings because he usually initialed them or indicated they were his with an “X”.
You can see this drawing labeled with a “T” bottom right.
or this one in the upper right corner.