Animation &Fleischer &Frame Grabs 26 Dec 2008 09:23 am
Popeye’s Waldman Walk
- One of the oddest animation walks appears in Popeye meets Rip Van Winkle. It’s the only Popeye cartoon that Myron Waldman animated (he actually directed the animation). I’m not sure if he animated this walk, which starts the film, but I’d say it was a pretty good bet.
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on 26 Dec 2008 at 11:48 am 1.Mark Mayerson said …
Frames 1-4 have the same arm positions, frames 11-14 have the same arm positions and frames 27-30 have the same arm positions. I’m betting that an inbetweener didn’t know how to read spacing charts or the work got split up among several inbetweeners.
I can’t see any logic in choosing which arm positions got 4 frame holds, which is why I think this is a mistake.
on 26 Dec 2008 at 11:53 am 2.Michael said …
Good catch, Mark. I noticed that while putting it together.
They have more than the same arm postitions, they’re identical upper bodies.
My guess is that the legs were on one level, the upper torso on another and the heads on a third. (The heads are different at another point during the walk cycle.) He kept the legs going in a cycle and limited the arms a bit. This gives it a chug-chug motion and an unusual bit of timing.
It’s a truly unusual walk cycle.
on 26 Dec 2008 at 2:45 pm 3.Bob Jaques said …
‘It’s the only Popeye cartoon that Myron Waldman animated (he actually directed the animation)’
There are 2 others you did not mention – ‘Can You Take It’ and ‘Problem Pappy’. There’s also a possibility that Waldman did (uncredited) animation for other Popeye cartoons. I wouldn’t assume that he did the walk. The de facto directors during this time period did little to no animation in their cartoons.
on 27 Dec 2008 at 10:52 pm 4.Mark Mayerson said …
I took a look at this single frame on DVD and the problem isn’t in the original cartoon. What’s happening is that Popeye is split into levels. His lower half is on ones, because his feet have to track with the background that’s panning. His upper half is on twos to save work. What happened is that Mike didn’t consistently grab the first or second frame for each step.
I’ve seen this approach to splitting a character into ones and twos on different levels on a wolf walk in Avery’s Senor Droopy. I was surprised when I first saw it, but now I’m thinking that it was fairly common.
on 12 Jan 2011 at 5:21 pm 5.Leon said …
Hi,
I have an ink drawing of Popeye in what looks like a wide black magic marker on artist drawing paper of about 32″ by 27″ — it is of his head only which is about 15″ high all in black — no color. It is signed Jan 17, 1929 and also signed Waldman ’75 all in large black script — also done with a wide magic marker.
Any help would be appreciated.
Email at leoncarbonaro@yahoo.com. 203-744-0456.
Thanks, Leon