Animation &Animation Artifacts &commercial animation 04 Apr 2012 07:20 am
Tangy Popeye – repost
Tangy Popeye
- Here are some of the drawings I have from what is probably the last piece of animation Jack Zander did professtionally.
It must be remembered it was Zander’s Animation Parlour that did the TV one hour “Special”, Popeye and the Man Who Hated Laughter. I was working as an Assistant Editor at Hal Seeger’s Studio when the job came through to Seeger. He decided to hire Zander’s Studio when he got the show from King Feature’s Syndicate. It was exciting to watch, first-hand, as the show developed.
This is from a Start commercial, a Tang competitor, done at Zander’s Animation Parlour. Instead of doling out the animation, Jack was intrigued with the idea of animating the character. He hadn’t animated Popeye before.
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(Click any image to enlarge.)
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Do you think the assistant asked for a straight on model of Popeye’s face to do the inbetweens?
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I think Jack might have been a bit out of practice when he did this spot. It looks a bit stiff.
By the way, this drawing is an example of how Jack drew
Popeye, straight on. I’m not sure anyone else used this pose.
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Tangy Olive Oyl
– Continuing my posting of the animation keys from the Popeye Tang commercial done at Zander’s Animation Parlour back in the early 70′s. Jack Zander cast himself to animate the spot since he hadn’t worked with these characters before. (His studio did the animation for The Man Who Hated Laughter for King Features Syndicate via Hal Seeger Prods. back in 1972, but Jack didn’t animate on it.)
(Click on any image to enlarge.)
On Saturday past, I put up the Popeye portion of this scene. Here are the Olive Oyl drawings. Jack has a bit more fun with her, and his drawings are much more loose.
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I’d thought this was a Tang commercial, but
Charles Brubaker in the comments, below, directed
me to one of the spots on YouTube. It’s for
“Start”, which I assume was a Tang competitor.
AWN has on its site an excellent Joe Strike interview with Jack Zander about his career.
on 04 Apr 2012 at 9:28 am 1.Charles Brubaker said …
Are you sure this is for Tang? Because I remember seeing a commercial for Start, which was also an Orange drink.
Here’s a YouTube link.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uyNt_17duMI
on 04 Apr 2012 at 11:42 am 2.Tom Minton said …
That doesn’t sound like Jack Mercer, who usually voiced Popeye. Whoever it is was trying hard to sound like him.
on 04 Apr 2012 at 11:48 am 3.Michael said …
It was defintiely Jack Mercer. I interviewed Mercer not too long after the show was done.
on 05 Apr 2012 at 1:06 am 4.J Lee said …
I think at least in this commercial, that’s Allen Swift handling Popeye’s voice. Parts of it sound like the voice he provided for Clint Clobber in Gene Deitch’s Terrytoons (here’s a B&W example off YouTube to compare the voices.). There may have been other efforts in the ad campaign where Mercer did do the voice.
Zander’s Popeye is pretty similar to the later Paramount-KFS designs in the side and three-quarter angle shots, but his chin’s a little too big in the front angles, as if Seth McFarlane handled the model sheet. Still better looking than a lot of the animated ads companies spring for today.
on 05 Apr 2012 at 8:19 am 5.Ray Kosarin said …
I actually like how he solved that pesky front-view inbetween. Not a pose to stay in, but nicely avoids the problem of flattening (and, for 1/12 second, killing) the character as he turns. I doubt there is a head-on view of Popeye that is both “correct” and good. This solves it with a tiny twist of Tytla-ish drag: the top of his skull passes through the “correct” position while the more forgiving curves of his chin, quietly resolving in 2-D space, persuade the eye that it’s seen what it needs.