The Lost Continent

Animation Nation: The Art of Persuasion part 1

2012-01-26T01:58:00.000-08:00

In 2005 BBC4 ran Animation Nation, a three-part documentary series about the history of British animation which formed probably the single most comprehensive overview of the subject out there. It was an early inspiration for this blog and a source I've frequently turned to for information since.

For a while the series was available on YouTube, but only as an unauthorised upload which has since been removed. Animation Nation really deserves a wider audience, and so I've decided to put together a complete transcript for posterity.

Episode one, The Art of Persuasion, focuses on propaganda and advertising. Here's my transcript of the first half of the episode.

Footage from Matches: An Appeal.

Narrator: The oldest existing animated film in the world is British. It was made in 1899 by Arthur Melbourne-Cooper to advertise Bryant and May matches and created a sensation when it was shown for the first time.

Ken Clark: It was astounding. The fact that he could actually manipulate these matchsticks - because they were matchsticks - and they were wired together with light wire and animated frame by frame, so that these little characters ran about all over the place and even appeared to write the message on the wall.

Narrator: Matches: An Appeal asked patriots in the audience to donate one guinea to enable the Bryant and May match company to send a free box to every British soldier fighting in the Boer War.

Paul Wells: I don't think that Arthur Melbourne-Cooper realised this, but when he started to make a film called Matches Appeal, he was pulling together a film that was going to generate two of the most popular areas that have been taken up by animation: propaganda and advertising.

Footage from Halas & Batchelor's famous Murray Mints advert.

Footage from a Spam advert - more stills from it here.

Footage of the 1930 promotional film John the Bull.

I don't know what advert this is from, but it appears to have been made by Aardman.

Narrator: For over a hundred years, propaganda and advertising have been the twin engines of the British animation industry. Because when it comes to selling, animation has proved it reaches parts other media cannot.

Peter Lord: It really dives deep into human imagination. It's a fantastically condensed form of communication.

A man is forced at gunpoint by his TV to eat cereal - this appears to be from a cartoon satirising advertising, rather than an actual advert.

Bob Godfrey: Animation does sell stuff. And it's memorable, and sometimes it's very funny.

Narrator: It was during the First World War that British animators became widely established as purveyors of propaganda. The style that these early cartoonists used was based on an old music hall act called the lightning sketch, in which a skilled artist would draw a picture in double-quick time. Animators took this one step further, jump-cutting the film to magically develop the picture before using animated paper cut-outs to play out a satirical scene.

Footage from unidentified film, possibly by Lancelot Speed.

Ken Clark: They weren't aimed at kids, no, certainly not, they were made for an adult audience. And remember, this was during wartime, so they had to be amusing at the same time. You needed levity in a state of tension.

Narrator: Cartoonists like Lancelot Speed would lampoon the German Kaiser - doubtless to the jeers and cheers of the audience.

Footage from Lancelot Speed's Bully Boy no. 1 (1914).

Paul Wells: Self-evidently we were in a position of conflict with another country. What propaganda does is to try and isolate things that the public can understand clearly as things that can be ridiculed. These figures, though dangerous, though obviously part of the enemy, they are ultimately people that actually will not be victorious in a war.

Narrator: These jingoistic cartoons were shown in theatres, and played an important role in keeping up morale. When war broke out again twenty years later, animation came into its own was a propaganda weapon. The technique had become more sophisticated, but the message was the same.

Robert Hewison: The point about animation is that it is a graphic medium, and that means that ideas are very quickly illustrated. So you can absolutely, simplify a message down to a simple set of images, very few words, a very minimal amount of movement, just to get a single message through. That's why it's good for propaganda, and that's why it's sometimes not very subtle.

Footage from Adolf's Busy Day (1940), by Lance White.

Narrator: As war with Germany esculated, animators were only too pleased to ridicule Hitler and the Nazis as part of the war effort. Soon, animation would be used in a much more purposeful way by the Ministry of Information, but only after they tried and failed with other methods.

Narrator: By 1941 British cities were being blitzed and there was a nationwide shortage of vital supplies like food and clothing, and raw materials for weapons. Through cinemas, the government launched a huge propaganda campaign.

Robert Hewison: What the government wanted to get across was the idea that this was a people's war. Now, lots of people can't participate - they're farmers, or they're housewives, and so on. So what they did with all those appeals to, you know, save rubbish, dig for victory and so on, what they were doing was trying to bring everybody into the idea that they were part of the war effort.

Narrator: Under the leadership of an ex-advertising man named Jack Beddington, the Ministry of Information commissioned a series of films of which this is a typical example. Its theme is the need to recycle scrap.

Footage from Ealing's Salvage with a Smile, a 1940 live action propaganda film which can be seen online here.

Paul Wells: Typical across a number of films, really, from the forties, is the idea that middle classness, in a very British sort of way, is kind of educating us. And those chaps who speak on those films, very much are telling us where the middle class want us to be. And the working class, of course, who are depicted in these films, are very much people who have to learn.

Narrator: The patronising tone of these live action propaganda films did not have the desired effect on the public. Instead of listening to the government's message, the audience would often groan when the ministry logo came up and often ignore the film completely.

Paul Wells: Even the cinemas had contempt for it, they sometimes actually pulled the curtains when the films were on, and effectively they knew that the public were waiting for the features. So they had to do something, and Jack Beddington, who was a very important figure really, recognised that animation could be the real point of access there.

Narrator: Beddington approached a recently established animation studio called Halas & Batchelor to make a film of the same subject- donating scrap for the way, and they responded with the cheerful patriotism of the Dustbin Parade. The film showed exactly where and how the civilian contribution could help, but in a way that was now witty and engaging.

Footage from Halas & Batchelor's Dustbin Parade (1942).

Paul Wells: Suddenly tin cans take on a personality. The rubbish is literally processed into the needs of the war - army uniforms, shells - and it's so much more successful than the live action version.

Narrator: This was a new style of animation for British audiences, one that tipped its hat to the popularity of American Disney films, but whose message and tone were very British.

Paul Wells: You see the rubbish diving into molten vats, dying for the cause, literally. And you'd never see that in American cartoons, you'd never see that in Disney cartoons. And this sense of sacrifice is crucial in those animations.

Narrator: The combination of design, style and political commitment that became Halas & Batchelor's hallmark had its roots in the young studio's origins. A graphic artist who'd spent time at the famous German Bauhaus school of modern design, John Halas was a Hungarian Jew who entered Britain in 1938 along with thousands of other refugees fleeing the Nazi concentration camps. Here, he met and married a talented English illustrator called Joy Batchelor.

Vivien Halas: I think what they both had in common was ambition, and they both believed passionately in animation. They thought it was a new artform - or maybe not new, but they believed that it was an artform like any other, and they wanted to make a difference.

Footage from Halas & Batchelor's Compost Heaps for Feeding (1944), viewable here.

Narrator: Among the first staff to work at the Halas & Batchelor studio was Vera Linnecar.

Vera Linnecar: The whole point about animation is, I think, you can tell a story in fifteen seconds that in live action would half an hour or twenty minutes. There's nothing like drawing for getting it across - it's quite an extraordinary medium, really, and you can also pack information very much more clearly. This is why I think they used it.

Footage from Halas & Batchelor's Blitz on Bugs (1944), viewable here.

Narrator: In 1943 the studio was given an unusual commission: a series of cartoons to take the propaganda war to the Middle East. These films show the trials of Abu, a young Arab boy, at the hands of a Nazi snake and his helper, the Italian bullfrog.

Robert Hewison: Obviously the Middle East was crucial, because the Middle East was where all the oil came from. And it was a place where there were either neutral countries, or countries which were formally colonial countries. Consequently it was terribly important to win - to use the later phrase - the hearts and minds of people. And the way you did it, of course, was by entertaining them, by amusing them.

Footage from Abu's Poisoned Well (1943).

Narrator: Halas & Batchelor made four films in this series, which were translated into Arabic and Persian and widely screened in the Middle East.

Vivien Halas: They were anti-fascist films, and I don't think that they were exactly told what to do. They were given a brief, then they went away and developed it. And also, these films were made very quickly, if you think that during the war years they made over seventy films. So I didn't think they had much time to think - they got on and they did it. And sometimes one's best work is done under pressure like that.

Narrator: Halas & Batchelor drew on Arabian folk imagery and myth to present the Nazi threat as a venomous reptile which peasant peoples would naturally fear. The Abu films were unashamedly anti-Nazi and pro-British.

Robert Hewison: The British of course are presented, interestingly enough, as a military force, but as a sort of jokey military force, so that on the one hand they represent a kind of authority, but they also represent a sort of help.

Narrator: For the duration of the war such cartoons proved their worth as the sugared pill of propaganda. And although other animation studios were also producing information films, it was Halas & Batchelor who emerged after the war as the most influential. And because animation was so good at selling the government's message in wartime, it would have a role to play in moulding the shape of Britain in peacetime. The end of the war in 1945 was a catalyst for change. A Labour government was elected, set on creating a new kind of society.

Footage from Halas & Batchelor's Cold Comfort (1944), viewable here.

Robert Hewison: When the Labour government came in, in 1945, with a massive majority it was committed to social change, social reform. Nonetheless you had to sell the idea - not just to the people who'd actually voted for the "new Jerusalem", but you also had to persuade the skeptical that what was on offer was something of real change.

Narrator: So the Central Office of Information launched a nationwide cinema campaign using Halas & Batchelor's expertise to sell its reforming message to the British public.

Footage from the Charley film Your Very Good Health (1948). More information here.

Dick Horn: At the time I moved in there, as well as the black and white stuff for the Central Office of Information, the Labour Government wanted a series of films to put over their programme of social reforms. So they came up with this idea of a character called Charley, who represented the average man.

Vivien Halas: Actually, he resembled my granfather quite a lot, and he cycles around being rather obtuse, and not wanting to have social security or be covered because he doesn't understand that it's to his advantage.

Narrator: Robinson Charley starred in six short films [note: he was only called "Robinson Charley" in one film, a send-up of Robinson Crusoe] and could never quite see the point of free trade, the new education policy or the new national insurance., but he was gradually persuaded by the argument of the film. Charley was meant to be the classless everyman, appealing to both blue and white collar workers. ~But some found the character unattractive.

Vera Linnecar: Well, I didn't find him very appealing. I thought that he was a bit pompous, really, always right. He had this enormous head and little tiny body, from what I remember. I didn't even like drawing him, he was horrible to draw!

Dick Horn: I think the fault was largely in the design of the character, it looks to me rather like a puppet that's been drawn as an animated cartoon. He wasn't flexible enough to show real feeling.

Narrator: And the product Charley was selling, and the way he was selling it, were inflexible too.

Paul Wells: Getting across the ideas about the welfare state does seem in some ways forced. Propaganda we understand, during the war, wants to impose its messages, wants to get the public on its side, but getting across political and ideological ideas that are not geared towards an enemy is a completely different notion.

Narrator: Halas & Batchelor wasn't the only animation house making cartoons for a new Britain. The Larkins studio was producing short films to the same brief, but with a very different style. And it was Larkins that was now to play a key role in the development of British animation through the work of its charismatic principal director Peter Sachs.

Narrator: Sachs made this film for the Tea Bureau, about the need to make the most of the little tea that was available through rationing.

Footage from Peter Sachs' 1947 film T for Teacher. More stills here.

Paul Wells: It was Peter Sachs' design sensibility that was very important, his graphic design training was effectively startling on the screen, in the kind of the almost... the sort of jagged, modernist lines that he used. It's a very sweet and engaging film, but it's important, I think, because because there's a recognition that at the heart of tea drinking and the qualities of tea, it's also about the quality of human life.

Narrator: Sachs' philosophy on life and art were coloured by his background. Like John Halas, Sachs worked as an animator in Europe before coming to Britain.

Bob Godfrey: Well, his background was central Europe, he was German, he was Jewish, therefore he had to get out of Germany otherwise he would've been thrown in a concentration camp. And he got into Britain, and then of course they rounded up the Jewish refugees and put them on the Isle of Man. But then someone found out that he had worked in the animation business, and they wanted animation films at that time desperately, to make films for the war effort.

Footage from Skymaster, one of Sachs' wartime films.

Narrator: Sachs had spent the war at Larkins' studio, making secret films for the British military using the clear lines of animation to help gunner tell the difference between friendly and enemy aircraft. Now he began employing his talents on information films for a variety of clients, experimenting with different styles of animation and technique.

Sachs' 1948 film Men of Merit. See this post for more stills.

Dick Horn: Peter's style was... the design came first, and the animation supported the design. If it was limited animation he didn't worry, he was much more concerned about the overall look.

Dick Taylor: He made you feel that what you were doing was important and good. The emphasis on quality was such that you couldn't get away with sloppy work with him.

Narrator: Sachs' reputation attracted some of the most gifted British animators to work with him.

Dick Taylor: Well, he was almost the animation version of the continental film director. "Zis schwill happen!", he used to say.

Vera Linnecar: I think his ideas were very forward-looking, and he had a very precise mind - he could analyse a subject very rapidly and try to think of a new way - like he'd come in and say, "this morning we'll try Picasso", you know - I mean, that sort of thing.

Bob Godfrey: He was like Mr. Toad, he was always having these tremendous enthusiasms. You now, he'd say, "this week we're all going to work like Steinberg" or something, I'd say "oh, yes, Steinberg", then he'd come an say "oh, forget that, we're all going to work like..." somebody else, you know. So we were always sort of following his enthusiasms.

Footage from an unspecified film made for the British Iron and Steel Federation. More stills here.

Narrator: This film for the British Iron & Steel Federation shows Sachs' love of German expressionism and his clever use of limited animation to maximum effect. The backgrounds were painted by a young trainee called Bob Godfrey, later to find fame as one of Britain's most successful aniamtors and who was given his first job by Peter Sachs.

Bob Godfrey: He didn't teach me, really, I mean I learned by listening to him saying that what really works in animation was big, generous movements or little, fiddly movements, you know, because your eye goes towards that movement. It was all saying kind of things like that. "If you can animate a horse, you can animate anything", you know, which is more or less true!

Narrator: In keeping with his passion for experimenting with arthouse styles, for this corporate film Sachs drew on the work of Bauhaus artist Paul Klee for inspiration.

Footage from Sachs' 1952 film Balance 1950. More stills here.

Paul Wells: Literally, really, Sachs took the Paul Klee issue of taking a line for a walk, and effectively these animated films often do that - they literally take a line, often as an abstract form in the first instance, but then form them into shapes and obviously objects, and artifacts from the real world that the public associate with. But the tension between abstraction and sort of narrative and figurative imagery is very powerful in his films. There's lovely ideas in it too, for example the naughts in big million figures are singing voices.

Narrator: It was no accident that Peter Sachs and John Halas were both emigrees who'd arrived in Britain needing to make their way. Their combined energies had established the bedrock of an entire industry.

Robert Hewison: Because they'd been used to running things in their own countries, they actually brought a kind of entrepreneurialism which meant that suddenly the British animation industry was forced to get its act together, 'cause here were people who weren't just good animators,they were also good businessmen.

Narrator: Animation's next big sell was of international importance, and it took it further onto the political payroll. The war had left many European countries and their economies in ruins, so the American government came up with a financial aid package known as the Marshall plan to restart trade and industry.

Robert Hewison: General Marshall, who became secretary of state in the United States government in 1947 - that's the equivalent of Colin Powell - proposed that huge amounts of American dollars were poured into Europe to rebuild the European economies. But of course there's a price to pay, and that is the condition for getting these vast sums of dollars from the Americans was that Western Europe should lower its tariff barriers- should, in effect, become what it did become which is the common market. The common market was something the Americans wanted to see happen, and that's why they were prepared to fund pretty folktale films promoting the idea of economic union.

Narrator: Halas & Batchelor were commissioned to make this film, the tale of a poor shoemaker and an elitist hatter, as an allegory about the potential benefits of free trade and the inevitable folly of protectionism.

Footage from Halas & Batchelor's The Shoemaker and the Hatter (1949).

Vivien Halas: The plot is basically the shoemaker, who's poor with a big family, and the shop next door, which is very exclusive - a hatter who only makes the best hats for the best people. And the shoemaker has this idea that you should make lots of shoes cheaply for everyone. And he realises that if he goes to another country, he can trade shoes for something that he needs.

Narrator: By the end of the film, the shoemaker succeeds in helping to overcome trade barriers between countries, and business thrives in a European common market.

Peter Sachs' 1953 film Without Fear. More stills here.

Narrator: The Americans had also commissioned the other principal British studio, Larkins, to make a film promoting the Marshall Plan and Peter Sachs responded not with a European folk tale, but with a more personal address to the people and the continent and he'd left behind. True to the aims of Marshall Plan propaganda, the film graphically illustrates the issue of European trade restrictions. But Sachs' film was also a political call to arms for Europeans to turn their backs on the growing treat of Communism. Marshall Plan money not only made these films, but also paid for them to be translated into the major European languages, including Russian, and shown all over the continent.

Paul Wells: What becomes much clearer now is the fact that the American government and the whole kind of American ideological agenda starts to impact very much on the process and the making of these animated films.

Narrator: As the Cold War between Russia and America intensified, British animation became a weapon in the battle for hearts and minds.

Robert Hewison: And the battle is fought by other means. And essentially it's fought by ideas - "my ideas are better than yours, my values are better than yours".

Narrator: Halas and Batchelor's high-profile handling of animation with political content brought them to the attention of an American producer called Louis de Rochemont. In 1952 he hired them to make Britain's first animated feature film, an adaptation of George Orwell's Animal Farm. The commissioning and making of this film was a great coup and Halas and Batchelor were touted in newsreels as the British Disney.

Vivien Halas: They went from being a small film studio with a good reputation to being the largest studio certainly in Britain if not in Europe.

Footage from Animal Farm.

Narrator: Orwell's story takes place on a farm where the animals are beaten and starved by a brutal farmer. The animals rise up and rebel, driving the farmer out, and a new leader appears - a pig called Napoleon. The animals soon realise they've swapped one cruel dictator for another. First published in 1945, Animal Farm is an allegory of the Russian revolution and the rise of Joseph Stalin.

Paul Wells: Animal Farm was being made as a serious piece of work. You know, it was trying to align itself with the feature-length live action films, transending aniamtion as a kind of popular novelty entertainment and using the language of animation for serious purpose.

Narrator: The film remains largely faithful to the book, but where Orwell left the animals under the terrible control of their new leaders, Halas & Batchelor changed the ending so that the animals overthrew the Stalin character for a better, if undertermined, future.

Vivien Halas: My father said, "Well, we had to change the end, I mean, you cannot send hundreds of audiences home disappointed - it would be too depressing." So I think he took a more commercial view.

Narrator: But this ending also fitted in with the ideology of the American backers, for we now know that the producer, Louis de Rochemont, was a frontman for the American CIA, and it was they who were funding this political warning of the perils of communism.

Paul Wells: In alighting upon Animal Farm as the perfect Cold War story and getting that made by a British studio, what they could do of course was reinforce their ideas about the conduct of the Cold War and the ways in which particular messages were made available to a general public.

Vivien Halas: Did they know that Animal Farm was really Cold War propaganda? Well, I do't think that they did. They'd been looking for a project that they felt was meaningful, because they'd spent the war doing work that they felt was meaningful, and therefore they didn't want to do something that was lightweight. And whether the CIA was behind it or not was really irrelevent, beause the film is what it is.

Narrator: The film premiered in New York in 1954, where its combination of animals, animation and politics was not an easy sell.

[Quotes from newspaper reviews are shown: "Too violent for children", New York Times; "Adult entertainment - cartoon not for kids", New York World Telegram; "It's British and no pig in a poke", Walter Hayes]

This cartoon is shown while the narrator comments on reactions from the press; its artist and place of publication are not named.

Narrator: Although the British press were more supportive, Animal Farm was not the hit its makers had hoped for. It remains, however, a milestone in British animation history.

Dick Horn: I think it made people like the advertising agencies aware that there was a British animation industry, so that when commercials came in only a year later obviously their thoughts turned to using animation.

Ken Lidster and Jonathan Hills in Opéra imaginaire

2012-01-23T10:38:00.000-08:00

Opéra imaginaire (also known as Animated Arias) is a series from 1993 which consists of animated shorts based on various operas. It is similar to the later Operavox, but while that series compresses operas into half-hour films Opéra imaginaire instead works with individual arias, covering two per ten-minute episode - although, in some cases, the actual animation summerises the storyline of the entire opera.

The series is a predominantly French production but has a few British contributions. The first of these is Ken Lidster's interpretation of Vesti la giubba, from Leoncavallo's Pacliacci.

And here's Jonathan Hills' take on Un bel di vedremo from Puccini's Madame Butterfly.

Another set of late 4mations idents

2012-01-16T10:26:00.002-08:00

Three more of the 4mations idents made by uncredited students at some point around the late 90s (the others are here and here). I think I've covered all of them now...

More Canterbury Tales

2012-01-07T06:03:00.000-08:00

Following on from my last post on the series, here's a look at the final three UK-animated segments in S4C's 1998 adaptation of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. First is The Franklin's Tale, directed by Damian Gascoigne of Picasso Pictures.

Next is The Squire's Tale by Iain Gardner of Jumping Jack, who is probably best known for his short film Akbar's Cheetah.

And finally, The Miller's and the Reeve's Tales, directed at Aaargh! by Gogs creator Deiniol Morris.

Looking back at 2011

2011-12-31T02:25:00.001-08:00

And so, 2011 draws to a close. The troubled economic climate was no better for the animation community than it was for anyone else. There were rumours that Aardman would begin outsourcing, although these were subsequently denied; a cut in Arts Council funding cast doubt on the continued existence of the Animate scheme; and it was reported in October that the government decided against introducing the tax breaks hoped for by the British animation industry. Thankfully there were rays of light as well, with Animation Alliance UK being set up to campaign for independent animators and Oli Hyatt's Animation UK (aka Save UK Animation) campaign soldiering on.

Watch the Birdie, a rare 1954 Bob Godfrey short that was briefly available online this year.

Legendary animator Bob Godfrey turned ninety on May 27. The previous month a debate took place at the Cartoon Brew blog as to how Godfrey's filmography should be distributed: blogger Amid Amidi questioned the decision made by Godfrey's family to close down the YouTube channel showing his films and instead sell them via a view-on-demand process through the official Bob Godfrey Films website, which has since closed. In the comments section Tom Lowe, representing the Bob Godfrey Collection, had his say; the result is an interesting read and highlights the potentials and pitfalls offered by online distribution. (Just to avoid any cases of mistaken identity, I'd like to mention that the commentator named "Neil" is not me.)

Gulp, Aardman's 2011 record-breaker.

Last year the Aardman film Dot set the world record for smallest stop-motion character. Now, the studio has made it into the Guinness book for world's largest stop-motion set with Gulp. The short was made for Nokia by directors Will Studd and Ed Patterson. Another short from Aardman this year was Peter Peake's Pythagasaurus, featuring the voice of Bill Bailey.

Arthur Christmas, Gnomeo & Juliet and The Adventures of Tintin.

2011 saw the release of two more of those rarities, full-length British animated theatrical features - albeit ones that were, in large part, actually animated in America. Neither was hailed as a masterpiece but Aardman's Arthur Christmas was warmly received, while Gnomeo & Juliet was released to mixed but generally fairly positive reviews.

If we count Gnomeo as partly British on the strength of its writers and voice actors then we may as well also give a nod to Steven Spielberg's The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn. The Belgian master Hergé's comics were adapted for the screen by a trio of UK writers (Doctor Who's Steven Moffat, Shaun of the Dead's Edgar Wright and Attack the Block's Joe Cornish) and featured the voicing and mo-cap acting of a predominantly British cast (Jamie Bell, Andy Serkis, Daniel Craig, Simon Pegg, Nick Frost).

The latest clutch of preschool direct-to-DVD flicks.

On the direct-to-DVD front we saw some more outings for younger children. Thomas the Tank Engine starred in Day of the Diesels; Bob the Builder gave us The Big Dino Dig; and Angelina Ballerina danced again in The Shining Star Trophy.

2011 TV premiers: Little Charley Bear, Raa-Raa the Noisy Lion, Rastamouse and Wonderland: The Trouble with Love and Sex.

On a similar note, a few more preschool TV series premiered this year: Little Charley Bear (covered in depth by Toonhound) stars a CGI teddy and his toybox friends, while Raa-Raa the Nosiy Lion and Rastamouse showcase more work from stop-motion puppet maestros Mackinnon & Saunders. Adult animation was not neglected: Zac Beattie and Jonathan Hodgson collaborated on The Trouble with Love and Sex, an episode of the otherwise live action documentary series Wonderland.

Biffa Bacon stars in the third installment of Viz Blaps.

Some time ago I made a post mulling over the surprising lack of comic adaptations throughout the history of British animation. This year saw an exception to the rule when Channel 4's three online shorts based on the long-running Viz premiered, apparently intended as pilots for a potential TV series. Writing-wise I found the shorts to be a hit-or-miss lot, but with strong voice acting and interesting visual sensibilities there's definite potential.

Latest publications from Stephen Cavalier, Tony White and Aardman.

Of the various books on animation that were published this year, I know of two by British animators: The World History of Animation by Stephen Cavalier and Animator's Notebook: Personal Observations on the Principles of Movement by Tony White. I must admit, I haven't had time to sit down and read either of them yet, but I've skimmed through World History and can recommend it as a broad and lavishly-illustrated introduction to the subject. Also of note is the movie tie-in The Art & Making of Arthur Christmas.

Childhood Ghosts. Well, we've all got to start somewhere, haven't we?

For my part, I completed a short cartoon of my own, Childhood Ghosts. It didn't make it anywhere in the festival circuit, but it's a start...

Oscar and BAFTA successes: The Lost Thing, The Eagleman Stag, the Wallace and Gromit's World of Invention website, Flying Monsters 3D, The Amazing World of Gumball and Peppa Pig.

The Oscar for Best Animated Short Film had two partly-British nominees this year: the UK/German co-production The Gruffalo and the UK/Australia collaboration The Lost Thing, the latter winning the award. A Morning Stroll by Grant Orchard of Studio AKA is amongst the ten films shortlisted for next year's award, but it remains to be seen whether it will make it into the final list of nominees. At the BAFTAs, meanwhile, it wasn't a bad year for British animation, with all three nominees for Short Animation hailing from the UK: David Prosser's Matter Fisher; Matthias Hoegg's Thursday; and the winner, Michael Please's The Eagleman Stag.

A smattering of animations graced the BAFTA television awards, with the prize for New Media going to the website for Wallace and Gromit's World of Invention; Flying Monsters 3D , a part-CGI documentary about prehistoric life, taking the award for Specialist Factual; and Fonejacker earning a nomination for Comedy Programme. In the children's awards the UK/France co-production The Amazing World of Gumball won the Animation prize (the other contenders being Grizzly Tales, Muddle Earth and Pet Squad) and its scribes James Lamont and John Foster won the award for Writer. Meanwhile, Ragdoll's Dipdap took the Short Form award; Aardman's The Tate Movie Project won the Interactive trophy; and Peppa Pig took the gold in Pre-School Animation, a category in which it was nominated alongside Octonauts, Little Princess and Rastamouse. Harley Bird, who voices Peppa, won the Performer award.

A few of the festival winners: A Morning Stroll, The Renter, Bobby Yeah, Abuelas, The Itch of the Golden Nit and Save Our Bacon.

At Annecy, the Junior Jury Award for short film went to Grant Orchard's A Morning Stroll; the Cristal for best TV production went to The Quest, an episode of The Amazing World of Gumball; and Michael Please's The Eagleman Stag earned a special distinction. Over at the Ottawa festival, the Best of Ottawa 2011 programme included 12 Sketches on the Impossibility of Being Still by Magali Charrier; I'm Fine Thanks by Eamonn O'Neill; Moxie by Stephen Irwin; The Goat and The Well by Ben Cady; and Electropia, British-based animator Noriko Okaku's music video for the Japanese band Joyz.

At the Bradford Animation Festival Geoff Dunbar was presented with a Lifetime Achievement Award; Jason Carpenter's The Renter earned a Special Jury Prize; Grant Orchard's A Morning Stroll won the Award for Best Professional Film; The Girl Effect, animated by Mighty Nice, took the Award for Best Commercial; Sarah Cox's The Itch of the Golden Nit was given the Films for Children Young Person's Jury Award; and the Films by Young Animators Award was won by Bricknell Primary School's I Wish I Went to Ecuador, with Buchlyvie Primary School's Hedgerow Tales the runner-up.

Meanwhile, the student awards at Middlesborough's Animex International Festival of Animation & Computer Games honoured Peter Baynton's Save Our Bacon, which won the 2D Animation Award; and Matt Aldridge and Tim Mehmet's Pollex, which was a runner-up for Games Animation Award.

Wolverhampton's Flip Animation Festival handed out awards for films voted for by the audience. The winners were Francesca Adams's Bertie Crisp; Trevor Hardy's Dead Bird; Ben Smith's Robin Hood; Ravi Maheru's Caged; Alex Hancocks & Luke Geroge's John and Betty; and one foreign film, The Skeleton Woman, by French director Sarah Den Boom.

At the London International Animation Festival the award for Best British Film went to two films: Robert Morgan's Bobby Yeah took the judges' vote, while Afarin Eghbal's Abuelas earned the audience vote. The award for Best Cut-Out Film also went to a British production, Elizabeth Sevenoaks' Roots of the Hidden.

2011 also saw a new animation festival held in Bridgnorth - although, technically speaking, it's actually an extension of the existing Bridgnorth Arts and Music Festival, held from 24 August to 2 September. Dubbed ForwardFor, it does not appear to have handed out any awards.

Mark Hall, 1936-2011.

Mark Hall, co-founder of Cosgrove Hall, died in November at the age of 74. Shortly beforehand he had seen his legendary animation company revived with the help of Dublin-based Francis Fitzpatrick as Cosgrove Hall Fitzpatrick Entertainment; this company has been involved in the creation of two new series, Pip! and The Hero Gliffix. A memorable obituary was posted by Toonhound, touching on the little-known stop-motion version of The Pied Piper of Hamelin that Hall directed:

When I was growing up, Cosgrove Hall were the biggest name in UK animation. They dominated our teatime tv schedules on ITV, and each year I would scour the Christmas edition of Radio Times, eager to pinpoint the date and time of their next festive premiere. Losing one half of that amazing company name makes this commentator feel like the little boy, left behind by the Pied Piper of Hamelin. Sam, Chorlton, Jamie, DM, Toad, Ratty, Mole and so many more favourite characters have been led away into some fading magic hillside, ne'er to return...

Animations of Christmas past and present

2011-12-17T02:46:00.000-08:00

Well, as you'll have noticed, Christmas is coming and the geese are getting fat. To ring in the festive season, here are some Christmastime shorts old and new to enjoy before you all go off to wassail the orchards.

To start with here's one made by Falmouth-based Christian Topf Design as a gift to its clients in 2007. Very limited in terms of animation, the clip is basically a moving illustration, and rather charming in its way:

Next, here's a 1988 short by Sheila Graber, Toys Will be Toys:

And here we have a characteristically warped festive outing from Cyriak Harris:

Moving swiftly on to something rather more traditional, here's a stop-motion Nativity story made by year 6 six pupils from the Hempstead Junior School in Gillingham:

And now, Walter R. Booth's 1901 trickfilm Scrooge, or Marley's Ghost, the earliest surviving film adaptation of Charles Dickens' work. More information can be found on Screenonline.

And finally, an eight-minute BFI documentary about a form of pre-film animation, the magic lantern show. Not strictly pertaining to Christmas (although A Christmas Carol turns up again), it nonetheless seems somewhat appropriate for the season:

Tim Searle's Blue Xmas

2011-12-12T11:40:00.000-08:00

Blue Xmas is a music video animated with a stylish (and very eighties) collage technique. It was made in 1988 by Tim Searle, then a West Surrey College of Art and Design student and now better known as the creator of 2DTV and the Have I Got News for You opening. The visual style is alien to his later projects, but his interest in social commentary is evident.

(Incidentally, Searle also wrote the song for the video, a blues number performed by Jo Law).

Aladdin Bonzo and the Wonderful Lamp

2011-12-11T10:05:00.000-08:00

Just in time for the panto season, here are some stills from 1925's Aladdin Bonzo and the Wonderful Lamp. The sixteenth short in the Bonzo series, it sees the puppy hero happen upon a woman relating the Arabian Nights story, causing him to become Aladdin himself in a daydream.

It's one of the most off-the-wall Bonzo cartoons. Before becoming Aladdin, Bonzo takes the spot off his body, turns it into a bouncy ball and gives it to a small boy. Later, with the aid of the genie's magic, the ball is sent out of reality and into Bonzo's daydream via a telephone line (or some kind of radio station's equipment - I'm afraid I'm not familiar enough with 1920s technology to figure out what's being portrayed); the detached spot briefly sprouts a face, limbs and the ability of speech in one scene. Gags like this far removed from the fairly conventional slapstick humour of the first Bonzo short, and arguably show the influence of crazy American cartoons such as the Out of the Inkwell.

The short is available on DVD from Cartoons on Film. Unfortunately the surviving print is in poor shape, with the final gag (in which Bonzo struggles to remain seated on a camel's back, and ends up inverting the poor creature so that its troublesome humps are on its stomach instead) having faded away almost to nothing.

Arthur Christmas: Aardman and Sony go transatlantic

2011-12-07T04:32:00.000-08:00

Earlier this year I made a post about the UK/US co-production Gnomeo & Juliet taking a look at exactly what either country was responsible for during the making of the film. In this post I'll be doing the same for the similarly transatlantic Arthur Christmas, a co-production between Aardman and Sony Pictures Animation.

The film was directed by Sarah Smith, whose only prior involvement with animation appears to have been working as a writer on the TV series I Am Not an Animal; according to IMDB she has previously worked primarily as a producer on various live-action TV series such as The League of Gentlemen. Her co-writer on Arthur Christmas was fellow I Am Not an Animal scribe Peter Baynham, who also wrote for I'm Alan Partridge, Big Train, Brass Eye, Borat and, apparently, those "It's not leafy, it's too gorgeous" Pot Noodle adverts, which he starred in. So, then, Arthur Christmas has a UK director and - like Gnomeo - a writing crew culled largely from the world of British live action comedy.

Taking a look at the film's IMDB page, we see that the main cast is largely British - James McAvoy (who, funnily enough, voiced both Arthur and Gnomeo), Hugh Laurie, Bill Nighy, Jim Broadbent, Michael Palin, Imelda Staunton and others.

The American talent, then, appears to be in the animation department. Amongst the senior animators we find Wee Brian (Flushed Away and a few DreamWorks films); Joel Foster (The Incredible Hulk, Night in the Museum 2 and other special effects films); Jean-Dominique Fievet (a French-born animator who has worked primarily on American films such as Open Season 2); Aldo Gagliardi (who appears to have started out in Spanish and Italian animated films before going on to animate for US productions such as Iron Man 2, sometimes with the London company Double Negative); David Anthony Gibson (Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs and several photorealistic talking animals from Tippett Studio); Boris Hiestand (a Bristol-based Dutchman who has worked on European productions such as Asterix and the Vikings and Aardman's upcoming The Pirates!); Andrew Lawson (Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, The Tale of Despereaux and others); Jeremy Lazare (who has worked with Cinesite Europe and MPC on the Harry Potter series); Matthew Meyer (the recent Alvin, Yogi Bear and Smurfsfilms); Ryan Page (I Am Legend, Open Season 2 and more); Tim Pixton (various Rhythm & Hues projects such as Yogi Bear and The Wolfman); Alan Short (British wildlife documentaries and a short film called Fly). The storyboard and character design teams likewise consist mainly, but not exclusively, of American animation veterans.

And there we have it - like Gnomeo, a collaboration between generally British writers and actors and generally American animators.

Alfred Wurmser

2011-11-25T07:09:00.000-08:00

A couple of weeks ago I came across a second-hand copy of The Human Sum, a 1957 book on overpopulation which I bought mainly because of the lovely illustrations by Alfred G. Wurmser, such as the one pictured above. Out of curiosity I decided to do a little more research on the cartoonist.

Image of Alfred Wurmser from the BBC website. Original caption: "Alfred Wurmser, designer of animated captions, altering one of the caption cards used to show the state of the parties before the swingometer was invented."

According to IMDB, Alfred Gaston Wurmser was born in Vienna in 1912. His earliest involvement with British television appears to have been assisting ventriloquist Francis Coudrill on the fifties children's variety show Whirligig (according to this fansite). Coudrill's act, revolving around a cowboy named Hank and his friends, mixed traditional ventriloquism with a form of cutout puppetry similar to the technique used by John Ryan in Captain Pugwash - presumably Wurmser's contribution was to the latter segments, as it is the same basic concept as the primitive TV graphics demonstrated above.

Indeed, Wurmser became so closely associated with these sliding captions that his name became a byword for them. TV Studio History quotes Patrick Moore on the matter:

In pursuit of "props" we went to see Alfred Wurmser, a charming Viennese who lived in Goldhawk Road. He had a dog named Till, half-Alsatian and half-wolf, who weighed about a ton but was under the strange delusion that he was a lap-dog. Alfred made moving diagrams out of cardboard, and he soon became enthusiastic, so that we continued to use the "wurmsers" until he decided to return to his native Austria. The original title of our programme was to be Star Map, but we changed it to The Sky at Night almost at once - to make sure that the new title went into the Radio Times.

As an aside, I've always been a little unsure of what to call series like Captain Pugwash, which are generally classed as animation but were technically made using live action puppetry. Perhaps it's time we revived this piece of terminology...

IMDB states that Wurmser also worked on Jackanory, Great Captains and 1951 versions of Aladdin and The Tempest. According to this fansite for the puppet series Sara & Hoppity, he also worked on three programmes narrated by Jean Ford: Christmas Story, Clara the Little Red Car and Janie's Toys.

Here are some more of Alfred Wurmser's illustrations from The Human Sum:

The Canterbury Tales

2011-11-21T11:10:00.000-08:00

The Canterbury Tales is a 1998 adaptation of Chaucer's masterwork presided over by S4C (whose contributions to animation I summerised here). It is divided into three episodes, each containing three stories, alongside linking sequences featuring the pilgrim storytellers and even a stop-motion Chaucer as narrator. A DVD was released in 2005, but is unfortunately now out of print.
The series was a collaboration between Moscow-based Christmas Films, who animated the linking sequences and some of the stories, and various British studios. The first of the UK-animated sequences is The Nun's Priest's Tale, directed by Ashley Potter and Dave Antrobus of aka Pizazz (now Studio AKA).

Next is The Knight's Tale, also by aka Pizazz, but this time directed by Dave Antrobus and Mic Graves.

And finally, the most acclaimed sequence in the whole series - Joanna Quinn's interpretation of The Wife of Bath's Tale. This one is available online; I've embedded it below.

Two years of blogging

2011-11-18T10:09:00.000-08:00

Today is this blog's second birthday - fancy that, and it only seems like yesterday I started it. As with last year, I decided to take a look though my stats to see what my readers have been looking at...

The most-viewed pages on this blog are Gifford's '70s, Gifford's '40s, Save UK Animation, Richard Taylor's Swimsong, Richard Williams ads for Levi's, Jōvan and Limara, British anime, the closure of Cosgrove Hall, Joe & Petunia, Gifford's '80s and obscure adult comedy series.

The search terms that brought the most people to my blog are "Cosgrove Hall", "Daddy's Little Bit of Dresden China", "Soloflex", the blog's URL, "Halas and Batchelor", "Owl and the Pussycat 2011" (I'm not sure what these people were searching for, but I'm afraid the only version of The Owl and the Pussy-cat I've covered so far was from 1952), "BBC2 ident", "BIC Perfume" and "history of British animation".

Thanks go out to my top referrers: Cartoon Brew, Peter Gray's Cartoons and Comics and Asterisk Animation.

The picture at the top of my post, incidentally, is from John J. Miller's Act V, and is the picture most clicked by people who find my blog via Google images.

Now, on with year three...

Cara Confused

2011-11-10T12:21:00.001-08:00

In compiling this blog I've begun to really miss the days of gorgeous hand-drawn ads from the Richard Williams studio and its contemporaries. With even Joanna Quinn's delicately pencilled grizzly - the last remnant of a dying tradition - replaced by a CGI koala, I'll take any attempt to keep the flame alive, no matter how small.

The Confused.com adverts by Dan & Jason of Hornet Inc, while digitally animated, at least have their roots in a hand-drawn aesthetic. They're not the most sophisticated works around but they're vibrant, bouncy and get a surprising amount of mileage out of the site's original, rather static logo (top). Good on Hornet for keeping some 2D work going in the world of TV ads.

The Hornet Inc website has caricatures of the studio's staff drawn in the style of the ads:

More late 4mations idents

2011-11-06T02:03:00.000-08:00

Some more of the late nineties 4mations idents contributed by students (see here for my first post about them).

David Anderson's Door

2011-10-31T12:49:00.000-07:00

Some stills from Door, directed by David Anderson and written by Russell Hoban. This 1990 short is one of two films in the Deadtime Stories for Big Folk series, the other being the slightly better-known Deadsy.

Bonzo's animation debut

2011-10-25T13:33:00.000-07:00

Some stills from the first film in the Bonzo series, titled simply Bonzo and released in 1924. The short was directed by William Ward and written and designed by George E. Studdy, the original creator of the Bonzo character.

The Bonzo cycle is almost certainly the best-remembered series of silent British animation - generally regarded as something of a dry period - but little has been written about it. Most material that I've found covering the character focuses on his original print incarnation: the animated series seems to be remembered more for its reputation than for its own merits.

The Bonzos stack up pretty well against American cartoons of the time; although less visually inventive than the contemporary Felix shorts, the Bonzo films are more sophisticated in terms of artwork - Bonzo himself has to be one of the most delicately-rendered animated characters of the period.

A DVD containing this short and others can be purchased from Tom Stathes' Cartoons on Film.

Biographic's A Cat is a Cat and Gold Whiskers

2011-10-18T10:50:00.000-07:00

The name of Biographic is associated primarily with co-founder Bob Godfrey, but we should not forget the work by other members of the group. Here are some stills from A Cat is a Cat, made in 1971 by Vera Linnecar; the short is a lighthearted documentary about cats in both nature and human culture, narrated by two children.

And while we're at it, some stills from Keith Learner's 1964 short Gold Whiskers. Unfortunately, this cartoon hasn't aged well - James Bond parodies have been rather well-trodden in the intervening decades, and this one in particular is now all too reminiscent of the later Danger Mouse. Still, some interesting design work.

Incidentally, I'm not entirely sure why these two films are credited to "Biographic 3" and "Biographic 2". The Biographic group appears to have become divided into units at some point, but I have no idea what the full story is there.

Bubble & Squeek annual (1950?)

2011-10-12T04:37:00.000-07:00

The Bubble and Squeek series from George Moreno's British Animated Productions studio never really took off, lasting for just four shorts and one spinoff from 1947 to 1948. But it did spawn at least three annuals, only one of which I own.

I'm not sure when it was published; the only date in the book, 1950, was written in by a previous owner. That doesn't necessarily mean it was published in 1950, although as I'm not familiar with the average shelf-life of children's annuals at the time I can't vouch for the likelihood of it being published earlier.

If it was indeed published two years after the series it was based on ceased production then it would seem likely that it was the final Bubble and Squeek annual. However, it opens with the story of how the title characters first met, implying that it was actually the first in the series - is it possible that Moreno and his company were trying to revive the characters in the field of children's books after they failed to catch on in animation?

Aside from the frontispiece, which is signed "Cal", the illustrations in the book are credited to Moreno himself. That said, in the comments section of this blog post about Moreno (which is itself well worth reading) one poster, who worked for Moreno in the sixties, speculates that some of the artwork credited to him in fifties comics was actually ghosted by members of his studio.

Here are the covers of the only other Bubble & Squeek annuals that I know of:

Gerald Conn's Whale Song

2011-10-08T05:44:00.000-07:00

Whale Song is a 1989 sand-on-glass film by Gerald Conn. It's haunting evocation of mankind's relationship with marine life over the centuries, and from a stylistic point of view is also notable for an interesting sequence where the sand animation is used to imitate primitive computer graphics.

Incidentally, the version on YouTube is lower quality than the Vimeo copy above, but has full credits.

Jayne Bevitt's Blubber Boy

2011-09-25T11:12:00.000-07:00

Based on an Eskimo folktale retold in A Kayak of Ghosts by Lawrence Millman, Jayne Bevitt's 1991 short Blubber Boy tells the story of an Eskimo woman who carves a chunk of blubber into a replica of her drowned boyfriend, which she then brings to life by rubbing against her genitals. Unfortunately, the blubber boy tends to melt in hot conditions, and the woman eventually has to carve him afresh from a new chunk of blubber.

The film was narrated by Ruth Avingaq, advised by Co Hoedman of the National Film Board of Canada and made at Whitehorse Films for Channel 4.

TVC's Charley

2011-09-18T09:19:00.000-07:00

Made by TVC in 1965, Charley (not to be confused with the other boy-and-cat cartoon called Charley) is one of those felt tip on paper shorts that used to be common before Flash came along. It takes place in the imagination of a boy, who transforms himself into a clown, an aeroplane and an explorer before running up against an angry hairy creature and a stern policeman.

Of special note is the soundtrack - all of the sound effects are made vocally by Noel Picarda, perfectly fitting in with the overall stream of consciousness aesthetic. It's almost as if you're hearing an animator mumbling and humming to himself as he draws the frames.

The film's credits list George Dunning, Jimmy Murakami, Alan Ball, Ron Wyatt, Alex Rayment and John Williams as its creators, but exactly who did what is not explained. Denis Gifford's filmography identifies Dunning as director and producer, Murakami, Wyatt and Ball as animators, Rayment as editor and Williams as camera operator. The BFI database, on the other hand, credits Murakami and Ball as co-directors and Dunning as producer, as does IMDB, which also lists Rayment as editor. Meanwhile, when the film was shown on Channel 4 in the nineties, it was identified simply as a George Dunning piece.

Animation Alliance UK

2011-09-12T09:17:00.000-07:00

A little over a year ago I posted about Save UK Animation, a group campaigning for tax breaks on the British animation industry. Since then I've heard very little about the organisation, but I'm pleased to see that it has been joined by a similar group, focusing instead on independent animation, called Animation Alliance UK. Its member list is a veritable who's who, containing names such as Phil Mulloy, Caroline Leaf, Clare Kitson, Jonathan Hodgson, Jayne Pilling, Marjut Rimminen and many others.

A press release from the group has been posted on Cartoon Brew:

Animation Alliance UK has today written to Lord Chris Smith, Panel chair of the independent review of Government film policy, to raise its concerns about the lack of public policy, strategy and support for independent animation.

The Alliance makes a “straightforward plea” for an acknowledgement of the importance of cultural animation production to the UK, and a recommendation that steps are taken to ensure its continued success.

Animation Alliance UK has a focus on independent animation as cultural cinema and art form. Its membership includes Oscar and BAFTA winners and nominees, and reflects the range of animation practice, across many areas of creative, cultural and commercial activity in the arts and creative industries.

British animated short film has enjoyed amazing success, with British animators winning the Oscar for animated short film eight times, with a further 20 nominations, in the last 25 years.

The letter notes that as support from broadcasters and public funding bodies has diminished, so UK animators are finding financial support from, and relocating to, other countries. It states that the UK Film Council and Arts Council England have failed to work together to provide any strategic leadership:

“Independent animation is a vital part of the UK’s culture and its creative industries. The sums of money that are required to underpin a vibrant independent animation sector are relatively small. But the development of independent animation and the nurturing of its talent base is dependent on its own drive and determination, and this is unsustainable.”

The group's website contains the full text of the letter to Lord Smith. "The UK achieved international renown as a prolific centre of excellent for animated short film came about because of a uniquely British model of sustained public support from public service broadcasters, and public film and arts funding bodies, that allowed creative production free from commercial constraint", it says in one section. "That support has all but evaporated. Ten years ago, both the BBC Animation Unit in Bristol and S4C’s animation unit were closed. In 2005, in addition to its single film commissions, Channel 4 was supporting around 15 short films a year through its innovative open call schemes, in partnerships with BFI, Arts Council England and the National Media Museum. All now gone." The letter's conclusion is as follows:

What is needed
Independent animation seems to languish in a chasm between the responsibilities and remit of Arts Council England and UK Film Council/BFI.

Independent animation is a vital part of the UK’s culture and its creative industries. The sums of money that are required to underpin a vibrant independent animation sector are relatively small. Modest investment in the past has delivered incredible value for money in terms of job creation, financial leverage, and the impact on other sub-sectors of the knowledge economy. This can be done with relatively small amounts of money, yet the cultural returns on any investment would be enormous.

To reverse this process of decline we believe that as a first step it is vitally important that the BFI and Arts Council England recognise the role that the independent animation sector plays in British culture.

We would urge your Panel to give due consideration to our concerns, and to raise them with those agencies.

All this is good to see, but I think there's also an area which the academic side of the animation community should be engaging with: namely, what is independent animation in this day and age? The Internet has changed the landscape completely - in the past we had to rely on Channel 4 airings and festivals to see independent animated shorts, but now we can watch them on YouTube. Unfortunately, the Internet also brought with it a culture in which something like this can find over three million viewers. Clearly, there's a gap between the high standards of the old era and the vast potential of the new generation that needs bridging, and doing so could help campaigns such as this no end.

Brian Pickersgill's Oh Whiskers!

2011-09-10T03:11:00.000-07:00

About a year ago I mentioned that Brian Pickersgill made a 1939 film with the GPO called Oh Whiskers! but had no more information on either Pickersgill or his film.

Sine then I've managed to see the film in question, and more recently I checked my blog's stats and noticed that "Brian Pickersgill animator" was one of the top search terms - he has a following, clearly...

Rather unexpectedly for a GPO film, Oh Whiskers! turns out to have nothing to do with postal services; instead, it is a children's educational short made for the Ministry of Health, advising kids to wash in the morning, eat healthy food and go to bed early. It stars a knitted character named Whiskers and his stop-motion toy friends, and is bookended with live action sequences featuring child actress Elizabeth Forbes as the toys' owner. The usage of toys recalls Arthur Melbourne-Cooper's pioneering films, although Whiskers' doll girlfriend is more reminiscent of Svankmajer.

According to IMDB, Pickersgill served as assistant director on a documentary short called North Sea in 1938; beyond that I'm afraid I know nothing more about his career.

Henry Elwis and Peter Strausfeld

2011-09-06T04:11:00.000-07:00

While I was looking through British Pathé's online film archive I came across several forties propaganda shorts by two little-known animators.

The first is Henry J. Elwis, who appears to have begun his career at British Animated Films, which I posted about here. There he served as producer on two of the three films from the studio that I am aware of, Kathleen "Spud" Houston's How the Motor Works (1936) and John Halas' The Music Man (1938). That is, according to Denis Gifford's filmography - the in-film credits to The Music Man do not mention Elwis; I have not seen How the Motor Works but the BFI database does list an H.J. Elwis as producer.

Watch the Fuel Watcher.

Gifford goes on to credit Elwis with directing the propaganda films The Clothes Moth, AKA The Behemoth (1944); It Makes you Think (1944); A Ticket's Dream (1944); Bristles and Brushes, AKA Take Care of Brushes and Bristles (1944); Bones Bones Bones (1944); More Hanky Panky (1945); Writing's Worth While (1945); Tombstone Canyon (1945; not available online as far as I can tell), Brickmakers (1946) and Watch the Fuel Watcher (1946). After these last two he seems to have vanished from animation history.

The Clothes Moth.

Technically, these films are round about on par with much of Halas & Batchelor's work from the period. Did he work with some of the same staff, I wonder? Gifford does not list any animators besides Elwis himself, so I can't tell. A Ticket's Dream is an interesting short in which the floating outline of a ticket turns into a dancing human figure, a butterfly and a bird. A stream-of-consciousness piece in the tradition of Emile Cohl, it can also be seen as prefiguring John Halas and Peter Foldes' The Magic Canvas.

A Ticket's Dream.

The other animator I learnt about is Peter Strausfeld. According to the BFI database, Strausfeld lived from 1910 to 1980; during the war he made the films Peak Load (1943), Salvage Saves Shipping (1943), Skeleton in the Cupboard (1943), and Tim Marches Back (1944), of which a brief, poor quality clip can be seen here. After the war he worked as a designer on two live action films: George Hoellerig's 1952 Murder in the Cathedral (under the pseudonym of Peter Pendry) and Powell and Pressburger's 1955 Oh... Rosalinda!! This appears to have been the extent of his career in film.

Peak Load.

Strausfeld's propaganda shorts are an interesting lot. Peak Load makes up for its limited animation with its inventive techniques - heavy stylisation in the vein of Larkins one moment, a cutout animated sequence with live-action smoke pouring out of an oven the next. Salvage Saves Shipping is one of many films from this period on the importance of recycling and playfully explores the sight of household scraps literally morphing into armaments - a pile of old books melt like a candle and form a mortar shell carrier, while a hot water bottle and pair of shoes become a piece of abstract art before turning into a gasmask. Skeleton in the Cupboard is reminiscent of Iwerks, necessarily stripped down but maintaining a strong illustrative style.

Skeleton in the Cupboard.

Late 4mations idents

2011-08-31T01:52:00.000-07:00

I've posted stills from 4mations idents before, here and here; these ones were again provided by students. I don't know exactly when they were made, but they were presumably introduced around 1996, when the channel first adopted its "four-circle" logo.

Ian Emes films: Oriental Nightfish, French Windows, New York Seltzer

2011-08-29T02:22:00.000-07:00

Some stills from three films by Ian Emes. First, his beautifully crafted 1977 video for Linda McCartney's Oriental Nightfish, which can be seen here.

Next, Emes' first animated film: French Windows from 1972. Watch it online here.

And finally, an eighties advert for New York Seltzer soft drinks ("they're from the city, kitty!"). The ad can be seen here; Emes describes it as saving him from bankruptcy following his 1986 live action feature Knights & Emeralds.

Look-In on British animation circa 1983

2011-08-26T12:06:00.000-07:00

The children's comic-cum-TV magazine Look-In ran an article on British animation in its 1983 annual. Being targeted at kids it's not the most in-depth analysis (and, yes, it misidentifies Max Fleischer as the creator of Betty Boop and Popeye) but it's still an enjoyable look at the state of things at the time.

The annual also contains an article on puppetry:

And a Danger Mouse comic strip:

George Dunning and Topper Carew's The Maggot

2011-08-21T09:02:00.000-07:00

Directed by George Dunning and apparently targeted at black American youth, this stylish anti-drug film was animated by Roy Evans and Jerry Hibbert, with design by Mick Crane and assistant Eric Marlow. The American musician Topper Carew is credited with "conception", as well as soundtrack.

The Maggot was a collaboration between TVC and The Righteous Apple, which appears to be Carew's brand: eight years later he produced a live action TV series called The Righteous Apples, about a fictional teenage pop group.

Alison de Vere's Psyche and Eros

2011-08-14T02:13:00.001-07:00

Psyche and Eros is a 1994 film made by Alison de Vere based on drawings by the German-born painter Karl Weschke. According to IMDB it was de Vere's penultimate film, the last being a 2002 TV film entitled A Small Miracle.

Based on the Greek legend, Psyche and Eros is quite possibly her most visually rich piece of animation.