I Yam What I Yam...

This weekend I finally got my hands on the newly released and restored Popeye the Sailor DVD set, featuring 60 cartoons from the Fleischer period (1933-1938). And boy are they great. I've never been a die-hard fan, but I'd consider myself a convert. For what one might say is a pretty repetitive formula (enter Popeye, Olive Oyl in distress, enter Bluto, fist-fights, walloping, more fist-fights, enter Spinach and theme, Popeye saves the day), the shorts are incredibly inventive for their time. The animation, scene-planning, musical timing, luscious backgrounds---heck, everything about them are a pleasure to watch. I found myself freeze-framing in several spots to appreciate the keyframes.

I haven't gotten through all of them yet, but one in particular, Popeye the Sailor Meets Sinbad the Sailor (1936), really caught my attention. I won't link to YouTube because the color and compression are just awful by comparison. It's one of the few Technicolor and long format cartoons included in the DVD set. While it's not the funniest of the bunch, there are some great monsters and ugly expressions coming out of Bluto in particular. So, during some freeze-frames, I did a little sketching. Which you will find below. I find this to be a fun exercise, especially to study the cartoon forms.








Ha! I just realized I didn't even draw Popeye. Oh well.
I'd recommend the set to all fans of early cartoon animation. I wrote an earlier post which included links to some of the buzz on other animation blogs.

Swing You Sinners (1930)

I just learned how to embed a YouTube video, so I figured why not take a moment to showcase some classic animation? This is a Fleischer short from before the more famed days of Bettie Boop and Popeye. It features a bopping jazz soundtrack, great visual gags, and lots of surreal animation—all the elements Fleischer Studios is best known for. Be sure to watch it to the very end, as there is a really bizarre finale. The Animation Archive offers a Quicktime version with less compression: view it here. They also have this to say about it:

One of the films preserved with the assistance of ASIFA-Hollywood was the classic Fleischer Talkartoon, Swing, You Sinners. Animated by Ted Sears and Willard Bowsky, with an eye-popping surreal ending by Grim Natwick and Bowsky, this film was the first of many Fleischer cartoons that mixed surrealism, cartoony ghosts & goblins, and hot jazz. While other studios built their cartoons around fairy tale stories or topical gags, the Fleischers constructed cartoons in the same way jazz music was constructed... statement of the theme, a series of variations and a big finish.

Popeye Restored

I've blogged about Fleischer cartoons before—easily one of my favorite styles of animation from the 20s and 30s. The guys over at Classic Cartoons have posted a bunch of screenshots from the upcoming fully restored Popeye DVD set, and they are just breathtaking to see. The detail and crispness matches what you might expect if you were looking at cel on background, minus a bit of film grainyness. I've seen a handful of these, either on VHS when I was a kid, or all compressed on the internet. But never with this crispness and clarity. I've included a couple below. Amid Amidi over at Cartoon Brew is also tracking this as well. Definitely a DVD to get—due out end of July.





UPDATE: John K has some great insight about Popeye, and the soon to be released DVD on his blog as well. Check out these posts:
(Popeye Rules) (What makes a character?)

Fleischer at Classic Cartoons

It's rare that I would post about something from another blog, but for the past couple of weeks the gang over at Classic Cartoons have been posting animation stills from the Fleischer Color Classics. Notably "Tears of an Onion," which I have never seen, and "Play Safe," which I had on VHS when I was a kid. I wish I could see the onion one, but it's supposedly still under copyright protection. I love the sequence in "Play Safe" where the trains are about to crash. It actually repeats over and over again with the trains whistling at each other for a good 30 seconds as they are barreling towards each other. Please hop on over and have a look for yourself. I love the visual style of the Fleischer cartoons...they are both cute and bizarre, which I find appealing.