16: The Little Match Girl

The Little Match Girl, 2006
Disney, Roger Allers

Excuse me for plucking this straight from the latest Nostalgia Critics video, but this truely is one of the best short christmas animated shorts ever.
I DARE you not to cry.
*Sniffle*

15: Mysterious Mose

Mysterious Mose, 1930
Fleischer Studios

Being a blogger with a header like mine, you'd have thought I'd have featured a Ghost cartoon a little sooner right? Cartoon ghosts are always solid gold when it comes down to it. They're the ultimate shape shifters and the silent-thru-golden age of cartoons used them to their fullest.

Three being the magic number, I bring you three classic ghost cartoons.

I said the best till last, and I meant it. Who did spooky ghost cartoons better than Fleischer Studios?
I've credited Mysterious Mose a dozen times on the dA masterlist, it feels like I've been talking about it forever. It is one of the singularly brilliant pieces of animation the studio ever did and I don't say that lightly.

Dog Betty is merely the tip of the ice burg. A comment on the video suggests she looks vaguely Josephine Baker-esque in this version of her early incarnation. Betty was based on some of the most beautiful women of the black and white era, Clara Bow being the one she most strongly bears resemblance to, but the commenter is right, and its not JUST because of her skin tone.

This video also, sadly, contains my favourite design of Bimbo the dog. Ghost or not, he'd never look that good or smarmy again. You may just say he looks like a rip-off of the Mouse, but really, what character wasn't.

So watch and re-watch my dears, as that song never quite leaves your head.

14: Haunted House

Haunted House, 1929
Disney

Being a blogger with a header like mine, you'd have thought I'd have featured a Ghost cartoon a little sooner right? Cartoon ghosts are always solid gold when it comes down to it. They're the ultimate shape shifters and the silent-thru-golden age of cartoons used them to their fullest.

Three being the magic number, I bring you three classic ghost cartoons.

Haunted House is proof that whilst you can do something amazingly the first time, and because you have a character building in popularity, doesn't mean you should smush your hands together and make something amazing.

Skeleton Dance is one of the most beloved of all the Silly Symphonies, especially among "dark" young animators who value it's appeal of both being old (and therefore good in some jaded industry critics) and "creepy" (thus satisfying their need to be as spppoooky as possible). Which is fine and dandy. And for its time, it is very impressive, and is alot of fun to watch. It's influenced alot of "spooky" animated subjects in its time- The Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy, Corpse Bride- basically, anything with dancing skeletons? Owes it to this short.

And Mickey Mouse? You may have heard of him. Nothing to be sniffed at.

But Haunted House fails (like so many of the Disney Shorts) to be entertaining.
It's still worth watching, and you may disagree with me.
But it feels WAY too much like Skeleton Dance, even if it was released in the same year.

And again, another ghost cartoon with a Questionable moment- I missed it the first time, but the comments point it out.

13: Jeepers Creepers

Jeepers Creepers, Looney Tunes,1933
Robert Clampett


Being a blogger with a header like mine, you'd have thought I'd have featured a Ghost cartoon a little sooner right? Cartoon ghosts are always solid gold when it comes down to it. They're the ultimate shape shifters and the silent-thru-golden age of cartoons used them to their fullest.

Three being the magic number, I bring you three classic ghost cartoons.

Jeepers Creepers is actually one I stumbled upon whilst looking up info on a much more recent piece of animation.
Whilst Warner Brothers aren't my favourite golden-ghost cartoon studio (The Best I save for last). But as I stumbled upon it, and as Black and White Looney Tunes don't get enough love in the public eye (remember, I'm naught but a humble art student) I thought it'd be good place to start. And being the 1930's, there is bound to be some racism. But can we just look past it? Acknowledge that it’s horrible, but just appreciate it for what it is. Isn't it just nice to see Porky again?

And if you know who the voice of the ghost also voices, then no-duh. It's not all that hard to recognise.

08: Family Dog

Family Dog Part 1
Family Dog Part 2
Family Dog Part 3
Brad Bird, 1987

Its amazing how motivated you get to watching something when you can just feel it about to get ripped into.

It's also no suprise how I know about this when in retrospect it seems pretty obscure- but I've never been very motivated to watch it because...well, I guess I'm lazy. Theres a quote floating around that Family Dog was done around the same time The Simpsons came out, and the reason it flopped was because of the gaining popularity of everyones favourite long running family.

The original short however came out as apart of a series called "Amazing Stories" in 1987, and thats what I'm going to talk about.

With it's quirky design and lovely character animation, not to mention very interesting voice direction, Family Dog would proberbly be just as big a cult hit even if it wasn't attatched to Tim Burton's name (Who apparently produced and helped design the characters- which I believe. If you watch Vincent, the dog looks just the same- in fact he draws all his dogs like that. And the Mother has lips like all his female characters- in his drawings at least).

And, because I can do what I please- I very much enjoy the quaint little soundtrack as well, done by a very young (at the time)and talented man by the name of Danny Elfman.

Oh yes.

I went there.

05: BeetleJuice; Second TV Opening

BeetleJuice, Second Opening
1991

This post could border on the ranting side slightly, but you know, it’s only really when this show gets knocked into the same category as some of the worst 1980's animation that I get defensive. I have to try and defend this as much as I can without letting my Burtonite instincts get the better of me.

I, like many, follow John K and Cartoon Brew. And as much as those Blogs are a wealth of information, I tend to disagree with alot of the opinions from John and Amid (of course, I should probably just bow down and accept they know alot more than I do. But fuck that, this no-body has an opinion, and I'm going to HAVE it damn it). Certainly this is already starting to tread ever so slightly into the ranting side of things, so I'll cut this train of thought off now, and just say this entry is meant to disagree strongly with the fact that the BeetleJuice cartoon is being lumped in with the bad animation stick currently in John's latest tirade of "Everything that’s good has to be made before the 60's and NOTHING ELSE HAS ANY CHARACTER WHATSOEVER" blah. (That wasn't an attack of any kind by the way, but you look at his posts objectively and just tell me he's not tooting that horn).

Anyway, BeetleJuice the TV show. Well, if your looking at this show from a design point of view, then you'd better be prepared to accept the fact that the show follows the mantra that most Burton movies (Especially in the case of his stop-animated features); Duality. All that is Alive and Pleasant is flat, boring and incredibly dull. Characters are dressed in Pastel and the shapes are either round (Lydia's father) and subdued, or Sharp and angular (Lydia's stepmother). All that is Dead and Strange is much more detailed, they leave trails of dust or colour, and the shapes are more complex. In the way of backgrounds, things follow the same rule. The Living world is set out in the country and suburbia and everything is fairly straight, ordered- the land of the dead (or Neitherworld) is a parody of that. The roads float in a greenish or orange haze, and therefore every building and person then contrasts strongly against those colours.

I love this show, but I have to say that it's actual writing sucks. Pun-based humour is only good when used sparingly. All the characters are dumped down to be kid-friendly from the movie and two of them are missing all together (The step-mother aspect is removed entirely because apparently that dynamic was seemingly too much for kids? And whatever DID happen to the Maitlands? Why is Lydia suddenly 13 years old? What made them think having her hang out with an adult male ghost was a good idea?).
However, As much I dislike gross-out humour it was rather cutely used in the show, and Lydia is still one of the most Iconic Goth Girls of our time (a stereotype I'd rather like to explore in later posts), and BeetleJuice...is pretty much one of my favourite cartoon characters ever.

01: 1928 Koko's Earth Control

The Inkwell Imps in Koko's Earth Control
By Fleischer Studios, 1928

So, for the first cartoon, I thought it'd be fun to to revisit the cartoon master list I was hosting over on dA and pick out the one cartoon I had that featured that was apart of the series that I took this blog name for.

The Inkwell Imps (or at least the version I'm talking about) was a series of animated shorts from 1919 to 1929 featuring the adventures of a clown called Koko and his best friend Fritz the dog. The series was the first work to be produced by Max Fleischer, and is notable because it was one of the first to feature live action and drawn animation together- several decades before the more commonly associated major feature of Who Framed Rodger Rabbit.

I picked this cartoon at the time, because it’s a part of the Fleischer history that I skipped over quite a bit during my essay at college, and I was actually rather afraid of. The cartoons I usually prefer from the studio are the more refined and well-developed era of 1930 to 1934. The characters by this point are fleshed out (to the extent they were ever going to get, but I'll get to that later), the animation has settled into a beautifully surreal stride and the backgrounds are lushly painted, even for a black and white cartoon (again more on that in later posts) But I was actually pleasantly surprised with this short.

For one thing, the Interaction is limited and in a way that’s good. There’s a much later short, where Betty and a (horribly racist stereotyped) Janitor share words, and its poorly done and I didn't really care for it. There’s also the famous Rise to Fame short that’s included on every dvd release has, that seems cute at first, but it is after all, a clip show.

The interaction in these early shorts are limited usually, and in this case, to the human hand drawing out the characters. And I really love how it looks. Obviously very inventive in its day, in retrospect it looks almost phython-esque. Creator/creation relationships are hard to establish, whether it’s real or not (ala Duck Amuck for instance), and keeping it so limited is a nice way to start a cartoon.

Enjoy this one, and keep a look out for more gems in future posts.