Tuesday, July 24, 2012

HOW TO MAKE ANIMATED CARTOONS (1941, Nat Falk)



Falk Nat, How To Make Animated Cartoons , New York, Foundation Books, 1941.

JPG images / 10 MB / Eng / 73 pp (A scan made by animationresources)

The people from animationresources scanned this book, one of the very first on animation history.
A foreword was made by Paul Terry, which is real funny because he talks about the artistic possibilities of cartooning: animation as an art form! ... I mean, this comes from the same cheap bastard that proudly used to said: "If Disney is making chicken pâté, then we are making chickenshit!"
In the first chapter we have a brief history of the attempts to give illusion of movement to drawings: from the Altamira cave pictures till Emile Cohl's animated cartoons. A sweet mention to the Big Four: John Bray, Earl Hurd, Raoul Barre and... Paul Terry of course. According to the book he was the greatest pioneer of them all (I'm not being sarcastic here, I sort of agree with that). So Terry got the most pages and attention: Little Herman, Farmer Al Falfa, and the Aesop's Fables. And then the usual topics: McCay's Gertie the Dinosaur, Felix the Cat, Max Fleischer and Walt Disney (didn't give his permission to show pictures of Disney characters, BOO!!).
In the second chapter we take a journey through each of the "seven major" cartoon studios at the time: The Fleischer Studios; Walt Disney Productions; Terry-Toons; MGM cartoon Division; Walter Lantz Productions; Leon Schlesinger Productions and Screen Gems.



At the end of the chapter Walter Lantz explains how he created Andy Panda (But I'm not sure that he's telling the truth, cause I've once heard a very different story about the origins of Andy).
The third chapter is about the animation production process. Story and Gags, Design, Animation and Layout, Music and Sound Effects, The inking process... etc.
In the last chapter, there's an explanation on how to make your own animated cartoons... How to draw cartoon characters, Squash and stretch, etc. (There are hundreds of books that teachs you that, but the lessons here are made with...Famous characters, like Popeye!)

So, this book is awesome!!! (by pelida77)

Do You Want to read this book?, You could follow this link...

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