These close ups are in that style I thought was Willard Bowsky. Peter has cast some doubt in my brain as to who actually drew them, but whoever it is, is a real cartoonist and his stuff is really fun to look at.This is a cartoon that exults in being a cartoon. It's not trying to hide it.

It's not trying to compete with live action on its own terms.It uses what cartoons do best-funny magic.
Fun to look at pictures that do crazy things.
Characters with funny personalities and distinct funny voices. (Listen to the voices in that Ratatouille clip! Is there anything remotely distinct about them?)
This whole blog is dedicated to bringing back real cartoons. There are still many real cartoonists alive today who could do this really fun type of animation but there is no studio that will take advantage of them.
It's also hard to learn how to be cartoony, when nothing in the media is anymore and there are no schools that teach it. That's why it's great that there are so many blogs that are making a whole new generation of cartoonists aware that drawing can actually be really fun.

Wouldn't it be great to look look forward to coming to work every day and be able to actually use your imagination and think up ways to make people really laugh and pleasure their senses?
The reason I put up modern animation styles and make fun of them is to contrast them to this fun stuff. To really show how hugely different the philosophies are.
I'm not against having other types of animation on the planet, I would just like to have a reasonable % of cartoons doing what they do best.

The Pixars and Dreamworks and Disneys could exist if they wanna make the same films over and over again. If they want to abandon all cartoon tradition, fine.
But some smart studio oughta make room for real cartoons and really funny cartoonists and let them loose to actually use their imaginations.
If someone put 10% of the money that they spend on animated features or prime time animated shows into an unashamed cartoon studio, that studio would clean up. I think it would largely kill at least all the Pixar and Simpsons imitators.


Maybe the next generation of cartoonists will see all these possibilities on the blogs and then do what's so obviously fun and right.

BTW, if you click the label "cartoony" below it will take you to other posts about particularly cartoony cartoonists.

Isn't it crazy that we have to add an adjective to cartoons so that you will recognize the ones who actually draw cartoony?

I'll put up the clips from these scenes this weekend so you can see how much the animation is.

I used to notice a really unique drawing and animation style in the early Betty Boop cartoons. The way they drew ogres and tree monsters didn't look like typical "animation-style" cartoon drawings. They looked more like a comic strip artist who learned to animate. Think of the close ups of The Old Man Of The Mountain.


I think I've figured out who the artist is and it's Willard Bowsky. I see his name in the credits of almost all the cartoons that have this style in it. It's more detailed than the other animators. He would do those gruesome close ups of Bluto with all the wrinkles and crazy expressions-like in "Sinbad The Sailor".

I'm pretty sure this scene of Olive and Popeye in "A Date To Skate" 1938, is him too.
Look how cool these drawings are! They have a whole bunch of drawing skills happening at the same time.




Construction: All the features of the face wrap around the bigger forms of the faces and are in perspective.



Design: This is a really unique stylistic look. If you look at the other animators' Popeye cartoons from 1938, they are less stylish. Almost every 30s Popeye has great animation, but this style is like a throwback to an earlier more designy look. By the late 30s even the Fleischers were being influenced by the "west coast" animation style that Disney was doing. That style was more fluid, more organic but also more generic. When the Fleischers started doing this style, they lost their own more graphic gritty manly look.

The New York animators never quite understood the west coast style and when they tried to copy it, the couldn't figure out how to combine construction with organic timing and drawing, and their animation became kind of mushy-especially into the late 1940s.

They also were influenced by the cutesy look of Disney but couldn't draw cute themselves, because they were more manly street type guys.

Bowsky though seems to have retained a " cute-ugly" style.Tightness: Nothing wobbles or melts in the animation. All the details and finish are really tightly controlled. Some of the other animation in cartoons of the same period have a sloppier finish, even if the animation itself is very good.

Some of these screen grabs are inbetweens and they are just as tight as the keys. I don't know how the animator was able to control every drawing so well.



Thick and Thin inking: Other Popeyes at this time had abandoned the earlier Fleischer style of thick and thin inking. Here it is looking great.

Note that the less important lines are thinner. Wrinkles are thinner than the more important shapes they help describe. That's hierarchy of lines.



Hierarchy of forms, lines and shapes and animation:

In the animation, the main motion of walking to the beat of the music never falters. Within that basic motion the characters also have to act and talk.

Within each character's construction all the details have to follow where the forms are going and wrap around them.

No elements just go off in their own direction. Everything follows some higher authority.



Cartooniness: Hard to define but here it is, undiluted by cutesy-pie Disney influence.

Cute-Ugly: This is a really cute scene without being "cutesy". It's a cartoonist drawing characters that are supposed to be ugly, but his drawing style is so appealing and well balanced that it comes off as cute. Sincere-cute, rather than pandering-to-moms cute.






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Control: Bowsky controls all these different artistic elements and makes it all work together. The more creative skills you have to balance at one time, the harder it is to control any one of them.

This is a marvel of control and skill, but is really fun on top of it. It doesn't lose any spontaneity.


WATCH THE FUN FILLED CLIP!!!