Ken Glennedy

So, John Kricfalusi has posted up some of "Uncle" Eddie's Tiny Toons drawings on his blog. Interesting how he refers to the characters by the names of their Golden Age counterparts, and as being "babies" despite the fact that they are meant to be age 12-14 or so. I guess the Tiny in the name is kind of confusing, heck, before I saw any episodes, I thought the characters were called "Baby Bugs", "Baby Porky" etc. because that was the convention I knew about. Since I assume John K. knows better than this, I guess he's suggesting that the characters are rip-offs and immature, or something.

Fitzgerald was one of the first directors of the series (along with Ken Boyer, Art Leonardi and Art Vitello), and his name appears as a director on three of the earliest episodes, before his unit is taken over, first by Gerard Baldwin, then by promoted character layout / storyboard artist Rich Arons. After that Fitzgerald continued to serve as a writer and storyboarder (usually for the same unit, now under Rich Arons) and occasional director.

The subject of Kennedy animation crops up a lot in the comments. It has a bad reputation among TTA fans but I personally think it was just sometimes misused. Glen Kennedy himself animated (the majority of?) the first episode "Hare Today, Gone Tomorrow" and the segment "One Minute Til Three". (Sadly neither episode is available on YouTube, but you can find screengrabs at the above links)

In "Hare Today, Gone Tomorrow" the characters are not fully defined yet, and so a more "on-model" animation style might have helped to ground them as in some way consistent characters. "One Minute Til Three" on the other hand, is almost entirely devoted to Plucky's frantic mental state -- there is very little physical movement for the characters - and so Kennedy's wild distortions really make Plucky's feelings come across visually - it would be a pretty bland segment if Plucky stayed on-model the whole time. This is a similar situation to that described by Mark Mayerson in his 1980 article on Jim Tyer (and if you don't know who Jim Tyer is, then read this article and I guarantee you'll be seeking out certain Famous and Terrytoons shorts!).

Actually, Glen Kennedy (or at least Kennedy cartoons), Jim Tyer and John Kricfalusi do intersect in one TTA episode. The villain of the episode "Who Bopped Bugs Bunny" is a rival cartoon star named Stanley the Elephant, designed by John K. (his only connection with TTA) and based on the Terrytoons character Sidney the Elephant, originally animated by... Jim Tyer. Now, Glen Kennedy is only credited as a timing director on that episode, with Namcook Lee as animation director, but the scene where Stanley throws a diva fit with his director looks to my admittedly inexpert eyes like Glen might have animated it. It does look like it was animated by the Silver Age answer to Jim Tyer.

(Feel out of the loop because I'm talking about TTA episodes you've never seen? One solution to that: buy the DVDs! No, I don't get paid to write this, but it would be nice if I did.)

Train of thought

Ever been to the Museum of Transport in Glasgow? As a kid, obviously the preserved steam engines are the highlight. As a former kid, they still look impressive and are still, along with the other exhibits, great as a way of looking back to a past age, but their bright colours of blue, yellow and green somehow make it hard to imagine them being real. Maybe it's because most times one sees a steam train nowadays is in an old black-and-white film or photo, it's as if they really were monochromatic.


I know that pretty much every kid has at least a passing acquaintance with certain brightly coloured fictional locomotives, but I guess, subconsciously if not consciously, it seems as if their bright colours are as much a fantasy as their big grey faces.

Now, despite some momentary lapses on the part of some of my fellow students of 18th century Scotland, I think most people would think if a train showed up in a film set in 1745 they'd realise this was wrong. And yet, there was a railway *line* near Edinburgh from 1722, and one of the battles of the 1745 Jacobite uprising was fought along one! The line was used not by locomotives but by horses pulling wagons.

So, if someone made a film which included the battle, it would be more *accurate* to include the railway line, but it would be more *believable* not to... unless the film also included a scene with a horse pulling a wagon along the line. Which is more important? To portray history as it really was and risk people being pulled out of the film when they think you've made a mistake, or to change the facts so the audience will think you're remaining historically accurate?

You are getting Sleepy... Sleepy... no... not Sleepy, some other guy

The Disney EverNotice site was a favourite of mine in my younger days, until it shut down. Fortunately, with the help of the wayback machine at archive.org, it is (sometimes) able to be seen again. And thanks to Paul Reiter providing a link over on A.FilmL.A., I was able to re-read an odd theory that was put forward on that site.

Visit the EverNotice Snow White page here, and scroll down the post by "Polar Bear" which begins "I've not seen the movie in a few years..." Basically, what the post says is that the character of Sleepy was a last-minute replacement for a different character, and that the evidence to support this is that Sleepy only appears for "a few minutes".

The strangest part of the theory is this: "Polar Bear" identifies another dwarf who appears in most scenes, with "a hatchet face and a red vest" who gets the lines "Goldenrods!" "Do you have to wash where it doesn't show?" and "Was it hard to do?" (in the lead-up to Someday My Prince Will Come).

The implication is that this other dwarf (with at least three lines of dialogue!) is a mysterious un-named character who appears in most scenes *in place* of Sleepy, but that's not really borne out by the film: the description matches Grumpy, Bashful says "Goldenrods" and "Do you have to wash..." and Sneezy (surprisingly, not Sleepy himself) asks "Was it hard to do?"

Incidentally (or not), Michael Barrier says the last dwarf name to be chosen was Sneezy, but that for a few days they were still considering "Deafy" instead. This was before animation began though. Still, you do have to wonder though: Sleepy and Bashful can look almost identical except for the facial expressions, there's a point at the beginning of the "Spooks" sequence where Sneezy seems to turn into Sleepy (scenes 5 and 7 on the draft), and scene 14, described in the draft of the "Entertainment" sequence as "Happy and Doc push Bashful forward" actually has Doc and Sneezy. One wonders if there were any points where one dwarf was redrawn as another...

A closer look at Snow White sequence 4A and 4B: the Heigh-Ho sequences

The drafts for sequence 4A Dwarfs At Mine and sequence 4B Dwarfs March Home From Mine are on A. Film L.A. here.

Apparently, these sequences were nearly cut from the film (Barrier p.225), in
which case the dwarfs would have been introduced in the following sequence when the animals hear their singing in the distance and hurry to watch.

One advantage of keeping them in is the fact that the diamond mine is a good and memorable set-piece. I'm not sure if the individual dwarfs get a better introduction than they would in their next appearance. They are in small groups rather than all at once, but only Dopey and to a lesser extent Doc (and Sleepy I suppose) get a chance to show their personalities. Although Grumpy, Happy, Bashful and Sneezy are introduced in close-ups with individual singing lines, nothing they do or sing indicates what types of characters they are... it was up to the animators to convey personality.

For the close-ups, Bill Roberts introduces Happy and Grumpy, Marvin Woodward introduces Bashful and Sneezy, Les Clark introduces Sleepy and Art Babbitt introduces Doc. Group shots, particularly of the four digging dwarfs, seem to have been fairly arbitrarily cast, with the same group of characters animated by Al Eugster, Marvin Woodward and Shamus Culhane.

Eugster complained that very little of his footage remained in the film. (Barrier p.224) He does have the glory of having animated the very first dwarf scene to appear in the film, but as of the washing sequence (the most recent draft sequence to have been posted up) that seems to be all. We shall see whether any more of his work survived...

Of course, it's supervising animator Fred Moore who gets the main character stuff here, with Doc inspecting the gems and Dopey as his comical assistant, who tries to amuse Doc by placing diamonds over his eyes, accidentally throws himself into the vault and hangs the key up right next to the entrance where anyone can find it!

Frank Thomas' one scene is also of these two characters: a brief shot where Doc calls "Heigh-Ho!" to the other dwarfs to let them know it's time to go home. Thomas was apparently the first of the non-supervising animators to be assigned to the dwarfs (Barrier p.212) and, as with his first assignment in scene 5A where they first meet Snow White, he seems to have been given the material that Fred Moore didn't have time to do and wasn't important enough for him to do -- like a stand-in for a leading actor!

Shamus Culhane leads the dwarfs out of the mine and into the next sequence where the dwarfs return home. Perhaps in an attempt to acquaint the audience with their individual appearances, the first scene of sequence 4B: Dwarfs March Home From The Mine was to be close-ups on each dwarf, animated by the other dwarf supervisor, Vladimir "Bill" Tytla. The scene did not survive into the film, and the numbering (it is numbered 3 but placed before scenes 1 and 2) suggest that the directors weren't sure exactly where to place it anyway. Some nice scenes by Shamus Culhane, but unfortunately the effects animator responsible for the waterfall is not identified on the draft.

A closer look at sequence 3B - Snow White meets animals

Definitely a Snow White craze - while at work this evening I saw a poster for a pantomime version of the story, and I overheard part of a lecture which quoted from a girl who had been to see another pantomime production of it in 1938. Probably one of the Disney-approved ones as they seemed to run the racket on Snow White performances at that time.

OK, open up the drafts on A. Film L.A. and stick Snow White in your DVD player, it's time to take a closer look at scene 3B - Snow White meets animals!

In Michael Barrier's book "Hollywood Cartoons" (which is what I'll probably mean when I refer to "Barrier" from now on) he mentions one of the problems which faced Disney and his employees during the making of the film was the casting of the dwarfs. It was impossible for one animator to handle all the dwarfs' footage, nor was it feasible to assign one animator to each dwarf as they spent so much time all on screen at once, interacting with each other. The result was to have several animators assign to the dwarfs, all of whom at some point animated *all* of the dwarfs, and therefore needing to learn the right way to portray all seven characters.

Presumably no such problem existed with the other group of characters drawn by a group of animators: the forest animals. They're less important to the story and less differentiated, with many being generic rabbits, squirrels and chipmunks. It's interesting to compare the designs to those used in Bambi, originally intended to be the second feature. They are more simply drawn than in the later feature, and I find this makes the rabbits more appealing than Thumper. The deer, on the other hand, I find both designs appealing, but the simpler Snow White design is probably less suited for a feature's main characters.

There are a few animals in this and later sequences who stand out as distinctive characters. Most memorable perhaps is the turtle, but there is also a family of deer and of bluebirds. No animator seems to have been consistenly assigned to these characters with the exception of the three bluebirds, who are usually handled by Eric Larson, including in a substantial section where the youngest of the birds sings with Snow White and hits a "sour note". This scene was obviously added to at a late stage, perhaps even during animation, because as Hans notes, scene numbers run from 15B to 15BBBBB!

Other than that, there are occasional consistent assignments: for example, Larson also animates both scene 9 where a group of squirrels flees into a tree trunk and 10A where they emerge from holes in the tree trunk. However, some assignments seem fairly arbitrary: while Bernard Garbutt animates scene 8 - a group of animals (inluding the doe and fawn) scurrying away, over a log, after Snow White wakes up, and scene 10B, featuring the same animals on the same background, the same set-up is animated at the beginning of the sequence in scene 3 by James Algar. No animator seems to "own" any of the animal characters, except for Larson with the three bluebirds.

All the animators working on this sequence were in Hamilton Luske's unit, as he was the supervising animator for Snow White and the animals. Barrier mentions he had seven animators in his unit: the three who animated the heroine (Grim Natwick, Jack Campbell and Robert Stokes) and the four who animated the animals (who he doesn't name but are presumably the four who animated them in this sequence: Eric Larson, Milt Kahl, James Algar and Bernard Garbutt). Luske also animated the Huntsman in sequence 3A and I'd expect he was the supervisor for the Prince as well, as he was animated by Grim Natwick and Milt Kahl. There are also two more mysterious names on the draft: Maxwell Gray and Tony Rivera. Gray animates the Huntsman in sequence 2B and Rivera's name appears alongside Campbell's, seemingly animating Snow White as well, in sequence 3A. It seems likely they were Luske and Campbell's assistants, respectively, and were assisting on the Snow White animation in this scene as well, but as the animals were also handled by members of Luske's unit, who knows?

Ham Luske actually drew a few of the animal scenes in this sequence himself, including scene 10, the first to feature the bluebird family who, as I mentioned before, were handled by Eric Larson the rest of the time. I wonder why this is. Did he have the technical expertise to animate the fancy flying they do, or did some person in authority feel that the supervisor should do the scene which introduces the characters?

In general Eric Larson animates the most scenes in this sequence and probably is most consistently assigned to specific characters. It's no surprise he became the supervising animator for all the (less anthropomorphic) animal characters in Pinocchio.

The draft Hans has been posting is not a final draft and so there are some interesting differences between it and the finished film. It contains several deleted scenes - this sequence has only one, 27A, and it already has a big question mark over it. There's also a small mistake: scene 15F has the same description as scene 15E, and should be something like "quails come out of cave". Other sequences contain many more scenes that were cut (or changed) later on -- keep checking both A. Film L.A. and this blog to find out more about them!

Snow White drafts!

Hans Perk has started posting the Snow White animator draft to coincide with the release of the "Plantinum Edition". Will this be the start of a Snow White craze of 2009, like the Pinocchio craze of 2007? If so, I'm not going to be late this time! While I don't have any studio documents myself, I thought I would post some of my own thoughts and discoveries about the information on the draft Hans has so kindly decided to provide.

The casting of the early features interests me... unlike the later films which Hans has posted the drafts for, in Pinocchio and Snow White there were units of animators assigned to each character. We often read about how Snow White was animated by Hamilton Luske (supervising animator), Grim Natwick, Jack Campbell and Robert Stokes (and there's a great article about it here), some of whom also worked on the other "realistic" human characters (Natwick on the Prince, Stokes on the Queen). There also seem to have been units assigned to two distinct *groups* of characters -- the dwarfs and the forest creatures. In the case of the dwarfs in particular, this type of casting seems to have caused a few problems, as recounted in Michael Barrier's book "Hollywood Cartoons", and it will be interesting to see how this is reflected in the assignment of scenes to animators. So you can expect quite a few more posts here responding to the Snow White drafts posted on A. Film L.A.

How dumb do they think kids' TV fans are?

When CITV stopped showing Tiny Toon Adventures at some point in the mid-90s, it was time to rely on buying videos. And thus I discovered the "volumes" of the series on video. These were not the motherlodes of silver-age goodness that the Volume 1 and 2 DVDs are today.

Volume One had New Class Day (segments), Kon-Ducki (full), Toons Take Over (full) and What Makes Toons Tick. It promised a "bonus 20 minutes" but there was none to be found - the small print explained quietly that this meant future volumes would only have three episodes on them.








Then came Volume Two, with Weekday Afternoon Live (full), A Cat's Eye View (segments), Acme Cable TV (full) and Love Disconnection (segments). You might notice that this video had four episodes on it as well. In fact, there was no indication on the back of the box that Love Disconnection was even on the video so maybe someone slipped it on in secret, who knows?







Then there was Volume Three. The blurb on the back announced that the episodes would be Duck In The Dark, Little Cake Of Horrors, Night of the Living Pets and Hare-Raising Night. If you know your TTA well, or take a look at the Tiny Toon Adventures Reference Guide, you'll realise that only Hare Raising Night is an episode - the rest are individual segments, from three different episodes. On the video the first three segments were packaged together like one episode, introduced by a clip from Love Disconnection - which, if you'll remember, was part of the previous volume! To make matters worse, the voice cast lists included the names of the episodes the segments came from, which increased the feeling of being ripped off (there's an episode called Best O' Plucky Duck Day??? why are we only seeing one-third of it?).

Next came Volume Four. I never bought that because the blurb on the back made it clear that it was just Volume One with a new box. Although it's possible it was actually *bits* of Volume One with a new box.