Thanks to Drawn!, I discovered Hans Bacher’s archive of Animation Treasures. Bacher collects, restores and annotates rare frame grabs and background paintings from classic animations. From What’s Opera Doc? to Max Fleischer’s Technicolor Superman cartoons. For anyone with an interest in animation, it’s a wonderful find. Even for mere mortals, it’s still rather lovely.
Head there now.
Fleischer’s Superman animations can be downloaded here and here. Magnetic telescopes, mechanical monsters, foreign people, Lois in a jam! Something for everyone. Related, and possibly NSFW, Man of Steel, Woman of Kleenex.
I’ll be away tomorrow, but, please, dry your eyes; I’ll post fresh ephemera on Friday.
Fleischer’s Superman cartoons are some of the greatest Art Deco art ever created.
I was exceedingly tickled to see the mechanical monsters in the film Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow were homages to some of the Fleischer Superman foes.
Yes, it’s heady stuff. I’m tickled by the mix of WWII overtones and Norman Bel Geddes styling. A few years earlier, Geddes had designed the General Motors ‘Futurama’ exhibit at the 1939 New York World’s Fair (with badges announcing “I have seen the future”). I’m guessing it had a big effect on the Fleischer brothers.
I think the style heavily influenced this game I’m looking forward to.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NaF638MBSAE
Dear lord. They’re like a heavily armed Village People from Hell. Why do I suspect AC1 is a hardcore gaming enthusiast…?
More of a wannabe game developer. You can only do commercial database programming for so long before your mind implodes with tedium.
Here’s the concept art for one of the maps in the game
http://www.intothepixel.com/preview.php?72&year=2007
It’s very similar IMHO
Thanks for those links, David, I remain an unending fan of the manually drawn cells motion cartoons. Indeed, Chuck Jones’s “Bugs Bunnny” is one of my top fifty documents – at http://tinyurl.com/ozn46 – filed under 1938.
That said, I retain a certain degree of respect for the early attempts of the Supermarionation folks, as described here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supermarionation
For your viewing pleasure:
Fireball XL5 (1962)
http://video.google.ca/videoplay?docid=-6793075531460196808
Stingray (1963)
http://video.google.ca/videoplay?docid=1391221094915607867
Thunderbirds (1964)
http://video.google.ca/videoplay?docid=-7716471414993063970