“Once Upon A Time” (1936)
“Are you a REAL Driver?” You have to give Metropolitan life insurance some credit for trying. In 1936, they hired Audio Productions to make an animated film on driver safety,…
Category Archives: THUNDERBEAN THURSDAY
“How Animated Cartoons are Made” (1919)
In honor of the opening of Watch Me Move, an exhibit celebrating animated films that starts today at the Detroit Institute of Arts, here is How Animated Cartoons are Made,…
Thunderbean Thursday: Hitting the Sauce
There sure are a lot of drunk characters in old cartoons…. Drunkeness seems to be one of the most popular of themes in Golden Age Animation. I never really understood…
Scrappy’s Art Gallery, Duracolor and Ted Eshbaugh’s Scrappy?
Just a short one today….. Scrappy is my favorite character. Maybe it’s because he often spends most of his own cartoons in a less than happy state, rarely finding solace….
A Lantz comparison: ‘My Pal Paul’ and ‘Hot and Cold’
Bill Nolan is one of the truly unsung heros of cartoons and character animation, and likely the most influential animator through the 20’s in terms of character animation and design/…
Red Raven Records and Creepy “Teddy Bear” Themes
This was one of my favorite things when I was a kid – Red Raven ‘Movie’ Records! These worked sort of like a zoetrope, with a continuous animated movie drawn…
What is “A Fabletoon”?
It’s been more than a busy week here and continues to be, but a cartoon showing is still in order! When I was first collecting cartoons, I found this film…
Fleischer Fun, Part 2: “Gulliver’s Travels” and “Modeling” Restored!
Out Of The Inkwell: “Modeling” Here is the Fleischer cartoon Modeling from 1921. It’s fairly early in the Fleischer Brother’s productions, and features some great early Stop Motion animation as…
Fleischer Fun, part 1: ‘Singin’ like the Birdies Sing’
I think we’re in pretty good times for old Fleischer animation, or, at least, better than in many years. I think it’s safe to say that any fan of 1930’s…
The Gingerbread Castle
Many years back, I was at a film show hunting through a milk crate full of 16mm prints. Film shows used to work like this – similar to a garage…
