Posted by Michael Pinto on Oct 23, 2011 in Animation
On October 23, 1941 the elephant who could use his ears to fly stepped onto the silver screen. Expectations were set low for the film as it was intended originally to be a short, and was done on a low budget to make up for the financial losses from Fantasia. Even though they weren’t trying to push the edge with Dumbo, the strong focus on storytelling and strong characters won over critics. What I love about this film is that Disney wasn’t trying to be realistic as with Snow White, so there’s a great deal of the silly cartoony look which harkened back to their shorts: Read more…
Posted by Michael Pinto on Jul 15, 2010 in Animation
I’m not sure what short this footage is from but it shows a recreated animation meeting at Disney for the 1955 film The Lady and the Tramp. While the meeting itself is clearly staged for the camera it gives a very good insight into the classic Disney animation process from that era where music was integral to the production (I also had no idea that Peggy Lee actually wrote lyrics for Disney!). By the way notice that the scoreboards all have animation peg holes on the bottom of the paper: Read more…
Posted by Michael Pinto on Nov 26, 2009 in Comic Books
Happy Thanksgiving from Fanboy.com! To celebrate we’ve put together a gallery of turkey themed comic books for your entertainment. The one thing you’ll notice is that most of the holiday humor is aimed at younger comic book readers — an audience that both Marvel and DC are rediscovering once again. Shown above is the cover from Superboy #36 which was published in 1954 — the pencils are by Curt Swan and the inks are by Stan Kaye. Read more…
Posted by Michael Pinto on Oct 16, 2009 in Animation
On this day in 1923 two brothers founded an animation studio to produce a series of cartoons for Margaret J. Winkler. Margaret started out as a secretary at Warner Brothers during the silent film era which then branched into cartoons in 1917. Her breakthrough came in 1922 when she put together Pat Sullivan and Felix the Cat. Based upon that success she formed her own distribution company, but had a then falling out with Pat. So Margaret was on the lookout for a replacement when some kid called Walt Disney showed her a pilot reel for a film called Alice’s Wonderland which featured a live-action girl in an animated setting. Read more…
Posted by Michael Pinto on Mar 30, 2009 in Animation
Sadly not many animation fans know who he was, but today is the the 96th birthday of legendary Disney animator Marc Davis who was born on this day in 1913 (and passed away in 2000). Disney had a core of talented animators who were known as “Disney’s Nine Old Men” and Davis was a member of that dream team. His did character design work and animation on Thumper from Bambi (1942), Tinker Bell in Peter Pan (1953) and my favorite Cruella De Vil of 101 Dalmatians (1961). He was also involved in creating many characters for Disneyland rides including working on the costume design for the Pirates of the Caribbean. Here’s an amazing video profile of Marc from the Disney Family Album which will inspire any fanboy: Read more…
If you’re a classic film or TV fanboy you have to check out the LIFE photo archive hosted by Google — it’s like having a personal time machine to view film history. After spending a few hours I found a few gems that are worth sharing, but these are just the tip of the iceberg. Shown above is a 1950 photo of Walt Disney, and below is a 1968 photo of Stanley Kubrick on set of 2001: A Space Odyssey.
How many times to you get to see a rehearsal for a scene in Citizen Kane? This photo is from 1940 and shows Orson Welles at the high point of his career. Read more…
