Monday, June 19, 2006
The Dark Ages of Animation:
When I was at the mall last Friday I stopped by SunCoast Video (which is going out of business at Laguna Hills) and picked up King Kong the Animated Series Volume 2 for $3 and change.
One of the episodes on this disk had a prominent place in last year`s Worst Cartoons Ever screening that Jerry Beck put on at San Diego Comic Con.
As deserving as this 1966 Arthur Rankin Jr. and Jules Bass produced, Toei Studio animated gem is of a place of honor in Jerry`s screening the bonus material, Tom of T.H.U.M.B. out does it grown for grown. No wonder we kids that grown up on this Saturday morning fare dropped out and turned on.
So why were all of the Saturday morning animations of this time period so banal? It is not that there weren`t talented animators working at the time. Hell, all of the animators that could hold a job during the dark ages had real talent or they wouldn`t have gotten the few jobs available. It wasn`t that all the top storymen were dead and gone. Their where around just nobody would buy their good ideas. It wasn`t the lack of good producers, Rankin and Bass have done some classic stop motion that I truly love.
It was the times, it was what the sponsors wanted, it was the pressure of the market place. It was the bad taste of the age. But the sponsors don`t get the stigma, it is laid on the victims of their bad taste.
How sad to be a master animator in the bad years between 1955 to 1975. Remember, Chuck Jones had to pitch Grinch 26 times before he could get the money to make his Christmas masterpiece.
Enough of that, here are screen grabs of these Saturday morning gems.
¶ 8:03 AM 
When I was at the mall last Friday I stopped by SunCoast Video (which is going out of business at Laguna Hills) and picked up King Kong the Animated Series Volume 2 for $3 and change.
One of the episodes on this disk had a prominent place in last year`s Worst Cartoons Ever screening that Jerry Beck put on at San Diego Comic Con.
As deserving as this 1966 Arthur Rankin Jr. and Jules Bass produced, Toei Studio animated gem is of a place of honor in Jerry`s screening the bonus material, Tom of T.H.U.M.B. out does it grown for grown. No wonder we kids that grown up on this Saturday morning fare dropped out and turned on.
So why were all of the Saturday morning animations of this time period so banal? It is not that there weren`t talented animators working at the time. Hell, all of the animators that could hold a job during the dark ages had real talent or they wouldn`t have gotten the few jobs available. It wasn`t that all the top storymen were dead and gone. Their where around just nobody would buy their good ideas. It wasn`t the lack of good producers, Rankin and Bass have done some classic stop motion that I truly love.
It was the times, it was what the sponsors wanted, it was the pressure of the market place. It was the bad taste of the age. But the sponsors don`t get the stigma, it is laid on the victims of their bad taste.
How sad to be a master animator in the bad years between 1955 to 1975. Remember, Chuck Jones had to pitch Grinch 26 times before he could get the money to make his Christmas masterpiece.
Enough of that, here are screen grabs of these Saturday morning gems.
¶ 8:03 AM
