Great Jim Tyer Comic

If ever there was a pure cartoonist who took advantage of everything a cartoon can do better than any other medium it was Jim Tyer.

http://comicrazys.wordpress.com/2008/06/06/mighty-mouse-the-perils-of-pearl-pureheart-jim-tyer/

I don't do many posts about him because he gives young cartoonists the wrong idea, namely that there are no rules.

I would say that "There are no rules for someone with super talent, tons of skill and knowledge and control over his work, and a place (like Terrytoons) where breaking the rules is pretty much the only way to get the otherwise conservative nature of the studio to do anything entertaining." That's a lot of conditions!

Jim Tyer has great draftsmanship (drawing skill). He knows how things work, but then chooses to let his imagination take his knowledge and bend it to do highly amusing and inventive work. Sometimes with control too.

His rules don't apply to someone who is not already highly skilled and talented. I love the guy, but this post might explain why I don't promote him more often on my public blog.

I do in private to my super skilled cartoon peers.

We live in a world where skill and draftsmanship and professionalism has almost vanished, so I am trying help bring it back before we embark on pure unbridled creativity again. You have to learn to walk before you run as you've heard before.

I have a tape I made 12 years ago of a bunch of Tyer's funniest Terrytoons scenes all strung together in a row. If I can get it digitized, I'll put it up.

Gandy Goose and Sourpuss

When I was a kid, I loved Terrytoons. I still do! There was a Saturday Morning Mighty Mouse Show that was really cool.It had bumpers with Mighty Mouse riding a rocket and talking to us in a different voice than he had in the cartoons.


Then they would show classic Terrytoons from the 40s and 50s.

These were fully animated but I knew there was something unique and strange about them. They were good but sort of slapdash at the same time.

I also had super 8 silent movies that I ran over and over for my friends. Woody Woodpecker, Zippy The Chimp, Ub Iwerk's Puss In Boots and a Gandy Goose and Sourpuss cartoon.
The cartoon was a take off on Mickey's Trailer. I must have watched that cartoon a million times.


Terrytoons made a practice of taking cartoons that were hits 10 years earlier and copying them using their own characters, now that the gags were completely out of date. It's a very ignorant yet funny practice. Joe Barbera would do something similar all through the 60s. He was always behind the times, but in a really funny way - like the episodes where Fred would sing Rock 'N' Roll.Gandy is a loveable homosexual. Sourpuss was a mean curmudgeon.
Gandy and Sourpuss had a funny relationship. They slept together and would invade each other's dreams. Sourpuss was the asshole character and Gandy loved him nonetheless. Their relationship inspired Ren and Stimpy.

Later when I teamed up with Ralph, he let me explore bizarre domestic situations in the Bakshi Adventures Of Mighty Mouse.

It was all practice for the Ren and Stimpy Show and my other cartoons. There is something inherently fascinating to me about domestic squabbles. They are a never ending supply of funny material.

Here, why don't you bone-up on Gandy and Sourpuss and I will reward your research on Friday.

Bill Tytla - Terrytoons - Pose to Pose Animation - character with fly swatter

POSE TO POSE ANIMATION

I think this cartoon is inspired by The Dover Boys. The poses are extreme and graphic. The villain is very similar to Dan Backslide.

Terrytoons had a funny habit of copying what other studios invented and then misunderstanding it. Usually they waited a few years until after a west coast studio made a revolutionary cartoon before they would copy it, but this time they were right on the heels of The Dover Boys.
I'm pretty sure this is Bill Tytla. He is animating pose to pose, as the animators in The Dover Boys, but the way he gets to each pose is different. In the Dover Boys, the animators use big blurred inbetweens that have come to be known as "smears".

POSE TO POSE means you draw all the key poses first and time them so that they have the most frames on screen. The motion is less important than the held poses. That way you really see the poses, as opposed to "straight-ahead" animation which tends to keep the character moving constantly and you don't plan the poses ahead of time. You just go where your pencil takes you.

Here the inbetweening is more evenly spaced and the effect is softer than in Jones' pose to pose style.

It's possible that Tytla did the main poses and someone else did the animation.

The timing isn't as snappy as the Jones and Bobe Cannon stuff. Maybe that's because of Terrytoon's inbetweeners. Who knows?

It still looks really cool and cartoony and fun! I like this kind of thing a lot better than when animators try to imitate what they think is "realistic", because realistic animation looks corny and falls far short of actual real life acting.

These poses are purposely stylized and wacky. A real person would never strike these poses, but in a cartoon you totally accept them, because cartoons are supposed to be silly.

CLICK HERE TO SEE CLIP! (1.11mb)

Carlo Vinci Babe Stimulates an Ass

This is some pretty serious heavy petting. I bet you are jealous!






"Irish Sweepstakes"(1934), Terrytoons



Clip:











Here's a little music video Hendry Porch put together to help you learn how to tell Carlo's style.


http://www.animationarchive.org/pics/flint3carlovinci.mov

Bill Tytla - Terrytoons - drunk mouse

Bill Tytla's known for his weighty powerful style of animation, but he seems able to jump to other styles pretty easily too.

This is him drawing and animating really cute. From a Mighty Mouse cartoon.
It's probably partly inspired by his pal Art Babbitt's Country Mouse animation, but I think this is cuter.










There is a lot of great animation in Terrytoons but the studio gets overlooked by many people who love animation and my guess is because it had a bad inking and and inbetweening department.

I noticed as a kid that the animation seemed sloppier because the characters wobbled around, and I later realized it's not the animation, but the tracings. Ever see those bad color retracings of old black and white cartoons? Like Popeye and Porky Pig? Those terrible ugly tracings ruined those great cartoons. It's not that bad in Terrytoons but it makes a lot of animators and historians kind of turn away from the wonderful animation in many of them.

(They'll all say it's the bad stories, but that doesn't add up. Disney had terrible stories and people love those cartoons ... because of the animation...and they have tight finishes.)

Some great animators who worked at Terry through the years:

Carlo Vinci
Jim Tyre
Bill Tytla
Connie Rasinski
Frank Moser
Ralph Bakshi!
I think Art Babbitt may have worked there early on...
I actually love Jerry Shields (if that's the name of the guy who doesn't do overlapping action)



CLICK HERE TO SEE small VERSION! (4.8mb)





CLICK HERE TO SEE LARGE VERSION! (11mb)

Bill Tytla - Terrytoons - cartoony animation

Here's a Terrytoon inspired by Chuck Jones' "Dover Boys". This fun animation is by the great and versatile Bill Tytla.

















I actually like this even better than some of his more famous Disney animation. It's less overworked and not meant to be competing with live action. The poses are very cartoony.




CLICK HERE TO WATCH CLIP!

More on Tytla:
http://www.animationarchive.org/2007/02/filmography-tytla-and-terry-jekyll-and.html

http://www.animationarchive.org/2006/12/biography-bill-tytla-part-one.html

My Lady's Garden - Carlo Vinci - beat up the pervert

Here's a wonderful kiddie picture with a common cartoon theme.

Title:


"My Lady's Garden"(1934), Terrytoons

Alternate Title:





It's amazing how many early cartoons had would-be rapists in them. Spiders are almost always rapists and they don't even want their own kind. They like mere six legged chicks.



Clip 1:





















The funny part about all these old cartoons is that the little guy is always able to beat the crap out of the big hairy brute. They never even bother to explain it. Like Puddy the fly was bitten by a radioactive Ultimate Fighter and then gained super strength or something. Nope.

Merely because the little guy is good, that's enough to beat up a huge bastard. Today, the executives would make you explain why the little guy can vanquish the big mean monster. "Kids won't understand it unless it's logical." or some kinda poppycock like that. Maybe because executives are bad and ugly and they have vanquished the good and kindly cartoonists. For now.




Clip 2:


















In the 30s you didn't need an excuse to be entertaining. You just did it and no one ever questioned it.



Carlo Vinci must have animated a hundred of these scenes where the beautiful girl's chastity was threatened but ultimately was preserved for another day.



If you are interested in seeing more perverted cartoons, write to world renowned animation archaeologist Jerry Beck at CartoonBrew.
http://www.cartoonresearch.com/garagesale.html

Slow But Sure - Carlo Vinci

Wow, before the censorship code happened in the mid 1930s cartoons were full of erotica!

Terrytoons had some hilarious titles:
Busted Blossoms
In My Lady's Garden

and this baby...



"Slow But Sure" (1934), TerrytoonsThis is some very early Carlo Vinci animation. Carlo is one of the most unique animation stylists in history. He moved things like no one else. His specialties were sexy girls and dance animation.


clip 1:



Carlo was way ahead of his time. His animation is much more advanced than his contemporaries. He was doing squash and stretch, overlapping action, follow through and animation techniques before they were officially invented at Disney's.

In these same cartoons, there are animators moving almost stick figure like characters, while Carlo's animation of the same characters is very much alive.

In "Slow But Sure", the hare races the tortoise, but stops midway for some action from a sexy bunny who eagerly complies.













clip 2:

That's some pretty detailed anatomy for a kiddie cartoon!

































I'm gonna have pizza with Carlo's granson John Vinci tomorrow, so I'll try to get some good stories about his talented Grandpa for you...




clip 3:

Carlo was a dancer himself and you can certainly tell from his animation that he knew how to shake booty.












CLICK HERE TO WATCH THESE THREE CLIPS ALL TOGETHER!

The scene after this sure looks suspicious, like they did something more thrilling than skating and dancing!

Terrytoons and a lot of lost cartoons are full of funanimation styles that have disappeared, but thanks to Jerry Beck and Mark Kausler and a few other folks, the cartoons are being rediscovered. I hope we can revive some of the techniques that have been lost to time. Wait'll you see some great Bill Tytla animation from Terrytoons. I like it even more than his Disney animation!

If you are interested in getting some of these long lost cartoons, write to world renowned animation archaeologist Jerry Beck at CartoonBrew.

Marc Duckwalk Deckter procured these great images and clips for you, so give him a big thank you!

I Found Old Cartoons To Buy! The Farmer Alfalfa Show! Jim Tyre! Carlo Vinci! B and W Eros!

Holy crap! I found a great site where you can get tons of old cartoons that they don't run on TV anymore!

WORLD'S BEST COMICS!

http://wbcomicshop.com/shop/searchBase.asp?stS=&selectcategory=234

It's almost impossible to find B&W cartoons anywhere. They don't run them on TV because the execs tell me that kids don't like B&W. I know this to be a lie, because I have little cousins and whenever I visit them I bring armloads of old cartoons-Betty Boop, Popeye, Terrytoons and stuff, and the kids sit in front of the TV in awe! They laugh, rock back and forth cluthing their little toes and then after the cartoons are finished they act them all out then watch them all again! And again and again!

There was a kind of humor in the old cartoons that you can't find in modern cartoons and even in the great 1940s color cartoons.

Terrytoons from the 1930s have these lost styles of animation that later disappeared as animation techniques became more standardized and influenced by Disney.

Carlo Vinci was way ahead of his time. In the late 20s he had already figured out squash and stretch, he could animate dancing, he animated really sensual little furries. Each animator was figuring out how animation works in his own way. There were no rules and the gags are cartoony and crazy.

Farmer Alfalfa cartoons are completely wacky and unpredictable and a lot of pure cartoony fun.

50s TV Cartoons Had Cool Packaging!

Hey, in the 50s TV was a lot smarter than today. They had a great idea for showing old cartoons.
I remember when I was a consultant for the Cartoon Network, a few years ago, they used to have these 3 hour blocks where they would throw together unrelated old cartoons from different eras and studios and give the block a retarded name like "Down Wit' Droopy D". This was a dead giveaway that these were "old" or "used" cartoons. Kids would know this and the feel cheated, because kids think that new means better.

In the 50s, they would take old cartoons and make half hour shows out of them. They would animate a new fun title sequence and write a rousing theme song-like the Bugs Bunny Show's "This Is It". Then in between the classic cartoons, they would get real animators to animate "bumper" scenes of the characters talking to the audience which made the kids think the characters were real. It made the cartoons feel special and new. This was the inspiration for the bumpers in the Ren and Stimpy Show.

The studios that now own all these old cartoons tore off all these great title sequences and threw out the bumpers, so most of these shows are lost.

THE FARMER ALFALFA SHOW!

Here is a great discovery. The Farmer Alfalfa Show from the 1950s.

The shows are intact as actually aired on TV 50 years ago! With:

Rare classic Terrytoons-even black and white ones!

New Titles animated in the 1950s by Carlo Vinci and the old Terrytoons animators- but -here's the really cool part- animated in the 1930s style! So...it's like they had to remember how they animated 25 years earlier-so it has a bit of 50s UPA influenced style (what they were doing at the time), mixed with the typical Terrytoons style - mixed with the rubber hose style! It's a really funny combination!

Jim Tyer Bumpers!

Between the cartoons are these weird non sequitor bumpers animated by the craziest animator of all time!

The Original Commercials!

As in all old TV shows the programs were directly sponsored, and the characters from the cartoons in Farmer Alfafa do these long elaborate commercials for Tootsie Rolls. Animated by the real Terrytoons animators! So cool
I just ordered a whole bunch of the Farmer Alfalfa Show
http://wbcomicshop.com/shop/searchBase.asp?stS=alfalfa&selectcategory=0&1=Go&kfg=fromsearch
Now I'm gonna dig through the rest of the cartoons at World's Best Comics and dig for more animated treasure...

Krakatoa - Carlo Vinci dancing

Just to put it in context, here is some of Carlo's "full-animation" from a 40s Terrytoon. He was using his broken-wrist/collapsing joints theories way back when. The Terrytoons directors always gave him the dance scenes and you can spot his style a mile away.
Carlo moves things as if he invented animation himself and had never seen anyone else's animation. He made up all his own rules. He doesn't use simple lines of action like the Disney animators did. Instead he uses zigzagged poses that to most animators would seem awkward.
I used to notice that about his Flintstone poses when I was a kid and I loved it. I learned early that the kind of stuff I liked most didn't fit a mold. It had to be skilled, but also needed to stand out and be a little "off" - like Carlo Vinci.






Carlo Vinci is one of the most original animators in history. I will show you some of his early 30s stuff soon. It's still recognizably him but a different and cuter drawing style.

Krakatoa01dancing
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Krakatoa02dancing
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Krakatoa03dancing
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