Art Lozzi 3- HB starts to standardize

HANNA BARBERA STARTS TO STANDARDIZE

There are a lot of variables that go into the look or "style" of a cartoon.

Every artist that touches the cartoon and every mood he/she or it is in when contributing, and the tastes of the bosses, the mood of the era...all these go into the feel and look of the final image and film. ...If they work at a studio that allows them to have creative input...

Change any one of these variables and leave the rest the same and you'll get a different look. Change them all and it will be a drastically different look.

These BGs are done by my hero Art Lozzi in 1961. They look completely different than the BGs in the previous posts about Art. The brush technique is still great, so why does it look so much "straighter" than the striking and fun 1958 HB cartoons?

Art Lozzi said:
As HB grew, we “unified styles” As the bg dept grew, we did our best to unify our styles, although Bob G always was recognizable, and Montealegre was too. Few of the other bg painters at Hanna-Barbera actually attended Fine Arts colleges. They took art lessons or went to Chouinard's -period. My art training began, as I told you, from the age of 8. This is basically the explanation of how -to me- green is not simply green. There are dozens of other tones included: blue-greens, myriads of shades of forest colors. I don't know if this can be called a theory but it certainly helps explain particular tastes...and techniques. It also touches on "how you choose your colors, textures". They're not actually chosen in the sense of selecting; they come out, I guess, depending on what my mood was the day I began those bgs. I think by 'frisket' you mean the cut-out cel we used to sponge in a color, especially for the repeats?

"Threadbare Bear" (1961)

Art's explanation doesn't answer quite everything. The 2 main things I see that are really different are:

1) The Layouts are bland and evenly composed, not as graphic or cartoony as 3 years earlier

2) The colors are realistic. Skies are blue. Grass is olive green.

Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera threw away the great creative opportunity they had with their quick success in TV.

All the elements that made their early cartoons so unique, fun, cartoony and imaginative were year by year sanded down and blanded out until all the cartoons began looking the same. And sounding and acting the same, and repeating the same stories over and over again. The irony is, as they had more money to put in the cartoons, they took out more of the creative elements.

These Lozzi BGs are still great, even though they aren't as obviously striking as the earlier ones. The caves here are much like the great caves and rocks he did in the Flintstones-and I'll go into that later.

When Huckleberry Hound came out in 1958 something happened that had happened in many cartoon series and comics earlier-a secondary star became more popular than the title character.

Yogi Bear was so popular, that 2 years after he debuted in the Huckleberry Hound cartoon, Hanna and Barbera did something that actually took common sense-something they usually were devoid of.

They spun off Yogi into his own show in 1960. Makes perfect sense right?

But while they did that, they made a whole bunch of decisions that I would call completely against any logic or sense. They purposely undid their good luck in discovering a star character by accident.

The original premise of Yogi and the characters that worked with him-Ranger Smith and Boo Boo - was a perfect sitcom.

Yogi is an overbearing slovenly greedy shifty but lovable oaf.

Boo Boo was his naive underage conscience who goes along with Yogi's schemes but always tries to steer him to do the right and responsible thing.

Ranger Smith is the republican authority figure whose mission in life is to make forest animals follow his regimented man made ways.

Boo Boo is always torn by his loyalty to Yogi and his obedience to Ranger Smith.

It's a perfect formula for conflict and laughs and imaginative stories.

Had HB taken all the great elements of the early cartoons and built on them and made more and more cartoony and imaginative cartoons and utilized the personalities of their characters, they could have saved animation and started another golden age.

Instead, when they made the Yogi Bear Show they must have assumed that since he was so popular, they wouldn't need to pay much attention to the cartoons.

One of the things that made the 1958 Yogis unique from each other was that there was a different mix and match of artists on each cartoon.

In Yogi's own show they decided to give every cartoon to the same layout artist ... and the weakest one of all.

The layout artist back then had a lot to do with the look and the acting in a cartoon. He would draw all the main poses of the characters and their expressions and he would design, draw and compose the backgrounds around the characters. When stars like Ed Benedict, Mike Lah or Walt Clinton drew a show it added a lot of style and life to the episodes. Animators like Carlo Vinci and Ed Love would use the poses and then add some of their own and the combination of styles made every cartoon look and feel new and different and alive.

You would see these same animators animate from Tony Rivera's layouts and the cartoons were a lot weaker -really primitive actually.

I used to watch these badly drawn Yogi cartoons, not knowing who drew them and just wondering why some Yogis looked like a kid drew them. I thought it was funny, until I realized there were so many of them. Mike Fontanelli and I, after watching the Huckleberry Hound DVD and being amazed at the variety of styles in it, cracked open his DVD set of the Yogi Bear show and watched a couple whole sides of Yogi cartoons in succession. We were stunned. Every one had terrible character drawings and bland background layouts. Many of the paintings were still good technically and interesting but had lost the charm and surprise of the 1958 stuff.

Even the music was different-it was now depressing. The voices were still professional but less distinct and had fallen into formula line reading rhythms, although Don Messick still did some hilarious acting for Ranger Smith-if only the artists had taken advantage of it!

Now, while sabotaging the creativity and fun of their most popular characters seems kind of crazy, Bill and Joe went even further!

Since Yogi was no longer in the Huckleberry Hound Show that was still running with new episodes on TV, they had to replace his spot with new characters. So what did they do? They invented a fake Yogi and Boo Boo!

Instead of bears they are wolves. Insane!

But this time the chemistry of the shifty oaf and his little buddy just isn't there.

Why would they purposely undermine their own star characters by competing directly with them and watering down two shows at once?

This became the pattern for Hanna Barbera (and the rest of the cartoon business) for decades to come. Eventually they would do cartoons with their star characters and they took out every part of the characters' personality that made them successful in the first place. Yogi eventually became a citizen of the world and flew around in Noah's Ark saving the environment!

All this bad decision making that gave HB the horrible name it had later started really early in their TV career. Studios today, without even realizing it still follow the self-sabotaging formulas devised at the Hanna Barbera studio during the 1960s and 70s.

Here's some fake Yogi and Boo Boo:

Hokey Wolf "Hokey Dokey" (1960)

Hokey Wolf "Pushing Wolf Around" (1960)
Look how skinny the lines are around the characters now and how uncartoony everything looks.








No more one of a kind poses or expressions.

Hokey Wolf "Too Much Too Bear" (1960)







Hokey Wolf "Phony-o-Juliet" (1960)



Hokey Wolf "Robot Plot" (1960)


Completely symmetrical composition.


Hokey Wolf "Which Witch is Which" (1960)

Here comes the garish colors!!

What a strange thing to do with a studio full of some of the greatest talent in the history of animation. You can have all the talent in the world in your studio and not know how to take advantage of it. Just design a system that doesn't allow the talent to get their stuff on the screen.

I understand when an executive run studio is set up that way since they naturally fear creativity, but when artists themselves do it, it baffles me.

For shame.

Color Theory 7 - color isolated from detailed technique-Yogi Bear "High Fly Guy", 1958

News blast from Art Lozzi-Frank Tipper

Hi John,

What're you doing working Sundays? Me too.

Some color idea sketches I did for a real outdoor Jellystone Park? No, I can't say I remember any specific one. You keep asking if I remember details from 45 yrs ago. Some I do. I find it amusing, but fun. I wanted to ask you how you know it's my work. From the titles? From a particular style?
Frank Tipper? Never worked with him. Gawd! Wasn't he from the late 30's, early 40's? Wasn't he associated with early Alex Lovy. I'm much later. I was 1 year old when he started.
I read you daily now, with my morning coffee. I'll check the one about how H-B gradually became bland. It was obviously because of the too many cooks in the kitchen. Gone was the sparkle and the crystalline clinks. This is why I tell you how glad I was when I quit at the time I did.

Happy day.
Best,
Art L.

Here's a cartoon without the credits. In the 80s they used to run all these cartoons on USA's Cartoon Express-complete with the title credits and that's how I began to know what the names of all the animators were whose styles I had recognized since I was a kid.


This was also the first time I ever saw the cartoons in color and it was a revelation. I never realized how candy like and cartoony they were. I picked out Art's as my favorite BGs but liked most of them in general.Then USA decided to add more commercials per hour in their cartoon block so they started cutting off the credits to make time to sell you "My Little Fetus" and "Erotic Leg Warmer Workout Tapes" for babies.
Years later, when Turner bought Hanna Barbera, Cartoon Network decided to run the HB cartoons on their new channel-but they couldn't find the titles! Whoever edited them out of the cartoons cut them off the original masters!!! Aaargh!

Can you believe how stupid people in high positions in entertainment are??

I think since then someone at either Cartoon Network or now Warner's (the latest owners) have been finding some of the titles and putting them back on-but they haven't found them all yet so some history is still erased.

Of course while restoring the titles they've also gone in and changed colors and DVNRed a lot of the cartoons and added further tampering, but not as badly as they have ruined the Warner Bros. and many MGM cartoons.

So I don't know who painted this cartoon, but I'm guessing it might be Frank Tipper-who I know nothing about. The technique on this cartoon is simpler and the brush stokes and lines less confident and stylish than either Monte's or Art's. It looks like another cartoon that has Tipper's name in the credits.
These stills illustrate a point I have strongly made in earlier posts about color: They are painted with a limited palette-that is, just a small range of basic colors.

But within each color, there are slight variations in tint, hue and value. Look at the hills and tress. The whole area is green, but different values and hues of green. Those subtle differences make the feeling of the background much richer than if it was just a monochromatic green with darker and lighter shades of the same hue of green.

One hill is a turquoise sort of green, the other more towards middle green (with the salmon sky peeking through the sponge holes). Then the trees are painted on in different hues and values of green too.

So even though the actual brush technique of these paintings is minimal and none too deft, just using fun and clever color does a lot to make the cartoon feel bright and happy.

Color Theory 6 - Montealegre - Lion Hearted Huck

The other main BG color/painter/stylist in the early HB cartoons was Montealegre.

His style in general is more primary/secondary colors and you can really see that in some MGM cartoons he did for Mike Lah Droopy cartoons. He was already doing the sponge technique but in a simpler, more garish style.

http://klangley.blogspot.com/2006/07/more-montealegre.html

He actually started painting richer lusher cartoon BGs for Hanna Barbera's TV cartoons even though the budgets were considerably smaller.

http://klangley.blogspot.com/2006/07/hanna-barbera-backgrounds-montealegre.html

Here's a great one.

Lion Hearted Huck is one of the first Huckleberry Hound cartoons. The BGs are really striking in this and many of the earliest pictures they did.
It's funny, this whole flat style was unpopularized by UPA cartoons, cartoons that were made on purpose to not connect with regular folks. They designed them to appeal to snooty critics and bland but artsy fartsy cartoonists.

The one cartoon series that UPA considered to be their "sellout" series is boring as crap-Mr. Magoo. They felt guilty even making them as meagerly entertaining as they are (read all the cartoon history books-they admit it!) These UPA cartoons were done for big budgets-as big as the lusher fully animated classic Warner's and MGM cartoons that the artists were rebelling against.

In my dumbass regular guy on the street who likes girls opinion, the "UPA style" was done best by the cartoonists who still wanted to appeal to a wide audience-Tex Avery and Ed Benedict in their 50s cartoons and Hanna Barbera in their earliest TV cartoons (also designed by Ed Benedict).

I like the look of these cartoons way more than the bigger budget, slower produced snooty molasses paced UPA cartoons.

These Hanna Barbera artists used the simpler styled flatter design but left in the main ingredient that separates cartoons from other mediums-the ingredient of "fun". These cartoons are like ice cream for the eyes. They are really fun to look at and have a big "kid appeal". They don't look down their noses at the audience. These color combinations are subtle, harmonious yet bold all at the same time.
It's strange how beautiful the colors are when you consider that they were made to be broadcast in black and white. Maybe Art can shed some light on why they paid so much attention to the color. Did they expect the cartoons to be syndicated later? That would be pretty far-seeing for 1958.
Look at the amazing colors that go into making that tree look so rich. Violet, reddish brown and burgundy.
The green BG has fern leaves painted on and criss-crossed. Some are lighter than the BG, some darker. The combination gives a rich and subtle texture to the scene without distracting from the character.
It's funny-The BGs are so bold and stylish in this cartoon, yet the animation is as bland as can be. It's animated by Ken Muse, the blandest of the HB animators. Even with a severly limited animation budget, Mike Lah, Carlo Vinci, Ed Love, Don Patterson and some other animators managed to put their own styles and some life into the animation drawings. Ken just did the minimum of what was required-and this later became the HB style and formula that so many people condemn them for.
Wow! I would kill to have this BG hanging on my wall. If you have it, let me know so I can put out a contract.
Do you know how lucky we are to even have this styling in Hanna Barbera cartoons? Ed Benedict told me that Joe Barbera hated stylized cartoons. Joe walked in on Ed working one night on a Tex Avery cartoon and started grilling him. "Why are you drawing this flat crap? Nobody wants it. Nobody likes Mr. Magoo! The folks in middle America want round soft cute things."

The only reason Joe and Bill went with Ed's graphic style, was that they figured it would read better on the tiny black and white TV screens of the 50s. Simple characters with big black lines would read from a mile away, even in Black and White.

As Hanna Barbera became successful, the cartoons became less stylized, more bland, more even and generic. Just watch Yogi Bear's 1960 cartoon series and you'll see it is already way less adventurous than 2 mere years earlier. By 1962 we have Touche Turtle and Wally Gator which are so bland it hurts.

Hanna Barbera went from:

1958 - adventurous, radical, experimental, fun. Every cartoon feels different.

to 1960 - still very professional yet more conservative (leaving out the first season of the Flintstones which I will talk about later)

1962 - conservative, bland and repetitive, HB starts recruiting young inexperienced artists who never animated.

1965 - ugly xerox lines, Iwao Takamoto reluctantly imitating Ed's design style, Saturday morning executive interference.

1967- Iwao and his crew starts to design harder to animate characters in a pseudo 60's Disney style-which are impossible to animate well with a low budget.

Gang cartoons start which further hampers the chances to animate well.

1969 - Scooby Doo-absolute crap. Ugly design, sloppy amateur execution, not written by cartoonists anymore-the ugliest BGs ever. The end of the world.

This is Hanna Barbera copying Filmation's Archies show. All basic cartoon principles are outlawed from here on in. No squash and stretch, no line of action, no funny teeth and tongues, no exaggeration, no design appeal, no composition, no professional voice acting, no writing on storyboards. Tiny FLESH-COLORED EYES!!!!!!!

Anything fun or professional is deemed "too cartoony". "Cartoony" becomes a swear word. And here we are today still in this retarded illogical state of mind.

Anyway thank God that no one was paying much overall attention in these early cartoons and left the artists to put some of themselves into the art and entertainment.

I asked Art to tell us a little bit about Monte and here's what he said:

Monte? Fernando Montealegre, Costa Rican, a charmer (at times), a good artist, funny guy, sort of conceited and family-proud. We started the same day at MGM and became close friends. He had studied classical painting in San Jose. When Bob needed assistance, Monte was sent in to help out, following the oldish MGM technique. As I already mentioned, because of the fact that in the new Hanna/Barbera set-up, we had to work fast and simple, we established a style that allowed us both to work on one cartoon without noticeable differences. When we each had a complete cartoon to do, which became more and more frequent, then our styles began to show. But we managed to keep it all Hanna-and-Barbera-identifiable.