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Show : AMsroiiciivij Making the Movie Cartoon Move The elaborate technique ro,nired to make the Katzen jammer Kids, Gert '.-c, the Family Dinosaur, Colonel lieozn Liar, and other crea lions of the cartoonist's pen go throucli their amusing stums on the scree ii. is the subject of an article by Homer Croy in .Everybody's for Sep-tem Sep-tem ner. "When anVmi mated series is completed, com-pleted, there are something like two thousand thou-sand dranlngs on r;i Ion iered paper about the size of typewriter sheets, making altogether al-together a piie lighter than a man's head. Each sheet is numbered, clear through the two thousand, and then turned over to the photographer, who works with his camera suspended over his drawings instead in-stead of set on a tripod. "When it is understood how complicated compli-cated the process is, and how. even with t he most ola borate backgrounds. two thousand dra wines are required to make five hundred feet of film, then one understands un-derstands better the difference between an originating and an animating artist and why Bud Fisher never makes a single one of the film cartoons that bear his name. Nor does Rube Goldberg or Tom Powers. Tf they did. we d see about six of their films a vear instead of one a week. "The a rtist conceives the funny situation, situa-tion, or possibly only the character, and the animator does the rest. In fact, an artist, after having conceived the character, char-acter, often doesn't know what is being drawn. Bud Fisher has never been In the studio where his Mutt and Jeff films are being made. A man whom the public knows a great deal less about gives us our weekly Mutt and Jeff. He is Raoul Barre. "But Mr. Barre doesn't do it alone not at the rate of five hundred feet a week.. Not bv some four hundred and eighty-odd 'feet. He has sixty artists working for him, all giving us Mutt and Jeff. One man may make a leg. another an arm. and a third a coat. Mutt and Jeff is t lie weekly combination of the artistic efforts of sixty people.'- Everybody's. |