animated
Animation is a method by which still figures are manipulated to appear as moving images. In traditional animation, images are drawn or painted by hand on transparent celluloid sheets to be photographed and exhibited on film. Today, most anim ...
short subject
A short film is any motion picture that is short enough in running time not to be considered a feature film. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences defines a short film as "an original motion picture that has a running time of 40 minutes ...
s produced by
Ub Iwerks
Ubbe Ert Iwwerks (March 24, 1901 – July 7, 1971), known as Ub Iwerks ( ), was an American animator, cartoonist, character designer, inventor, and special effects technician. Born in Kansas City, Missouri, Iwerks grew up with a contentious ...
from 1933 to 1936. The series was the last produced by
Iwerks Studio
Iwerks Studio was an animation studio headed by animator Ub Iwerks.
Financing
Iwerks was working for Walt Disney when he accepted a contract with Disney's former distributor, Pat Powers (businessman), Pat Powers, to leave Disney and start an ani ...
; after losing distributor
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios Inc., also known as Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Pictures and abbreviated as MGM, is an American film, television production, distribution and media company owned by amazon (company), Amazon through MGM Holdings, founded o ...
in 1934, the Iwerks studio's senior company
Celebrity Pictures
Patrick Anthony Powers (October 8, 1870 – July 30, 1948) was an American businessman who was involved in the movie and animation industry of the 1910s, 1920s, and 1930s as a distributor and producer. His firm, Celebrity Productions, was t ...
(run by Pat Powers) had to distribute the films itself. The series was shot exclusively in
Cinecolor
Cinecolor was an early subtractive color-model two-color motion picture process that was based upon the Prizma system of the 1910s and 1920s and the Multicolor system of the late 1920s and the 1930s. It was developed by William T. Crispinel and ...
.
Most of the ComiColor entries were based upon popular
fairy tales
A fairy tale (alternative names include fairytale, fairy story, magic tale, or wonder tale) is a short story that belongs to the folklore genre. Such stories typically feature magic, enchantments, and mythical or fanciful beings. In most cult ...
and other familiar stories, including ''
Jack and the Beanstalk
"Jack and the Beanstalk" is an English fairy tale. It appeared as "The Story of Jack Spriggins and the Enchanted Bean" in 1734 4th edition On Commons and as Benjamin Tabart's moralized "The History of Jack and the Bean-Stalk" in 1807. Henry Cole ...
'', ''
Old Mother Hubbard
"Old Mother Hubbard" is an English-language nursery rhyme, first given an extended printing in 1805, although the exact origin of the rhyme is disputed. It has a Roud Folk Song Index number of 19334. After a notable nursery success, it was eventu ...
'', ''
The Bremen Town Musicians
The "Town Musicians of Bremen" (german: link=no, Die Bremer Stadtmusikanten) is a German fairy tale collected by the Brothers Grimm and published in ''Grimms' Fairy Tales'' in 1819 (KHM 27).
It tells the story of four aging domestic animals, w ...
'', and ''
The Headless Horseman The Headless Horseman is a fictional character that appears in many venues.
Headless Horseman may also refer to:
* Headless Horseman ("Legend of Sleepy Hollow"), a character in the 1820 short story "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" by Washington Irv ...
''.
Production
Grim Natwick
Myron "Grim" Natwick (' Nordveig; August 16, 1890 – October 7, 1990) was an American artist, animator, and film director. Natwick is best known for drawing the Fleischer Studios' most popular character, Betty Boop.
Background
Born in Wis ...
,
Al Eugster
Alfred Julius Eugster (February 11, 1909 – January 1, 1997) was an American animator, writer, and film director. He worked for a number of American animation studios, including Fleischer Studios, the Iwerks Studio, Walt Disney Productions, an ...
, and
Shamus Culhane
James H. "Shamus" Culhane (November 12, 1908 – February 2, 1996) was an American animator, film director, and film producer. He is best known for his work in the Golden age of American animation.
Career
Shamus Culhane worked for a number of ...
were among the series' lead
animator
An animator is an artist who creates multiple images, known as frames, which give an illusion of movement called animation when displayed in rapid sequence. Animators can work in a variety of fields including film, television, and video gam ...
s/
directors
Director may refer to:
Literature
* ''Director'' (magazine), a British magazine
* ''The Director'' (novel), a 1971 novel by Henry Denker
* ''The Director'' (play), a 2000 play by Nancy Hasty
Music
* Director (band), an Irish rock band
* ''Di ...
, and a number of the shorts were filmed using Iwerks'
multiplane camera
The multiplane camera is a motion-picture camera that was used in the traditional animation process that moves a number of pieces of artwork past the camera at various speeds and at various distances from one another. This creates a sense of para ...
, which he built himself from the remains of a
Chevrolet
Chevrolet ( ), colloquially referred to as Chevy and formally the Chevrolet Motor Division of General Motors Company, is an American automobile division of the American manufacturer General Motors (GM). Louis Chevrolet (1878–1941) and ous ...
automobile
A car or automobile is a motor vehicle with Wheel, wheels. Most definitions of ''cars'' say that they run primarily on roads, Car seat, seat one to eight people, have four wheels, and mainly transport private transport#Personal transport, pe ...
.
Filmography
Copyright status
Home media
All of the ComiColor cartoons are now available in the 2004 Region 2 ComiColor DVD set released by Mk2/Lobster in France. Many are available in Region 1, in particular on the Cartoons That Time Forgot series.
Steve Stanchfield of Thunderbean will release the restored versions of the shorts on a Blu-ray/DVD set called ''ComiColor Cartoons Collection''.
See also
*
The Golden Age of American animation
The golden age of American animation was a period in the history of U.S. animation that began with the popularization of sound cartoons in 1928 and gradually ended in the late 1960s, where theatrical animated shorts began losing popularity to the ...
*
Cartune Classics
Walter Lantz Productions was an American animation studio. It was in operation from 1928 to 1972 and was the principal supplier of animation for Universal Studios.
The studio was originally formed as Universal Cartoon Studios on the initiative ...
*
Color Classics
''Color Classics'' are a series of animated short films produced by Fleischer Studios for Paramount Pictures from 1934 to 1941 as a competitor to Walt Disney's ''Silly Symphonies''. As the name implies, all of the shorts were made in color form ...
– a series of animated short films produced by Fleischer Studios for Paramount Pictures from 1934 to 1941
*
Color Rhapsodies
''Color Rhapsody'' is a series of usually one-shot animated cartoon shorts produced by Charles Mintz's studio Screen Gems for Columbia Pictures. They were launched in 1934, following the phenomenal success of Walt Disney's Technicolor ''Silly Symp ...
*
Happy Harmonies
''Happy Harmonies'' is the name of a series of thirty-seven animated cartoons distributed by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and produced by Hugh Harman and Rudolf Ising between 1934 and 1938.
Produced in Technicolor, these cartoons were very similar to Wal ...
*
Merrie Melodies
''Merrie Melodies'' is an American animation, animated series of comedy short films produced by Warner Bros. starting in 1931, during the golden age of American animation, and ending in 1969. Then some new cartoons were produced from the late 197 ...
*
Rainbow Parade
''Rainbow Parade'' was a series of 26 animated shorts produced by Van Beuren Studios and distributed to theaters by RKO between 1934 and 1936. This was the all-color series and final series produced by Van Beuren.
History
Many of the ''Rainbow Pa ...
*
Silly Symphonies
''Silly Symphony'' is an American animation, animated series of 75 musical short films produced by Walt Disney Animation Studios, Walt Disney Productions from 1929 to 1939. As the series name implies, the ''Silly Symphonies'' were originally inte ...
Puppetoons
Puppetoons is a series of animated puppet films made in Europe (1930s) and in the United States (1940s) by George Pal. They were made using replacement animation: using a series of different hand-carved wooden puppets (or puppet heads or limbs) for ...
References
Leonard Maltin
Leonard Michael Maltin (born December 18, 1950) is an American film critic and film historian, as well as an author of several mainstream books on cinema, focusing on nostalgic, celebratory narratives. He is perhaps best known for his book of fil ...
Penguin Books
Penguin Books is a British publishing, publishing house. It was co-founded in 1935 by Allen Lane with his brothers Richard and John, as a line of the publishers The Bodley Head, only becoming a separate company the following year.The Hand Behind the Mouse'' (Disney Editions, 2001) and documentary of the same name (DVD, 1999)
* Jeff Lenburg, ''
The Great Cartoon Directors
''The'' () is a grammatical Article (grammar), article in English language, English, denoting persons or things already mentioned, under discussion, implied or otherwise presumed familiar to listeners, readers, or speakers. It is the definite ...