Rubber hose animation

Rubber hose animation was the first animation style that became standardized in the American animation field. The defining feature is the curving motion most things possess, resembling that of a rubber hose. While the style fell out of fashion during the 1930s, there has been a minor revitalization of it in recent years with works such as the video games ''Cuphead'' and ''Bendy and the Ink Machine'', and the film '' Steven Universe: The Movie''.

History

Beginnings and rise

In the early days of hand drawn animation in the 1920s, the studios' main areas were not in Hollywood, but New York City. Animation was a new phenomenon and there were no experienced animators; yet there were skilled artists working on newspapers, creating comic strips in a time when even the comic strips themselves were relatively new. Many of them became fascinated with the introduction of moving drawings, and saw them as new possibilities and challenges to use their skills on something they found more exciting than the newspaper strips.

For this reason, many of the first cartoons had many similarities with moving comic strips. The artists experimented with what worked and what did not, and what they could and could not do. In the strips, they had no need to think of their work in three dimensions or how they moved, but at the same time this extra aspect gave them the opportunity to introduce gags and elements not possible in comic stills. Moreover, because the drawings had to be mass-produced to create the illusion of movement, they had to come up with a compromise where characters were less detailed and time-consuming, but at the same time alive and complex enough. As animators gained experience through trial, error and collaborations, cartoons became more professional and dominated by specific rules of how to make them.

The studios had to be sensitive to any new business trend to survive the competition. A consequence of this was that the style and design of the most successful and popular cartoons had a great impact on the rest of the animation business. One of the earliest examples was Felix the Cat, who quickly spawned imitators at different studios. Combined with the natural evolution of animation, this resulted in a dominating design that would be known as the ''rubber hose style'', despite individual differences between the studios. Bill Nolan is credited with the introduction of this animation style.

Decline and fall

Rubber hose animation gradually faded away as cartoons were made more sophisticated, especially by Walt Disney. Disney wanted to make his cartoons more realistic and have them follow much of the same rules as live action, a direction that would later be named ''full animation''. Disney saw animation as a potential surrogate for live action, where he could do what was impossible in live action once it achieved his demands of realism. This direction did not allow the fluid bodies seen in the rubber hose style and, due to Disney's success, this trend was spread to the remaining producers of cartoons through demands from their Hollywood distributors.

Rubber-hose trademarks appeared in some later cartoons, including those of Tex Avery for MGM, The Warner Siblings for WB Animation, or ''Ren and Stimpy'', but the original style and its influence became a part of animation history by the start of the 1930s, and went out of favor by the mid-1930s. Fleischer Studios held to it the longest, finally conforming to the more contemporary West Coast animation style by 1940. The style's influence, however, still continues into the present, with shows like ''Adventure Time'' incorporating some of rubber hose animation's elements, and ''Cuphead'' the video game paying full homage.

Influence in modern media

While there are not many uses of rubber hose animation today, there are some media that pay homage to the animation style.

Theatrical animated shorts

In 2013, Walt Disney Animation Studios produced a 3D animated slapstick comedy short film using the style. ''Get a Horse!'' combines black-and-white hand-drawn animation and color CGI animation; the short features the characters of the late 1920s Mickey Mouse cartoons and features archival recordings of Walt Disney in a posthumous role as Mickey Mouse. It is the first original Mickey Mouse theatrical animated short since '' Runaway Brain'' (1995) and the first appearance of Oswald the Lucky Rabbit in a Disney animated production in 85 years.

Video games

Some video games use rubber hose animation, including ''Epic Mickey'', ''Bendy and the Ink Machine'', ''Cuphead'', and early '' Sonic the Hedgehog'' games, shows and comics. '' Skullgirls'' includes the playable character "Peacock", whose visual design and attacks draw from 1920s animation tropes. ''Bendy and the Ink Machine's'' characters are based on 1920s rubber hose animation, having the appearance of old black and white cartoons. ''Smite

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