CARTOONS are coming!

New Zealand Listener, Volume 21, Issue 534, 16 September 1949, Page 6

CARTOONS are coming!

LEVEN months ago The Listener interviewed a young Scot with an odd job who had just arrived in New Zealand. Robert S. Morrow, engineering draughtsman turned film cartoonist, formerly of Glasgow, Moor Hall and Gaumont-British Animation, and now with the National Film Unit at Miramar, has gone a long way towards realising his dream of turning out New Zealand-made cartoon films since that day. Although it will be another six months at least before the public see any concrete results of his work in this country, for Morrow the battle is already more than half over. An anima‘tion unit has been set up, equipment thas been designed and constructed, and Staff recruited. Their first job is to produce a series of cartoon films for the ‘Health Department, picture stories that ‘will amuse as well as instruct-the lat‘est variation on the theme of strength through joy. . But it was tough going during those ‘11 months. First, official consent had to be given to the formation of the animation section-as an extension of the

Film Unit’s normal work in news, doeumentary, and general. film production. Then Morrow’s big task was to get lécal artists to train in the new medium. He wanted men who. were young, fresh, and enthusiastic, with a style flexible enough to be easily adaptable to the specialised business of film animation. So he did what any other person looking for new talent would do-went to an exhibition of work by art students of the Wellington Technical College. In all the paintings and drawings he looked at, the work of only one student seemed to ap‘proach the sort of thing he ‘wanted. The signature was Bruce Bryant, and after a long series of enquiries Morrow tracked his man down to a house in Miramar where he was living with his parents. Young and Keen The boy was only 18 and was working for his brother as a commercial ‘artist. Was he interested in the idea of making film cartoons? Well, @ certain amount -df talking was required, but in the end

> _ es Morrow’s keenness caught on, and Bruce ~became the first new member of the animation staff. That was four months ago. Bruce, however, had some friends who might also be interested in the project-John Dear, aged 16, and still a student at the Technical College, and Rodger Harrison, another 18-year-old. John’s parents had hopes of their son ‘becoming a school teacher, but there was no resisting the eagerness of the two animators, and a month later he joined the staff. Rodger, the third recruit, didn’t come until two months after that, for it took a little longer to -get him released from the National Publicity studios where he had been working. In the meantime Robert Morrow had been given an old store room, 19 feet by 12, to use as a studio, and he set about converting it to his needs. He wasn’t dismayed at having to start from scratch, for didn’t Disney start off in a disused garage? The walls were distempered, the ceiling renovated and linoleum laid on the floor. In one corner a camera rostrum was erected-a cup-board-sized room into the roof of which they fitted ja special camera in a frame

of startling massiveness and rigidity, for in the exacting process of colour photography the slightest shifting or vibration can mean disaster. Curtains of white muslin were stretched across the windows-not to give a homelike touch, but to keep out smuts when the windows were open. (For the same reason the animators wear cotton gloves when producing their final drawings-flicker-ing thumb marks on the corners of the cartoon frames can have a distracting effect on an audience.) Special Drawing Desks The drawing desks, attractively built in rimu, were specially designed with the object of speeding the task as much as: possible-when 1,440 pictures have to be drawn for each minute of film running time, and as often as not redrawn once or twice before they are satisfactory, cartoon animation is likely to become a tiresome business. In one corner of the studio is a specially constructed temperature cabinet, with electric heaters in the sides and drawers full of the acetate sheets on to which the cartoon pictures are finally traced. They have to be kept at an even

temperature of 65 degrees to’ prevent them from warping or cracking. On a table is a tape record@r for making experiments with voices for the sound track. In another corner is a movie acmiola, through which test runs of a projected cartoon can be viewed and criticised. And almost covering one wall is the story board. On this, preliminary sketches of the high points of each new film’s action are prominently displayed in their correct sequence. Last week Robert Morrow explained to The Listener how he had set about training his small staff. His own artistic ability had once won him a ten-year contract with David Hand, animation director of Snow White, Bambi, and Victory Through Air Power, but the first thing he told his "boys," as he calls them, was to forget all about their drawing and concentrate on timing. "Timing is the basic principle of animation work," he said. "I got them to draw a series of small circles the size of sixpence, one drawing to each page, at differently spaced intervals, so that when all the pages are flipped through rapidly the circle seems to move across the page, fast or slow, according to the space between each two «ucececciva

notes on the technical terms We use which they had. to memorise. "Next we got on to ‘effects animation’ — that is, drawing the inanimate objects (as opposed to the live characters) in a cartoon film. I had the hardest job at first in getting the boys to sketch freely, to loosen up and get the stiffness out of their drawing. However, once they had got the idea of the rhythm and freedom of movement required, I had each of them draw a short but complete sequence which we could take through the first stages of production. One did a series of drawings showing a tree trying to walk, another showed a drop of water falling from a tap into a bucket of water, and the ripples spreading out from where it hits the surface, and the third did a flour bag sliding down a long chute and flying through the air before it hit the ground with a thump, Life Classes"Finally we got on to character work. Here we usé two methods of training. The ‘boys

either draw from a life model, or from the facial expressions they make themselves into a mirror in front of their boards. For the life classes we have-an excellent model-the small son of one of the Film Unit staff. We draw him in all sorts of positions and with all kinds of expressions on his face. He enjoys it as much as we do-so much in fact that if we don’t get him down here for a few days he starts asking them at home when he is going to ‘go to work’ again. Of course for a lot of the expressions we are after I have to demonstrate myself, It’s all a matter at this stage of getting hold of the basic principles of acting and timing. "So that is the set-up as I sée it now," Morrow continued. "Once the boys have got hold of the elementary mechanics of animation all they need is more and more experience of animating on their own, working out the detail from the basic ideas in a film according to their own inclinations, but following my example in general as the key artist. They should acquire complete confidence and ability through working on these twominute health films we are going to do. The subjects we have in mind include one film about the common cold, another about tuberculosis among the Maoris, and one or two about dietsuch things as showing the benefits of drinking plenty of milk, and so on." Like Disney, Morrow and his team are aiming at quality as the thing to strive most for in their pictures. They have to keep in mind that the main appeal of the cartoon film lies in its freshness, lyricism, and colour. Apart from the drawing, the dialogue spoken by the cartoon characters must be simple, bright and amusing, and the voices, even the music, have to be specially selected for this type of work. For these additional effects Morrow relies of course on the general resources of the Film Unit. His erg supply the visual images, but all the rest comes from associates who spend most of their time on more normal film work. Speeded-up Dialogue Just before. The Listener arrived Morrow had been recording the voice of a woman employee of the Unit on his tape recorder. She spoke a passage

of dialogue (it might have come out of a nursery rhyme) into the microphone, speaking very slowly and_ distinctly. When the record was played back, however, not at normal speed, but about one and a-half times as fast, the voice sounded like that of a child, with all the brightness, rhythmic intonation, and slurring over the more difficult consonants, that characterise the speech of very small children. In the completed cartoon film image, sound and colour have to * move rhythmically from incident to incident with fluidity, imagination, and precision. Humour and simplicity are the paramount considerations, but there must also be a dramatic pattern, with the conflict of two opposing forces and a little business of chase, climax, and resolution to keep the excitement going. The images must move rapidly and blend smoothly, with both sound and colour paralleling the movement from scene to scene. "Very few people realise just how much work is involved in. making even a two-minute film like the ones we are going to*do,’ Marrow continued. "Basically there are about 3,000 frames to every. two minutes of film action. Actually, 3,000 rough drawings have to be made first of all, following the general pattern of ideas laid oug on the story board. These 3,000 are photographed with a movie camera and then viewed through the acmiola. From the acmiola we can’ pick faults in timing and design which will probably result in the whole 3,000 having.to be redrawn and photographed again. After the ‘clean-up process,’ as this sis called, is finished, we trace all the drawings on to acetate sheets, using ordinary ink with a little sugar -added to make it stick well. "Then the tracings are filled in with coloured paint on the back (we. are using only three colours at pfesent compared with the 3,000 used by Disney) and finally they are photographed for the last time with a _ technicolor

camera, and the sound track is synchronised with the photography. Thus you have about 21,000 separate camera moves in the production of'a two-minute filmwithout .all the other work. You can see that it’s a slow business, and at the moment we’ve only got a small staff of animators. Disney, you will remember, with his thousands of workers, took two years to make Snow White. "I tell you one thing though," he added when we mentioned that Walt Disney is said to owe over a million pounds to the bank, "this is one cartoon unit that is .going to pay its way." It may have been just ordinary Scots thriftiness, but that remark seemed to reflect more than anything his confidence in the ability and enthusiasm of his three young assistant artists,