Thursday, October 17, 2013
Popeye in Perspective
(Video link) In the 1934 animated film "A Dream Walking" by the Fleischer Studios, Olive Oyl sleepwalks on a skyscraper's scaffolding, as Popeye and Bluto try to save her. It's a tour de force of perspective, switching effortlessly between one-, two-, and three-point perspective.
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6 comments:
Here is an endless loop of Popeye swinging in perspective: http://i.imgur.com/izMj0cf.gif
A lot more shadow work than you usually see in old cartoons, too.
The perspective is downright awesome! So good in fact, if it were not so old I would have thought there was cg involved. Could any of this have been rotoscoped?
This was made almost 80 years ago. One would imagine the advances in animation that would have occurred in that time--but the sorry state of cartoons these days, with their flat, unimaginative character designs and flatter backgrounds makes one wonder where we went wrong.
I think it comes down to cost to a large extent. Sadly artists work for giant corporations that follow the almighty dollar. Back then animators, not distant corporate board members, made the decisions, because it was the artists them selves that ran the companies. These films were labors of love. And as such, being profitable wasn't everything.
It is also amazing how the music was synched in with the graphics... when Olive is walking on the wire... you hear the pizzicato on the violin... marching is always to the music...
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