How to Make a Hanna-Barbera Cartoon

No, the response to today’s topic is not “Hold a cel of Ranger Smith’s body underneath two drawings for blinking eyes,” though I admit there were some scenes where that did happen. You will find the answer below and, appropriately, it is a cartoon.

This was posted on Facebook by Scott Shaw! He started work at the studio in 1978, long after the period this blog deals with. But when he got there, some of the Hanna-Barbera old-timers were still toiling away, hamstrung by network restrictions and eyeballed by do-gooder groups that insisted cartoons can be tolerated only if they’re “educational.” Personally, I’d rather watch Chief Crazy Coyote bashing Quick Draw McGraw with a tomahawk instead of being badgered not to pollute. That’s the kind of thing parents should be teaching.

Scott says this was drawn by Pete Alvarado, whose name I recognise from Warner Bros. cartoons (C.M. Jones unit) but is known by others for his work in comic books. He landed at Hanna-Barbera in 1970 and also spent time at Filmation working on some shows that were, frankly, beneath his talents. His family has a memorial site at this link.

You can click on the photostat to make it larger. Interestingly, Lippy the Lion is here but the Jetsons aren’t. It appears the ink and paint department was just the paint department by the time Alvarado drew this; inkers were replaced with special photocopiers. Something interesting is the notation that voices, effects and music were on one track. There had to be separate tracks for each somewhere in the system. That would be able to accommodate foreign language dubbing (over the same music and effects as the English-language soundtrack) and, as we’ve pointed out on this blog, the few cartoons were a different music score is heard.