Frog Mouth

If you were to make a cartoon about a frog mouth, you couldn’t do better than to have George Nicholas animate it. He loved drawing big mouths with big floppy tongues.

It just so happened the tenth Flintstones cartoon that aired, “Hollyrock, Here I Come,” involved Fred being cast in a TV show about a loud guy with a big mouth. Guess who animated it?

Here are some of George’s poses. They’re a lot of fun. He liked drawing little beady eyes, too, when a character was excited or stunned, and cashew eyes in crying scenes.



Animating a half-hour show (roughly the same footage as four Yogi shorts) solo was a bit of a chore, so some walk cycles and other animation are re-used. You’ll notice the last drawing is the same as an earlier drawing; it’s just turned over then inked and painted on the other side.

Alan Reed does a really nice job on this cartoon. Next time you watch it, listen to how various emotions come through in the dialogue. And Jerry Mann’s pretty good, too, as the TV producer. Mann had been doing cartoon voices almost 20 years earlier but was never credited on screen and you likely don’t know a lot about him. We’ll have a post about him next week.