Here’s an example from Nowhere Bear, a 1959 Yogi cartoon. Here’s Yogi turning his head. Two cels don’t have the correct muzzle colour on them for two frames each.
The same thing happened earlier in the cartoon. Two cels, two frames each. This is the version broadcast on the Boomerang cable channel in the U.S.
But here's something odd. The current version of the cartoon you can find on-line has the colour error repaired.
The layout artist on this cartoon was the Father of Design at Hanna-Barbera, Ed Benedict, with the animation by the newly-arrived Ed Love, perhaps best known for his work with Tex Avery at MGM (Benedict was Avery's layout artist/designer in the '50s). Ranger Smith has a unique appearance in this one. I suspect it was a little too stylised for Bill Hanna's liking.
For the first few years at H-B, Love had little mouth movements, some not much more than squiggles. He liked two or three teeth taking up the whole mouth. Below, it looks like Yogi is auditioning for The Alvin Show.
The backgrounds in this one are by yet another MGM vet, Bob Gentle. What I like about the background art in these early H-B cartoons is they were full of interesting colour choices, though the artists knew full well they aired in black and white. The one below is panned left to right to end on the animation overlaid on top. The different blue-green shades are very attractive. Gentle didn't churn this out; this could easily fit in a mid-'50s MGM short. I also like the composition of the entrance to the cave. You can click on the image file to make it bigger.
Gentle, Monte, Lozzi, they all did fine background work on these 1950s cartoons.
Ranger Smith was going through an evolution in Foster’s stories, from a rather world-weary character to the stern-voiced, exasperated version. In the second half of this cartoon, Mr. Ranger works together with Yogi to rescue Boo Boo, which I find a refreshing change, with short gag sequences like you’d find in a Roadrunner cartoon.
This is an enjoyable cartoon, and I think we can forgive the slight colouring errors.
The only Ranger with prominent cheeks.
ReplyDeleteGood post, Yowp. To me, It’s not just the Yogi cartoons where you find goofs like those. If you go through and watch one of their other cartoons frame by frame, you can spot more goofs on production, like color goofs like those you mentioned, Dialogue errors (like Pixie speaking in Daws Butler’s Dixie voice or the opposite happening (Pixie’s voice coming out of Dixie’s mouth) or both, this happened a lot in “Pixie and Dixie” segments like “Homeless Jinks” (which i watched many times) for example during the mostly off-screen “mice” raid after George tells the mice to spread out, Dixie’s voice comes out of “Pixie”’s mouth when Pixie says “Here they come” and with the opposite happening when Dixie says “And there they go!” this happened in a few other Pixie and Dixie episodes, which makes me wonder if Hanna-Barbera didn’t have the time or money to let them do retakes due to the deadlines or if it was something else) or literal animation errors (In “A Wise Quack”, Bob Carr doesn’t even draw Mr. Jinks’ tail before the last moment where his tail is sooted, though this cartoon must’ve been rushed through production, given the rushed backgrounds by Vera Hanson) As to why you saw the Nowhere Bear goof being fixed in modern prints of the episode, My guess is the Warner’s restoration team noticed this being not intentional and fixed it like it never happened. — Corbin
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