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
ReplyDeleteThat kind of thing happened, I imagine, at every animation studio. I've posted a few from Warner Bros. on the other blog. And, of course, their cartoons were in production for a lot longer than the TV cartoons.
DeleteYeah, Animation errors were common throughout the animation industry and are not hard to find when you go frame by frame (like i did), Even at Warner’s (which i just read on your other blog) I’m impressed they kept it in despite the spelling errors. I’m also dropping by about Pixie speaking like Dixie, that also happened at the very end of “Jinxed Jinks” where Pixie spoke in Daws’ voice before correcting back to Messick’s voice for the character (at the end where they took out their accident insurance on Mr. Jinks after getting injured by the bulldog) I do know there’s more besides those two cartoons because i’ve seen this happen over 2 times out of the 50+ P&D cartoons because it was an recurring mistake that wasn’t corrected due to the deadlines. Maybe this could be a next topic to talk about for others to see, but out of curiosity, Do you recall on other Hanna-Barbera segments where the character speaks with the wrong voice or was it not common there because usually H-B editors & animators know who spoke and which character was that said it, (I don’t recall a mistake like this happening with Yogi Bear, Huckleberry Hound, or even the lesser known ones like Yakky Doodle but I remember only catching it on Pixie & Dixie because i knew the difference between Butler’s kid voice & Messick’s as he described Pixie in one interview: “straight high voice” that he used in other cartoons) I know you’ve been doing this for over 15 years (in my part i’ve been doing this ever since MeTV Toons launched, which was 2 years ago), so i wanted to make sure that i am not the only one that notices these audio goofs as i call them. I just wanted to make sure if H-B has done this type of mistake besides the two Pixie & Dixie’s i mentioned or if it was rare to notice given how many cartoons they’ve produced you covered. — Corbin
DeleteI remember seeing something suddenly disappearing and re-appearing between frames in a Disney cartoon once. Might have been Bambi.
ReplyDeleteIn the third frame, without the muzzle line, Yogi starts to look like a dog. Every ink and paint department was guilty of errors like this, undoubtedly due to time constraints: so many cels needed to be painted within such a time period.
ReplyDeleteThe famous hypnotist Yogi episode! I agree on Yogi looking like auditioning for THE ALVIN SHOW (Yowp; Yogi's by the ranger's office cabin looking away) and looking like a dog (HC Brando).
ReplyDeleteInteresting that they did that color correction. If any episode deserved it, it was definitely the one that gifted the world with chipmunk-cheek Smith.
ReplyDeleteIf John Kricfalusi saw this...
ReplyDelete