Director and animator Matthew Cooper finds inspiration in a skilful, inventive technique – and a fantastical scene – from a 1930s cartoon by animation pioneers the Fleischer Brothers.
For me, the final scene from the Fleischer Brothers cartoon Grampy's Indoor Outing stands out because of an uncanny change in technique that occurs between this shot and the preceding one. It still has a mysterious, magical quality even though the film was made almost 80 years ago in 1937.
I was drawn to the work of Max and Dave Fleischer because their animation is full of innovation and technical experimentation. Max Fleischer is famous for patenting the rotoscope animation technique, which involves painting over projected frames of live action film. They implemented this by tracing the movement of real actors, which gives their character animation an extremely fluid, but sometimes unsettling quality.
Although I only discovered these films in my twenties, they've played a large part in influencing my own film work, particularly in my desire to play with combinations of two dimensional and three dimensional elements, and attempting to blur the line between the two.
The Fleischer Brothers most well-known character is probably Betty Boop, and Grampy is an elderly relative spin-off character. Grampy is particularly appealing to me because he's an extremely optimistic, inventive character. He uses household objects to create ingenious and often fantastical devices to solve problems that he's presented with.
Grampy's Indoor Outing, features another of Betty Boop's relatives, the nightmarishly 'cute' Junior. When a trip to the touring carnival is ruined by a sudden thunderstorm, Grampy proceeds to cheer Junior up by building a carnival inside their apartment using everyday items. This culminates in a DIY roller coaster that uses the fire escape ladders of the apartment building as a track. At this point the film transcends the boundaries of logic, moving into a realm of surreal fantasy as the apartment block sprouts a giant umbrella, lifts off the ground and begins to rotate.
A three-dimensional model is used for this scene, painted to mimic flat, drawn animation. The difference between the actual two dimensional painted building of the previous scene and this one is subtle enough to initially trick the viewer's eye and go unnoticed, but the movement and perspective of the model creates a beautiful, immersive effect.
The brief feeling of wonder conveyed in this shot is something I can only hope to emulate in my own work.
matthewcooperfilm.com
Matthew Cooper
...is a director and animator who has worked with clients such as Lego, Reebok and YouTube. Other projects include animations for the band Of Montreal and for the TV show Noel Fielding’s Luxury Comedy.
The Fleischer Brothers
...brought Betty Boop, Popeye and Superman to the screen but despite the success of these cartoons, their efforts to rival Disney unravelled when, after twenty years of working together, Max Fleischer sent a telegram to parent company Paramount saying he could no longer stand to work with his brother Dave.