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Director: J.R. Bray
Release Date: January 10, 1914
Stars: Col. Heeza Liar
Rating: ★★★★
Col. Heeza Liar was the first animated series, and the character was the first specially designed for animation.
Col. Heeza Liar was the first star of J.R. Bray’s fledgling studio, only founded in 1913. The character was apparently based on Theodore Roosevelt, but he looks very different. Col. Heeza Liar’s African Hunt’ is only the second film featuring the character.
Drawn by J.R. Bray, the cartoon is filled with loose gags, in which the colonel unwillingly hatches an ostrich egg, has to climb into a palm to flee from a bear, shooting six animals within one shot, and planting a seed which grows into a palm tree instantly.
The looseness of the cartoon betrays the short’s origin as a cheater, for it shares no less than sixty percent with the preceding Col. Heeza Liar cartoon ‘Col. Heeza Liar in Africa’. In this respect, Col. Heeza Liar’s African Hunt’ is a ‘milestone’ of animation, being the first cheater in the business.
Despite being a cheater, the short is well animated. There’s some excellent perspective animation, when a kangaroo hops towards the camera, with the colonel inside, casually defying the African setting. The scene with the bear contains some great comedy. The animation over all is fair, ranging from fast to slow, and cleverly reusing animation cycles.
Col. Heeza Liar is not an immediately engaging character. And worse, as time progressed, his antics became less and less well animated. Nevertheless he would star more than fifty cartoons, lasting until 1924.
‘Col. Heeza Liar’s African Hunt’ is available on the DVD & Blu-Ray-set ‘Cartoon Roots: The Bray Studios Animation Pioneers’
Director: J.R. Bray
Release Date: June 12, 1913
Stars: J.R. Bray
Rating: ★★★★
J.R. Bray is the father of the cartoon industry, but this short is from a period in which J.R. Bray was still a lone artist, like other animation pioneers as J. Stuart Blackton, Émile Cohl and Winsor McCay.
In fact, ‘The Artist’s Dream’ is only J.R. Bray’s second attempt at animation, and the film is still rooted in the drawings come to life tradition of the earliest animated films.
Bray plays an artist drawing a dachshund and a sausage. While he’s away the dachshund eats the sausage, and later another till he explodes. Of course, all has been a dream, which clearly shows the strong influence of Winsor McCay’s dreams of the rarebit fiend.
‘The Artist’s Dream’ shows Bray’s extraordinary drawing skills, as his drawings are very clear and contain elegant shading. His handling of perspective is perfect and no less than McCay’s. The animation, on the other hand, is less fluent than McCay’s, if still of a remarkably high quality. Unfortunately, he would not transfer this level of art to his later studio films.
Watch ‘The Artist’s Dream’ yourself and tell me what you think:
‘The Artist’s Dream’ is available on the DVD & Blu-Ray-set ‘Cartoon Roots: The Bray Studios Animation Pioneers’
Director: Frank Moser
Release date: July 25, 1920
Stars: Bud and Susie
Rating: ★★
Review:
‘Bud and Susie’ was an animation series created by Frank Moser that consisted of at least twenty cartoons and run from 1920 to 1921. ‘Down the Mississippi’ does little to advertise the series as something outstanding, when compared to contemporary series like Earl Hurd’s Bobby Bumps’ or Otto Messmer’s Felix the Cat.
Like, Ub Iwerks, Moser is known as a very fast animator. However, unlike Iwerks, Moser wasn’t either innovative or funny. It may be unfair to use such an early cartoon as ‘Down the Mississippi’ as an example, but the ‘Bud and Susie’ series was Moser’s own creation, so it could have been inspired. This is not the case.
In this film Bud, Susie and their cat read ‘Huckleberry Finn’. When the sandman puts Bud to sleep, he dreams he’s on a raft on the Mississippi with his sister and the cat. The cat catches an electric eel and Bud catches a crocodile. They camp at the river bank, where they’re about to be eaten by a bear, which looks like an oversized mouse. The print on the ‘Presenting Felix the Cat’ DVD unfortunately stops here.
‘Down the Mississippi’ is clearly rooted in the comic strip tradition, although there are only two text balloons. Like, Ub Iwerks, Moser is known as a very fast animator, in fact he famed himself as being the fastet animator in the world. However, unlike Iwerks, Moser wasn’t either innovative or funny. His animation is certainly very readable but crude, and the animal designs are anything but original. Most interesting are his animation of the waves and the background art of the camping site. Notice that the cat’s tail changes into a question mark at one point, a feature normally attributed to Felix the Cat.
Nothing is particularly outstanding in this cartoon, which isn’t funny either. Indeed, Art Babbitt was unimpressed with Moser’s art. As he relates to Charles Solomon in his book ‘Enchanted Drawings’: “Moser was a man devoid of humor. He worked very rapidly, but his work was crude and without feeling. Of course, everybody’s work was crude in those days, but he constantly told you he was the fastest animator in the world. I undiplomatically told him that was like being the fastest violinist in the world. You can play very fast, but you can’t play worth a damn!” (Enchanted Drawings – The History of Animation p. 95).
Frank Moser would later co-found Terrytoons with Paul Terry. The two were likely kindred spirits, more interested in efficiency than in art.
Watch ‘Down the Mississippi’ Yourself and tell me what you think:
‘Down the Mississippi’ is available on the DVD ‘Presenting Felix the Cat – The Otto Messmer Classics 1919-24’
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