Yesterday I posted a fascinating short doc about the daunting creation of an animated film in 1938. Having seen my recent interest in the subject, YouTube quickly coughed up the above video about the methods by which characters in early cartoons went from being rigid stick figures and achieved human-style movement. It was the invention of the Rotoscope that did the trick. This fascinating innovation was the work of  the Fleischer Brothers–Max and Dave–who were pioneer animators and the team behind the Betty Boop cartoons as well as Popeye and others. The above short doc shows the process in action, using Cab Calloway’s real life dance moves as a template for various bizarre creatures/ghosts etc. Thirty years later Hannah-Barbara brutally reversed this process and gave us the flat, lifeless, non-moving-backgrounds that characterized ‘The Flinstones’, ‘Scooby-Doo’, ‘The Jetsons’ and a generation of lousy looking animated television shows. Cheapness was the motivating factor and I guess it worked. Now, of course, animation is back to being beautiful again. Alas not one lousy new animated film holds the least bit of interest to me story wise. Enough that we have the greatest of all cartoons–Warner Brothers’ Loony Tunes–still in circulation. More on that in a hot minute…