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ANIMATION WORLD MAGAZINE - ISSUE 4.12 - MARCH 2000
Animation Look-A-Likes:
Mobilux Lumia
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 The Mobilux Lumia process as drawn by Howard Beckerman. |
The
resurgence of theatrical animation, dating from 1988 when Roger
Rabbit strode his few whiny moments on the stage, belies the reality
that animators for decades bowed willingly to the demands of Madison
Avenue. Beginning in the 1950s, when the Hollywood cartoon began
its slow fade to extinction, the thrust of animation studios was
the creation of television commercials, sponsored films and Saturday
morning cartoons. Animators, accustomed to lush Technicolored, full-rounded
characters, realigned their skills to move flat shapes against limbo
backgrounds. The urgent call for variety, coupled with speedy production
methods, inspired a flow of clever techniques that seemed like animation,
but really weren't. These cartoon look-a-likes, shot in real-time
and not by frame-by-frame filming, sprung to life to cash in on
the vogue for stylized, and witty, limited animation.
Cartoon look-a-likes took advantage of flexible materials such as
rubber bands, plastics and cels. These techniques were adaptable
to motion pictures, but their arrival soon after the unveiling of
videotape in 1956, offered the convenience of replay necessary in
getting it right.
Cartoon Wanna-Bes
I remember one technique called Mobilux Lumia which cast colorful
gliding images. A simple design was drawn and then silkscreened
in color onto the side of a special sheet of acetate. It was about
60 inches long and 14 inches wide; basically it was an animation
cel except for one difference -- one side was mirrored. The material
was available at art stores then, and is probably still used in
the packaging and crafts field. To create the animation effect,
an operator dressed in dark, non-reflecting clothing and gloves,
held the acetate sheet bearing the mirror-painted image up to a
strong light. The operator-animator, or more correctly puppeteer,
positioned the acetate so that the reflection fell onto a screen
on the wall or ceiling as he twisted and wiggled the cel. The imprinted
image gyrated up, down and across the screen. One demonstration
which I remember, was of a lucid blue-green fish made to swim, wiggle
its tail and double over itself as the cel was twisted. These fluctuations
were recorded onto film or videotape and the resulting images were
often used as program openings, but more of that later.
Another technique used plastic sponges in a highly original way.
The method, called Aniforms, was created by puppeteer Maury Bunin.
Bunin and his brother Lou had appeared on the stage as the Bunin
Puppets in the years before television and were known for an elaborate
stop-motion puppet animation that opened MGM's 1946 production,
Ziegfeld Follies. They eventually went their separate ways,
Lou to continue his stop-motion work for commercials and Maury to
create marionettes and hand puppets for children's television. Maury
Bunin was a consummate professional puppet creator. The Aniform
technique was an outgrowth of his extensive knowledge and ingenuity.
Imagine this: a doughnut shape fashioned from a household sponge,
say a 5 inch circle with a hole in the middle. Then, draw a line
around the hole on one side of the sponge. If you squeeze the sponge
and contract the opening, the line will also flatten and elongate.
This takes advantage of the squash and stretch properties of traditional
animation, but Maury added another wrinkle. The sponges that he
used were black and the lines drawn on them were white. The black
sponge, bearing the white lines was shot against an equally black
background. In those days of black and white television, if you
reversed the polarity, the tones would shift, the white became black,
the black became white and disappeared against the background. The
effect, when manipulated in real-time was that the lines were squashing
and stretching of their own accord, like animation. It worked, though
it did have an eerie quality, much like the tedious timing of early
computer animation. But it was convincing and evinced the style
of popular cartoon commercials of the time.
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