Answer the following questions as fully and completely as you can. Be sure to use specific examples from the cartoons you've seen to support your ideas and also to use references to the texts whenever possible.
Among the pioneering figures in animation, Windsor McCay and Otto Messmer stand out as major contributors to the form. Choose one of these men and first describe his life and career. Then, using that information, assess, as fully as possible, his achievements in animation and his legacy to future cartoonists.
Working with the material in Maltin, Kanfer, Klein and Schickel, trace a technology timeline, starting with Humorous Phases of Funny Faces and ending with Snow White. How did cartoons change with each major advance?
In The Disney Version, Schickel quotes the words of Frederick W. Taylor, author of Principles of Scientific Management (1911): Good management is "knowing exactly what you want men to do, and then seeing that they do it in the best and cheapest way." All three of the most successful of the cartoon studios of the 1930s, Disney, Fleischer and Terry, were able to apply this principle of industrialization successfully but very differently. Describe the production model at each of the three studios and then explain how it contributed to the very different products that each marketed.
In many ways, the Disney studio and the Fleischer studio expressed the polarities of American culture in the 1920s and 1930s. Compare/contrast the two, particularly in terms of their characteristic styles, themes, sources of humor and definitions of realism. You may use any of the cartoons we're seen in class or lab to illustrate your argument, but your touchstone examples should probably be Disney's and Fleischer's very different versions of Snow White.
In 7 Minutes, Norman Klein traces the shifts in cartoon style from about 1915 to 1938. How does he see the American cartoon moving from a form concerned mainly with gag and graphic surface to "full animation"? What, in your view, is gained and what is lost in this progression?
Enumerate and explain five of the reasons the Disney studio was able to lead (and pretty much decimate) the competition in the 1930s. What factors do you believe are responsible for its loss of leadership in the theatrical short cartoon industry during the 1940s?
Just as in the live action film industry, art and business are nearly always at odds in the animation industry. Drawing on your knowledge of American animation through 1940, explain how this dichotomy plays out. Which is the more important quality for animation? Can they be reconciled? If so, how? If not, why not?
"A balance between cartoon anarchy and moral storytelling is very fretful to maintain," Klein concludes in his chapter on story, in which he also discussed the effect of the Motion Picture Code of 1934 on the style of the cartoon short in Hollywood. Using your viewing experience to substantiate your assertions, discuss Klein's observation, with a particular emphasis on the shift in cartoon style that ensued.
"Cartoons have a distinct sociological value. They exhibit man in society caught in a network of events . . . trying to escape the consequences. They are in fact a commentary, a very witty, instructive and biting comment on the absurdities on Man and other living things seen in the light of materialism. At the same time, they are human, tragic and comic." (Klein, p. 10) Choose one or two cartoons we've seen and apply this statement to them.