Thursday, August 03, 2006

Barney Bear Model Sheets

Here's a couple of model sheets of the lovable Barney Bear. The first is the design used in the Hugh Harman and Rudy Ising shorts for MGM and also when George Gordon took over the director's chair for the series in 1944. I'm sure that this complex design must have been a bitch to animate which is probably why he was streamlined when Preston Blair and Michael Lah co-directed three shorts in the late forties and used later when Dick Lundy revived the series in the early fifties. It's a shame that the Blair/Lah unit didn't last long as their shorts were quite good. I've also uploaded Busybody Bear which was directed by Dick Lundy when he took over Tex Avery's unit during his year long hiatus. I've posted Barney Bear cartoons in the past but those have since been taken off of YouTube. I'll try and get around to uploading them again and fixing those old posts.



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7 comments:

  1. Brett W. Thompson8/04/2006 1:01 AM

    I really love the model sheets you post, and I'm totally looking forward to sitting back and watching this cartoon :)

    This is one of my favorite blogs- I don't understand how you don't get a ton more comments!

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  2. Kevin Langley8/04/2006 10:16 AM

    Hi Brett! Yeah, I usually get just a couple of comments per post but I seem to get a decent amount of hits so at least people are checking this stuff out. Maybe this blog needs a little controversy to stir things up? Or maybe it's not sexy enough, that's it I'll sex it up a little!:) Actually I'm trying to gather enough pencil/layout and animation drawings of Red Hot to try and make something of a model sheet of her. I wonder if there ever was one considering Preston Blair did most of the animation of her, maybe it was all in his head? Surely, that would have found it's way into one of the books about Tex.

    I'm glad you're enjoying my posts, I recently scanned a load of model sheets of minor Warner's characters and some Lantz and Famous/Fleischer models too. I'll start posting them soon. I hope you enjoy Busybody Bear, Dick Lundy has become one of my favorite directors. He added more personality to Barney than the previous directors, in fact he's sort of a butt-in-sky in Lundy's cartoons whereas he hardly had any personality traits in the late 30's and early 40's.

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  3. Brett W. Thompson8/05/2006 12:41 AM

    Hi Kevin!!

    Awesome, thanks for the reply! :)

    Wow, a model sheet of Red Hot would be so cool!! And it would fit great with John K's recent post about drawing girls, right? :)

    Yay, so glad to hear you have more to post, too! I don't know where you find these, hah.

    I liked the cartoon, too, by the way :) I don't think I've seen too many Lundy cartoons.

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  4. Thad8/05/2006 11:33 AM

    Maybe they drew Red in the nude on the modelsheets, because I've never seen one of her reprinted!

    - Thad

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  5. Kevin Langley8/05/2006 4:05 PM

    I've never even seen one pop up on Ebay, if someone has one they ain't givin' it up. I'm beginning to think maybe Blair just drew from memory. There's a part in Red Hot Riding Hood when Red is running into the taxi and she just looks bad, clearly not animated by Blair, maybe there was no model sheet for the other artists to follow. Even worse they were probably tossed away like trash.

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  6. Anonymous8/08/2006 6:15 PM

    I love the model sheets too.
    And your own art makes me a bit envious.

    As for Red Hot Riding Hood, I read that much of the art of her was stolen at the studio. People just had to have the hot girl.

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  7. Kevin Langley8/08/2006 11:38 PM

    I'm glad you like the model sheets and thanks for the compliments. I could definetly see why the art would be taken from the studio, I just wish more of it would turn up on auctions or in books.

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