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• Scene from "Andy Saves the Princess" 16mm. animated Dollytoon filmed by author using rag doll characters.
• Closeup of Raggedy Andy and Raggedy Ann mounting the golden stair to Candy Tree lane. Enlargements are from original 16mm. film frames.
DOLLYTOONS
new
idea for animator*
B y
EUGENE
1
lOT so long ago, an unobtrusive fellow with an idea and named George Pal appeared on the Hollywood scene to produce a revolutionary type of entertainment film now familiar to theatregoers as "Puppetoons." These are animated shorts employing puppets or specially made figures instead of pen and ink drawings. Even the scenery and props are real, thus providing depth and roundness which are lacking in the animated cartoon film.
Where the amateur, ambitious to produce cartoons,, has been stymied by his inability to draw the hundreds of illustrations necessary for even a short-short film, the Puppetoon idea opens up many possibilities to the amateur interested in animation. It intrigued me, and until my entry into Uncle Sam's armed forces cut short my movie making hobby activities, I had experimented with a process similar to George Pal's. I call my productions "Dollytoons" because ordinary jointed dolls are used instead of puppets.
Any amateur, whose cine camera will permit single frame photography, can produce his own Dollytoons. The necessary characters may be purchased at the toy counter of most department stores — dolls, adequately jointed to enable them to be moved in a natural manner. This means the body must be capable of bending and the arms, hands, legs and feet must be movable and preferably be adjustable to fixed positions. The story plot may be adapted from any
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FERNETTE
of the well known fairy tales and the settings made by hand from paper, wood and other easy to obtain non-essential materials in these war times.
My last effort was titled "Andy Saves The Princess," starring Raggedy Ann and Raggedy Andy, and utilized soft doll characters obtained at a department store toy counter. Scenes from this film are reproduced on this page. In "Andy Saves The Princess" a none-tocomplicated plot finds Raggedy Ann and Raggedy Andy asleep in bunk beds. Andy awakes and clambers down the ladder to awaken Ann in the bunk below. Shaking her arms, he awakens her, gives her a good-morning kiss. This scene fades to the next of Ann and Andy climbing a golden stair backgrounded by a starry night sky — an effect accomplished by use of dark blue crepe paper sprinkled with silver stars.
As Ann and Andy reach top of the stairs, the blue sky dissolves to a new setting in which candy-laden trees are superimposed over the sky scene. Ann and Andy proceed down candy lane and here they find a castle. High behind a barred window a princess appears, apparently in distress. Andy goes to her rescue. Raising a ladder, Andy, in a • Continued on Page 299
• Five, frames from author's film which demonstrates technique used in animating the action cycle of doll ascending stairs. Note that movement from one step to another occupies four separate exposures, lending naturalness to the action.