Restoration tidbits on LOONEY TUNES and Max Fleischer POPEYE cartoons! (1 Viewer)

[Patrick McCart]

www.cartoonresearch.com

It looks like negatives have been located for many of the WB and Popeye cartoons are in the process of being restored and remastered. (Note: If you read or participated in the WHV chat, they have already revealed this.)

While the Popeye cartoons are still in video limbo, WB is putting up the money to have them restored even though they're not going to make profit until King Features agrees to a deal with them. WB should be praised for this. Many motion pictures don't get the restoration they need due to financial problems. Even without DVD release happening in the near future, it's great to know that they're being taken care of.

With the Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies coming in November, this makes them even more worth looking forward to.

 

[PaulP]

Can't wait (repeat ad nauseum).

 

[Richard Waller]

I'd love to see remastered Popeye cartoons. Hopefully they'll see the light of day soon.

 

[Eric Peterson]

I will buy any and all discs featuring Classic Looney Tunes or Popeye. Some of those early black & white Popeye cartoons are amazing and almost appear to be 3D. I think my favorites are when Popeye is on the island with all of the wild animals and of course the Ali Baba episode. I would do just about anything for remastered versions of these toons. I've seen them on VHS a vew times, but usually colorized.

 

[DaViD Boulet]

Agreed. I'd LOVE to be able to buy those classic-1930's popeye cartoons! 3-D is the perfect description. The animators actually animated *changing perspective* into the scenery at a level that even few full-length Disney Feature Films rarely acheived.

-dave

 

[Ruz-El]

I'm all over the Popeye! I'd like the Betty Boop Flieschers as well, any word on these? I remember the definitive collection on VHS back in the mid 90's, but never heard anything about a dvd release.

 

[Patrick McCart]

Artisan currently has DVD rights for the Betty Boop cartoons, but the rights will revert to Paramount soon.

On one hand, it's bad that they've sat on the rights this long. On the other, it's good that they've sat on them. The previous LD set featured transfers that had been DVNR'd to death (does this sound familiar?) and lacked some of the UCLA restorations.

 

[oscar_merkx]

Thanks Patrick for these updates about LT & Popeye

 

[mark-edk]

"The animators actually animated *changing perspective* into the scenery at a level that even few full-length Disney Feature Films rarely acheived."

I recall seeing a documentary once that indicated the perspective illusion wasn't animated at all. They built a large turntable and positioned miniatures on it and filmed it as the table slowly revolved. Then they superimposed the animated characters. As the table turned it looked amazingly realistic.

 

[Patrick McCart]

The technical diagram of the "stereoptical" process is on some Popeye sites. It's defintely something to admire.

Basically, a 12' diameter turntable was built which could be precisely moved for each frame. Minature sets were built upon this table out of cardboard, paper-mache, etc. At one point, a rostrum camera was built to photograph cels just like a normal camera would (instead of shooting down, shooting straight-on). The cels were placed standing up on a rig in front of the background.

The process was used in both the B&W and color Fleischer cartoons until the beginning of the 1940s. Some of the most striking examples of stereoptical background work can be seen in Sindbad, Aladdin and His Wonderful Lamp (Popeye) and Poor Cinderella.

 

[Jeff Jacobson]

Basically, a 12' diameter turntable...

I was recently watching the Futurama DVDs, and this was briefly mentioned in the commentary track for the episode "My Three Suns". There is a scene of Fry walking through the desert, and someone says that this scene is an homage to the turntable animation in the old Popeye cartoons. Having never seen these cartoons, I didn't know what they were talking about. But now I have some idea. Thanks for the info.

 

[Patrick McCart]

In the Aladdin two-reeler, the desert scenes are REALLY cool. They seemed to have put the camera lower than usual so that you got a really cool panning effect with the characters farther away from the camera (well, sort of)

 

[Jeff Jacobson]

I just found an article about an upcoming Popeye DVD ...
http://www.dvdtoons.com/news/859

 

[Jeff Jacobson]

I just found an article about an upcoming Popeye DVD (and another DVD with a variety of 30s characters).
http://www.dvdtoons.com/news/859

 

[Scott-S]

This is Awesome news!

The "Popeye Meets Sinbad" 2 reeler realy needs the star treatment. It is one of the very few cartoons to use actual 3d models (hand built, not cgi ) for the backgrounds. The process turned out to be too expensive so it wasn't used for long.

I am extremely glad that it is being restored. I have a cheap public domain dvd with this episode and it looked very old and worn. I will definitely be willing to buy this new one to see how good the restoration is.

 

[Mark_TS]

ah, heaven!

the pre-1950's LOONEY TUNES and POPEYE

 

[TimJS]

I think these are straight reissues of the Thunderbean discs, well worth it for less than 10 bucks a disc.

Tim

 

[Patrick McCart]

By "restored" they mean that they're going to apply digital cleanup to existing prints. It's no substitute for the restorations being worked on from the original negatives by Warner Bros.

 

[Eric Peterson]

I want these Popeye cartoons really bad. If King Features is supposedly controlling these and preventing WB from releasing proper versions, what give Mackinac Media the right to release something? This has me confused.

Either way, I'll probably check out this disc as a placeholder until a complete and comprehensive Fleischer Popeye set is released.

...and while we're at is, where is Betty Boop? This has befuddled me for years. Her image is everywhere, yet how many people have actually seen the cartoons? I'll bet there are people that don't even know the cartoons exist.

 

[Garysb]

I would assume these are public domain titles and therefore anybody can release them.