Here’s this week’s episode of Stop-Motion Animations for April 11, 2015!

First up, is a guy named Lou Bunin. Lou Bunin was an American puppeteer, artist, and pioneer of stop-motion animation in the middle half of the twentieth century. He was a mural artist in Mexico City in 1926. There he created political- statement puppet shows using marionettes.  Famed Italian photographer, model, actress, and revolutionary political activist Tina Modotti took many pictures of Bunin and his puppets and included them in her work, “The Hands of the Puppeteer.”

When he returned to the USA, Bunin created animated three-dimensional puppets to appear in the 1939 World’s Fair in New York. His 1943 political stop-motion satire, Bury the Axis, is also famous. Years later, Lou Bunin worked at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer films where he created the stop-motion Prologue to the famed film, Ziegfeld Follies (MGM).

Later on, Bunin went on to create a feature length stop-motion animation film adaptation of Alice in Wonderland in 1949. The film starred Carol Marsh as a live-action Alice. It is quite well done. Walt Disney, though, prevented it from being widely released in the U.S., because Walt Disney feared it would compete with his 1951 animated version. To add insult to injury, the film was banned in Britain as Bunin’s Queen of Hearts was seen as unflattering to Queen Victoria. This film has been restored and shown at museums around the US, including the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. You can see the full feature length film here. Below is the trailer!

Lou Bunin’s Alice in Wonderland Trailer (1949) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FbpN7gsG-KA

Next up is Arthur “Art” Clokey. You may not know the name, but if you ever watched American TV animations in the sixties, you know Art Clokey’s work. He is best known as the creator of the character Gumby in the well-known “The Adventures of Gumby.” When actor and comedian Eddie Murphy parodied Gumby in a skit on Saturday Night Live, the animation enjoyed a sort of revival. There was even a Gumby movie called, of course, “Gumby: The Movie.” Others who viewed Sunday morning animations know Clokey’s other extremely famous work, Davey and Goliath which was sponsored by the Lutheran Church in America.

Art Clokey – Mandala https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yYds20rShNY

Finally, today’s “feature”!

Charles R. Bowers was a cartoonist as well as a slapstick comedian during the silent film and early “talkie” era in America.

Wikipedia says: “Charles R. Bowers was forgotten for decades and his name was absent from most histories of the Silent Era, although his work was enthusiastically reviewed by André Breton and a number of his contemporaries. As his surviving films have an inventiveness and surrealism which give them a freshness appealing to modern audiences, after his rediscovery his work has sometimes been placed in the “top tier” of silent film accomplishments (along with those of, for example, Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, Harold Lloyd). In comic style, he probably modelled himself after both Harry Langdon and Buster Keaton and was known to the French as “Bricolo.”

This is very good and I think it is brilliant in concept!

Charley Bowers – There it is! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fKEtAtjgwTc

Well that’s it for this week’s animations. I hope you enjoyed them! See you next week when we will probably try out some different types of animations! Stay Tuned!

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If you want to see more, click on one of the links below!

初期のアニメ!Early Animations! Part 4 (robot55.jp/blog/初期のアニメ!early-animations-part-4/)

Need a Break? Watch These Three Fantastic Short Animations! (robot55.jp/blog/need-a-break-watch-these-three-fantastic-short-animations/)

More Exciting (and Bizarre) Animations! (robot55.jp/blog/more-exciting-and-bizarre-animations/)

More Exciting (and Bizarre) Animations! Part 3〜おもしろい動画をご紹介
(http://robot55.jp/blog/more-exciting-and-bizarre-animations-part-3/)

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At Robot55 we make video productions for businesses and services and products, but we also pride ourselves on making videos for art and music. Our starting price is ¥70,000 and we are sure we can work out something that fits your budget.  Contact us! contact@robot55.jp

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