Hist. 389

#12 The Impact of UPA

April 19, 2010 at 9:43 pm (Uncategorized)

Tim Burton is well known for his dark imagination when it comes to animation. But after watching his 1982, short film titled Vincent, there might be more to Tim Burton’s inspiration such as famous creators of UPA ( United Productions of America).

UPA is a large section of history in which animation takes a turn for the better. The origins of UPA can be found in 1941 during the production of Snow White when animators began the strike at the Walt Disney Studio.  Among the artists who left Disney’s because of the labor dispute were three men who later founded UPA: Stephen Bosustow, David Hilberman, and Zachary Schwartz. According to Maltin 1980, UPA  was more than a cartoon studio,  it was an attitude, a point of view, a new way of thinking about what an animated film could — and should — be. Maltin points out that UPA is famous for “taking a concept of that the path of action should look continuous,” as well as innovating a method of “holding a character in place while the background dissolves behind him” (Maltin, 1980).

Look at the following film and see if you can see the subtle inspirations from UPA;

Throughout the film, Burton uses a technique called  “match cutting” to visualize Vincent’s identification with Vincent Price, which provides a series of trick transitions between Vincent-as-himself and Vincent-as-Vincent Price.  This style of cutting is familiar from UPA cartoons, which often matched character position while backgrounds dissolved from one location to the next. Moreover, Vincent’s flat, simplified backgrounds show the influence of the stylized spaces of such UPA films as Gerald McBoing Boing or Mr. Maggo.

It is also similar to UPS type of animation as a film “without walls. There are no lines defining the difference between a ceiling and a wall.  As Maltin stated, “a picture is on a space, and then there’s a rug. So ‘rug’ means that’s the floor and ‘picture’ means that’s the wall.” The props in a scene are placed relative to the action; “we thought of them as standing characters.” (Maltin 1980). Though Vincent is less sparse, a similar ambiguity is introduced when checkerboard linoleum appears as a stark wall instead of a floor, or skylights are simply placed in an upper area of the frame. Done in stop motion animation, Vincent nevertheless looks surprisingly similar to a UPA cartoon in the simplicity of its stylized design.

Refrences:

Maltin, Leonard. Of Mice and Magic. Plume Books, 1980. Print.

Commented on Bonnie Hansen and Sarah Askri Blogs.