Auction (II) - a Technicolor Example

I have previously talked about the use of Technicolor and how the artwork shot in animation was adapted to its use on the screen. This page has a document transcription from a 1936 Disney art class that explains just that. An example from the upcoming auction can maybe clarify this a little, as well. Here are two versions of item #21, a background from the great "Mr. Duck Steps Out," the 1939 short of which I posted the draft back in May 2006.

DuckStepsOutBG-regularDuckStepsOutBG-enhanced
The left image is a regular scan of this wonderful background. What one notices is, that there is less contrast than one would expect to see in a movie background. I read in an explanation by Sam Armstrong (in a transcript I thought I had posted, but which seems to be on my to-do list) that the painters were asked to paint anything between around 25% to 75% of the color array. Technicolor would then stretch it out to from 0% (black) to 100% (white). Thus - no real whites and no real blacks; the painting gets a very elegant veil of low-contrast spread over it. Or graphically:
TechnicolorStretch
The right image is a "fake" I made in Photoshop: I noticed that the histogram had no peaks in left and right, so I stretched it using "Levels" which would do approximately what Technicolor did at least in its most basic form. We get a bright, very colorful image, which, if nothing else, I think goes to make my point.

Admittedly, the image on the left, the background as-is that is up for auction, would look prettier on my wall than the bright spray of colors I generated...
[This beautiful background did not sell at the auction!]

Comments

  1. Luis María BenítezApril 17, 2011 at 4:28 PM

    Very interesting, I didn't know that.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Don CoxApril 22, 2011 at 9:57 AM

    "Auto contrast" in Photoshop will do the same thing faster.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Hans PerkApril 22, 2011 at 10:08 AM

    Hi Don - Thanks for your comment - you'd get the same effect, but that was not my point: I wanted to control the levels myself, not have Photoshop decide them for me....

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Prod. 2074 - Peter Pan (XVII)  - Seq. 15.0 - Voyage Home -- Ending

Image
Directed by Wilfred "JAXON" Jackson, laid out by Maclaren Stewart. Assistant director Mike Holoboff, secretary Toby (Tobelmann). This FINAL draft dated 11/3/52. Animation by Marvin Woodward (Lost Boys, John, Michael), Eric Larson (Peter), Harvey Toombs (Wendy), Don Lusk (Tink), Norm Ferguson (Nana), Jack Campbell (Father), Art Stevens, Milt Kahl (Father, Mother, Wendy), Marc Davis (Mother), Hal King (John), George Rowley (anchor chain, pixie dust, sail, ship), Josh Meador (cloud-ship). And that concludes the draft for Peter Pan, the fourteenth complete feature film draft on this blog! (Ok, you smart-alecks, we still need to see the last page of the Pink Elephant sequence...) As always, I feel the need to stress that these documents were kept to keep track of the responsible person, and as such it may not reflect precisely the specific directing animators who worked on the sequences. If e.g. an inker or checker needed to find out who animated the scene because of some question
Read more

The First Hyperion Ave. Studio

Image
I used to wonder where precisely Walt Disney's first 2719 Hyperion Ave. studio was located, and what it looked like. Since reading about it first in the 1970s in Dave Smith's article in Michael Barrier's great Funnyworld, I spent hours looking at photos, aerial photographs, maps etc, until I found I had a pretty good impression. My aim here is to pass some of that on to you, as I have found there was an interest in this since I posted this image of the staff with their new Charlotte Clark dolls on my Facebook page: Looking through Cecil Munsey's Disneyana, it appears to me that the "funny looking" Mickey with the button eyes is actually an example of the 1930 British-made pose-able Mickey by the Dean's Rag Book company of London. First, the WHERE. Here is the front of the Gelsons parking lot, with the original plot of the studio indicated in a blueish hue. We see the very small building, the back yard that has a car shed does not even reach the current Gel
Read more

Miffy the Movie in cinemas in Holland!

Image
Finally, the film I directed called " nijntje de film " ( miffy the movie ) has gone into general release in 118 cinemas in Holland today! As you can imagine, I am very proud of this film. Interestingly, the reviews are split in two: the ones where the reviewer saw the film WITH a children's audience all give the film four out of five stars, while the ones who have NOT seen the film with kids give it three out of five, and mention "I doubt if the film can keep the young audience captivated." The "four star" reviewers note that it can - that the film "works!" In the Dutch TV guide Troskompas , in the very first review published a week ago, I found a very clear view on this: the reviewer wrote that he feels he has no way of judging the film, but as his kid loved it and was entertained all the way, he could not but give the film four stars. To me, that is the only way to look at it: does our target audience like it? Are they amused and entertai
Read more