Animation &Animation Artifacts &Fleischer &Models &walk cycle 23 Mar 2009 07:59 am
Wiffle Piffle
- Wifle Piffle was a character that the Fleischer studio tried to develop out of the Betty Boop series. The first appearance was in a Screen Song: I Feel Like A Feather In The Breeze released in 1936. He appears as a waiter in the opening. The animation of the character was by Tom Johnson (as was this model sheet.)
Two follow-up films were made with this side character in Betty Boop shorts.
The first, released in February 1937, was Whoops! I’m A Cowboy, and the second, in March 1937, The Hot Air Salesman. The opening scene features an expensive multiplane shot behind him.
He seems to have been an Egghead type character whose sole character trait was a silly walk. Needless to say, they couldn’t find a joh for him.
The model sheet for the character was an 18 drawing walk cycle with a bit of a turnaround. Crosshairs keep the character in registration; only a couple of the pages were punched.
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On ones at 24FPS
Click left side of black bar to play.
Right side to watch single frame.
on 23 Mar 2009 at 9:14 am 1.Jason said …
Cute walk. Ha.
on 23 Mar 2009 at 11:23 am 2.Mark Newgarden said …
I love this guy. If they had only starred him in Gulliver…
on 23 Mar 2009 at 11:45 am 3.Larry Levine said …
Whiffle Piffle had a Milt Gross-like design to him.
on 23 Mar 2009 at 12:09 pm 4.Bob Flynn said …
Love that silly Fleischer walk cycle. Great character breakdown sheets, too. Oh, and what a name!
on 23 Mar 2009 at 4:39 pm 5.John said …
The opening walk montage in “The Hot Air Salesman” — down the street through the yard with the dog and through the moving trolly (coming out in the same place he started) — is the best thing about the cartoon. It’s only when WP stops and starts to talk to Betty (Jack Mercer at his most nasal) that things fall apart.
on 24 Mar 2009 at 3:08 am 6.Tom Sito said …
Shamus Culhane, who was a long time directing animator at Fleischer, once complained to me:” You kids and your nostalgia kick love all dat old Fleischer stuff. It made me nuts that all we ever did for character development was think of one interesting trait like a funny walk, and a funny name, and that was it!” He specifically mentioned Mr Wiffle Piffle. I confessed to him I still loved it all.
on 24 Mar 2009 at 1:11 pm 7.billburgNYC said …
What fun! Thanks!
on 12 Apr 2009 at 6:31 pm 8.Bob Jaques said …
Here’s some titles to add to the Wiffle Piffle filmography: (in no particular order) ‘I Wished on the Moon’, ‘Talking Through My Heart’, ‘I Don’t Want to Make History’, ‘I Never Should Have Told You’ and ‘You Took the Song Right Out of My Heart’. It’s possible that Johnson may have created the character – most of the titles I noted are from Screen Songs that he de facto directed.
on 13 Apr 2009 at 7:42 am 9.Michael said …
You’ll note that he signed the model sheet.
on 29 Aug 2010 at 2:02 pm 10.Mark Cantor said …
Before I Feel Like a Feather In the Breeze, Wiffle Piffle appeared in No Other One, a Screen Song featuring Hal Kemp and his Orchestra, with a Skinnay Ennis vocal. I, for one, think this character is absolutely wonderful and I always look forward to seeing cartoon shorts in which eh is featurd.