Animation Artifacts &Illustration 01 Feb 2007 08:24 am
Three Little Pigs That Could
– One of the great, classic cartoons in the Disney canon is The Three Little Pigs. This animated short Silly Symphony was a very big item in its day. Its popularity came close to rivalling Mickey Mouse, and its theme song Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf was an overwhelming hit. It’s hard to remember this when watching the innocent, little original film.
There were three follow-up shorts featuring the same characters, though none of them really had much of an impact. The film had widespread cross-promotional success (sheet music sales, dolls, books, etc.) and was a big money-earner for the studio.
Even today you can find a recently constructed flash animated version of the characters on one of the Disney sites.
It’s always been said that this was the first real brakthrough for character animation. By featuring three almost identical characters, the Disney artists had set a chore for themselves trying to differentiate between each of the three pigs. It was a resounding success, and the rubber hose characters were left behind. After the popularity of this short, Disney put even more emphasis on character development and construction.
I have a number of pieces from that period that I thought I might share.
The first is this children’s book adapted from the film and published in 1933. It’s big enough that I’ll have to break it up into two separate posts. Here’s the first part:
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(Click on any image to enlarge.)
- A post note. Just today, Cartoon Brew talks about a cartoon sequence in a 1963 live action South American film, Cri-Cri el Grillito Cantor. The film features an animation sequnce directed by Bill Justice and X. Atencio. The sequnce can be seen on Didier Ghez‘ site posted last November. The pigs are alive in some form or other.
on 18 Jul 2008 at 8:56 am 1.Jerry Edwards said …
Hi Michael! Having read and commented on your post today 18 July on the book The Country Cousin, I had to go back to your earlier post of the book Three Little Pigs. I enjoyed both this post and the later post completing the book. This is fun stuff for me. I’ve FINALLY realized that you post every day (or just about), so I’m going to have to check to website more often to keep from falling behind. Although I am mainly a Disney “classic” animation fan, I do enjoy a wide variety of non-Disney animation including much non-cel animation. Yesterday I received “The Sand Castle” on DVD (have had it on VHS for decades) and I look forward to DVD release next week of “Abel’s Island” which I’ve had on VHS for many years. Some of my other fave non-Disney is “The Fool Of The World And The Flying Ship”, “The Man Who Planted Trees”, and “Stanley And The Dinosaurs”. Even limited animation, such as “Mike Muligan and His Steam Shovel” (the HBO “musical” version), is among my favorites.