Wednesday, December 30, 2009

Quasi at the Quackadero & Little Nemo: National Film Registry 2009



Sally Cruikshank's "Quasi at the Quackadero" and  Winsor McCay's "Little Nemo"   have both been included in the 2009 National Film Registry.  This is great news.  My only quibble is that they weren't inducted years ago.
As I've posted before, I  love with "Quasi at the Quackadero"- it's one of my favorite cartoons.  It's cute (without being cloying), bizarre (without being pretentious or annoying), inventive, colorful, funny and very original.  This isn't a cartoon where you can guess what happens next.
As for Nemo, I've been familiar with the old comic strips since I was a kid, but saw the animated version a few years ago.  Amazing stuff.
While very different, these cartoons have some things in common:
Each was largely the creation of a single artist, who thought up the plot, created the characters, and did most (if not all) of the animation.  Also, note how both take advantage of the medium (a fancy way to say the creators realized  Hey, this is animation, so I can make  the characters do whatever I want!)  There's morphing, surreal craziness, fantastic creatures and unique details.
And both are fun to watch.

5 comments:

Sally said...

Thank you so much namowal. Now time for you to take over on crazy cartoons.

Linda Davick said...

YAY Quasi!

& thanks for posting the Little Nemo piece--I had never seen it.

Namowal (Jennifer Bourne) said...

Hi Sally,
You're very welcome.
Hope you weren't offended that I threw in McCay's flick too. I thought it was pretty cool his work happened to be the other cartoon that got selected.

Hi Linda,
Yay Quasi indeed!

stray said...

It's all so exciting!

Sally said...

Winsor McKay was only about the best cartoonist ever! His Sunday comics from the early 20th century were exquisite and more.