World animation 1965 - 1970

World Animation 1965 - 1970

Japan

Toei Doga

The Toei Doga company made the Japanese series Cyborg 009 as first a film (1966), followed by a squeal, then a TV series in 1968, a coloured TV series in 1979 and again in 2001. Cyborg 009 was originally a manga comic about a famous athlete how, after an injury, got transformed into a cyborg, with a mission to fight all evil.

Hiroshi Sasagawa

Sasagawa made used the manga comic, Mach Go Go Go into an animated series (1967). This series was sold in the West as Speed Racer. The Western version was less violent that the original series, with the characters being stunned instead of killed. After Astro Boy was created, the market opened up in the West for the under-animated effects, heavy style of Japanese anime.

USA

Disney

Disney created The Jungle Book (1967). This film was commented upon for it being the first time animated characters' movements were based upon the filmed performances of the voice actors (this is now standard practice). This was also the last animated film that Walt Disney was involved in (he died on December 15th 1966 of lung cancer).

Marv Newland

Newland created the short called Bambi Meets Godzilla (1969).

UK

George Dunning

Dunning created the series Yellow Submarine (1968). This series is about the Beatles agreeing to travel in a yellow submarine to rescue the inhabitants of a land where music and happiness are banned by the meanies. Each song was animated into a different unusual visual, making full use of the new technology at the time.

Oliver Postgate & Peter Firmin

Postgate and Firmin formed the company Smallfilms. Smallfilms produced many animated children's series including Ivor the Engine, Bagpuss and Noggin the Dog. Smallfilms worked out of a converted cow shed, their animation was basic, using handmade models like in The Clangers (1969).

USA and Japan

Jules Bass

Producer Jules Bass had MOM Productions in Japan make a stop-motion film called Mad Monster Party in 1967. This influenced the later work of Tim Burton. The cast in this film was famous monsters like Dracula and King Kong, but due to copyright issues, the character King Kong was referred to as "it".

Italy

Osvaldo Cavandoli

Cavandoli created an advertising film for the Italian TV show Carosello called The Line in 1969. The Line was then turned into comics and a TV series with 90 episodes being produced between 1972 and 1991.

Belgium

Belvision Studios

Belvision Studios adapted Asterix the Gaul, from the first volume of comics and graphic novels created by Rene Goscinny and Albert Uderzo, into 12 animated films (1967). The first film of Asterix was created without the consent or knowledge of Goscinny and Uderzo. By the time they found out, it was to late to stop the release. Goscinny and Uderzo forced the production of the sequel to be stopped, stating that the first film was cheaply made and did a disservice to the comics.

Canada

Eva Szasz

Eva directed the film Cosmic Zoom, which was based on the 1957 book Cosmic View by Kees Boeke, for the National Film Board of Canada in 1968. The film starts with live-action of a boy on a lake. It then zooms out into space, zooms back in to subatomic level, and back out to the boy on the lake live-action. Later, designers Ray and Charles Earnes released their film Powers of Ten in 1968, also based on Cosmic View.

Ryan Larkin

Larkin produced a sequence of award winning films in the 1960s in a free flowing, psychedelic, figurative style, one called Walking in 1969 which was nominated for the best animated short Oscar in 1970.

Croatia

Pavao Stalter & Branko Ranitovic

Stalter and Ranitovic directed an adaption of Edgar Allen Poe's classic horror tale The Masque of the Red Death in 1969.

Russia

Andrei Khrjanovsky

Khrjanovsky created There Lived Kozyavin (1966). The film was a commentary on the absurdity of faceless communist bureaucracy and despite the KGB interference in all Soviet film production, this film received approval for production. The other film Khrjanovsky made, The Glass Harmonica (1969) was not so lucky and became the first animated film to be officially banned in Russia.

USA & UK

Terry Gilliam

Gilliam is the creator of Storytime (1968) and Monty Pythons Flying Circus. Storytime was influenced by Death Breath (1964). Gilliam came up with his trademark anarchic animation style by using a mixture of cutout photos, Victorian imagery, surreal machines and strange illustrations.