Studio: Out of the Inkwell (Fleischer)
Distributor: Bray Studios / Paramount
Short Synopsis
The film opens in a real artist's studio. Max Fleischer sits at his drawing board while a colleague looks on, and the pen draws the clown, still unnamed at this stage of the series, on the paper. Once drawn, the clown comes alive. A fly lands on the page and starts to pester him. The clown chases it, swats at it, and grabs an outsized pen nib as a weapon. Max, in live action, tries to help, flapping and grabbing at the insect as it moves between the drawn world and the real room. The fly proves too quick for both of them, and the chase sends the clown running across the white space of the page. The surviving prints differ slightly, and the exact final gag is not described in sources this book could check.
Why It Matters
- The clown moves like a real person because he was traced from one. The Fleischers' rotoscope, patented by Max in 1917, projected live-action film of Dave Fleischer in a clown costume onto the drawing board frame by frame. The fluid, slightly uncanny motion of the clown swatting at the fly is still striking next to the stiff animation of other 1919 cartoons.
- This is one of the earliest Out of the Inkwell films released, and the clown became Koko, the Fleischers' first star. The series' mix of live action and animation, with the artist and his creation in the same frame, led straight to Betty Boop and Popeye at Fleischer Studios.
Notes and Trivia
- The idea of a cartoon character escaping from and returning to the inkwell became the series' signature opening and closing.
- The clown only got the name "Ko-Ko" in the 1920s.
- See also: Feline Follies (1919).