History of Animation. Visual & Performing Arts Research Paper

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22 February 2019
Koko the Clown
Koko the clown was a creation of the Max Fleischer with the help of his brothers. Produced in a new design using Max’s invention, the Rotoscope, Koko revolutionized the animation industry with his fluid, human-like movements. He was the star character until the late 1920s when talking cartoons were introduced. He featured in a few films in 1930s before making his last appearance in 1934 (Fleischer Studios, 1).
The idea of Koko the clown came to Max Fleischer introduced the Rotoscope in 1915 (Menache, 19). Rotoscope was a mechanism that max created to improve the jerky, jumping quality of early animated films. To give characters a more fluid life-like movement, animators could use life action film as a guide for their drawings. After Max built the prototype he and his brothers set to work of creating an animated character to showcase their invention. The character created was ‘little crown’ who later came to be known as ‘Koko’ (Cabarga, 5).
‘Little clown’ was created in the era of silent movies. By creating a character who could communicate mainly though natural choice (pantomime), Max eliminated the need for excessive text and showed the potential of the Rotoscope to revolutionize the audience’ experience. Two factors contributed to the success of the ‘little crown’. First, Max’s younger brother, Dave was a wonderful clown who previously worked at Steeplechase Amusement Park at Coney Island and even had his own suit. Second, the Fleischer brothers had no problem getting the fabric they used to create his costume; they were sons of a tailor. The costume resembled the one worn by Bessie McCoy’s Yama Yama Man (citation). The black costume, loosely fitting, with large pom-poms in the front, white gloves and a peaked hat was perfect for the kind of sharp high contrast image that would make tracing of the images using the Rotoscope easier and the white and black was convenient for the limited color palate. Creating the ‘little clown’ was no easy work as Max had hoped. The work started by filming Dave playing around on the roof of Max’s building in his clown outfit. They then spent the next one year creating some 2500 new hand drawn images to match each frame of the original film. The final result was a one-minute film that transformed the look of animation forever.
In 1916 Max was hired by J.R.Bray to work at his studio after several failed attempts to catch the attention of various animation studios (Cabarga, 7). Max was to make films featuring life-like little clowns together with other assignments. However, Max had to put on hold this work and work on a series of military film as America had joined the World War I. It was not until the end of the war that Max resumed his work on animations which he now named ‘Out of the Inkwell’. The films began featuring in theatres in 1919 but their regular appearance started in 1920 when Max found short-cuts in development and modification that eased the production process.
The popularity of the little crown by 1921 convinced Max and Dave to part ways with Bray and venture into their own. They established their own studio under...