Fleischer Studios
Fleischer Studios, Inc. was a pioneering American animation studio founded in 1921 by brothers Max and Dave Fleischer. The company was Walt Disney Productions' leading competitor in the 1920s and 30s, producing successful cartoons such as Koko the Clown, Betty Boop, Popeye the Sailor, and Superman. While most famous cartoon characters of the early twentieth century were animals, Fleischer Studios' most popular characters were humans.
In 1914, Max Fleischer developed a machine called the rotoscope, which allowed animators to trace over live-action film movement for use in hand-drawn animations. The technique was used in the production of the Koko the Clown cartoons, with Dave Fleischer, dressed in a clown costume, serving as Koko's live model. Rotoscoping was a significant contribution to the advancement of animation and was adopted by Walt Disney Productions as well.
The Dissolve
A paradigm shift in contemporary art is rare and hard to recognize at its inception, but that is what curators Sarah Lewis and Daniel Belasco did in The Dissolve, SITE SANTA FE’s Eighth International Biennial. The curators presented a new sensibility in the art of our time, a mingling of up-to-the-minute technology and traditional visual arts (painting, drawing, and sculpture) with dance, music, and film. The fundamental form of this new work was animation, uniting the technological (the camera) with the handmade (drawing).
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