Thoughts on Why Animation in the 1960s Was Extremely Vibrant

‘Vibrant’ can be defined in a few different ways, one can describe vibrant as “pulsating with life, vigor, or activity” (Marriam Webster, 2021), whilst another’s definition of the word is an adjective of “sounds that are strong and resonating or colors that are bright and striking” (Cambridge Dictionary, 2021). This essay will be focusing on the latter definition for the word. I will delve into the comparison of 1960s animation from animators such as Ryan Larkin, Norman McLaren and Walt Disney’s motion picture films released during the decade to fully explore if the animation was actually vibrant and if so, why animation in the 1960s had such a change in visual imagery.

One reason for the vibrancy of the animation in the 1960s was due to increased drug use in North America during the decade. Marijuana, cocaine, and LSD were increasing in popularity for their vivid psychedelic highs, especially amongst the younger members of the hippie counterculture and overall anti-government and anti-war movement.

Ryan Larkin was known for taking illicit substances such as cocaine and drawing inspiration from it, even him being quoted to say, “The cocaine was giving me incredible insights into human behaviors and very acute sensitivities towards what constituted human behavior” (Chris Robinson, 2004, p.21). His highs gave him a new introspective look at human movement, even using his own body as reference in his films such as ‘Walking’; a film that depicts different people walking in various mediums, angles and styles. In both ‘Walking’ and ‘Street Musique’, Ryan Larkin shows a unique look at movement and perspective, especially during his more colorful sections that reflect a lot of the art that was popular in the 1960s, however it could be argued that this style had more to do with Ryan Larkin’s independent experiences with cocaine than the current society’s trends in art.

However, not all artists that were prominent in the 1960s were drug users and many certainly were not using it as their artistic inspiration. Take Norman McLaren for example, he has no known use of substances and yet his films ‘Neighbors’ and ‘Lignes verticales’ are extremely bright and colorful and whilst largely different to the animation style of his mentee’s work it still has this uniquely vibrant look to it. Whilst Norman McLaren does not use fully saturated colors in his work, “the way his animations react to rhythm, tempo and musical structure brings such a bold yet fluid movement to it” (Holly Rodgers, 2014). The colors used in his work, whilst deliberate, are also a result of the materials he had available at the time. ‘Lines Vertical’ was him painting directly onto scrubbed 35mm film and drawing lines into the paint. Paint by nature is bright and pigmented. Similar reason with his 1952 film ‘Neighbors’. Yes, it has vivid colors, and even the 2D houses are as such, but the film used at the time for photography and films used a three-strip process that would have monochromatic negative for each primary color. In the 1950s companies found cheaper ways to make this film but at the cost of more grain and higher contrast, creating such a vibrant and uniquely 60s look. Norman McLaren's pixilated film would have been affected by this greatly, granted to its benefit. To give all the credit to the available materials at the time, even with their major influence on the work, would not be giving Norman McLaren the credit he deserves for his own use of color, composition and contrast. He came up with groundbreaking techniques for synchronizing sound with colorful animation that he taught and passed down to quite a few notable animators such as Rene Jodoin, George Dunning, Jim McKay, Grant Munro, Ryan Larkin; who was mentioned earlier, and Evelyn Lambart when he created a small animation team within the NFB. This may be a reason as to why many animators did use such bold, bright and vibrant colors as they had learnt the style from Norman McLaren himself.

Walt Disney himself in his last few films had this extremely vibrant color palette to it, however it certainly was not due to an influence of drug culture in the 1960s. Walt Disney had a target audience to please, namely parents of children who would have wanted something more geared towards a family friendly approach and illegal substances would not have passed with film regulations. Walt Disney’s animation change was altered due to budget cuts. The inking department had major cuts, causing the company to go from five hundred inkers to less than a hundred. They decided to start scanning the initial sketches and printing them onto cells instead using a technique called Xerography, creating a more sketched look. They also started to use less shading and blockier colors in the animation, not to mention the replacement of many paints with makeup as a cheaper alternative at the time, creating this very uniquely simplistic, scratchier and yet vibrant and bold style in films such as ‘101 Dalmatians’, ‘The Jungle Book’ and ‘The Sword in the Stone’, though ‘The Jungle Book’ combined the harder sketched character animation with the more classic painted backgrounds. The minimal use of cell shading really allowed many of the bright colors used to pop and have a high contrast as a result of these budget cuts, especially compared to earlier Walt Disney works such as ‘Alice in Wonderland’. The backgrounds in the 1951 film are painted with way more detail compared to its consequent films, and the colors are more realistic aside from the more saturated color of the grass to be greener in some cases.

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One case in which both drug use and the vibrant style of low-cost animation both contributed to how a film looked was The Beatles’ feature film ‘Yellow Submarine’. The film was completed in just under a year by a variety of different animators and had ideas for the visuals and characters suggested by The Beatles themselves, including the Vacuum Monster. A large portion of the animation was done with psychedelic art style, which in turn was inspired by the effects LSD had on people and the weird visuals they would see when high. In turn, The Beatles themselves were drug users, arguably one of the reasons many fans or hippies of the time did drugs too. However, even with many portions having very detailed, intricate animations for the psychedelic look, the rest of the film had a very simple blocky color style, still vibrant by all means but certainly caused by the crunch to get the animation done quickly.

Not all animation in the 60s was a technicolor dream however, many animators were still working with black and white mediums and film. Ryan Larkin, mentioned in an earlier paragraph, created ‘Syrinx’ which was done entirely with charcoal sketches on paper and done in a realistic, or at the very least semi-realism style. The film was about a classical myth about the Syrinx; a nymph who desperately tries to flee Pan, a great goat god of mischief and trickery dating back to Mycenean Greece. As already discussed, Ryan Larkin was taking drugs throughout the 60s and onwards, well before the creation of ‘Walking’ and his other more colorful, vibrant works. This was one of his very first pieces of animation within the NBC and also one of the first to get to a larger audience. If this were really the sole reasoning for why his work was vibrant, why would he create works like this? Whilst drug use would have been a source of inspiration, clearly Ryan Larkin had talents in quieter tones and shapes and would not be defined by his more vibrant works. Ryan Larkin was taught by Norman McLaren in one of his smaller animation teams within the NBC. Norman McLaren has a plethora of animation works in monochromatic black and white; ‘Pas de deux’, ‘A Chairy Tale’ (in collaboration with Evelyn Lambart), and ‘Pen Point Percussion’ being good examples of this. ‘Pas de deux’ particularly has a hypnotic look from the delayed frames that could also be described as psychedelic, even without the typical colors. The films, whilst beautiful and engaging, would not tend to be described by the word vibrant very well.

Even the use of bright colors in the 1960s is not definitive proof that it was a particularly unique thing for the decade, Walt Disney was still working with a vibrant color palette before the 60s, as seen in films such as ‘Alice in Wonderland’, ‘Peter Pan’ and ‘Lady and the Tramp’. Once again, this was because of the target audience Walt Disney intended the film for, that being children. Children are huge fans of bright, primary colors such as red, blue and yellow, with secondary colors such as purple, green and orange coming up second. A child is more likely to focus on the screen and want to see a film if it has colors they enjoy. Walt Disney would need to put his target audience first and foremost if he wanted to make a turn in profit from any of his major animated films.

Even in The Beatles’ ‘Yellow Submarine’, there were plenty of segments lacking vibrancy, namely the ‘Eleanor Rigby’ portion. There would be the occasional pop of colors in the animation such as the yellow submarine and a red phone box but overall, the colors are very muted, and the style is more of a collage of actual images screen printed rather than anything that overly pushes the boundaries of shape. It can be argued that it is due to the depressing lyrics and tone of the song that this decision to have muted colors was made but it still leaves the animation lacking in vibrancy.

To conclude, the 1960s animation was influenced by a great number of reasons; from the spreading use of hallucinogenic drugs, which the animator’s highs caused inspiration for vivid color and imagery, to simple things such as budget cuts causing both independent artists and larger studios to improvise and work with simpler, bolder colors that made their work more vibrant as a result and just the widespread three strip film available at the time. Even with black and white monochromatic pieces by iconic animators being made within the 1960s, the impact of the more colorful and vibrant works is clear from just how often it gets referenced, reused and brought back in modern media. It is more than likely that when you think of the 60s, you will think of the bright colors and psychedelic patterns to the point where people will just call it 60s art or hippie art style. While these reasons are very different from each other, one being more deliberate whilst the other was more of a product of coming up with a solution to another problem, they have both contributed to the entire vibrant and well-known look of the 1960s.