Sep 3, 2018

More than 90 animators collaborated to re-animate the classic manga "Dover Boys".

"The Dover Boys" (1942) has long been recognized as a seminal work in the development of commercial animation, but only in the last decade has it been rediscovered, with John McLeish, who was also the narrator of the goofy "How To" short, playing the film's quirky The film is now being remembered by a younger generation drawn to its quirky imagery and over-the-top dialogue, played by John McLeish, who was also the narrator of Goofy's "How To" shorts.

The film's renewed popularity has now culminated in the ultimate acclaim: a re-animation project in which over 90 animators re-create every shot of the film in their own personal styles. The variety of graphic approaches, visual ideas, and designs used in this short film is a particularly fitting tribute to a work that was revolutionary for its time and challenged the graphic conventions of the era in which it was created.

The Dover Boys Reanimated Collab debuted online last Monday and has garnered over 340,000 views in its first week:

Cartoon Brew, who goes by the online handle "Zeurel," the project's We spoke with the organizers about why they decided to re-animate the film and how they were able to put it all together in just four months.

Cartoon Brew: When did you first hear about the short film Dover Boys? After asking him where it came from he showed me the original short story.

What in particular stood out about "Dover Boys" compared to thousands of other vintage theatrical shorts that made you want to re-animate the film? The script for this short also feels surprisingly modern, even though it was produced in 1942. [Where and how did you advertise the project to attract over 90 animators? Many of them suggested Tumblr, but since I don't use Tumblr, I decided to use Twitter instead. I created a DoverBoysReanimated Twitter account and on April 23 (2018) I posted all the links to the information I needed through that Twitter and retweeted/promoted it on my main account. After the first few retweets from my followers, I received a steady stream of application emails, and it took less than four hours for all the slots to be filled.

What technical/creative instructions were given to the participating artists? Also, how closely did the artists have to follow the frame count/scene layout/action for each shot? Basically, the artists had to stick to a 1920x1080 aspect ratio and 24 frames per second, and the files had to be rendered as mp4, mov or swf. Alternatively, transitions could be coordinated with adjacent scenes to give a bit of an effect, as in PitiYindee and Biffimator's transition from the scout sending the message to the mailman entering the tavern.

The only other constraint was that the artist had to follow the original flow of the scene, but could experiment with very static scenes to breathe more life into them, as in the opening credit sequence. As for the characters, we encouraged artists to interpret them in their own style to give each scene its own unique flair: Gooseworx's psycho Dan, Simon Beed's meaty Dan, Ashley Nichols' cartoon-inspired Dora I don't think the collaboration would have been as successful were it not for the strange and wacky interpretations by some of the artists.

What do you hope this remake will accomplish, creatively, culturally, or otherwise: 1) to see if I can manage something of this magnitude, 2) to bring relatively unknown animators into the spotlight, and 3) that people will enjoy working on it. Many of the re-animation projects I've seen recently have a very high bar for submissions, and I personally don't enjoy that; with "Dover Boys Reanimated," I wanted people of different skill levels and media expertise to participate and have fun. There was stop motion, and some people used puppets. Hearing stories of relatively unknown animators getting attention for their work was also a big plus. I am really happy that this collaboration is producing the results I was aiming for, as it gave them the attention they deserved and gave them a great deal of confidence.

Images at top: Chictanzz (left), Vexversion (right)