By Lucia Olaverry
Out of the Inkwell is little series created by Max Fleischer.Little do we know he is going to make animation history these three short films.He independently made these short films with his own invention the Rotoscope.He made it with a film projector and easel used as an aid for achieving realistic movement to his characters.His device would project a motion picture film through an opening in the easel and it was covered by a glass pane and its purpose was a drawing surface.
Some of the characters are Koko the clown and fitz the dog from the first few short films that Max has made.Max took inspiration from this younger brother Dave Fleischer for Koko as
Dave was working as a Coney Clown.Out of the Inkwell began at Bray studio as a monthly entry in The Bray Pictorgraph Screen Magazine.Fleischer and his brothers started their own studio in 1923 and in the same year Dick Huemer had become the new director of animation.Humer had previously worked with the Mutt and Jeff cartoons.He helped Fleischer with his work and help him to stop depending on the rotoscope to make his animations as well with his art style and the way he used his ink.
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His art style changed and along with it was the animations introduction.Usually in Fleischer's original films.The audience would see him drawing the character and him making it ‘come to life’,
but this changed. Mid 1918 to 1927 Out of the inkwell was renamed to The Inkwell Imps ,this continued till 1929.Amazingly all of the 62 Out of the inkwell and 56 Inkwell Imps films were all made within 11 years.That is incredible.Soon the inkwell imps were replaced with Talkartoons and sadly koko the clown retired from this days in films in 1931 and introduced new characters like Betty Boop and Bimbo
Koko’s last appearance was in a betty boop film called Ha-Ha-Ha in the year 1934.It was a remake of Screen Song.Stuart Productions in 1950, released a few of the Out of the inkwell cartoons and a couple of Inkwell Imps cartoons to T.V.The year 1958 Max fleischer had re opened his studio to make 100 films of Out of the Inkwell five minute cartoons in color and brought back Koko and introduced his girlfriend Kokette.In conclusion ,that's all the important things about Out of the Inkwell that you should know.