It's tough to imagine this but when I see online photos of Popeye in Color on places like Facebook, I can tell those stills are pulled from what I call the INFAMOUS FAMOUS STUDIOS era.
My guess is why they choose those stills from Popeye's Famous studios era cartoons is because almost all of the Popeye's made by the more superior Fleischer era are in black in white.
In fact, the only color Popeye's that were made by Fleischer (and were originally photographed in Color instead of colorized by Ted Turner) are what are referred to as the Popeye Arabian Nights Trilogy.
The first entry in the Popeye's Arabian Nights Trilogy is SINBAD THE SAILOR.
This beautiful short was released in November 27 1936, a good 13 months before the release of Disney's Snow White at the Carthay Circle Theater in December 21 1937.
But back to Popeye, this is a major achievement in the history of the Sailorman. Not only is it a beautifully animated 3-strip technicolor film featuring Popeye but it's also the most lavishly animated of all the Popeyes out there even for Fleischer's standards.
It all starts with this guy:
Is that really Sinbad or is that just Bluto in disguise?
Anyhow, Sinbad is as boastful as Bluto. He sings a self-congratulatory song about how he's the best sailor in all of the Atlantic Ocean.(I have to say Atlantic because that's what we call the seven seas. Plus, Fleischer was an East Coast Animation Studio.)
Sinbad is so manly, as he puts it, that animals who confront him cower in fear.
Especially when hit in the face.
"Who's the alpha predator now? You!!! Sinbad.... the...... Sailor......"
Here's a major highlight of Sinbad, and virtually any Fleischer Popeye short:
The 3D Stereo optical setback Camera.
I really like this camera. It has a much better Multiplane camera feel than Ub Iwerk's more well known system. Why?
Ub Iwerk's multiplane camera system, which he sold to studios like Disney and Warner Bros, is just the same down facing system as the standard camera so the art stays flat no matter what. It's good for assets that don't have that much detail such as the cacti and mountains you see in Roadrunner cartoons but If you push for Hyper-realism such as the trees in Bambi's opening sequence, your art is limited to a fixed perspective.
Fleischer's setback camera on the other hand uses Actual sculpted 3D Assets which are placed on a turntable. Of course, this means the animation has to be photographed horizontally but that's a trade-off when you want to do 3D a good 60 years before computers could let you do that.
Did I mention that everybody is scared shitless of Sinbad's manliness?
Not even a two-headed giant is a match for Sinbad's personality.
Nor a Roc.
"Not even any other man could stand up against this menace."
"SPOKE TOO SOON!!!"
Sinbad is not amused.
OW!!!
So he sics his Roc at Popeye and the gang.
One of the many reasons I like Fleischer's setback camera better than Iwerks' Multiplane Camera.
The perfect blend of 2D Animation and 3D Backgrounds on a turntable.
Nowadays, if your software supports it, you can do this on your own computer. Just as long as you have a multicore CPU, high-end graphics card, and at minimum: 32GB of RAM.
Popeye's ship has sunk.... err....umm.... RAN AGROUND BY A GIANT BIRD!!!
As usual, Popeye is absolutely pissed.
Another Fleischer turntable marvel.
A look. LIONS! Will they scare Popeye?
NOPE!!!
"What's this damn wall here?"
"Welp. Better antic and....."
"Drill the wall like a human drill!"
Sinbad is not amused.
And this is where I'll have to end my post. I actually have more screenshots but if I show all of them, I end up spoiling the rest of the cartoon for you.
On a side note, You may notice the somewhat yellow and red hues in the screenshots.
That's because I'm using the National Film Registry print of the cartoon.
There's actually a version of Sinbad that's on DVD but unfortunately, whoever was responsible for that restoration thought it would be a good idea to pump up the purple, pink, and cyan colors to the maximum.
This DVD color restoration actually pissed off John Kricfalusi, who fervently despises pink and purple since he views those colors as sissy and not manly for his tastes.
In his blog, He accused the restoration team for purposely using what he calls the MY LITTLE PONY color palette... To me, the colors on the DVD version look like they pulled the colors out of an episode of RAINBOW BRITE which uses a pastel color palette.
Ironically, Sinbad's outfit was originally Purple but neither the DVD or the National Film registry print show that.
My guess is that the original Purple outfit Sinbad is in the Thunderbean print but I can't find the Thunderbean print on ARCHIVE.ORG and the .mp4 file found in there uses the DVD print which has that pastel palette.
Seriously, that pastel palette looks way out of place for a 3-strip technicolor cartoon released in November 27 1936.
Look, I get that a lot of Fleischer's Popeye cartoons are in the public domain but at least show absolute respect to the people who worked their ass off in the 1930s when painting and photographing the artwork by handling the restoration which means get accurate colors and keep the lineart intact. It pains me to see Disney's 1930's color shorts use that Gaudy pastel palette but what pains me even more is when I see prints of 30's and 40's cartoons that have accurate colors but instead uses AI upscaling instead of finding the original 16MM or 35MM prints when restoring them in 4K.
Luckily, Popeye's aforementioned Arabian Nights Trilogy are the only Popeye's in Color during the Fleischer era.
Here are sneak preview posts for other color Popeyes(Still Fleischer era only).
And you can also see the how better handled the colors were on these prints... barring a few exceptions but those are for another post.
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