![]() ![]() Placed into historical context, the footage is breathtaking: the rotoscoped sword-fighting is significantly ahead of anything else being animated at the time, while Clampett’s experimental use of oil paints on the colour sequences gives each scene an oddly three-dimensional, rich aesthetic. In recent years Clampett’s test reel was rediscovered, allowing fans of both animation and Burroughs to assess the footage for themselves. While MGM offered Clampett the chance to use his new animation techniques to create a Tarzan serial (which is what the exhibitors really wanted), the director elected to renew his contract with Warner Bros. Negative feedback from film exhibitors led the studio to back out, however, leaving Clampett’s vision as the first of numerous unrealised Barsoom movies. There was no animated film to look at to see how it was done.’ 3Ī six minute test sequence was completed in 1936, and presented to MGM. We were working in untested territory at that time. In the running sequence, for example, there is a subtle blending of figure and line which eliminated the harsh outline. ‘We would oil paint the side shadowing frame-by-frame in an attempt to get away from the typical outlining that took place in normal animated films. To achieve a more mature and realistic style of animation, Clampett abandoned traditional inks in favour of oil painting. Since Clampett was at the time working for Warner Bros, the Barsoom test sequence was animated in the evenings, with John and his wife assisting from time to time. Clampett’s test footage raised the interest of film studio MGM. So, he gave me a great deal of freedom to dream up and be inspired by his writing and develop a cartoon story on my own.’ 2Ĭlampett and Burroughs’ son John Coleman Burroughs started animation tests on a proposed animated serial – what would have been the first of its kind. Clampett said: ‘Edgar was smart enough to understand that one couldn’t just literally translate his Mars books page by page into animation it just would not be cinematic. There is no other medium that allows you to exert such control over every frame of film.’ 1 Clampett visited Burroughs at the author’s Californian estate, and was surprised to find him extremely receptive to the idea of an animated John Carter. ‘An animator can take a pencil,’ he explained, ‘and put the city of Rome or a strange planet on a small piece of paper and have a character do anything that comes to his imagination. In 1935 animation director Bob Clampett wrote to Edgar Rice Burroughs, enquiring after the film rights to the Barsoom novels. While the Tarzan books were adapted to cinema as early as 1918 (in Tarzan of the Apes and The Romance of Tarzan), John Carter’s road to the cinema took almost exactly 100 years, three movie studios, six directors and countless writers, artists and designers along the way. ![]() He rapidly becomes involved in the political affairs of the planet’s warring tribes, including the red-skinned humanoid Martians and the tall, four-armed Tharks.īurroughs wrote nine more Barsoom novels in total: The Gods of Mars (1918), The Warlord of Mars (1919), Thuvia, Maid of Mars (1920), The Chessmen of Mars (1922), The Master Mind of Mars (1928), A Fighting Man of Mars (1931), Swords of Mars (1936), Synthetic Men of Mars (1940) and Llana of Gathol (1948). Carter finds that in the lower gravity of Mars he has super-human strength and the ability to leap great distances. While exploring a cave he is inexplicably transported through space to the planet Mars, known by its numerous inhabitants as ‘Barsoom’. In Carter’s first adventure, A Princess of Mars (serialised in 1912 and published as a novel in 1917), Carter goes prospecting for gold in Arizona. ![]() This Virginian Civil War veteran travelled to the planet Mars in a string of pulp adventures, all written by Burroughs. Less well known that Tarzan, however, is John Carter. Mention the name Edgar Rice Burroughs to many people and they’ll immediately recognise him as the creator of Tarzan, the popular pulp hero of novels and film who endured throughout the 20 th century as one of the world’s most popular fictional characters. ![]()
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