The Beatles Cartoon animation studio breakdown

One of my favorite cartoons is The Beatles cartoon from the 60's. It is an early example of outsourcing animation to different countries. What follows is a list of each studio and ways to identify them:

1. TVC London: (26 segments, 39 sing-a-longs, third season intro) This studio was the main studio involved in production of the cartoon. Their segments can be identified by constantly reused shots of the boys performing, characters with odd skin colors, and trippy visuals. Some of TVC's work was sent to Group Two Animation. Group Two's episodes have very uncannily detailed designs for the Beatles (Ringo and Paul in particular). Also assisting TVC were Bob Godfrey Films on three segments (“I’m Happy Just To Dance With You”, “Mr. Moonlight”, and “I Saw Her Standing There”) in the first season. Godfrey's segments were among the first to be produced, so they have a choppy unfinished look to them, with frequent model sheet tracing. Starting with season 2, all episodes were animated by TVC.

2. Artransa Park Studios, Sydney, Australia: (20 segments, 20 sing-a-longs) These episodes are very Hanna-Barbera influenced (in fact, some of the animators for Artransa later went on to work for HB's Australian studio). At the time this show was made, the Australian animation industry was just starting up, so there were fewer professional animators available. This is evident in Artransa's segments, which are very inconsistent, but with admittedly nice character designs and backgrounds. Some traits that characterize Artransa's segments are a limited selection of sound effects, horror movie monsters showing up, and Asian stereotypes. A few of Artransa's segments were sent to a smaller studio called Graphik, which looked even worse. Despite that, I think the Australian episodes are my personal favorites. There’s something charming about the amateurish visuals and annoying sound effects.

3. Canawest, Vancouver, BC, Canada: (6 segments, 6 sing-a-longs): Probably the most professional looking of the studios. This studio's crew was a mix of Canadian and Hollywood animators, under the supervision of veteran scriptwriter John W. Dunn. These segments are characterized by UPA-influenced designs, unique title cards, and for some reason, small creatures helping the Beatles (i.e. the leprechaun in “Do You Want to Know a Secret”, a fox in “I’ll Follow the Sun”, and a Beatles-loving seagull in “Hold Me Tight”).

4. Cine-Centrum, Holland: (5 segments) TVC had a satellite studio in The Netherlands which worked on a few episodes, under the supervision of Jim Hiltz (credited as "Snav Sniekus"). The Beatles in these episodes have unusually large hands, and really thick eyebrows.

5. Los Dibujos Animados, Mexico City, Mexico: (Season 1 & 2 intros, sing-a-long intros, credit sequence, bumpers) For the record, it translates to "The Animated Drawings". These segments are pretty fluid, and stick somewhat close to the model sheets. I would guess that some of these animators also worked on Rocky and Bullwinkle and other Jay Ward cartoons.

There’s also the sing-along songs, which were animated by the studios assigned to their corresponding episodes (except Cine-Centrum, whose sing-alongs were done by the main TVC studio instead). Like the episodes, each studio has a distinguishing feature to tell them apart…

TVC’s sing-alongs usually consist of still drawings of the characters sliding across the top half of the screen. Two of the sing-alongs they animated for Season 1 (“Help!”, and “Ticket To Ride”) were not adapted into episodes until Season 2 and 3, respectively. As the show went on, their sing-alongs got trippier, oftentimes not even featuring the band at all. Season 3, in particular, has a bizarre and frightening sequence for “Eleanor Rigby”, anticipating the beautiful scene that was to come in the Yellow Submarine film.

Artransa’s sing-alongs are mostly just drawings crossfading into one another, and the drawings they use are frequently recycled over and over again. But the actual artwork itself is pretty nice, even better than their actual episodes. One of Artransa’s sing-alongs, “All My Loving”, did not become an episode until Season 2, but that was animated by TVC.

And last, but not least, Canawest’s sing-alongs are the best looking of the bunch. They often have full animation in them, some of it recycled from their episodes. The font they use for the lyrics is also different from the other studios. And the actual content of them is pretty strange. “Do You Want To Know A Secret” features a talking guitar confessing his love to a pink silhouette of a girl’s head. “Misery” features Ringo on stage performing Hamlet. “Long Tall Sally” is mostly recycled animation of The Beatles’ dance from the “Do You Want To Know A Secret” episode, intercut with new shots of Uncle John and Long Tall Sally staring at the camera like a couple of inbred hicks. The one for “I’ll Follow The Sun” has a beautifully stylized storybook feel, and tells the story of a bird couple being separated from each other. “I Don’t Want To Spoil The Party” combines recycled and recolored clips from the episode with new footage of George, Paul, and Ringo dancing. My favorite one is their last, “Hold Me Tight”. It has a special intro with unique animation of the group performing before going into the song. The song itself cuts between this footage and scenes of a stylized teenage girl preparing herself for a date.