https://www.nfsa.gov.au/sites/default/files/2023-11/Chapter%201%20Block%201000%20x%20745.jpg
Snippy is an Artful Dodger
Title:
Snippy is an Artful Dodger
NFSA ID
5727
Year
1925
A young boy, Snooks, chases the animated figure of Snippy up a ladder in his back garden. Snippy teases Snooks before springing over his head and up a tree, then onto a children’s roundabout. Snooks pushes the roundabout but Snippy steals away and climbs through a ventilation hole in the side of the house. Snippy taunts Snooks from inside the hole, his words appearing in a speech bubble, ‘Ta ta Snooks, see you next week’.
Summary by Poppy De Souza
The clip uses a combination of live action and cell animation.
Snippy is an Artful Dodger Synopsis
This short film, with animation by David Barker, features a young boy (Snooks) and a cartoon character named Snippy. Snooks is asleep in his garden, dreaming, when Snippy appears. Snooks chases him around the garden, but Snippy eludes capture.
Curator's Notes
This is a charming example of an early Australian cartoon from around 1925. Snippy is an Artful Dodger superimposes cell animation over freeze-frames of live action to create Snooks’s dream world. This simple technique was used by Yoram Gross in his Dot and the Kangaroo films made in the 1970s and 80s. A small segment in Snippy uses a rapid succession of still frames to create the appearance of movement as Snooks tries to catch Snippy on a children’s roundabout.
An artist from Ballarat, David Barker was a cartoonist, illustrator, painter and etcher. He worked for the Curtis Publishing Company in Philadelphia as a cartographer during the First World War, and exhibited his etchings and watercolours in New South Wales in the 1920s.
Notes by Poppy De Souza
Producer
David Barker