Excavating Bedrock: Reminiscences of . Making their debut on a Friday night prime- time series on ABC in September 1. Bedrock circa 1. 00. B. C. And those roots grew fast: The program was an immediate. Though animation had long been associated with children.
Fred and Wilma hold the distinction of being television. Undoubtedly, being animated offered advantages. The Flintstones engendered a global merchandising phenomenon.
This is the opening to 'A Flintstones Christmas Carol 1995 Demo' VHS. This is for entertainment and enjoyment purposes only and no copyright infringement.
Cartooning from its inception had been used as a means of moving merchandise (no less an august figure than Richard Outcault himself set up shop at the World. The Flintstones presaged today. ABC even pioneered some programming cross- pollination, pressing The Flintstones into service to promote the fledgling series Bewitched, with Stone Age versions of Darrin and Samantha Stephens guest- starring (perhaps coincidentally, Darrin and Samantha were television.
In 1. 96. 4, a nationwide poll of newspaper readers placed the comic- strip version of the animated series at number three, fending off stiff competition from the likes of Blondie, Dick Tracy, Steve Canyon and Li. The effect of The Flintstones on viewers. Their immense popularity not only made it acceptable for grown- ups to watch a cartoon. What emerged were personal reflections that provide unique insights into the development and existence of Hanna- Barbera. Though The Flintstones. A Broadway adaptation that has been kicking around for years holds open the possibility that prehistory may conquer yet another entertainment form. The long- lived appeal of the Bedrock bunch, suffice to say, long ago surpassed the imaginings of the people who birthed them.
The Flintstones are passing into the hands of the third generation of creators who will escort the modern Stone Age family into the new millennium with a new feature film that the Cartoon Network will release later this year. Soon, just as when we first met on that autumn night so long ago, we. When I was told the studio was coming out with these new characters set in the Stone Age, I thought about it for a while and tried to imagine what the family and the neighbors would look like, maybe like Mutt and Jeff or Alley Oop.
A Flintstones Christmas Carol is a 1994 animated television film featuring The Flintstones and based on the novel A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens. The Flintstones was a parody on modern suburban life, set in the Stone Age. The characters in the cartoon series all behaved and spoke in a contemporary manner.
They were cave people, so I sketched up some characters carrying clubs and wearing long beards, with scraggly, unkempt hair and in slightly distorted, hunched- over shapes; UPA- like is what I had in mind. I straightened them up, took off the beards and make them look more neat and clean- cut. I worked on the the loincloths so they would hang properly. Barney as originally designed had a strap over one shoulder, and when he turned he had a bare shoulder. I was told they had a pet, so a dinosaur seemed appropriate, and that. I suspect he was thinking in terms of removing unneeded detail and making them easier to animate. I had six spots on Fred.
Bamm-Bamm Rubble was adopted by Barney and Betty Rubble, after they found him left in a basket on their doorstep. Bamm-Bamm's name came from a note left in the basket. Flintstones trivia quizzes in our Television category. 100 Flintstones trivia questions to answer! Play our quiz games to test your knowledge. How much do you know?
I continued to add little things, like the necktie on Fred and the stone necklace that Wilma wears. Joe just continued making very small changes, bit by bit. Joe was going more for a neat, cute look, but not cute for its own sake. An early drawing of Fred. He was thinking about the look of the characters in terms of the stories we could put them into. My characters might have lasted two generations.
Since 1. 98. 8 he has produced Flintstones serigraphs and studio concept pieces. Gene Hazelton? I worked for Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera for years at MGM doing layouts and designing and styling characters for theatrical cartoons. In 1. 95. 5, when MGM thought they had enough cartoons to shut down the animation department, I was kicked out along with some tremendous creative talents, like a fella I also worked with named Tex Avery.
By 1. 96. 1 I had been in advertising for some time producing TV commercials with two former MGM colleagues and was working nights on the Yogi Bear syndicated daily and Sunday feature for the Mc. Naught Syndicate, when they proposed a strip based on The Flintstones television show. I brought the syndicate together with Bill and Joe and it took about a year to make the deal.
Under full- time pressure to leave advertising and come aboard as director of the comic- strip department, with a bonus and complete control, I was back with Hanna- Barbera and never felt so needed. They felt I could devote part of my time to the syndicated features as well as animated commercials, and this made my workload quite heavy. Gene Hazelton (top) and Dick Bickenback, 1. I was taking the designs and adapting them to another medium.
Newspapers editors were hesitant to run a Flintstones comic strip. They were from television; TV was hurting newspapers and they were very worried about competition. It was on my shoulders because Bill and Joe were up to their necks producing more animation per week than any other studio in town.
They had no interest whatsoever in the comic strips and were not experienced with newspaper syndicates: the time involved, gags, inking, deadlines, shipping, etc. They were in the animation business and that. I never took work to them for their judgment. It was my responsibility and I felt duty- bound to produce what they expected of me when I signed on. We had a worldwide syndication, despite the fact we were distributed by Mc. Naught, which was one of the worst outfits in the business. At one time The Flintstones was voted one of the top five comic strips in the country, and I.
For the strip, I put a ribbon in her hair and gave her more of a shape and perked her up a bit. All the characters changed over the years and became more lovable and cute. I recall the Ideal Toy Co. I worked with them and came up with a good number of models. The Pebbles with the little bone in her hair was chosen as the winner. Ideal made dolls for many years with that.
Pencils of a Hazelton Sunday Flintstones page (click to enlarge). Bick was not only a neat guy, but in my mind much of the character styling at H- B showed Bick. A couple of years later when Barney and Betty adopted a little boy, I did the character designs for Bamm Bamm, who was modeled after my son Wes. Again, Bick drew the animators. The Flint- stones had to be squeaky- clean. I could sometimes take topical subjects and place them in prehistory, but any time I did a gag that smacked of something children shouldn. It had its limitations as to the kinds of stories I could do.
A lot of gags took place around the house, and Wilma and Fred needed someone else, so I created Fred. In the TV show, Pebbles only said . I developed her into more of a character and worked her more by giving her thought balloons, and she improved 9. Complicated subjects coming from the mouth of a baby quickly shot her into a starring role. I did the same with Dino: Bark bark bark would have reduced the family pet to a sleeping dog, but with thought balloons he became a very . Fred, Wilma, Barney and Betty became even stronger characters with Pebbles and Dino giving them input. It was suggested that I send the strips upstairs for the secretaries to ink, but I never did that.
I felt the type of inking I wanted to make the strip look good had to be more professional, and working at the studio I had access to some very talented people who knew the characters well after years of writing and animating the TV shows. I would tightly storyboard the pages, so complete and detailed that they almost became miniature Sunday pages themselves. My help appreciated this and it was a load off of them with their regular TV work to produce as well, but it was also my assurance of a good final product.
My Disney training came in handy. I could never just draw a simple straight line for a background like some strips do today. I really put a great deal of myself into it and we did a careful job. Hazelton daily strips (click to enlarge)A Bamm Bamm model sheet (click to enlarge)?
Harvey Eisenberg and his son, Jerry, Dick Bickenbach, Iwao Takamoto, all top guys in the business. Then there was me doing what I thought both Hanna- Barbera and the syndicate wanted.
Writers Dale Hale, Mike Maltese, Warren Foster and other studio people worked closely with me to make sure the characters were maintained as they appeared on the highly successful TV show. For years I worked at the studio, but after a while I was able to make a deal with Bill and Joe where they allowed me to work at home. Tons of my originals never came back and I. Some of these were tremendous jobs, such as . Just as I did with the strips, I put a great deal of work into them. Several sold out quickly and are now collectors items, such as .
Women particularly respond to Pebbles, for some reason. The other day I saw a cartoon in the newspaper of two stone bowling balls. My many thanks to those who helped make it a happy trip. Armstrong dailies (click to enlarge). At that particular time, though, I was looking for work and got a call from my ex- assistant, Joe Messerli. He was at Hanna Barbera and told me there was a new comic strip they were working on called The Flintstones and that I should go over and show them some of my samples. I was given some model sheets to work from and Gene sent some strips to me to letter and ink.
I took a lot of liberties and took it a step beyond and put a lot of myself into it rather than just slavishly following the pencils. Like so much art by people who worked in animation, it was penciled very roughly, and I did what could be called an approximation of Fred Flintstone; the gags every once in a while reminding the audience that they were reading a comic strip. There were a lot of fellows who followed me on it over the years.
Dale Hale worked on it and Gene did it for quite a while. The comic- book work came a couple of years later. I got a call from Chase Craig.
He said Western Publishing Company, for which he was the West Coast Comic Editor, had the contract to do the Flintstones comic book and he thought I. I worked on that from the inception, then Hanna- Barbera took back the contract and went with Marvel, and I was called back to do it for them.