I wanted to explore this company because they have made and created the most well known cartoons and animations known to man. Everyone is aware of their work and can recognise the cartoons from a mile away they are so infamous. I wanted to look into this particular company because I think I could be greatly inspired by doing so for my own e-book illustrations.
Who are Hanna Barbera?
Hanna-Barbera Productions, Inc., also variously known as H-B Enterprises, H-B Production Co., and Hanna-Barbera Cartoons, Inc., was an American animation studio and production company founded on July 7, 1957, by Tom and Jerry creators and former MGM cartoon studio staff William Hanna and Joseph Barbera. They are known for making the iconic Scooby do, Tom and Terry, and the Flintstones. Hanna-Barber was an animation powerhouse. They made the majority of cartoons during this time but have been absorbed by Warner Bros now, their work continuers to inspire today.
William Hanna
William Hanna joined a California engineering firm after studying engineering and journalism. He switched careers to cartooning in 1930 and in 1937 joined MGM as a director and story man in the animation department.
Joseph Barbera
Jospeh Barbera was working as a bank accountant with the Irving Trust Company in New York City during the early 1930s when he started submitting cartoons to magazines; he sold his first to Collier’s magazine and decided to forsake banking for cartooning. He joined MGM as a sketch artist in the same year as Hanna.
A further look into some of their characters;
Fred Flintstone
I really love the illustration style for the Flinstones, I feel the style to be humorous and consistent with the other characters. The characters design reflects each characters own personalities and I feel this comes across clearly throughout the animations. I want my style to be able to do this, I want kids to be able to distinguish between each character and not get mixed up because they look the same. I also like the minimal use of colour on his outfit and overall, I think it is important to have bright colours but not that many of them.
Tom & Jerry
I am not going to be illustrating animals in my e-book but I thought it was really fun to look into the style of tom and jerry because it is so well known and everyone loves it. I did not know that this was created by Hanna Barbera and was fascinated to look closer into it. I love the detail in this style, the whiskers, fur deatiling and even eyebrow expressions. This is a very impressive style for a cartoon this old but I feel that it is too detailed for the style I am going for.
Scooby-D0 (Fred)
I then wanted to explore the Scooby-Do world of Hanna-Barbera. I was shocked to see this in the character list, and was excited to look at this style. The cast of Scooby Do is similar to what I am going for, a group of friends and it was interesting to see how the style differed from each character, this was done through features, clothes and hair colour. I really liked the detail but feel like a style like this is too old for the age group I am going for.
What did I learn?
- I learned a lot from this research into Hanna-Barbera, I got to look into different styles to see if any were right for me
- I learned about the history of who Hanna-Barbera even is and how they came to be cartoonists
- I discovered that I need to keep looking for some inspiration for my characters
- I learned how characters can have the same style but with look different