3.Spread of Animated Film Pictograms in North America
World War II, which prompted Ragan to begin animation production in earnest, was a difficult time for the North American animation industry, but also a time when propaganda, training, and educational films were in demand, and many animated films were produced. This section explores examples of pictogram animation by theme, focusing on works by United Productions of America (UPA), Walt Disney Studios, and the NFB.
Pictograms on Geographic Maps and Logistics
UPA was an animation studio founded in 1941 by animators laid off after a Disney Studios strike. John Hubley, one of the principal founders, described the wartime situation as animation’s need for a “new language.” According to Hubley（Hubley and Schwartz 1946, 360）, this language was sought at the intersection of two opposing methods: the realistic, funny method represented by Disney and the cold method for information graphics, such as charts, maps, and diagrams for educational or training purposes.
In UPA’s work, which sought a direction different from Disney’s, animated expressions using pictograms can also be found—although not so many. Bullet (1944) and Lend-Lease (1944) from the A Few Quick Facts series are typical examples. In the former, pictograms partially depict the complex, time-consuming paths of weapons’ delivery to the front lines. In Lend-Lease, the law is first explained with an allegory in which our neighbor’s house catches fire, and the flames then descend on our house. The global situation is explained using the housefire metaphor, saying that a hose for the entire yard is needed to extinguish the fire in the neighbor’s house. Boldly omitted backgrounds and objects depicted in this scene are drawn in UPA’s distinctive style, but in the scene’s latter half, where supplies are lent-lease on a map, line drawings that could be considered pictograms appear (Figure 9).
These pictograms effectively indicate the supplies needed and the locations for lending on the maps.
Walt Disney Studios produced many propaganda and training animations commissioned by the Armed Forces. The situation was similar to that above: Almost all works identified as animations with accompanying pictograms are also map-based animations. They were also used in documentary films, such as the Why We Fight series (1942–45), commissioned by Frank Capra, who produced A Few Quick Facts (Figure 10). Moreover, full-color animations with pictograms are used extensively in the 1945 film Two Down, One to Go! to illustrate the army’s reorganization for the invasion of Japan after Germany and Italy surrendered.
Besides Ragan’s animated works, the NFB’s films contain few animated pictograms. However, the NFB vigorously pursued documentary production, and maps were considered integral to the documentary process. One of the best-known documentaries in the World in Action series, Our Northern Neighbour (1944), depicts the German invasion of the Soviet Union, including three-dimensional pictograms representing factories and other locations as part of a drawn map (Figure 11). Also noteworthy is the documentary Now-the Piece: World in Action (1945), which depicts the one-world postwar order at which the United Nations aimed, not with maps but with three-dimensional pictograms representing human figures (Figure 12).
The map designs above have a common, general orientation toward realism—with the horizon drawn spherically, the pictograms themselves are sometimes drawn in three dimensions, and, to express movement, smooth conversion from flat to round. After the 1930s, with the development of airways, the importance of the Arctic Circle increased, especially in North America, and the equirectangular method became the center of cartographic representation in journalism, replacing the Mercator method. The general public was also expected to view international affairs globally, and animations depicting maps gave films this perspective. In these maps, pictograms representing supplies, weapons, and soldiers became the mainstay of the movement. This affinity between strategic maps and pictograms reminds us of Otto Neurath’s reference to old military maps as a representative historical source for isotype (Figure 13). Neurath, however, never incorporated such spherical surfaces as the globe into his graphic system.
Voting System and Its Call
While the works mentioned so far have been animations with a solid propagandistic tone, one film includes animation with a more educational purpose: Tuesday in November (1945), a film promoting fair presidential elections during wartime (Figure 14). Directed by John Hubley, this film’s animation uses pictograms to explain the election’s mechanics. The animation’s background is monotone and blank. Except for the president, who wears glasses, the human figures have no eyes or noses; they are impersonal figures, all of the same shapes, with suspended circular heads and angular bodies—a typical pictogram shape. In contrast, in the setting’s depiction—the desk and the council chambers—the depth expressed by inverted perspective, characteristic of the “mid-century” style, and the figure’s irregular, distorted, and geometric shape highlight differences from rational figures by Ragan or Pictograph Corp. Overall, the pictogram’s movement is loose and descriptive.
Animation for Learning Basic English
A remarkable film, different from those introduced so far, was conceived in 1943, but never completed: an educational film for Basic English conceived by a British literary scholar I.A. Richards and produced by Walt Disney Studios. This seems an important fact, given Otto Neurath’s interest in Basic English and his two isotype books produced for C. K. Ogden, the founder of Basic English in the 1930s.
First, we should mention the proponents of Basic English in the United States, where Basic English attracted attention during World War II as a convenient language for communication with non-English speakers, including Canadians or Chinese. Its specific use was promoted by Richards, who occupied this effort’s center. Richards, along with Ogden, wrote The Meaning of Meaning, and like Ogden, he had international pacifist sentiments (Russo, 1989). He also had experience teaching English in China during the 1930s, and his experiences there also led to a strong interest in languages oriented toward the universal. In addition, Richards’s empiricist view of language required richly illustrating materials for learning language. In 1942, he published a four-part series in the United States and Canada titled Learning the English Language. These instructional books were designed by Pictograph Corporation, headed by Rudolf Modley (Figure 15). In addition to these books, Richards received funding from the Rockefeller Foundation to visit Disney Studios in the summer of 1942 to study drawing, eventually leading to Disney Studios’ production of animation materials for Basic English.
Reported in magazines and newspapers, the plan attracted widespread interest. One newspaper article reported the following:
Basic English, as illustrated by Disney Cartoonist Dick Kelsey, starts with the figure of a man and the word “I.” It progresses simply to such words as “here” and “there” “is” and “am” “this” and “that.” Then there are such sequences as this: A sketch of money and the word “money;” a woman and a man holding money; and the words “this is my money;” the man holding the currency toward a woman and the words “I will give my money to you,” and the finale “I give my money to you.”
(Anon, 1942)
This prototype’s general picture can be observed in magazine sketches and other publications (Figure 16). The human figure, with a circular head floating in mid-air, clearly refers to Pictograph Corporation pictograms, whose design style—silhouettes of male and female bodies—can also be confirmed.
The sketches’ figures mix silhouette and line drawings, but the line drawings’ form is unique. The background is not drawn, and the shading is minimal, a style of expression rarely seen in Disney animation. Judging from these sketches, the style is somewhat unstable, oscillating between line drawings and silhouettes. Here, arguing what sort of movement was envisioned is problematic because, ultimately, the project was never completed.