When I first discovered Vet Anderson's animation in the Oswald series, I found it completely archaic. His animation seemed to me surprisingly rough and jerky, comparable in many ways to the very bad animation that Jerry Sheild provided to Terrytoon.

However, after recently watching Van Beuren's The Haunted Ship, I discovered that he was in fact a very competent animator: those scenes of the fish swimming towards the camera are beautiful and their designs are remarkably original. The scene of the fish playing the clarinet with his hares and the scene of the Jewish octopus are also very well done; I have the impression that he also animated the many skeleton scenes and the scene where Waffle and Don jump out of the plane and dive into the sea.
In addition to The Haunted Ship, Vet animated the quartet of singing animals at the beginning of Farm Foolery as well as the final cat dance scene in Midnight.

These are really good animations, and my curiosity leads me to want to see more. That's why I'm here to ask if anyone could share other animations by Vet Anderson at Van Beuren studio because they seem to be light years ahead of Walter Lantz's studio !

When I first discovered Vet Anderson's animation in the Oswald series, I found it completely archaic. His animation seemed to me surprisingly rough and jerky, comparable in many ways to the very bad animation that Jerry Sheild provided to Terrytoon.

You should also account that John Foster was also responsible for awful animation at Terrytoons, such as in String bean Jack, where he does the W.C. Fields caricature selling beans, as well as What a Night where Farmer Alfalfa waltzed with the skeleton, so there's that.

However, after recently watching Van Beuren's The Haunted Ship, I discovered that he was in fact a very competent animator: those scenes of the fish swimming towards the camera are beautiful and their designs are remarkably original. The scene of the fish playing the clarinet with his hares and the scene of the Jewish octopus are also very well done; I have the impression that he also animated the many skeleton scenes and the scene where Waffle and Don jump out of the plane and dive into the sea.
In addition to The Haunted Ship, Vet animated the quartet of singing animals at the beginning of Farm Foolery as well as the final cat dance scene in Midnight.

These are really good animations, and my curiosity leads me to want to see more. That's why I'm here to ask if anyone could share other animations by Vet Anderson at Van Beuren studio because they seem to be light years ahead of Walter Lantz's studio!

I remember FuriousMan226 doing a breakdown on Grandma's Pet from 1932 where he does the close-ups of the wolf casting spells, as well as the shooting gallery gag in said short. Besides that, try consulting Milton Knight on this stuff. I might make a video for The Rutabaga Network in order to break down Vet's work at Lantz with knowledge I've gathered from others in order to piece together what we know in order to find more answers to better identify his work.

I thought John Foster only wrote stories for Terrytoons. I didn't know he did double-duty as animator.

Chuck Judkins did an article on his work over on Cartoon Research.



Let's just say he's responsible for being the worst animator in the Golden Age of Animation.
https://cartoonresearch....or-profiles-john-foster/ 

When I first discovered Vet Anderson's animation in the Oswald series, I found it completely archaic. His animation seemed to me surprisingly rough and jerky, comparable in many ways to the very bad animation that Jerry Sheild provided to Terrytoon.

You should also account that John Foster was also responsible for awful animation at Terrytoons, such as in String bean Jack, where he does the W.C. Fields caricature selling beans, as well as What a Night where Farmer Alfalfa waltzed with the skeleton, so there's that.

You're right, John Foster's animation in Terrytoon is also pretty pathetic, especially when compared to his early efforts in Pigs In Clover (1919).

However, after recently watching Van Beuren's The Haunted Ship, I discovered that he was in fact a very competent animator: those scenes of the fish swimming towards the camera are beautiful and their designs are remarkably original. The scene of the fish playing the clarinet with his hares and the scene of the Jewish octopus are also very well done; I have the impression that he also animated the many skeleton scenes and the scene where Waffle and Don jump out of the plane and dive into the sea.
In addition to The Haunted Ship, Vet animated the quartet of singing animals at the beginning of Farm Foolery as well as the final cat dance scene in Midnight.

These are really good animations, and my curiosity leads me to want to see more. That's why I'm here to ask if anyone could share other animations by Vet Anderson at Van Beuren studio because they seem to be light years ahead of Walter Lantz's studio!

I remember FuriousMan226 doing a breakdown on Grandma's Pet from 1932 where he does the close-ups of the wolf casting spells, as well as the shooting gallery gag in said short. Besides that, try consulting Milton Knight on this stuff. I might make a video for The Rutabaga Network in order to break down Vet's work at Lantz with knowledge I've gathered from others in order to piece together what we know in order to find more answers to better identify his work.

Is Milton Knight present on this forum ?
Should I contact him on his youtube channel ?

And making a video about Vet Anderson's work at Van Beuren and Lantz sounds like a great idea.

Chuck Judkins did an article on his work over on Cartoon Research.



Let's just say he's responsible for being the worst animator in the Golden Age of Animation.
https://cartoonresearch....or-profiles-john-foster/ 

By the way, I didn't know that John Foster had worked at Audio Cinéma. I had read a biography by Frank Goldman focusing on the history of this studio and Foster was not mentioned anywhere. Knowing that he was the new animation director replacing Cy Young, he should have been credited.

Man, all this talk on Foster is really poor, especially since you guys are really judging everything by one scene he probably rushed, though I think it has charm. Foster would still occasionally animate throughout the mid to late 40s, like the Tarzan whale in FISHING BY THE SEA, he wasn't a bad artist at all. In the 10s and 20s he was a very important animator, but not quite because of his animation, but because he was a forward thinking storyman and directing, one of the first to cast animators to scenes when the usual norm was to animate an entire film by yourself. I suspect that Foster's influence on the stories at Fables from 1923-25 introduced a lot of "tropes" to the Fables that became regular stables of cartoon comedy. Maybe not the best animator, though still full of life, but definitely an important storyman and gagman. It's hard to judge someone's whole career by just a few scenes, as you guys are doing

Man, all this talk on Foster is really poor, especially since you guys are really judging everything by one scene he probably rushed, though I think it has charm. Foster would still occasionally animate throughout the mid to late 40s, like the Tarzan whale in FISHING BY THE SEA, he wasn't a bad artist at all. In the 10s and 20s he was a very important animator, but not quite because of his animation, but because he was a forward thinking storyman and directing, one of the first to cast animators to scenes when the usual norm was to animate an entire film by yourself. I suspect that Foster's influence on the stories at Fables from 1923-25 introduced a lot of "tropes" to the Fables that became regular stables of cartoon comedy. Maybe not the best animator, though still full of life, but definitely an important storyman and gagman. It's hard to judge someone's whole career by just a few scenes, as you guys are doing

RareSox is right, all of John Foster's animation at Terrytoon is downright pathetic and I obviously don't just take a few random scenes to make that opinion. Of course, that doesn't take away from his exceptional talents as a writer and director but he was simply a very bad animator, let's face it.

Man, all this talk on Foster is really poor, especially since you guys are really judging everything by one scene he probably rushed, though I think it has charm. Foster would still occasionally animate throughout the mid to late 40s, like the Tarzan whale in FISHING BY THE SEA, he wasn't a bad artist at all. In the 10s and 20s he was a very important animator, but not quite because of his animation, but because he was a forward thinking storyman and directing, one of the first to cast animators to scenes when the usual norm was to animate an entire film by yourself. I suspect that Foster's influence on the stories at Fables from 1923-25 introduced a lot of "tropes" to the Fables that became regular stables of cartoon comedy. Maybe not the best animator, though still full of life, but definitely an important storyman and gagman. It's hard to judge someone's whole career by just a few scenes, as you guys are doing

I know. His 40s scenes are better though. It's just the stiffness does not sit well with me.

Now we're supposed to be talking about Vet Anderson at Lantz, by the way.

It's just the stiffness does not sit well with me.

This sentence tells me you don't actually know anything about Foster's animation. Far from stiff, in fact better to say loose and wobbly. So I can prove an educated answer rather than repeat facts from other researchers, as you guys are doing, here are some Foster scenes at Terrytoons:


Foster does most of the scenes with the eccentric, loose, rubbery dog chaser in THE DOG SHOW (go to 3:50 and 5:00)

An animator that is "the worst" and "stiff" wouldn't of been able to animate the loose, nicely timed, funny scenes depicted here. The little touch of Dr Moan's nose moving when looking into the Farmer's mouth isn't something a crude animator would've done, it takes consideration to do that

Finally, Foster handles the scenes in the last minute of FLYING OIL where the salesman tries to sell the Farmer into buying his product, only for both of them to shoot up by cats (these scenes handled by other animators). Foster does nice touches with the streak lines on the salesman's finger when he twirls it, some expressive posing, and nicely drawn effects when he launches them (followed up by Frank Moser's work). Again, a "worst" animator certainly wouldn't of been capable of this

With this in mind, what do you guys consider a good animator in the first place? Hopefully this has at least given you consideration into more than a basic, poorly formed opinion on Foster. I hope it wasn't a waste of time for me to write this, I truly do like his work

Fair enough.

Moving from John Foster now, we should mention Vet Anderson, which was why Puppertoons made this forum in the first place.

Sure, though no need to minimod, it is okay to go a little off-topic, especially since Vet Anderson did almost exclusively work on Foster's Fables during the second half of the Silent Fables run

Vet was out of Van Beuren by the end of the first sound season it seems. But he contributed a fair amount of animation before this, such as the opening scenes of the farm animals singing a quartet in FARM FOOLERY. It's clear he designed the four animals too (so much great character design in this one in particular!)

As Charlie Judkins notes in the booklet to the HALLOWEEN HAUNTS, Vet does the scenes where the fish swim to the camera in THE HAUNTED SHIP. In these scenes, I like how it shows just how unique his posing was; cramped but yet so carefully drawn to avoid negative spacing, likely helped from his years as a magazine cartoonist

By this point, he was also given parts of scenes, switching animators when his way of doing things were better needed. You can see this in NOAH KNEW HIS ARK when the skunks come on ship while the crew sings, switching to Vet when they noticed the unwelcome guests. This also occurs in FOOLISH FOLLIES, when the quartet sing Auld Lang Syne, it switches to Anderson when the Hippo trips. Vet also does the scene with the two critters fighting over the binoculars

I should have stepped in here earlier, but it seems the situation got sorted out on its own.

In the future, discussion regarding John Foster's career should have been in a separate thread.

---

Yeah, sorry about causing the tangent. Just got curious on him.

Getting back on topic, how long was Vet at Van Burean before he went to the west cost?

Vet starts showing up in 1923, and stays for most of the first full sound season (I recall FARM FOOLERY) being his last, so maybe Spring 1930 he was out of VB? He went to Fleischer's briefly, and was probably out after 6 months, I think the only work he did that made it to screen was HIDE AND SEEK, a very held back title. I think his first at Lantz was THE STONE AGE, a July 1931 release. Backlot would've probably been six months so he probably relocated in late 1930 then

It's just the stiffness does not sit well with me.

This sentence tells me you don't actually know anything about Foster's animation. Far from stiff, in fact better to say loose and wobbly. So I can prove an educated answer rather than repeat facts from other researchers, as you guys are doing, here are some Foster scenes at Terrytoons:


Foster does most of the scenes with the eccentric, loose, rubbery dog chaser in THE DOG SHOW (go to 3:50 and 5:00)

An animator that is "the worst" and "stiff" wouldn't of been able to animate the loose, nicely timed, funny scenes depicted here. The little touch of Dr Moan's nose moving when looking into the Farmer's mouth isn't something a crude animator would've done, it takes consideration to do that

Finally, Foster handles the scenes in the last minute of FLYING OIL where the salesman tries to sell the Farmer into buying his product, only for both of them to shoot up by cats (these scenes handled by other animators). Foster does nice touches with the streak lines on the salesman's finger when he twirls it, some expressive posing, and nicely drawn effects when he launches them (followed up by Frank Moser's work). Again, a "worst" animator certainly wouldn't of been capable of this

With this in mind, what do you guys consider a good animator in the first place? Hopefully this has at least given you consideration into more than a basic, poorly formed opinion on Foster. I hope it wasn't a waste of time for me to write this, I truly do like his work

No doubt that he was an experienced animator even if I still believe that his first animations were the most successful, but let's pass...

Sure, though no need to minimod, it is okay to go a little off-topic, especially since Vet Anderson did almost exclusively work on Foster's Fables during the second half of the Silent Fables run

Vet was out of Van Beuren by the end of the first sound season it seems. But he contributed a fair amount of animation before this, such as the opening scenes of the farm animals singing a quartet in FARM FOOLERY. It's clear he designed the four animals too (so much great character design in this one in particular!)

As Charlie Judkins notes in the booklet to the HALLOWEEN HAUNTS, Vet does the scenes where the fish swim to the camera in THE HAUNTED SHIP. In these scenes, I like how it shows just how unique his posing was; cramped but yet so carefully drawn to avoid negative spacing, likely helped from his years as a magazine cartoonist

By this point, he was also given parts of scenes, switching animators when his way of doing things were better needed. You can see this in NOAH KNEW HIS ARK when the skunks come on ship while the crew sings, switching to Vet when they noticed the unwelcome guests. This also occurs in FOOLISH FOLLIES, when the quartet sing Auld Lang Syne, it switches to Anderson when the Hippo trips. Vet also does the scene with the two critters fighting over the binoculars

Thank you very much for all this information, I did not know that Vet Anderson took over the animation of other animators, it is very interesting.
Otherwise I think that the last participation of Vet in VB turns out to be in The Office Boy on the scene where a guy wants to force the passage to enter the office of the boss but that the look-alike of Mickey Mouse blocks his way with his glove.

The scene of the fish playing the clarinet with his hares and the scene of the Jewish octopus are also very well done; I have the impression that he also animated the many skeleton scenes and the scene where Waffle and Don jump out of the plane and dive into the sea.
In addition to The Haunted Ship, Vet animated the quartet of singing animals at the beginning of Farm Foolery as well as the final cat dance scene in Midnight.

To prevent misinformation, most of the scenes described above aren't correct, done by other animators for scenes he would've of usually been casted too (he was ONLY casted to the scenes where the fish jump out of the screen in THE HAUNTED SHIP). It doesn't look like he did anything in MIDNIGHT, either

Edit: Neither is that scene in OFFICE BOY. Vet's animation became much more standout during the sound era as his appeal was in a very straightforward style, the timing and movement isn't his at all

Vet starts showing up in 1923, and stays for most of the first full sound season (I recall FARM FOOLERY) being his last, so maybe Spring 1930 he was out of VB? He went to Fleischer's briefly, and was probably out after 6 months, I think the only work he did that made it to screen was HIDE AND SEEK, a very held back title. I think his first at Lantz was THE STONE AGE, a July 1931 release. Backlot would've probably been six months so he probably relocated in late 1930 then

In fact, Farm Foolery was released on September 14, 1930, which indicates that he left the studio in the summer of 1930 rather than the spring. I note that he also animated the dancing walruses and the second barber bear scene in Frozen Frolics released on August 31 so I think it is unlikely that he left VB before the summer.

The scene of the fish playing the clarinet with his hares and the scene of the Jewish octopus are also very well done; I have the impression that he also animated the many skeleton scenes and the scene where Waffle and Don jump out of the plane and dive into the sea.
In addition to The Haunted Ship, Vet animated the quartet of singing animals at the beginning of Farm Foolery as well as the final cat dance scene in Midnight.

To prevent misinformation, most of the scenes described above aren't correct, done by other animators for scenes he would've of usually been casted too (he was ONLY casted to the scenes where the fish jump out of the screen in THE HAUNTED SHIP). It doesn't look like he did anything in MIDNIGHT, either

Edit: Neither is that scene in OFFICE BOY. Vet's animation became much more standout during the sound era as his appeal was in a very straightforward style, the timing and movement isn't his at all

Okay. Did you notice any animations of Vet in The Singing Sarps?
I feel like he animated the bum fight but I'm not sure.
Imdb says he also animated in Oom Pah Pah but I didn't recognize any scenes of him.