Pebbles

MEDIUM: Hand-Painted Model Cel on Printed Background
IMAGE SIZE: 14" x 11"
YEAR: c. 1990s
SKU: IFA9904

ABOUT THE IMAGE: This hand-painted model cel of Pebbles was based on concept drawings that Dick Bickenbach created in the early 1960s. The note at the top reads, "Use the model sheet for crawling poses only - See revised sheet for likeness and outfit."

ABOUT THE ARTIST: Prolific American artist Richard 'Dick' Bickenbach spent his early career working for Warner Bros. where he animated numerous Looney Tunes shorts from 1939 to 1947. He joined MGM in 1947 where he animated nearly eighty Tom and Jerry shorts over the next decade. He was one of Hanna-Barbera’s first employees and continued there for the next twenty years as both an animator and layout artist. Bickenbach was responsible for drafting many of the studio’s early model sheets and character designs. His influence on the style of Hanna-Barbera’s early cartoons cannot be overstated. In 1984, Bickenbach won the Motion Picture Screen Cartoonists Golden Award.

ABOUT THE MEDIUM: Model sheets were designed in animation studio production to show a standard for how any given character would look in different poses. Since many animators could work on a single production, this model helped keep the character uniform looking throughout a cartoon. Model cels, while similar in function, also established the characters coloring as a permanent reference tool.