MartinHafer I love the history of film and have watched thousands of early--very early films. Among them have been quite a few animated films, so I have a good idea about what types of animated films were available back in 1920...and they were incredibly primitive. Most had very simple drawings and backgrounds and just a few years later, these simple sorts of cartoons simply wouldn't have made it in theaters. A wonderful exception to these simplistic cartoons were the Koko films of Max Fleischer. Before Fleischer started his own studio, he worked for Bray Studios. There, he perfected the use of the Rotoscope...a technique he invented by which a cartoonist would take live action film footage and trace over it to create animated characters. The biggest advantage with this sort of technique is that the characters were extremely fluid and moved about like real people or animals. "The Ouija Board" is one of these Rotoscoped films and uses Fleischer's first star, Koko the Clown. Like most of these Koko films, he is a character that can interact with the real world--much like you saw in later films like "Who Framed Roger Rabbit?". The plot for this short is very simple and the cartoon lasts less than six minutes. One of the animators and a janitor are playing with a Ouija Board and as for Koko, he's haunted by a bunch of ghosts until he ultimately leaves the cartoon and starts trying to scare the folks in the studio.For the most part, all of this this is good clean fun. There are a few stereotypes, common in the day, involving the black janitor and ghosts---certainly not politically correct nor all that funny. Though, Fleischer, too, reacts to the 'ghost' and so it's not all at the expense of the poor black man....so who knows if viewers today will be offended by it or not! Regardless, the animation is lovely and the film holds up pretty well today.By the way, if you are curious about who it was that dressed up like Koko and let themselves be animated for these 'Out of the Inkwell' films...it was Dave, Max's brother.

John T. Ryan WE RECALL WHEN some sales person at our local jewelry told us about some "new" animation process was used in the feature animated film, WIZARDS (Bakshi Prod./20th Century-Fox, 1977). She stated that the process utilized live action frames; which were traced in order to create the illusion of real movement.WE DID RESPOND, of course with the objection that the invention that produced such an effect was the ROTOSCOPE; which was patented by its inventor, animation artist, Max Fleischer in 1917. The sales clerk was incredulous and refused to believe such truth could come from such a peasant as I.ALTHOUGH THIS CARTOON is quite short, somewhat lacking on animated material and sort of unfunny (to one of our day & age), it is an outstanding example of the application of rotoscoping to the animated film. The sequences that portray KoKo the Klown's movement totally fool the most trained eye of any professional observers as to is it cartoon or real persons.THE STORYLINE IS quite brief and compact; although no much more story is needed to complete the necessary gags and action. In short, a clean-up man and another fellow animator begin to operate an Ouija Board, which garners the interest and attention of Max Fleischer, himself. A newly animated KoKo decides to mix it up with the three men and a number of properly "frightening" gags are brought to the forefront.THE LITTLE PICTURE ends up without the tradition of KoKo's usual retreat back into the safety and sanctuary of his Inkwell.* WE DID ENJOY this all too brief, little foray into the land where the cartoon invades the real World. It is worth taking in for several reasons. It is very short, it does make a fine example of "the Best in Rotoscoping" and it is an important landmark in the trail of the Fleischer Brothers' journey up the ladder of "Toontown"; as Eddie Valiant would say.NOTE: * We wonder just Dr. Sigmund Freud would have to say about KoKo's propensity of escaping the problems in the real world by retreating back into the Inkwell (Womb?).

Robert Reynolds This is an early Koko the Clown silent short produced by the Flieschers. There will be spoilers:This is a live-action/animated combination short featuring Koko the Clown. There really isn't much of a plot per se. It starts with a live-action shot of a janitor and a cartoonist, who eventually start messing around with a Ouija board.Max Fliescher comes in and draws Koko and then draws a haunted house before going over to the pair doing the Ouija board while Koko is interacting with the haunted house and a myriad of ghosts of all shapes and sizes. The animation is excellent and the ghosts are interesting.The live-action scenes, by contrast, aren't terribly interesting until Koko leaves the drawing and begins to interact with solid objects and scares the daylights out of all three, particularly the poor janitor. The characterization of the janitor is much like Stepin Fetchit and is likely to offend some people.This short is available for viewing online and is worth watching.

boblipton When Max comes in to draw the latest Koko cartoon, the janitor and another cartoonist are playing around with a ouija board. Max goes to check out their activity while Koko deals with ghosts in the cartoon in this early Out of the Inkwell cartoon.Fleischer is still playing around with the sheer audacity of working with the series' combination of cartoon and live action, so the gags are neither as funny nor well executed as they would become later. Koko is clearly a frenetically rotoscoped Dave Fleischer. Nonethless, although this cartoon is not as brilliant as later efforts in the series, it is engagingly performed and beautifully executed.