FeelAx the Cat in Production

Some of the earliest experimental animators were some of the earliest animated characters. After spending all day in the world of those being animated, FeelAx the Cat wanted nothing more than to spend a little more time in that world again, but to do it his own way. Enough of the tyranny of the producer, director and background artist to draw what you must do and where you must do it. He wanted to animate, too, after being animated all day long. He wanted to create life his own way, and with his tail.

Pacing back and forth, climbing question marks to a new adventure, it was all very exhausting, but more so for the people who drew out his nine lives and not so much for him, for FeelAx. So FeelAx the Cat took over the animation studio at the odd hours, after the midnight clangs.

The last animator turned off the lights and shut the door. The last animator turned the key to lock up the office studio of FeelAx Productions. Now nobody was there but FeelAx himself and a few cartoon mice. As the cartoon mice slept, FeelAx went to work.

He could wave away his tail under the animation camera. He could move it a little and he could take a picture. He had been watching all day so he knew how it was done.

All the prior day he was supposed to be acting and laying on the platen glass for the exposure, but what he was really doing was studying how to line up the image and take the frame and then advance the film and platen glass for the next picture. He was soaking up the finer points of what was animated with him so he could animate back. He studied it so well that he could do it better than the humans who ran the studio, and he could experiment with what animation was itself, he could do it all himself and blaze new trails of tail, he was keeping that exposure and advancing the camera while he kept his tail as still as necessary. He learned and practiced and did it for reel and made his famous tales of tail.

Making them was something he could do. He had a whole animation studio at night at his disposal. Distribution was simply a pain in the neck, or a pain in the tail. But that is not a tale for today. That is a tale for a future day's look back at early experimental animation from your harrible seargant, Horrace Hound.