A Pencil and Alick P.F. Ritchie

1915
Silent
7m

More chalk-talker than pencil-pusher, this popular artist recreates his cartoons for the screen with flashes of added animation.

Behold the wonder of the magic pencil! OK, the special effects are more Thunderbirds than Gravity, but the real delight of this film is the fluid line of an artist with a gift for the comic, caricature portrait. Yes, you can see the faint guidelines that his lightning sketches follow, and the actual animation is limited. But the detail and character achieved mainly with thick chalk is astonishing.

Alick P.F. Ritchie was a Scottish-born commercial artist and cartoonist whose work frequently appeared in Vanity Fair, as well as on posters and cigarette cards. The 'chalk-talk' was a popular music hall act and Ritchie seems a familiar performer in the form. Here he explores the potential of stop-motion animation to develop the chalk-talk, though Ritchie only seems to have dabbled in filmmaking, with a short-lived series, Alick Ritchie's Frightful Sketches, the same year.

Early Animation

The dawn of a new celluloid art: Britain's animation pioneers at peace and war

When you're creating a new art form, everything is experimental. The pioneers of animation in Britain cast a range of subjects as the stars of their films - the toys of an Edwardian child; insects and animals; Kaiser Bill and John Bull. But even the richest of fantasies on display here offer a window into the turbulent era in which they were made. When the nation went to war, animation was conscripted to meet its propaganda needs. In peacetime, the industry sought success as an entertainer, but found a career in sales.