Tale of a Tendril

1925
Silent
7m

A bug's life laid bare in this charming cut-out animated tale by pioneering film naturalist F. Percy Smith

Are you ready for a bedtime story? F. Percy Smith was a naturalist and pioneer filmmaker who brought his interests together in microphotography marvels like The Acrobatic Fly (1910) featuring real insects. Though best known for his natural history work on the long running Secrets of Nature series, these 'Bedtime Stories of Archie the Ant' shorts reveal his remarkable talents as a character animator.

Smith's background as a nature lover is readily apparent in the film, with the whole plot based on spotting the visual similarity between a plant's tendril and the proboscis of a butterfly. Though the film is produced through 2D cut-out animation, every effort is made to give the characters and the backgrounds a sense of depth - including using real plant-life in some scenes.

Creatures Great and Small

Fur, feathers, bugs or beaks: from the start animators have cast the whole natural world in their human comedies and dramas

Would you know Mickey was a mouse if you didn’t know his surname? Many of the most famous animated characters are drawn from the animal kingdom, but they rarely behave quite as nature intended. Anthropomorphism has a long history in storytelling - going back to Aesop and beyond - and animation has imported it into film. But whether it's Bonzo the Dog or Charley the Cat, these characters are really studies in human nature.