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tymime · 1 month

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Public Domain cartoon characters from the Golden Age of Animation (and beyond)

Revised and expanded version of this post: https://tymime.tumblr.com/post/648495121557585920/instead-of-whining-about-mickey-mouse-not-falling

While Mickey entering the public domain is exciting and all, I do think a lot of people are overlooking the many other animated characters that are available to use in their creative works. This list isn't entirely exhaustive, but it does highlight some of the most interesting and/or appealing characters, as well as ones that have the potential to be so.

Koko the Clown

One of the oldest cartoon stars from the Fleischer studio, almost all of Koko's silent-era cartoons are PD, and have been for quite some time. A handful of his appearances alongside Betty Boop are also PD.

Oswald the Lucky Rabbit

Oswald's PD status has been greatly overshadowed by his fellow Disney star Mickey, but I believe that he deserves more recognition. All of the shorts produced by the Disney studio are PD as of this year, and let's face it, those are the only ones most people care about. Pegleg Pete's bear design is also PD.

Keep in mind that the blue shorts that Oswald wears in Epic Mickey and elsewhere are likely copyrighted, so I recommend steering clear of that.

I'm also not entirely sure you can use the name "Ortensia" for his cat girlfriend, since that name first appeared in Epic Mickey also. She was called "Kitty" back in the day, among other things.

All of Van Beuren Studio's cartoons

The Van Beuren Studio was active during the rubberhose era, and their cartoons, especially the earlier ones, are like a cruder, possibly even more bizarre cousin to Fleischer and Disney. They went bust in the late 1930s, and no one renewed the copyright later on, so the entirety of their output is PD.

Their most notable characters include Tom and Jerry, a pair of average Joes who always get into strange adventures. They shouldn't be confused with MGM's Tom and Jerry, and in fact they were called Dick and Larry when their shorts were rereleased for the home-movie market in the 1940s.

Also notable is Waffles and Don, who are basically just animal versions of Tom and Jerry. You might consider these two as a better alternative, just to avoid confusion.

There's also Cubby Bear, a pretty blatant Mickey Mouse clone, but unique enough that I don't think anybody’s going to confuse the two nowadays.

In the previous post, I mentioned a rumor that Disney threatened legal action over the character, but I can't find the source for that now. I may have been thinking of Milton Mouse, who was so extremely similar to Mickey that they actually did sue the studo for copyright infringement. So maybe don't try selling any Milton merchandise...

Finally, there's Molly Moo-Cow, who appeared in several Rainbow Parade cartoons in the mid-to-late 1930s. Molly is arguably not the most interesting character, but I have a fondness for her since we grew up with one of her shorts on a VHS tape.

Toby the Pup

Another very obscure character, about half of his cartoons are lost media. The little that does survive is hard to find online, but I think his design has appeal.

Dr. XXX

Disney's The Mad Doctor was never renewed for reasons unknown, though some speculate that the studio thought that the cartoon was too scary and decided to let it go. Fortunately for us, that means that this iconic character is now in the people's hands.

Goopy Geer

Goopy appeared in the three Merrie Melodies cartoons alongside his unnamed girlfriend. Despite his name and appearance being similar to Disney's Goofy, he actually made his debut about a month before (Goofy was named Dippy Dawg at the time anyway, so it was undoubtedly a coincidence).

Claude Hopper

Claude appeared in a single Looney Tunes cartoon in 1943 called Hop and Go, alongside a pair of Scottish rabbits who antagonize him. The cartoon ends with a very unfortunate depiction of Tokyo being blown up (World War II was still going on at the time), so it's no surprise that Warner Bros. decided not to renew this one. Despite that, he has a very appealing design (imo), so I think he has potential. (Also, he's voiced by Pinto Colvig, the original voice of Goofy!)

Private Snafu and Mr. Hook

Snafu and Hook were created for the US government, so according to the law are automatically public domain. The shorts were made to be shown to members of the US army and navy respectively, in order to teach them valuable lessons for fighting in WWII, but are nevertheless hilarious cartoons- animated by the Looney Tunes team with scripts by Ted Geisel- aka Dr. Seuss!

The Dover Boys

Also of note are the ComiColor cartoons from the Iwerks studio, Rainbow Parade from Van Beuren, and most of the Color Classics by Fleischer. These don't have any especially memorable characters in them, but I thought I ought to mention them.

Yes, Tom, Dick and Larry, Dora Standpipe and the villainous Dan Backslide are all public domain. A bunch of YouTube Poops were created after this fact was discovered by the internet a few years ago.

How Warner Bros. could ever let this one get away I'll never know. Their loss is our gain, I suppose.

Caveats and other concerns

Krazy Kat

Felix the Cat

All of the strips up to 1928 are definitely fair game. According to the Public Domain Superheroes wiki however, the entirety of the strip's run is PD. I'm not sure if it that's true, but the Fantagraphics collections don't credit any newspaper syndicate, so it seems likely. (Apparently the copyright status of newspaper comics are a whole can of worms on its own...)

At any rate, the strip's cast was pretty well set in stone by 1928, so it shouldn't be much of a problem. A large number of animated shorts starring Krazy are also PD, but those were pretty much in name only.

Flip the Frog

Felix was pretty much the first cartoon superstar, and almost all of his Golden Age appearances are PD now. Keep in mind that this does not include elements from the 1950s cartoon like his magic bag, or from The Twisted Tales of Felix, as amazing as that series is.

The character's name and appeance are still trademarked by NBC Universal however, so you might be able to use him in a minor role, but not much else.

I'm uncertain about this one. According to most sources Flip is PD, but according to the Thunderbean Blu-ray collection he's copyrighted by the Film Preservation Archives, whatever that means. Additionally, Flip himself is supposedly trademarked by Leslie Iwerks, Ub Iwerks’ granddaughter, though no one seems to be able to confirm that. I don't know how the trademark hasn't lapsed yet, considering that Flip hasn't appeared on any official merchandise or anything in decades.

Bosko and Honey

I believe there's nothing stopping anyone from using Bosko's classic design (later appearances at MGM and in Tiny Toons are still copyrighted), but the character himself is a bit problematic, considering that it's all but stated outright that he's a blackface caricature. Use with caution.

Foxy and Roxy

Noveltoons

Like Goopy Geer, Foxy appeared in three Merrie Melodies cartoons. Roxy's name originates from an episode of Tiny Toon Adventures however, so keep that in mind. Though I'm not sure what else you would call her (or if Warner Bros. would even care). Supposedly her original name was "Fluffy", but I can't find a source for this.

Like Bosko and Honey, later appearances in Tiny Toons are still copyrighted.

Noveltoons was a series produced by Famous Studios, the successor to the Fleischer studio. The characters include Baby Huey, Herman the mouse, Blackie the sheep, Little Audrey, and of course, Casper the Friendly Ghost. Only a small handful of the shorts are PD though, and Casper is trademarked, so one's options are limited.

Ginger Nutt (and rest of the Animaland cast)

Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer (1964)

This one I'm not entirely sure about either, but Ginger Nutt's Christmas Circus has long been a staple of grey-market tapes and DVDs, so I'm just going to assume all of the Animaland cartoons are also PD. Considering that the series wasn't very sucessful, and is very obscure nowadays, it seems pretty likely.

If anyone has any insight on this, let me know.

Calvin and the Colonel

Now here's an interesting case. An all-time classic Christmas special, and yet large parts of it are PD because they accidentally put the wrong date on the copyright notice. Instead of the Roman numerals MCMLXIV (1964), it reads MCLXIV (1164), and according to the law at the time, that meant that the film immediately went into public domain.

Of course, Rudolph himself is still copyrighted, and will be until 2035 when the original book falls into the public domain. Even then he's likely to still be trademarked. Not to mention the songs featured in the '64 film will be copyrighted for a long time afterward.

Still, this means that anyone is free to use all the other characters, including Hermey, Yukon Cornelius, King Moonracer, Clarice, and all the Misfit Toys. It's a wonder no one seems to have taken advantage of this. And of course Santa and his reindeer have been PD for ages, especially Santa since he comes from folklore- and you can't copyright folklore.

This cartoon is based on and stars a lot of the same voice cast as the old-time radio show Amos and Andy, which, while not overtly racist, featured white actors pretending to be black. The cartoon obviously has animals instead, but still, tread carefully. Someone is bound to point out the characters' history.

Hoppity Hooper

Another one I'm not sure about. The Public Domain Superheroes wiki has characters from this show among its articles, but I wasn't able to confirm if it really was PD. It was created by Jay Ward, the same studio who made Rocky & Bullwinkle and George of the Jungle, but was also a huge flop for some reason, so that may be the reason why they let the copyright expire. Again, I'm not sure, but no one seems to care that the entire series is on YouTube, so who knows?

...Well, there you have it. Lots of obscure and forgotten toons waiting to be rediscovered and reused! If anyone has any more info or corrections, leave me a comment. I'd love some clarification on some of these.

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funnyfaceflea · 2 months

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friendly reminder (for those who are unaware) that dan backslide is in the public domain !

so you're free to make dan part of your story's villain's arc and....maybe make a horror movie out of him :3

#dan backslide #the dover boys #looney tunes #public domain #chuck jones

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gross-giirl · 4 months

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Thoughts on Dan Backslide?

He is a scoundrel and a cad. Not to be trusted. I love that even though the cartoon is called The Dover Boys, he is clearly the star of the show. It's such a well written cartoon, I always notice a new little gag every time I watch it. Fun fact, a "runabout" is a real car body type!

#my asks #dan backslide #the dover boys #inverse ninjas vs the public domain #invpd

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publicdomaincharacters · 3 months

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Since the The Dover Boys at Pimento University is public domain that means The Dover Boys (Tom Dover,Dick Dover and Larry Dover) are public domain

#public domain #the dover boys at pimento university #tom dover #dick dover #larry dover #the dover boys

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ninebaalart · 1 year

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Dan Backslide has been in the public domain for a while, and I really just kept my take pretty faithful.

#dan backslide #dover boys #public domain #artists on tumblr #art

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reportwire · 2 years

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Delaware's public health director to step down in June

Delaware’s public health director to step down in June

DOVER, Del. (AP) — Delaware’s top public health official, who has led the state’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic, has announced that she will leave her job next month. The News Journal reports that Dr. Karyl Rattay, the country’s longest-serving public health director, will be stepping down on June 30 after leading the Division of Public Health for 13 years. It’s unclear where she will work…

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#covid-19 #delaware #Dover #health #Public health

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garadinervi · 11 months

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Hans Reichenbach, (1928), The Philosophy of Space & Time, Translated by Maria Reichenbach and John Freund, with introductory remarks by Rudolf Carnap, Dover Publications, New York, NY, 1958. Cover designed by Menten Inc.

#graphic design #philosophy #philosophy of science #epistemology #book #cover #book cover #hans reichenbach #maria reichenbach #john freund #rudolf carnap #dover publications #menten inc.#1920s #1950s

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raytorosaurus · 10 months

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the way ray took some time away from guitar following the breakup to explore other instruments and techniques and different sides of production/mixing, and then 'rediscovered' guitar and clearly focussed on fingerstyle playing and bluesy techniques for a while, and now he's honing in on precision picking jazz-style and has been working away at learning cliffs of dover for months and is considering taking lessons...and just a few months ago he was on stage four nights a week playing all the solos he wrote in his twenties bigger and better (and better again!) than ever before just for the joy of it, all the while chatting to other career musicians backstage about how mastery of your instrument matters so much less than playing it with feeling and making other people feel something...this guy is completely offline, any work he's put out has been self-released and the definition of a passion project, he's constantly writing music and learning more and more about what he can do with guitar with no intention of getting money or public praise from it - no intention of anything besides doing it. we're so lucky when we get to experience his playing but there's something so admirable and comforting about the knowledge that even if we don't see it for ourselves, he's still doing that shit! he's writing music with his kids and mixing songs and experimenting with new sounds and techniques and instruments just because! like...ray is one of the most incredible rock musicians out there but the most inspiring thing about him is how much he just genuinely truly loves his craft!! fuck!

#like frank's commitment to performance and musical community and connecting with crowds is deeply admirable to me #but sometimes i forget that ray's quiet passion that doesn't really expect any return is too!!!#SORRY FOR BEING SAPPY AND PARASOCIAL I AM LITERALLY HAVING A MOMENT.#ray toro #mcr talk #*#guitar

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brother-emperors · 22 hours

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Do you have any good resources/references/advice for drawing (late republican) Roman clothing? I want to draw a couple of historical figures but thinking about drawing a toga makes me feel like 😖😖😖...

-Costumes of the Greeks and Romans, Thomas Hope

-Greek and Roman Fashions, Tom Tierney

-The World of Roman Costume, ed. Judith Lynn Sebesta and Larissa Bonfante.

-Decorative Symbols and motifs for Artists and Craftsmen/Decorative Patterns of the Ancient World, Dover Publications

-photos & videos from reenactors and reenactment events

-build a screenshot reference library from movies and shows that have costume designs you like, that kind of thing. grab a blanket and wrap yourself up in it toga style and take a photo if you need a specific angle. etc. museums usually have a lot of their galleries online, and places like the met often shoot statues from multiple sides.

#my screenshot reference library has a lot from gladiator/hbo rome/the cleopatra movie/various JC film adaptions #sometimes toy stores and craft supply places have those tiny figures and every now and then they got little romans #highly recommend that too #ask tag #ngl if you can grab the discovery tour edition of assassins creed origins. like. go to one of the greek/roman cities and use #photo mode on various npcs #art advice tag

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dk-thrive · 13 days

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Think... of the world which you carry within yourself... and set it above everything that you notice about you. Your inmost happening is worth your whole love, that is what you must somehow work at, and not loose too much time and too much courage in explaining your attitude to people.

― Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet. Reginald Snell (Translator) (Dover Publications, April 3, 2012)

#Rainer Maria Rilke #mind #thoughts #mental health #world #psychology #love #inner thoughts

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professorpski · 10 months

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“Soon the knitter herself will visualize a thousand of other ways in which a motif can be used, and so fave at her disposal an exhaustible variety of fabrics. Thick fabrics or thin fabrics, patterned fabrics or plain fabrics, those blazing in colour or decorated with beads, she can make fabric imitated fur (Looped Knitting), Lace, Picot, Filet, or Crochet, and even cloque and woven fabric, by a mere change of technique. Every ornament known to dressmaking can be imitated, even hemstitching and buttons!”

When Mary Thomas wrote this in 1945 in Mary Thomas’s Book of Knitting Patterns when dressmaking was the most common craft women learned. Circular knitting, which she called seamless knitting, was viewed as peasant knitting, interesting historically, but not something most women likely to do. So, comparing knitting to dressmaking was a compliment. In fact, sewing pieces of knitted fabric was taken for granted and Thomas offered the same garment block or garment schematic that we see in dressmaking in the section explaining how to plan an entirely original sweater.

Similarly, Thomas urged her the reader to imagine new ways of patterning a knitted fabric through her choice of stitches. Every section of the book suggests how variations might be introduced to the stitches she explains. She valued the experimentation and imagination which created the stitches she taught and clearly saw yet more to be invented.

You can find this and other Thomas books at Dover Publications: https://store.doverpublications.com/0486228185.html

#knittingbooks #knitting #knittinginstruction #marythomas #making #makers #dresshistory #costumehistory #fashionhistory #dressmaking #vintageknitting #vintagefashion #vintagedressmaking

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balladofsallyrose · 5 months

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Dennis Hopper's collection of owned and gifted books (a few are listed under the cut)

Islands in the Stream (Charles Scribner's Sons, 1970)

Magic (Delacorte Press, 1976)

Sneaky People (Simon and Schuster, 1975)

Strange Peaches (Harper's Magazine Press, 1972)

I Didn't Know I Would Live So Long (Charles Scribner's Sons, 1973)

Baby Breakdown (The Bobbs-Merrill Company, Inc., 1970)

37 (Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1970)

Presences: A Text for Marisol (Charles Scribner's Sons, 1970)

Little Prayers for Little Lips, The Book of Tao, The Bhagavadgita or The Song Divine, and Gems and Their Occult Power.

Lolita (G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1955)

The Dramas of Kansas (John F. Higgins, 1915)

Joy of Cooking (The Bobbs-Merrill Company, 1974)

The Neurotic: His Inner and Outer Worlds (First edition, Citadel Press, 1954)

Out of My Mind: An Autobiography (Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 1997)

The Savage Mind (University of Chicago Press, 1966)

Alive: The Story of the Andes Survivors (J.B. Lippincott Company, 1974)

The Documents of 20th Century Art: Dialogues with Marcel Duchamp (Viking Press, 1971)

The Portable Dorothy Parker, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, I Ching, and How to Make Love to a Man.

John Steinbeck's East of Eden (Bantam, 1962)

James Dean: The Mutant King (Straight Arrow Books, 1974) by David Dalton

The Moviegoer (The Noonday Press, 1971)

Erections, Ejaculations, Exhibitions and General Tales of Ordinary Madness (City Light Books, 1974)

Narcotics Nature's Dangerous Gifts (A Delta Book, 1973)

The Egyptian Book of the Dead (Dover Publications, 1967)

Tibetan Yoga and Secret Doctrines (Oxford University Press, 1969)

Junky (Penguin Books, 1977) by William S. Burroughs

Weed: Adventures of a Dope Smuggler (Harper & Row, 1974)

Alcoholics Anonymous (Alcoholics Anonymous World Services, 1976)

Skrebneski Portraits - A Matter of Record, Sketchbooks of Paolo Soleri, and High Tide.

Raw Notes (The Press of the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, 2005)

Le Corbusier (Heidi Weber, 1965)

Henry Moore in America (Praeger Publishers, 1973)

Claes Oldenburg (MIT Press, 2012)

Notebooks 1959 1971 (MIT Press, 1972)

A Day in the Country (Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 1985)

Album Celine (Gallimard, 1977)

A Selection of Fifity Works From the Collection of Robert C. Scull (Sotheby Parke Bernet, Inc. 1973)

Collage A Complete Guide for Artists (Watsun-Guptill Publications, 1970)

The Fifties Aspects of Painting in New York (Smithsonian Institution Press, 1980)

A Bottle of Notes and Some Voyages (Rizzoli International Publications, 1988)

All Color Book of Art Nouveau (Octopus Books, 1974)

A Colorslide Tour of The Louvre Paris (Panorama, 1960)

Dear Dead Days (G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1959)

Woman (Aidan Ellis Publishing Limited, 1972)

The Arts and Man ( UNESCO, 1969)

Murals From the Han to the Tang (Foreign Languages Press, 1974)

A (Grove Press Inc., 1968)

Andy Warhol's Index Book (Random House, 1967)

Voices (A Big Table Book, 1969)

Another Country (A Dell Book, circa 1960s)

On The Road (Signet, circa 1980s)

#dennis hopper

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shitpostingperidot · 3 months

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Kamala Khan’s bookshelves

Kamala’s room in The Marvels is an absolute treasure trove of little details to zoom in on, and I’ve identified so many books on her shelves!

Shelf 1, top to bottom:

1. Landmark Experiments in Twentieth Century Physics by George L. Trigg

College-level book about experiments that helped us learn about x-rays, lasers, isotopes, superconductors, and all kinds of other things I don’t understand. Meant to be more practical than theoretical since it talks about the actual methodologies of these experiments. Could be for school, or for Kamala and Bruno to run their own tests of Kamala’s powers. The first of many books in the Khan house that come from Dover Publications.

2. Space Time Matter by Hermann Weyl

“An esoteric initiation into space time physics” -Amazon reviewer. I’m gonna be real, I don’t understand half the words in this book description, but apparently it’s famous for introducing gauge theory, which was later reborn as phase transformations in quantum theory. I can see this being something Kamala reads to try and understand the bangle transporting her to the Partition. Also from Dover.

3. A Map to the Sun by Sloane Leong

A graphic novel about a high school girl’s basketball team learning to work together despite their many differences and conflicts. Also it has a gorgeous color palette. Seems fairly self explanatory why it’s in this movie. I’ll definitely be borrowing this from my library! Like my friend Kamala recommended a book to me herself.

4. The Good Immigrant anthology edited by Nikesh Shukla

21 essays from Black, Asian, and Minority Ethnic (BAME) people in the UK about their experiences. It was crowdfunded initially, extremely critically acclaimed, and has gotten spinoffs and sequels. Riz Ahmed, who is British Pakistani, is one contributor, and a fun fact is that Rish Shah (Kamran from Ms. Marvel) worked with Riz Ahmed in an Oscar winning short called The Long Goodbye. Also, the editor, Nikesh Shukla, is currently writing the Spider-Man India comics series!

5. Bright Lines by Tanwi Nandini Islam

A coming-of-age story about 3 young adults with complicated family, friend, and romantic relationships between them. They have to travel from Brooklyn to Bangladesh together one summer and thereby discover a lot about themselves. I haven’t read it, but there seems to be a ton of complex representation of LGBTQ, POC, immigrant, and Muslim characters. I wonder how much the three main characters can be compared with our three characters with complex relationships in The Marvels, and I wonder which character Kamala most relates to!

6. I can’t tell! The font is bugging the hell out of me because theoretically, with that amount of contrast, I should be able to read a word when I get two inches from the TV and mess with the settings. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

7. I also can’t tell, but I’m being easier on myself because the title is written in white on a yellow background. It’s not the only book I know off the top of my head with this color scheme (Yellowface by RF Kuang) because the title is definitely multiple words. Help!

Shelf 2, right to left:

1. One Night that Changes Everything by Lauren Barnholdt

A YA romance where, through a convoluted series of events, a teenager must face all of her insecurities in one night. I can see Kamala devouring this as brain candy after wrestling with those advanced science books, or using it as fic inspiration!

2. Can’t tell, but love the color scheme!

This next one is a weird one, because I am 100% sure of what book it is, but I cannot find a picture of a matching edition.

3. Wizard at Large by Terry Brooks

It’s definitely, without a doubt, this book (where a character and a magical medallion are accidentally transported to Earth from another realm and switches places with an evil genie). Like those are the words on the spine and the plot of the book is an obvious choice for this movie. The fonts match on the audiobook, the ebook, and the next two books in the series. But try as I might, I cannot find any proof on the internet that the physical book that appears in Kamala’s room, that uses those two fonts and that spine formatting, exists. This is haunting me…

4. (On the other side of the box) It’s not The Twilight Saga Eclipse, but I definitely thought it was before I could watch in high definition. I think it’s a journal or sketchbook of Kamala’s; there are a bunch scattered throughout the room.

Shelf 3:

I’ve only identified the bottom book, which is Einstein’s Theory of Relativity by Max Born (Dover Publications). The third one up is HAUNTING me, it looks SO identifiable and yet!

Living Room Side Table:

1. Amateur Astronomer’s Handbook by JB Sidgwick (from Dover Publications)

2. Cosmology by Hermann Bondi (also Dover)

Both of these seem less difficult than the science books in Kamala’s room, but reviewers note that it helps to know calculus when reading Cosmology. Idk which member of the Khan family is reading these, but I love their family’s connection to the stars 💫

Tbh I’m having so much fun doing this! And I really wish we got to see Monica’s living space so I can analyze her books 😭

#the marvels #kamala khan #ms marvel

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