I did some research on art and animation styles, and learned that this technique was known as “hyperrealism”, a style intended to give intense lifelike detail using traditional (non-digital) art methods. Some pieces of this genre were almost indistinguishable from photographs. The “Lion” wasn’t quite that realistic—you could still tell easily enough that it was a cartoon, yet it was somehow as visually striking as a real photo of a lion.
I continued my research, now focusing on finding people who were knowledgeable about this art form. I narrowed my search down to a few academics and animators, and emailed them the Lion still.
I got a response from one expert saying the style reminded him of Johann Strobl, an Austrian artist and animator who had moved to the United States in the 1930s. He had worked for Disney briefly before starting his own animation studio. He was known for his bizarre, deconstructionist approach to animation and had started his own small anti-art movement of sorts. Animators and cartoonists trained at his studio produced their own bizarre works, which often included violent and grotesque themes, despite the fact that the studio ostensibly marketed to children.
The email went on to explain that Strobl became increasingly obsessed with magic and the occult during his career. He became less and less functional until his studio was forced to close due to bankruptcy.
Curiously, the studio was known to produce only a handful of original works of its own. Apparently, the animators had spent a lot of time deconstructing and replicating the works of other companies, mainly Disney since they were the only major animation studio at the time, and altering them to make them surreal or disturbing. This would have opened the company up to piracy claims, except that they never sold such works to the public, instead gifting them to a handful of collectors within the anti-art elite community.
Strobl had also self-published a book, a manual of sorts which contained prints of some of his still cartoons and instructions on his technique. It was simply titled “Animation Deconstructed.” I immediately determined to read it, but it took me ages to find a copy. I managed to track one down at a public library headquarters three states away. The book was in their special archive collection, so I couldn’t get it through Inter-Library Loan. I had to drive there, where they would allow me to examine it in their archive reading room.
The room was sparse, dusty, and poorly lit. It had the feel of a 1950s police interrogation room. I was allowed to read the book of interest at the single table under the supervision of a librarian. It was yellowed, and the jacket was wrapped in protective plastic. The volume was short enough to read in an hour. Strobl was not as good at English as he was at drawing, so the self-published aspect really showed in the numerous grammar errors. There were a couple dozen prints in the book, all made in his unique hyper-realistic style. Again, they weren’t photorealistic like other artists in the genre, but had a depth of detail and perspective that made them appear alive all the same. None of them did anything paranormal or anything like that, but there was one that managed to seriously frighten me. It was a cartoon snake, a cobra, with its fangs bared and a menacing look in its eyes.
You know how some paintings of people have the eyes painted in such a way as to give the impression of the subject’s gaze following you as you view it from different angles? Well, this piece didn’t do that, but it had some similar thing going on where the eyes of the snake appeared to bore right into you straight through the page. I felt like the snake was going to strike up and dig its fangs into my arm. I didn’t have a trippy experience like with the Lion animation, but it was still surreal and unnerving.
In addition to sections on art technique, Strobl had also included a number of seemingly randomly placed critiques of the state of animation that could generously be described as educated rants. A frequent target of his criticisms was Walt Disney, whom he decried as an amateur buffoon who was holding back the animation medium from its true potential. The author went on to emphasize the need to be bold and daring in animation, and willing to push social taboos.
I returned the volume to the librarian. I hadn’t discovered anything that would help me with my search for the Aristocats tape, but at least I had come away with some interesting insights into the philosophy of the man who may have been behind it all.
My next step was to visit Strobl’s studio, which involved yet another cross-country road trip. I started to wonder how much gas money I would have ended up spending by the end of my search for that damned video. Was it really cheaper than flying?
At least the studio was still standing, though I had arrived anticipating that anything of major interest would have been looted decades ago. Still, I held out hope as I pulled into a shopping center parking lot. The rest of my journey would have to be on foot since the studio had predated modern roads. I crossed the interstate, there being only light traffic, and found and followed the old dirt road that would have been the sole source of vehicle traffic back then. By now it was largely overgrown, and I cursed myself for not bringing a machete.
It took me two hours to reach the location. It was a one-story wooden building, with its windows boarded up, and foliage growing all around it. I walked the perimeter, looking for a way in that wouldn’t open me up to charges of “breaking” and entering, though I seriously doubted anyone would ever know or care I had been here in any case. To my disappointment, no entryway had been left by previous urban explorers, and I had to hack away the boards of one window with a hatchet I had brought (it may have been easier to smash down the door, but that felt somewhat less ethical.)
There was of course no source of light, except the now-open window-way, but I had had the foresight to bring three high-powered LED lamps in my backpack, which I now set up around the floor, relieved that I did not see any scurrying or slithering.
The place seemed smaller on the inside, barely more spacious than my basement at home. There was no furniture except a couple broken easels on the floor. They probably sold off the tables and desks to pay off their debts, I thought. Some scuff marks were visible on the wooden floor. There was a low wooden partition that sectioned off a small segment of the room. I guessed that this was where the administrative desk had been, while the rest of the floor was used for the actual animation work.
Like I said, I hadn’t really been expecting to find anything important, but it was still disappointing. I spent the next couple hours pacing the floor, wondering if the whole trip had been a waste of time and mileage. I was about to pack up my lamps and leave when I discovered a trap door behind the floor partition.
I had taken one of the lamps off the floor to perch it on top of the partition, and the light now allowed me to see the outline of the trap door along with its hinges and latch. The door was about three feet by two feet. I grew excited and opened it.
Annoyingly, the door did not appear to have a mechanism for staying open, and was too heavy for me to hold up. I had to back out through the window and back several times just to bring some rocks to prop it up. But the contents of the compartment were worth it.
The compartment was about three feet deep, and contained what looked like diagrams for animation or film devices, along with various little parts; knobs, bolts, lenses, and the like; all scattered at the bottom. I studied these with fascination, but couldn’t make heads or tails of the schematics. I tried fitting some of the parts together, with no success.
I decided against taking these items with me. I had rationalized that violating the law by entering this place unlawfully was worth pulling back the curtain on whatever had caused my childhood trauma, but these items were unlikely to be of value to that end and thus stealing them for my own curiosity would go beyond the bounds of that justification. However, I did photograph each one of them just in case.