Cartoons of the Moment – The Kaiser War (c1918)

Cartoonist Harry Julius was employed by the Australasian Gazette from approximately 1914 to provide political cartoons as part of its wartime newsreels. This edition of the Cartoons of the Moment was probably made around 1918, after Prime Minister Hughes’s second visit to England to attend the Imperial War Cabinet.

Cartoons of the Moment employs paper cut-outs – white figures on a dark background. Cut-out animation uses two-dimensional character shapes, photographed with a stop-motion technique. Stop-motion, or frame-by-frame photography, involves photographing the action one frame at a time to create the effect of movement. Today, animation is more often achieved using computer technology. The hand of the artist often appears in Cartoons of the Moment as it draws in the details and features that bring each animated character to life.

Julius’s style would have become familiar to audiences in Australia as the Australasian Gazette newsreel was screened on a weekly basis. Harry Julius was also a comic strip artist whose sketches appeared in The Bulletin magazine. His animated cartoons were probably the first locally created cartoons to screen in Australian cinemas.