‘Fun on Mars’: Sally Cruikshank’s reaction to California
In the world of American animation, Sally Cruikshank is an important artistic voice whose works have contributed to a different understanding of animation. Known for her work on Sesame Street as well as her subversive masterpieces like Quasi at the Quackadero, Cruikshank’s unique art style championed a hallucinatory fluidity and brought something new to the table. Influenced by the legacy of Fleischer Studios, the animator used her own concepts of motion to make her projects stand out.
While Cruikshank developed this style in later works such as Face Like A Frog, this was evident from the beginning of her career. As a student of art at Smith College, she realised that animation had a lot of potential and she started working under the guidance of her professors while making her first animated shorts. Among these early outputs, one of the most interesting projects is a psychedelic 1971 gem titled Fun on Mars.
In an interview, Cruikshank recalled: “I was an art major in school at Smith. In my senior year, I taught myself about animation and made a film. A professor helped me set up a photo enlarger and that got me started. I graduated early from Smith and went on to the San Francisco Art Institute because I wanted to get as far away from New England as possible! I made a couple of art films there, just on my own. One was called Fun On Mars, which was sort of my reaction to San Francisco.”
Featuring a bizarre soundscape of ducks quacking and Charles ‘Buddy’ Rodgers singing ‘Sweeping the Clouds Away’, Fun on Mars feels like a fever dream that pulls you in and doesn’t let you go. This early short was a stepping stone for Cruikshank who eventually became a major figure within the domain of animation during the 1970s, especially after the release of her hugely influential work Quasi at the Quackadero in 1975.
When asked about the state of the industry during the ’70s in the same interview, Cruikshank said: “The industry was mainly down in Southern California, really. In Northern California we were so out of that. There was so little production going on there. Gregg was doing commercials, but it was more just art. I felt I was an artist experimenting with things. The scene in LA was very male-dominated, and in San Francisco there was very little animation going on…”
Featuring landscapes that look alien, proto-versions of her iconic duck-adjacent creatures and caricatures of annoying tourists, Fun on Mars is a very personal image of California that seems like a completely natural conclusion in retrospect. Made with crayons and watercolour on cutouts and collages, it proved that Cruikshank had the talent to create something completely original even while working with a limited budget of $100.
Watch the film below.
