Quasi at the Quackadero

Quasi at the Quackadero is a 1975 animated short by Sally Cruikshank. This cartoon follows two ducks and a pet robot at an amusement park in the future where time travel is exploited. In 2009, it was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress.

Initially given working titles that included I Walked with a Duck, Hold That Quasi, and Quasi Quacks Up, the 10minute, 35mm short, with 100 watercolor backgrounds and approximately 5,000 cels, took two years for Cruikshank to draw, followed by four months for photography and postproduction. Cruikshank independently financed the 6,000 budget, which went primarily for cel painting, sound recording and lab and camera work. Underground cartoonist Kim Deitch, then Cruikshanks boyfriend, did much of the inking, using dip pen and rapidograph, with Kathryn Lenihan doing most of the cel painting.The short starred Quasi, characterized by one writer as an infantile duck with buck front teeth, thick glasses and a red cape, voiced by Deitch Anita, which one writer described as Betty Boop with a New Wave wardrobe and whose Mae Westlike voice was supplied by Cruikshank, and robot Rollo. They progress through the Quackadero, a Coney Islandesque sideshow with such attractions as the Hall of Time Mirrors, which depict the viewer as he or she will look in old age or 100 years from now the Roll Back Time Machine, in which Quasi watches a skyscrapers life running backward the ThinkoBlink Machine, which illustrates ones thoughts the game showlike act Your Shining Moment Madame Xanos, where the audience can see last nights dreams and the Time Holes, in which one can lean on a railing and see a live slice of three million years ago unfold. The music, by Bob Armstrong and Al Dodge, of the Berkeley, California band the Cheap Suit Serenaders, used slide flute, xylophone, ukulele, duck call, boat whistle and bagpipe to create what Cruikshank called the strange, gallopy feeling of 1920s1930s danceband music, of which she is a devotee. ........

Source: Wikipedia