crows shots can also be seen in Robin Hoodlum and The Magic Fluke. After UPA finished its trial run with Columbia in 1950, Hubley’s films became more visually ambitious. As the supervising director of Gerald McBoing-Boing, Hubley oversaw the film’s unique visuals provided by designer Bill Hurtz and colorists Herb Klynn and Jules Engel. Rooty Toot Toot uses complex color blocking to tell its story visually, and implements even stronger skewed perspective and stylized line art backgrounds. Unlike Gerald Mc-Boing Boing, which uses abstract blocks of color in its backgrounds, Rooty Toot Toot experimented with different patterns and brush types. The film’s last act is illustrated in the style of sponge painting, pulling inspiration from European abstract expressionist artists. This push towards replicating brush strokes and printmaking in backgrounds extended to the animated segments Hubley directed for The Four Poster. For his independent directorial debut, The Adventures of *, Hubley drew heavily from the visual style of artists like Paul Klee, Joan Miró, and Pablo Picasso. The film’s backgrounds were painted with sponges and thick brushes for texture. The characters were drawn in yellow crayon on black paper to give them a more unique, handmade look. In subsequent films, Hubley would experiment with watercolors, ballpoint pen, and fabric markers to give his films distinctive visuals. Hubley used both cels and the Xerox method (popularized by Ub Iwerks on the 1961 film One Hundred and One Dalmatians) depending on the film. For Cockaboody, characters were drawn on paper by Tissa David, then cut out and placed on cels. Hubley sometimes opted to use underlighting - wherein the drawing or cel is lit from below rather than above - to make the films more distinct, and often used multiple exposure for more complex elements, like the river in Tender Game or the abstract color section in Everybody Rides the Carousel. While directing The Ragtime Bear, Hubley encouraged actor Jim Backus to improvise his dialogue and ramble on as his character Mr. Magoo would. Bauckus’ unique vocal performance would make Mr. Magoo a hit, becoming UPA’s flagship character. The idea of using improvised dialogue in animation was not created by Hubley, as Dave Fleischer often encouraged his actors to make up their own dialogue for his Popeye and Betty Boop shorts, but the success of Bauckus as Mr. Magoo inspired Hubley to pursue stream of consciousness improvisation for his independent films. Hubley took