Coal Black - bike

http://www.michaelbarrier.com/Essays/Milt_Gray/Gray_on_Coal_Black.htm

HEY STEVE!
This youtube clip doesn't do the scene justice. Is there anyway you can make a clip at a larger frame rate? You can't really see all the overlapping action the way this looks now...Thanks!

This is my favorite kind of animation!

It only existed for a short time-between 1939 and 1942 or so.

It's round and bouncy, has tons of overlapping action and is just super lively. It's a way of moving that can only be done in drawn cartoons and makes animation a world unique to itself.It's just automatically fun just by itself. But then in context of great gags, direction and pacing, it's thrilling.

I wish real people could be so bouncy and floppy all the time-and there should always be a great jazz soundtrack happening behind you.

This, by the way is by Bob McKimson. He is not normally known for this kind of thing. His normal strengths are solid and powerful looking characters (as the Queen is here). His creation, Foghorn Leghorn epitomizes his style.

In 1942 this kind of animation is a bit of a throwback. Clampett loved to hang on to earlier cartoon styles and take them further than anyone else thought to. Gruesome Twosome is a caricatured throwback to characters from 1938.

Another nice example of this style is Elmer's walk in Elmer's Candid Camera - he's walking along, and his hat is bouncing up and down on his head. So fun!

Brad Caslor did a great cartoon in the 80s called "Get A Job" where he brought back Clampett's style of motion. Maybe it's on youtube...go look, it's wonderful!

I sure wish there was a way today to do stuff like this. Animation today seems to be ashamed to be animation, it just doesn't use its power to create magic anymore.

You would think with all the animated features and the ton of money they sink into them, that SOMEONE would want to revive and maybe even build on this great style of movement.

Boy, if anyone ever gave me the money to do full animation, you can bet you'll see this come back pretty fast.

I've been stuck in TV Land for 2 decades trying to figure out how to revive some semblance of techniques from the 40s, but having to use tricks to simulate what could be done easily and naturally back when you had your own animators sitting in the room next to you.

I'll tell you something-the prime time TV cartoons they make today that look like they cost 50 bucks to produce... They actual spend a fortune on them-waaaay more than Warner Bros. cartoons cost-even counting for inflation, and could easily afford to do all the animation in North America and do it fully too.

Shame shame.