Here's a sample of one of the many clips Marc Deckter has prepared for me to show how incredible Bob Clampett is tomorrow at the Ottawa festival.
When the historians talk about Clampett, they really don't understand the vocabulary of animation, let alone animation direction well enough to really describe his achievements.
They usually grudgingly give him credit for 2 things: surrealism and being "wild". Well, he is both those things but he is also a master at every other animation principle and incorporates ideas from other mediums as well.
I think he is by far the best animation director when it comes to timing and pacing. He can cram more ideas and information into a second of film than any other director in history. He not only fills every scene with info, he makes it all read clearly!
This crazy sequence from Tale Of Two Kitties shows just how well he can take an idea and build it and make it get more and more exciting through quick cutting, tighter and tighter shots, great music, contrasts in the angles and scene lengths and stunning animation. He weaves together all these separate disciplines to give you a sensory experience no other medium can provide-and no one else in his own medium.
Bob is in a total class of his own. There are cartoons-the most creative art form in history, and then there is another medium even more inventive and fun than cartoons-The Bob Clampett Cartoon.
Come down to the National Arts Center in Ottawa tomorrow at 4:00 and I'll show you lots more of what makes his cartoons so great.
Then at 7:00, come back and watch film prints of his best cartoons. See what is possible in an animated cartoon when you let truly creative people do what they were put on this earth to do!
