Thursday, November 09, 2006

Fox Pop (1942) - Bobe Cannon-Chuck Jones

In early Chuck Jones cartoons, Chuck gave his animators a lot of freedom to move things in their own styles. They had to use Chuck's key poses, but each animator had his own way of breaking them down and getting from one pose to the next.

This is an animator that I really like to watch-I'm not 100% who it is, but I'm assuming it's Bobe Cannon because it looks a lot like animation in earlier Clampett cartoons when Cannon worked for him.

If anyone knows for sure who this is, let me know!



















Whoever it is draws great and moves everything in a very flowing way-almost like liquid wrapped in a tight elastic skin that can bend and stretch when moving fast.

Nothing moves directly from one Chuck pose to the next-it moves in complex figure 8 type formations and waves, or it "smears".

It's not exactly what you would call funny movement, but it is beautiful and artistic and very distinct.

It makes Chuck's early films very entertaining to watch just from an animation point of view. When I first discovered this style, I was mesmerized-I guess I still am. It's a reason to animate, rather than just trying to imitate reality, or worse- to have no animation skill or fun at all, like today's cartoons.

Chuck's later cartoons were more restrictive in terms of movement, and for that matter, oddly enough, so were Bobe Cannon's.

Cannon's style (if this is him) gradually got stiffer, first in Tex Avery's cartoons at MGM, then in Cannon's own cartoons for UPA.

Fox Pop (1942) - Bobe Cannon
Uploaded by chuckchillout8

Clampett told me lots of stories about Cannon, how he got his name, how mild mannered he was, yet he was athletically built.

By the way, doesn't Chuck draw weird hands?? There's something perverted looking about this one, even though it is very well drawn.