Wednesday, May 09, 2007

What Cartoons Can Do





Cartoons can do things that no other medium can do. They used to do it all the time.These are from Dick Lundy's "Banquet Busters" 1948.




You can float when you smell something heavenly.You can change into abstract shapes to convey your mood.

You can propell yourself through the air by stretching and squashing.
You can penetrate the smallest crevice.

You can have perfectly composed beautiful poses.You can smash people with anything handy.

You can zip out of scenes.

Cartoons can easily do all these magic things that live action can't. Of course it's not easy to draw and animate them this beautifully. You have to be really good to do it.

Watch it in motion.

WACKY WOODY

But why does so much animation not take advantage of its natural gifts?

Instead we have whole schools of animation that try to compete with live action on its own level, which is impossible. We get badly formulaic animation acting, contrived stories filled with pathos, horrible puns, lots of realistic hairs and pores and no visual magic or pure fun.



BTW, look how great this print looks! I don't think you will ever see these cartoons look as good as the Columbia House releases, so if you can find those anywhere, snap them up.

The last versions I saw of these cartoons were digitally "remastered" and destroyed, full of DVNR line-erased all kinds of sick digital compression. I think that all cartoons from now on are going to be tampered with.


DVNR AND REMASTERING RUINS CARTOONS





MORE REMASTERING TORTURE ON LOONEY TUNES DVDS



The Columbia House cartoons look just like the films they were made on. Probably because they were a low budget release, so they couldn't afford to spend any extra money ruining them.