Wednesday, July 04, 2007

Accents

Clampett sure liked his accents. He was always figuring out ways to make his points come across stronger.Here, he's figured out a new way to make an anticipation and accent at the same time and not just with the drawings.

This door is yellow when open and inside the house.
On the way to slamming shut it turns green for a couple frames.

Then it slams and it's white.The green was used to give more color distance between the yellow and white. Yellow is not that much different than white, but green is a stronger contrast.
That contrast gives us a feeling that something really strong happened-even though we don't really see the green frames at full speed. We just feel the door swinging closed and slamming hard.





Here it happens again, this time swinging open.
There are all kinds of ideas like this in Clampett cartoons that are only used once or twice. They inspired me to take some of them and do endless variations in Ren and Stimpy and other cartoons.


I wonder how much further cartoons would have developed in the 40s if Clampett didn't leave so early in his career (he was only 32 or 33!). He was really on a roll and then POP! He just left and no one carried on the cartoon film language he was pioneering.

His momentum did give animation some excitement and verve for a few more years, until the next thing came in and sucked all the life out of cartoons.
By the way, look at the huge accent when Porky pops his head out of the snow.

WATCH THE CLIP!