Mike Judge and Humanity

I've used the words "humanity", "sincerity", and others to describe a quality in entertainment that I can't find the perfect word for. If you've got a better one, let me know!

It's a quality I find in The Honeymooners, All In The Family, The Three Stooges, Bob McKimson cartoons, Kirk Douglas movies, Johnny Winter music, early Beatles and many other entertainments and entertainers. It's not the artistic finesse or skill - although that comes with many of my favorite entertainers...it's more a quality of truthfulness, an open, no-bullshit view of the world, a way of communicating universal and real human emotions and sensory feelings that cuts through current trends and styles.

You won't find this quality in blockbuster animated features, Cirque Du Soleil, but maybe sometimes in the odd TV show.

Mike Judge has this mysterious quality of sincere, open minded truthfulness and he sees what's really funny about actual humanity versus phony popular trends- he makes fun of when humans lie to us about who we are. He speaks to real people.

A MESSAGE FOR EDDIE!

When so much modern entertainment is polished insincerity, it's refreshing to watch something and laugh out loud.

When I watch King of The hill, I'm pretty sure I can tell which scenes are Mike unfiltered and which are teams of writers trying to evoke fake pathos. I'm caught off guard by Mike's jokes and laugh really loud, then it quickly switches to someone trying to manipulate me to cry over some writer's contrivance. It's a weird combination of elements.

Buy This Cartoon and many more here:

THE ANIMATION SHOW

***CHUCK JONES had humanity supplied to him for awhile by Mike Maltese. Tex Avery, The Fleischers and Clampett had it in abundance.

UPA went out of their way to excise it from their cartoons- so much so that even Jones saw it.What kind of humans are entertained by this? Send pictures.

NOW'S HERE'S THE REAL TRUTH ABOUT HUMANITY!

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THE BATTLE OF THE CENTURY!

CHUCK VS WANDERLEI

Clampett Structure - Clever and Entertaining Setups Tale Of Two Kitties

Clampett and Film/Story Structure

Clampett has a reputation of being wild and anarchic (thanks mostly to Chuck Jones telling everyone that) but in reality, his films are extremely well structured and tightly controlled.

All storytellers have to find ways to balance storytelling devices with entertainment. You have to tell your audience what your story is about at some point and this requires a setup. Setups can be boring or expositional as the writer or director explains to the audience through words what they are supposed to expect from the story.

Exposition to Setup the Story

Tex Avery usually spends a minute or 2 having a character explain what the story is about before the actual entertainment starts, "Whatever you do, don't make a noise, not one little sound!" and then we know that there will be a succession of gags around someone trying not to make a noise.

Entertaining Setups

Clampett's setups are very clever..."clever" is a word you usually associate with Chuck Jones, but Clampett's clever is different. Jones wants you to notice that what he just did is clever and he will point to the clever bit in some way (a character will glance at the audience and pause, to let you know to appreciate it)

Clampett doesn't care if you know what he did was clever. Cleverness is just one of many storytelling tools he uses to entertain you with. He's so confident in his power to entertain that he just throws tons of ideas at the screen and doesn't worry if you miss some or just feel them.

TALE OF TWO KITTIES

This cartoon is a masterpiece of entertainment, acting, story and film structure, crazy ideas and cartooniness. And cleverness.

It's structure is multi-leveled.

This post covers the setups. Clampett has to setup the story and character relationships but doesn't want to rely merely on exposition. He does it in 20 seconds, and you don't even see the characters for most of that time.

http://www.cartoonthrills.org/blog/Clampett/42TaleOf2Kitties/1Tale2Kittiesopensml.mov

The very first thing we hear is "Hey Babbit!" but we don't see the character. The audience already knows this will be an animated incarnation of Abbot and Costello, but Clampett teases us by not showing them. Instead he shows a fence and we hear the violence happening behind it as we see loose boards slamming and garbage flying up in the air as Babbitt smacks Catstello around.

(BTW, a modern audience doesn't know who Abbot and Costello are and this cartoon structure still works. )

This is a really clever and indirect way to establish the characters and it builds suspense and curiosity in the audience. We are hooked right away and can't wait to see what's coming."

Set Up Audience Curiosity and Characters

"Hey Babbit! Cut it out! I don't wanna do it!
By the way, this layout of the fence is great. It has a flowing S curve that gives the pan a much more dynamic motion than if the fence was just horizontal and vertical lines.

Setup Story Plot and More About Characters

In the first tight acting scene of the characters we can really see their relationship. Catstello is wimpy and Babbit domineering. It's funny lively acting while they quickly make the story point that they are hungry and Babbit wants Catstello to catch a bird for them.

"You wanna eat, don't you?"
"Well go up and get the bird!"
This funny shot shows how hard it's gonna be for Catstello to get the bird.




http://www.cartoonthrills.org/blog/Clampett/42TaleOf2Kitties/2setupcatssmll.mov

Clampett makes us think at first that Catstello is an animal lover and doesn't want to hurt anyone, when in reality he's just scared.
"But I donn't wanna hoit nobody Babbbit..."
"What's the matter fraidy cat, this is only a tiny little bird!"
"You mean only a teensy weensy itsy bitsy tiny defenseless bird?"

This is all Bob McKimson animation. Full animation that deserves the work that went into it. No tricks. No squishy stretchy snapping away from and into poses. It's all done to let you enjoy the characters as characters, not as animated cliches.

Catstello Finds Courage

As soon as Catstello thinks the bird is too tiny to put up a fight, he gets courage. This could have been done with one quick pose and expression, but Clampett gets McKimson to milk the new found bravery with 3 different stages of fun personality animation.

"Let me at 'im!"

"Gangway, I'll moidelize him!"

He turns into a Gorilla in the middle of the bravery scene and hops around. This is a pure Clampett type of idea. Just for fun, but it makes the point.


"Let me at 'im!"

Then he goes into a boxer bit...
Many of the top animation directors have been assigned certain skills and signatures that define them. Because Jones' style and cleverness is so obvious, he gets the title of being the clever stylish guy.

Friz gets the title of musical guy, because his timing is so mechanically to the beat and it's hard to find any more tangible cartoon skill that everyone else isn't much better at - he gets music and timing by default. Tex is the wild crazy guy.

Clampett is all of the above and much more. A lot of his creative tools are behind the scenes working to make the entertainment experience stronger and richer, so they don't get written about by critics much. Because you have to actually get into deeper analysis of his films to see how they work, they are harder to write about. Especially if you don't make cartoons yourself and aren't aware of all the problems you have to solve firsthand.

Compare these acting scenes to later cartoons and see if you don't think 40s character acting in cartoons is more fun that the walking talking and held poses of 50s cartoons.

Much more of Tale Of Two Kitties to come.

McKimson's gift to Dads - humanity

Y'know, when you read a lot of animation histories or critiques, you find that the animators that get the most points among the critics are the ones who seem to have invented the most stuff, broke ground or bucked the establishment. Skill at entertainment is not high on the list of praise and I think that's an injustice. (just look at what wins animation academy awards)

To me, all art and entertainment should aim at communicating with humanity and speaking truth to human nature. Yes, great innovators are to be admired, but so are great pure entertainers. Entertaining at the top levels requires great talent and skill and love of the audience, and most of the audience is not made up of critics or art historians. It's made up of us people who have real lives and all experience universal emotions and situations.

Kids look for certain things in their entertainment that is different than what the adults need, and certainly different than what the critics need. The general perception of cartoons today is that it's a medium for kids, but it wasn't always that way.

Most grown up men aren't that into what cartoons are all about - fantasy, silliness and wild imagination. They certainly aren't looking for art and imaginative flights of fancy.

After all, they have to be mature and bring home the bacon, shave 4 times a day, raise smart ass kids, worry about rent, taxes, Liberals, stocks and pensions. They are slabs of meat riddled with real life stress.

So what do men find entertaining? The essentials: Fear, pain, stupidity and abuse.

These are all universally funny and that's why the 3 Stooges are the most popular comedians in history and Bob McKimson is the greatest cartoon director for the unwashed capitalist masses.

McKimson delivers the goods and I'll bet he made the most popular WB cartoons after Clampett left the place. Mckimson is the Jules White of the cartoon world.

This is top level fear.

This scene completely says it all:

http://www.cartoonthrills.org/blog/McKimson/UpstandingSitter/FearIntoAbuseclipsmall.mov

Nothing is funnier than a good ass beating with a board...except when it's a beating that's the result of causing a burly male to experience extreme fear.
What else do regular guys need from entertainment?

WHY DONT WE HAVE DISCLAIMERS LIKE THESE?

*** These frame grabs are from a remastered cartoon. The lines have been ridiculously thinned. Note how jagged that makes them. The colors have been "modernized" by taking out all the subtleties and pumping up the primaries and secondaries. It makes the cartoon strobe when you watch it on TV and flattens everything out, but this is all you get to see because we have removed the Film-maker's version from history."

Merry Christmas Everyone

Once Upon A Wintertime

Illustrations by the Walt Disney Studio
Tom Oreb

Happy Christmas Eve Theater Presents: THE COOKIE

Guest Speaker: Kali

Ah, the fresh smell of sugar cookies covered in goo.


Dumbo was given the first cookie to try. After one delicious bite he gave it to his friend, The Sad Purple Burro to taste.


The Sad Purple Burro agreed in a monotone drone,"it was good."


Then o'er yonder came that minx, Joan Octopussy!
"Give it to me," she demanded. The Sad Purple Burro complied.


Just as she nibbled her first suck, then along came Porky Pig with ravenous eyes.
"C-c-c-c-c-c-c-ould I have a p-p-piece of your coo-coo-coo-coo... could I have a bite of your baked goods?"
Joan thought about her figure, and decided she didn't need the rest of the cookie, and tossed it to Porky.


Porky came home to his cat, Sylvester and said, " now you be a g-g-g-good little pussy and I'll let you have a special treat."


Sylvester licked his lips and enjoyed his cat snack. The neighbor, Quick Draw McGraw spied the cat's sugar biscuit, and yelled to him, "let me have the rest, sugar is no good for a cat!"
Sylvester threw Quickdraw the tiny morsel.


Quickdraw found a nice high place away from everyone else, and scarfed down the last bit of the cookie. Just as he was wiping his mouth some shelve-natives approached! They saw Quickdraw eating a cookie, and the Worm King shouted, "give us the rest of your cookies or ...DIE!"
Quickdraw panicked and tried to explain to them that he had no more.


"Do you think I'm playing games here, boy?"


As the angry natives drew nearer Quickdraw whistled for his trusty horse, Sterling! Quickly they galloped away down the shelfside to safety.


Quickdraw came home to his cabin in the Christmas Tree Forest, and told his lover, Liberace all about his wild adventure. Liberace proceeded in doing a celebratory can-can dance.


THE END!

more yuletide

Chuck Jones Transylvania 6-5000, 1963 Clever

I love this cartoon. It 's very clever.
It's one of Jones' last WB cartoons.
I wonder how Maurice Noble co-directed this? Did he do rough BG designs and turn them over to Givens to do finals?
This is a cartoon that really uses what cartoons can do that other mediums can't compete with.

GREAT LAYOUTS BY BOB GIVENS

I love the BGs in this. Not merely because they are stylized, but because they are also really well drawn, composed and moody.

Bob Givens used to say "You would think Chuck was a Goddamned *#% from the way that he draws, but I've seen him with girls, so I guess he's not."

This cartoon is very stylish, but it's not so much so that it becomes too cloying as some other Jones' cartoons do. Instead, it's very handsomely designed and drawn.

DRACULA IS THE STAR, NOT BUGS

This design of Dracula is really good. It's a combination of animated cartoon forms, human anatomy, Ronald Searle and Chuck Jones all in perfect balance.

This would be really hard to animate, because of all the complex organic forms and stylized angles and curves. But since it is made up of real cartoon principles and the animators have been animating for 20 years or so and learned the classic techniques, they are able to pull it off.
Today, when many cartoonists try to be stylish, they don't have the solid drawing and animation background that Jones did, so it just comes off looking like bad drawings or collections of drawing mistakes.
To do this takes extreme control. And lots of careful decisions.

EXPERIMENTING WITH DESIGN AS YOU GO - Designing by organizing a group of concepts

Here's something that you don't see much of anymore: Chuck designed the character but didn't stick exactly to his first conception of him. Instead of being a model sheet design with every exact incremental shape and size carved in stone, it's a collection of design concepts and ideas, left open to constant tinkering throughout the cartoon.
His proportions and details keep changing, not only from scene to scene, but from pose to pose. Does the audience notice this? Of course not, but today's executives and show runners would seem to think that they do and will get mad if you play with the character designs as you go.
This method of creation opens up the creators' pallete and allows for a much wider assortment of entertainment possibilities.
It isn't uncontrolled ignorance like much of today's stylized stuff. It's highly controlled sophisticated visual concepts. Each character is designed as a combination of general concepts, rather than specific mathematical proportions and shapes.

DRACULA'S HANDS

Aren't these hands great? Inspired by real hands, but just stylized enough to give him a gothic evil flavor.

THE SKIN TOOTH

I know some cartoonists who hate the Chuck Jones patented skin tooth, but I think it works perfectly here.

The animation in 1963 has lost a lot of the 40s punch and dynamics, but what Jones' animators did here is still very skilled and clever and has subtle contrasts in the timing.

The Bill Lava music kind of slows the pace down, but it's so visually stunning that I almost don't notice.

http://www.cartoonthrills.org/blog/Jones/63Transylvania65000/Dracintro.mov


Dracula's Floating Cape
Chuck Jones being clever again.

BUGS' DESIGN

Bugs changes all through the cartoon too. I loved the way Jones drew Bugs when he was using his "handsome style" rather than his fruity style. I used to always notice the bumpers he did in the original "Bug Bunny Show" from 1960. The Friz and McKimson bumpers looked bland and lifeless by comparison.

Here's a strange design, almost looks like Friz.
Some of the animators are drawing Bugs too tall.
One weird thing about the later Bugs. He has tiny hands.

Here, he has the gift of human arms.

Just to compare with classic 40s Bugs...







There are lots more good things about Transylvania 6-5000 - like the gags, and I'll get to 'em soon.

BTW, this is also one of the rare remastered cartoons that hasn't been significantly altered by engineering wizards. The colors are mostly still subtle and the lines haven't been thinned to where they are all pixellated like in so many other Looney Tunes DVDs.

almost here

Acting tool 3) Gestures - McKimson examples

http://www.cartoonthrills.org/blog/McKimson/UpstandingSitter/McKimsonChickenGestures.mov
That last post I did on acting

http://johnkstuff.blogspot.com/2007/12/acting-head-motion-to-punctuate.html

got me to thinking about acting through gestures, which is something many animators do. McKimson was really into gesture acting (as opposed to acting through facial expressions)

This chicken scene is funny acting. The actual gestures themselves are pure McKimson and there isn't a lot of variety to the held poses. What makes it more interesting is the variety of ways the animator comes up with to anticipate each of the held arm poses.
This looks like McKimson animated it himself, but Greg Duffel told me that the scenes that look the most like McKimson's own work were actually animated by his brother Charles McKimson - who would take Bob's layout poses and translate them exactly in great family loyalty.
The McKimson dynasty were chicken masters.








Here's a famous McKimson Daffy Duck scene that really defines his style. I think Mark Kausler told me this was animated by Manny Gould.
http://www.cartoonthrills.org/blog/McKimson/UpstandingSitter/DaffyHipHopClip.mov

This is similar to and different than the chicken scene at the same time.
Here, Daffy uses broad arm gestures, but there aren't many holds. You don't see the final poses, because the arms keep swinging.
Bill Melendez told me that he and Rod Scribner used to make fun of McKimson's acting style and then he acted it out for me, swinging his arms and pointing in the air and at me and shoving me around his office.
He said all of McKimson's gestures were literal. If someone said "you" in a sentence, the character would point to the you he was talking to.



Here's a funny "scoop" gesture that you see in a lot of McKimson scenes. Maybe it's a Manny Gould trademark?
Daffy is amazingly ugly in McKimson's cartoons. I wonder what his theory was behind that?