More Breasts - Chuck Jones

Later, see clips of more animated tit eyes by popular request.

Birth Of A Notion

this is one of my favorite scenes from a great Bob McKimson cartoon.










Back when I worked at the ultra-conservative and bland Filmation studio, we used to play the audio of this clip over the intercom in the middle of the day to remind all the old guys of when cartoons were funny.

I love the idea that a little guy can be menacing, just through the sheer power of his psychosis.

http://www.cartoonthrills.org/blog/McKimson/47/BirthNotion/TerribleThings.mov

"Birth Of A Notion" was made near the beginning of what I think of as McKimson's Golden Age - 1947-1949. He made a lot of great cartoons, especially in that period.

2 of My Favorite Cartoonists Contrasted

I like Harvey Eisenberg and Milt Gross for some traits they have in common and some that distinguish them. Their main difference is that Harvey is very conservative and Gross is very radical creatively. Harvey uses construction, Gross doesn't. But they share many other controls or the use of principles.
Harvey's compositions seem to be very carefully, logically thought out while Gross' seem more spontaneous and anarchic. They may look anarchic on the surface but they still are full of negative shapes, clear posing and the BGs are composed around the characters. They are filled with what could be considered mistakes -like tangents, but that adds to the spontaneity of his images.

Opposing Angles

They both compose their characters in reaction to each other using opposing angles.

ROOM LAYOUTS

They both use interesting angles in their BG compositions and frame the bgs around the characters.

Action, Acting

Gross uses line of action but also goes beyond the limitation, while Eisenberg pretty much sticks to the rules. Gross' poses seem much more lively than Eisenberg's. Eisenberg uses great control and the classic principles to make his images read clearly and have good artistic pleasing balance.

BG Composition

Gross tries to get more observation and grit into his BG scenes, and uses more interesting shapes. Eisenberg is able to draw dynamic angles but is very careful about it.

Wackiness

Eisenberg can be wacky, but in a very conservative way. Gross is always wacky and in constantly inventive ways.

SHAPES

Gross really uses shapes to keep his images full of contrast, inventiveness and interest. Eisenberg sticks to a handful of stock animation shapes, plus a few of his own stylistic inventions. His construction is very careful with some purposeful cheats, while Gross ignores construction altogether. He gets away with it because he has so many other artistic principles in his work to hold the images together.

Panel Layout

Gross' panels are all different shapes and angles, while Eisenberg's are mostly rectangles.

Gross is the far more creative cartoonist, but I also really admire Eisenberg's control and discipline. Eisenberg is born to layout. Gross is born to genius.

I love both these guys and they each have their place. My own style is somewhere in between the 2 approaches. I wish I was as inventive as Gross and as controlled as Eisenberg.

See the whole comics here:

http://comicrazys.com/2009/06/26/pixie-dixie-mr-jinks-lone-star-hero-artist-eisenberg/

http://comicrazys.com/2009/06/19/pete-the-pooch-hi-jinx-4-1947-milt-gross/

Mighty Mouse Toy

Look at the care that went into this classic toy! So many different cartoon materials!They must have had lots of meetings to decide whether to give him eyebrows or not. Or which sides of his eyes get eyelashes, since eyelashes were rationed during the war.
Nice 2 -toned cape.
Mighty Mouse was a caged circus animal. With a fully developed package.

Thanks to Mike F. for this jolly discovery!

Hey if you get a chance, test out the new search engine at the right side of my blog: "Ligit"
Tell me what you like or don't like about it. It searches all my blogs, not just this one.

From Tension to Tit Eyes

This was my first Clampett experience, and I don't even mean the whole cartoon; I mean just the opening. Right from the opening title cards I felt an uneasiness, like something weird and momentous was about to happen.

Watch this clip:
Piggy Bank Opening Tension For a Duck

It starts out with a pretty normal pan of a farm, but layed out with odd angles that make it move in a slightly creepy way.

Then it just cuts to Daffy walking. I always assumed he was part of the pan, but no, it's a jump cut that I never noticed till now.
This walk is rife with tension, animated by Izzy Ellis. It's a double bounce - which is usually used to make a character seem happy. Something about this walk though is anything but bubbly or happy.
When I saw this for the first time, an anticipation of dread gripped me, like Daffy was expecting the world to come to an end. I never had weird feelings like this watching cartoons before.
And Daffy looked so different than what I was used to. He was more angular, scrawny and his poses were dynamic and really communicated what he was feeling - new more specific feelings. He's waiting for something that must be more important than life itself. What was it?






More great poses!
I was astounded at how clear and stark his poses were. Like a caricature of the cartoon principles of silhouettes, line of action, anticipations etc. No timidity like the poses in a Friz cartoon.
He says "sufferin' succotash!" which I had only heard Sylvester say before. I wonder who said it first. Clampett said that when they recorded Mel Blanc's voice for Daffy, he liked the way it sounded better than after they sped it up, so when he created his first Sylvester cartoon he suggested using the same voice and not speeding it up.
I love this action that really accentuates the dialogue.
Mel and Carl Stalling are in top form in the cartoon. It's amazing how Clampett coordinated all his talents to contribute to the unique intense feelings you only feel in his cartoons.


"Why don't he get here?" Listen to how the voice and music work together perfectly here.




This head shake is great too.





My eyes were bugging out of my head watching these unapologetic poses.
Nice ass anticipation there...
I think this was the first time I noticed smears too and they work perfectly here.
Here's a nice jump cut to the mailbox in a different position. Clampett's camera angles add a lot of dynamic tension to his cartoons.

I think this is a different animator.




Man was I creeped out by these realistic 3 fingered man hands - which Mike Fontanelli told me are outlawed in Japan.
Yikes! It's hilarious but really sick. Like a mutant from Hell has come to violate Daffy's sacred mailbox.
Another bold jump cut
...to reveal Daffy's eyes sliding around the post like living breasts whose aching needs beg to be sated.
All this is just the beginning of the cartoon and it made me feel like I was seeing - not "seeing" but feeling something different in a cartoon. I was used to laughing at my favorite Chuck Jones or Tex Avery cartoons and admiring the artwork and animation, but this was my introduction to a kind of comedy that had the extra element of intense feeling and empathy for the character. I was sucked into Daffy's emotions and felt everything he felt, instead of just laughing at him from the outside world. Clampett has this way of sucking you into the screen by making the story come out of the characters' emotions, rather than just stuffing them into a neat and tidy preconceived plot.

The Great Piggy Bank Robbery was a great revelation to me. It completely changed how I thought about cartoons and entertainment.

I've made a bunch of clips from it and will share all my revelations about it. I just had another last week as I was studying it again for the millionth time.

A CARTOON STARRING ONLY ONE CHARACTER

This cartoon stars only 1 character! It's just Daffy. No foil in the cartoon, except himself against his own urges and imagination! It's not Bugs VS Elmer, or Peter Pan VS Captain Hook; it's just a single extremely emotional duck. Doesn't this break every rule of (or cliche) of storytelling? Somebody quote me some rules out a film school book about character.

Today you can't have a cartoon without 80 characters, each with no charisma or personality, but who have to all take their turns eating up screen time by saying their cringe-inducing catch phrases or making arbitrary references to other films and TV shows.

Under Clampett's supremely controlled direction, Daffy is so charismatic that he can carry a whole cartoon by himself on the strength of his personality.

George T Shirt colors

courtesy of Kali

Happy Father's Day From The Big Chicken

When I was about 10, My Dad decided it was time for me to become mature and start thinking about saving for the future and to forget childish things like cartoons.
He was dumbfounded and frustrated to find me still watching them as a teenager.
Every Saturday afternoon at 5 I would bring a Salisbury Steak TV dinner downstairs and sit on my Dad's chair in front of our "Space Command" color TV set to watch the Bugs Bunny Show.
I'd get through half of the first cartoon when I would hear my Dad stomping down the stairs. "What the Hell are you watching down here? What!? CARTOONS! Aren't you a little old to be watching this crap? When are you gonna grow the F*** up?"
Then he'd kick me out of his chair. "Let me see what you think is so Goddamn funny!"
He'd lean forward and tilt his glasses on his nose so he could see the cartoons better. I had a theory that Dads had trouble making out cartoons; that adults were too serious to see fantasy figures and that they would just see colored blobs floating across their TVs and think the set was broken. But Dad would chuckle at some of the Bugs Bunny or Roadrunner stuff; he could make out the images when someone got hit or blew up. The blobs would come into focus for pain scenes.
But then like clockwork, after the first cartoon was over, the middle cartoon would come on and it would start with a Foghorn Leghorn title card. All of a sudden I could see my Dad's eyes focus. Now he'd get excited. He'd sit up and twist around in his chair. "Hey, wait a minute, is that the big chicken??! I love that guy!" I think he thought Foghorn, unlike Bugs and Daffy, was not a cartoon - that he was a real guy because he could totally follow all the gags and action.
As soon as Foghorn started smacking and shoving the dog or other characters around, he would begin to laugh really loud. He also loved Foghorn's loudmouth fast talking sales pitches. He was always trying to convince Henery Hawk that he wasn't a chicken, that the dog or cat was a chicken and this killed my dad. He really thought Henery was a dumb kid, like me.
Dad would laugh so hard at this stuff that his glasses flew off his head.
I liked Foghorn a lot too, but watching my Dad lose it made me laugh even harder.
Foghorn Leghorn is one of the greatest cartoon characters in history because he's such an identifiable type. He's just like our Dads! Totally in command, thinks he's smarter than everyone else, and when he doesn't get his way through reason, he shoves and yells at you till you understand the logic of his inate beliefs.
I always loved when Dad would come down to yell at me about being too old for cartoons, because I knew I could count on Bob McKimson and Foghorn Leghorn to make him bust a gut and prove I was right.
After the cartoon was over, he'd realize that he'd just been laughing at something really immature, be embarrased and then get even madder than when he first came downstairs to yell at me. He'd pick his glasses up off the floor and stab them back onto his head, lunge out of the seat and start back up the stairs. He'd give me one final disgusted glance" This stuff is STUPID! Grow UP!"
But he'd be back next week to laugh his arse off again at the big chicken.
It was a highlight of every week for me. Foghorn was one of the few things we agreed on. We argued about The Beatles VS Elvis but totally were in synch about our beloved big chicken. He brought out the testosterone in us and taught us family values.

So Happy Father's Day, Dad and I'm sorry I'm not there to have a shoving and yelling contest with you!


http://www.cartoonthrills.org/blog/McKimson/47/47CrowingPains/FoghornSylvesterHeneryEgg.mov
Frustration, beatings and yelling are manna for Dads.







Hey, isn't this a cool way to render shadows on a character? I always loved this scene!


http://www.cartoonthrills.org/blog/McKimson/47/47CrowingPains/SylvesterHeadFoghornLightning.mov

Hey There It's Yogi Bear 2

VIP Tries To Sell Out

I've mentioned Virgil Partch before as being an all-man's cartoonist. He has a sarcastic and real look at life, which, being a cartoonist, he exaggerates.
Later in his career, it looks like he tried to sell out by doing a daily and Sunday comic strip. His drawing style is more toned down, but I loved this comic when I was a kid. I think not so much because of the jokes themselves, but because the drawings and attitude had an edge that reflected real human nature.
I think the strip is loosely based on the Honeymooners, with a blowhard husband and more reasonable wife. Yeah, that's kind of pandering to the 1960 audience, but it beats having a completely wimpy male lead with a character arc and a sassy liberated female lead like we have in so many cartoons now.

Partch was great at getting the worst aspects out of the average man in a simple expression. To him, even civilized man is still a caveman at heart - and I believe he's right.

Early Partch

Big George

Kick Bug

Usually in animation I am fighting to get people to nor tone down what the previous artist did or them. Layout artists tone down the storyboards Animators tone down the layouts. Assistants tone down the animation until the images on the screen have no life to them.
I never had to worry about this with Kelly Armstrong's animation. I wish I had the layouts to show you, but she actually took the poses much farther.
Usually when I send my poses to another land - even Canada, the animators don't believe the drawings and "fix" them for me by taking out the line of action, specific expressions and exaggeration.



















http://www.cartoonthrills.org/blog/spumco/RenStimpy/1BHB/KellyKickBug.mov

Comics By The LB

When I was very young I was already acutely aware of the difference between REAL products and generic brands or knockoffs.

For every real and successful brand name, there was at least one cheaper, crappier version of it. This applies to ketchup, tissues, sodas and comic books.

My Dad would buy me comic books when I was very little (later he decided I was too old and that they would rot my mind), but to him a comic book was a comic book. One was as good as the next.These logos were warnings that you were being cheated by the makers of the content inside.


Dad had an instinct for finding only the "fake brand" comics - the knockoffs or what I thought of as badly drawn books.
Charlton comics, CDC comics were fake in my head. Harvey, Dell, Archie and DC were real because they were slicker and more "professional" looking.
I even thought of Marvel as fake superhero comics in the early 60s, because they were inked so poorly and everyone had strange square heads.
Later, I became obsessed with them and started to appreciate quirkiness in drawing styles. The inking got better too and that really helped.


They used to bundle generic brand comics by groups of 3 to 5 in plastic bags and sell them cheaper than if you had to buy them separately for a whole dime each. So when I needed new comics to read, my Dad would go out and buy them by the pound and never check to see what brands they were.

That's how I knew about Timmy the Timid Ghost.I would usually save the generic comics like Timmy the Timid Ghost for when I ran out of the real comics that I bought myself by collecting empty bottles and cashing them in at the


drugstore.

They were especially good for "sick days", when I stayed home from school. The fake Casper comics were drawn in a pseudo-animation style, as if someone who wasn't an animator was trying to figure out how cartoons were supposed to look.

http://comicrazys.com/2009/06/11/timmy-the-timid-ghost-7-the-magic-book-al-fago/

Later, as the 70s approached, even real characters and brands started to look fake to me.

"Real" Versions of cartoon characters in comics:

"Fake Versions"

Awkward Design

These old "fake" comics had an awkward unbalanced design sense to them, and I thought of that as being unprofessional. Harvey comics and Casper in particular were well balanced - but to the point of being completely generic. Same thing with DC comics and Archie.


Later, I came to discover cartoonists who had quirky styles that seemed slightly unbalanced, but were highly appealing despite that: Jack Kirby, Clampett, Harry Lucey, Carlo Vinci, etc. My favorite entertainment is a combination of skill and individual quirkiness.

After the 70s, to my growing dread, almost everything became generic and awkwardly designed -without the skill.Even famous brand names became unbearable to look at and lost all their appeal.

Now I appreciate the bargain bags of fake comics my Dad used to buy me. But I don't miss drinking RC Cola.

Patrick Wants You To See The Product Of His Labors

I'm very flattered when folks are inspired to take my sketches and polish them up. Nice job, Patrick! Very otherworldly. To think that all this alien activity takes place in our eyelashes every second of every day.

http://givealittlebit.blogspot.com/

Eisenberg Sunday Page

Some great layouts there - and the later Iwao Ranger model.

From Layout Poses To Animation - I'm outta here Jack

Thanks to Ted, I can show you the kind of drawings we send animators. We draw the basic poses, and sometimes I go in and add some acting poses to go with the dialogue. I write timing notes on the odd layout if I have a certain idea I want.


And if we are lucky we get a good animator like Kelly who plusses the scene when she animates it.

http://www.cartoonthrills.org/blog/spumco/RenStimpy/1BHB/KellyOutJack.mov

A Mystery For Hardened Hanna Barbera Nerds

Like me.These are from the earliest Yogi Sunday strips. Gene Hazelton is the artist known for doing the strip, but these panels don't look like his work to me. They are too unbalanced. They look like Tony Rivera - who did the layouts on most of the 1960 Yogi Bear TV cartoons.
The real giveaway is the weird design of the Ranger -with the upturned pointy nose and the stiky outy pant cuffs.compare the above Ranger to this one below by Eisenberg:
A much better drawing of the 1st standardized Ranger. (The Ranger in the first 2 seasons of Huckleberry Hound's Yogi segment always looked completely different in each cartoon)
Yogi and BooBoo are also very unbalanced looking - just like the 1960 TV layouts.
But then here is a kid and a Mom that look like Gene Hazelton designs - along with stiff bears, and Yogi with man hands.

http://allthingsger.blogspot.com/2009/05/hey-hey-hey-tuesday-comic-strip-day.html

Who can solve this mystery? It's very important to learn the truth.

Comic Book Day Outline - pt 2

in case you missed part 1:
http://johnkstuff.blogspot.com/2009/03/comic-book-day-outline-pt-1.html

another pose of George

maybe that first pose was just too weird

how about the second one from the scene?

Cute Girl and Ren Running, Bob animation 12x beat

This girl character is based on Tex' Avery's Lonesome Lenny, which in turn is taken from Steinbeck's "Of Mice and Men". It's such a funny concept it's hard to resist it. -Someone who loves his little pets so much, he squeezes them to death. "I'm gonna love you and squeeze you and kiss you..."

I tried to get a little pathos here with shadows of the bars and Stimpy pulling his rubbery gloves along the bars in heartbreaking agony.

I asked Bob to make the girl be light in this run and to have more drawings of her off the ground than on the ground in this run. There are 12 x per step. 7 of them, her feet are off the ground.

There are 5 where she has at least one foot in contact with the ground.




This is drawing 7 and drawing 11. There are 3 more inbetweens very closely spaced between them to make you feel this part of her run, where she is floating in the air. Bob used "tight inbetweens" a lot to great effect.

He also added lots of overlap to smooth out the run. Ren's bouncing overlaps the girl's up and down motion, and then Ren's hair overlaps his.
http://www.cartoonthrills.org/blog/spumco/RenStimpy/1BHB/BobImAlive.mov

That "I'm alive, I'm alive" bit is inspired by "Stranger On The 3rd Floor" - a great movie.

T Shirt Designs

Here's a couple t-shirt designs Kali and I are working on for the SD Con this year.
We are also probably going to have the Blen and Kubercheebie design from yesterday. Let me know if you're coming and which shirt you want (if any) so we know how many to print.

Big House Blues 5 Spumco - smack Stimpy

http://www.cartoonthrills.org/blog/spumco/RenStimpy/1BHB/Hairballs3smackStimpy.mov

Student Copies Of HB Characters

Here are some drawings by Becky. She has a very strong personal style of her own, but has chosen to go back and practice some classic cartoon construction to supplement her already impressive talents.
These Preston Blair dogs show that she has a good grasp of hierarchy - making the details subject to the physics of the larger shapes. She also has a very natural flair for nice linework and appealing shapes.



I think she actually had an easier time drawing 40s style characters than the HB style, which at first glance seems simpler.

Becky drew a really cute Quick Draw above, but the proportions are different than the drawing she was studying. Obviously when I draw HB style, I change the proportions drastically too, but that's after first trying to learn the way they are actually designed and constructed and using that as a stepping stone for experiments.

HB isn't merely drawing flat or with no rules. The best HB artists - like Ed Benedict, Dick Bickenbach and Harvey Eisenberg knew and used the old cartoon animation principles and just applied them in a (superficially) simpler way. They cheated the odd little thing for style, but not everything.

When studying anything, it's usually best to be conservative and anal about it - to try to get your studies as accurate as possible - and to understand how something is built and why it looks the way it does. So you can tell the difference between stylistic license and mistakes.


This is great practice and the more someone analyzes their studies and makes adjustments, the faster they progress.