LUTHER IS JOHNNY'S FRIEND

Obviously Johnny Cash is great, but so are his side men. I'm especially fond of Luther, because he looks guilty about something.

I don't know what he did, but you can tell he's worried that Johnny's gonna make him pay for it after the show.

Sidemen are as fun for me to study as the stars themselves are. A star needs good sidemen.

Country Fans

George Liquor swears he thinks music is for wimps, but even he, once in awhile needs to feel the sweeter emotions. He has a hidden Victrola in his closet and a stack of classic country songs that are about cutting down trees or things that are too sad to fathom. Like showing your love to someone with even part of a tree. The Louvin Bros. always make him cry because they sing about the most ignorant kind of pain.

MY FAVORITE VERSION

AND IF THAT DIDN'T MAKE YOU CRY

MORE SAD

The state of cartoons today is making me thing maybe I should become a country singer. It'd be a lot simpler.

Songs I'd Like To Animate

Musical Opening

1 Slides spatula under pancake2 toss up
3 spin
4 drop

repeatTempo speeds up, as dog follows actions, accents are stronger
1
2
3


4

contrast fun music to death march

Illegal cut

http://www.cartoonthrills.org/blog/Clampett/41/porkysPooch/PorkyPoochPancakes.mov

what-causes-tit-eyes - 3

What goes with tit-eyes? Find out in another post coming soon.

In the meantime, here's another great scene from "Mouse Wreckers".
These are all great frames to draw from.
1948 was a year when Chuck was drawing extra solidly. He combined human anatomy with pears and sphere style with animal anatomy.
I just love how solid and menacing this bulldog looks.
The lip is beautiful!

This dog is very McKimson like - the way McKimson drew 8 years earlier. Solid with great hierarchy!


This is a clever gag, showing the scene turn red to indicate the Bulldog's growing rage.

Even cloud scuffles had construction!







Here it is:
http://www.cartoonthrills.org/blog/Jones/48mousewreckers/ClaudeCatTitEyes3.mov

Great timing! Listen to the music again - it's sfx music - no melody.

What Causes Tit Eyes? - 1

I have a theory about it. And a few more about this period of Chuck Jones' career.
I think that once he teamed with storyboard/writer Mike Maltese, his cartoons started to become funnier. Maltese's gags themselves were not the only funny thing about the cartoons though.
The way Jones' drawings reacted to the gags really sold them to the audience.
In a way, I think Jones was competing with Maltese's gags by coming up with visual toppers -like the tit eyes that happen after each gag in "Mouse Wreckers". It was a way of punctuating the gags and competing for attention with them.
Mouse Wreckers is full of great gags, but the structure of the cartoon is built around Claude Cat's reactions to them.
You remember the gags of Hubie and Bertie nailing the furniture to the ceiling and tieing Claude up and pulling him through keyholes, but what really stands out in the cartoon are Claude's tit-eyes. The drawings and timing are perfect too.
Mouse Wreckers is from the period of what I think of as Chuck's funniest/best year - roughly 1948.
It's after the "Bobe Cannon period" and before the stylized angular pose to pose talky period.
More about all that in the next posts. This is a fantastic cartoon, don't ya think?
http://www.cartoonthrills.org/blog/Jones/48mousewreckers/ClaudeCatTitEyes1.mov


Oh, to introduce another subject, after watching the clip, go back and just listen to the music. I'll do a post about different approaches to music sometime. This is one approach, where the music is added afterwards and has no melody; it's just there to help to punctuate the action - acting like sound effects.

Timing/melody 2

there is 3 seconds of music - right up to where Bugs crashes into the wall


then it switches to dialogue only
but even the dialogue is totally rhythmic as it almost always is in Bob's cartoons.









Where did Bugs' head go?

http://www.cartoonthrills.org/blog/Clampett/43Tortoise/doityToitlesml.mov