Cartoon Paintings

Hep Cat FX

http://www.cartoonthrills.org/blog/Clampett/42HepCat/hepcatwireFXsmall.mov

Copy and paste the above url to see the animation. I can't get the direct link to work today for some reason...sorry


http://www.cartoonthrills.org/blog/Clampett/42HepCat/hepcatwireFXsmall.mov










http://www.cartoonthrills.org/blog/Clampett/42HepCat/hepcatwireFXsmall.mov

Porky and Daffy - Innovative Wackiness - The Double Bounce Butt Walk

I first saw "Porky and Daffy" at a party in Bob Clampett's studio. Bob used to show us 16 mm prints in his fun room. Mostly he showed his obviously brilliant color classics, but once in a while he would show us a really rare black and white.

He ran "Porky and Daffy" and sat there with a sly look on his face watching the reactions. We were all rolling on the floor laughing.

After the cartoon was over we all looked at Bob with awe and shame and he said to us "You fellas have dirty minds". He looked exactly like Bugs Bunny, just gleeful at the sneaky gags he got away with in this otherwise innocent looking cartoon.





I've since watched Porky and Daffy at least a hundred times.



The more I see it, the more amazing ideas I find in it. It's a huge reservoir of clever ways to move things funny.



This early period of Clampett's career is often overlooked by historians, probably because on the surface the drawings themselves don't look as advanced as the later color cartoons.

Clampett's First Cartoons Were Something Completely New

But to me, this is the period where Warner Bros. really found its unique voice. Clampett was not only constantly trying new ideas - he gave the characters life.

His characters were living throbbing vessels of cartoon protoplasm. When you watch his cartoons, you aren't just sitting from a distance witnessing funny things happen to cardboard images.

You are instead pulled into the screen and invited to experience the things that the characters cause to happen from their own natural urges and motivations.

That in itself is a major innovation. But here is the one I am talking about in this post:

Ideas on every Level

The other one is that he found a way to insert all kinds of funny and inventive ways to move the characters. It seems that no detail escapes Clampett's thirst for invention.

Even actions and scenes that are not the focus of the storyline are creative.

For example, the other night, Milt Eddie and I were watching Porky and Daffy for the millionth time and I noticed this really funny walk.

http://www.cartoonthrills.org/blog/Clampett/38PorkyandDaffy/DaffyButtWalk.mov

Obviously, the focus of the scene is The Pelican dragging his anatomy across the canvas. The story point is just a connection between other scenes. Clampett can't bring himself to just let a continuity scene be merely functional. He finds room for fun in everything.

The pelican is hilarious and obvious, but behind him, Daffy walks by to sit on the stool. The walk is crazy and funny. It's a double bounce butt walk! Now if I had a funny walk like this is one of my cartoons, I would want to show it off. I'd wait till the Pelican did his bit, and then frame Daffy so that everyone could get a laugh out of that zany walk.

But to Bob, it's just a throwaway bit of inspired wackiness. He's got so many ideas, he doesn't really need to show each one off. This is the complete opposite of say Chuck Jones' approach. Jones will build whole cartoons around some central wacky idea and really point to it so that the audience and cartoon historians can't miss it. (the breast eyes in Claude Cat cartoons, for example)

Bob tosses away so many ideas that you can watch his cartoons over and over again and still find great stuff you would never have thought of in a million years.

And none of this stuff distracts from the main thrust of the story. The story is always completely and clearly told and you never have trouble following what he wants you to laugh at. He just adds in lots of easter eggs. The total entertainment effect is that everything is completely awake and alive and real. This totally wacky impossible world feels more real and fun than our own mundane 3 dimensional bland existence.

http://www.cartoonthrills.org/blog/Clampett/38PorkyandDaffy/ButtwalkSlosml.mov

DAFFY'S BUTTWALK

Another thought:

Innovation and Inspiration

A lot of cartoon history and individual cartoons have been judged on innovation. If something was new and hadn't been done before, it has been traditionally considered a quality cartoon - regardless of the entertainment value.

Most art forms and entertainment are not solely judged on how innovative each work is. They are judged on their skill, their power to evoke emotion and other qualities.

Why is animation so frequently judged on merely how innovative it is?

My theory is because it is still a young field, and it grew and changed so fast between 1930 and 1950. Those cartoons are the best ever produced and at the time, the evolution in techniques was so rapid that you couldn't help but notice the changes. Animation historians of that period tend to judge the talent and creativity of the creators by how much of a change each cartoon or animator effected. Thus, purely entertaining highly skilled directors and animators generally get short shrift from critics. This explains Bob McKimson's poor place in history.

I don't know of a single animator or director alive today that is as skilled, entertaining or funny as Bob McKimson was, yet he gets a bad rap because he wasn't always innovating. He was merely a superhuman talent.

Clampett on the other hand was too innovative. He tried new things out all the time. The problem is he had so many ideas that most of them weren't picked up on by the rest of the business and so many went unnoticed by historians.

Disney had a methodical approach to growth and innovation. They had in house classes to improve their drawing skills, action analysis, etc... you could see progress in skill every month in their 30s cartoons. This also came with a process of discovering and creating rules.

Disney formulated rules to govern what was allowed to happen in their cartoons and what wasn't. This really influenced the rest of the artform.

Clampett innovated and grew through inspiration. He just had spur of the moment inspirations and tried them. He didn't make a preset bible of rules to follow.

His inspirations always fit the context and story that he was directing. He had focused inspirations. What was happening in the story would give him ideas of how to handle it.

His characterizations, his sense of fun and cartooniness and exaggeration did inspire and influence the rest of the industry but the innovation of using natural inspiration and plain fun in every aspect of cartoon making never quite caught on with anyone.

Hopefully now that people are noticing, it might influence the future of our great art form.

Let's Hope Things Will Get Better

Animation Book Library

Classic Cartoon History

Here are some great books on classic cartoons. I put them roughly in order of the periods.

Maltin's book is a great overview of all the studios. You can tell he really loves his subject. He gives you a good feel of what was going on at all the various Golden Age studios.

The first real animated cartoon character star. I think everyone since owes a huge debt to Otto Messmer and Felix. We are using techniques, ideas and cliches today that began with this creation. Felix is truly the father of cartoony cartoons.

Wait'll you read the ugly true life story!

Walt Disney's silent cartoons.

To me, The Fleischers had the most creative studio of the 1930s. They invented all kinds of techniques never again equaled, and made the first cartoons with fully developed personalities that contrasted and played off each other.

This is a really interesting book about that genius-jack-of-all-trades, Ubbe Iwerks. It also has great stories about the many stars that worked with him, including Grim Natwick, Irv Spence, Bob and Chuck, Shamus and more.

There are about a zillion books about the history and growth of the Disney Studio. They are all very biased towards Disney's own historical account of animation (which basically discounts all other studios). Even so, The Art Of Walt Disney is a very inspiring book and is as good as any of them.

A good overview of the Warner Bros. cartoons, with lots of great production art -especially background paintings.

Celebrating decades of fun with the greatest cartoon star in history.

Jerry Beck's history of Tweety and Sylvester includes the back stories of their first appearances without each other.

A warm look at the Looney Tunes Studio from someone who was there. It's refreshingly absent of politics and critical opinions. Martha gives you the feeling that it was a really fun place to work and all the people were great. Makes you wish there was a funny cartoon studio today.

Chuck Jones wrote an autobiography...twice! The first one has more original drawings from the actual cartoons. By the middle of the first one, he got the idea to trace over his old drawings to update them to his more modern angular style, and by the second book, almost all the drawings were updated retracings of the old ones. So get the first if you like the original drawings of the characters from the 40s and 50s.

Strangely, after writing the same book twice, he forgot both times to talk about his cohort and biggest influence - Bob Clampett. Thank God that there are Blogs to fill in the gaps!

A hugely inspiring book! This book completely changed my way of thinking about cartoons. Joe really thought about the cartoons he loves most and d his thoughts clearly and with lots of fun.

Great interviews with Tex and Mike Maltese too.

A too often forgotten studio and its story. Walter Lantz produced lots and lots of fine wonderful cartoons. His studio was a swinging door for top animators from other studios and the combination of styles that came together in this melting pot found room for creativity and ideas that could not have happened at other studios.

I get these two books mixed up, but if I remember correctly, they both have lots of large sized production art in them and tons of great model sheets.

We all love Mary Blair of course and this is the best source for her work. The book suffers from dark printing and too small images of her paintings, but where else can you find them all together?

Canemaker gives us an exciting glimpse into the preproduction art from Disney cartoons (which is more inventive than many of the final cartoons!)

Preproduction art for Disney cartoons never made.

Amid is more intense than any UPA fan ever! This book is chock full of great production and preproduction art and has history of many long forgotten stylized studios of the 1950s and 60s.

Post-Classic Cartoons

The story behind the bravest man in modern cartoons.

Instructional




The original Preston Blair book is the best "how to" animation book ever written. Beware of the million imposters!

The Illusion Of Life is largely a propaganda book to teach us that no one else ever made any cartoons that were worth a damn and that Disney created everything, BUT it has a great section on the 12 priniciples of animation which every animator and fan should know.

Reference

A synopsis of every single Warner Bros. cartoon for uber-nerds like me and you.

I have the first edition of this book, full of hilarious spelling and grammatical errors, but I love every page. It lists the most obscure cartoon series and every damn episode!

This is where I first found a complete list - in order of every Yogi Bear cartoon! I know you all need that.

I haven't seen this one, but imagine it is similar to the encyclopedia, except about the creators, instead of the cartoon characters.

Fun

Jerry knows why we really like cartoons. because they are fun, and these books are designed to let us in on some long lost thrills.

David Gerstein put out a great compilation of Otto Messmer's Felix The Cat comics from the early 30s.


Now curiously, where is a book on Clampett?

Oswald: Hurdy Gurdy, A Lesson On Bathing

Here's some pure cartoon fun.
Hurdy Gurdy, 1929 (Walter Lantz Productions)

Watch a hippo take a bath

Makes me feel clean all over to see a cartoon doing what makes cartoons unique.

How about you?


WHAT IS A CARTOON ANYWAY?