Variations on a theme, working backwards in time

Fans of classic Warner Brothers cartoons might observe that Isadore "Friz" Freleng was quite fond of re-using gags and story ideas, often transplanting them onto different characters. (See my earlier post on "Curtain Razor") Here is another example, his 1957 cartoon "Bugsy and Mugsy".

Bugsy and Mugsy:


In this short, Bugs is living under the floorboards of bank robbers Rocky and Mugsy's latest hideout. Throughout the cartoon, he tries to convince Rocky that his dim-witted sidekick Mugsy is smarter than he looks, and is trying to kill Rocky and take the stolen loot for himself. As the two crooks beat each other up, Bugs alerts the cops to their presence (which Rocky blames Mugsy for, continuing their fight even in the back of the police car). Why does Bugs do this? Just out of a sense of justice, it would appear. The two gangsters don't actually threaten Bugs in any way - they have no idea he's there - but he feels the need to turn the two criminals in. As they are established as Bad Guys at the beginning we don't seem to mind when Bugs starts playing mind-games on them unprovoked. Well... we don't feel too bad for Rocky. Mugsy is so clueless you've got to feel bad for the befuddled guy, being constantly beaten up for things he hasn't done.

Freleng had already used most of the same plot elements before, in 1950's "Stooge for a Mouse".

Stooge for a Mouse:

Sylvester The Cat - (Ep. 20) - Stooge For A Mouse by cartoonNetworks

This earlier version has an all-animal cast. A mouse takes the role later played by Bugs, with Sylvester the cat in Mugsy's role and a bulldog named Mike in Rocky's. Mike and Sylvester are much friendlier with each other than Rocky and Mugsy would be, and neither is portrayed as being particularly villainous, so I think more audiences would sympathise with them than with the gangsters in the later cartoon. One notable difference is that Sylvester and Mike *are* a threat to the mouse, and so he has more of a personal reason to plot against them. Does his make him more sympathetic, or less so because he appears less selfless than Bugs in the later cartoon? (Notice that in "Stooge for a Mouse", he, not the characters he plots against, is described as a robber) Some audiences may automatically side against Sylvester, recognising him from other cartoons where he comes across as a villain... but Sylvester was often portrayed as a hapless victim or even as a hero in other cartoons, so we can take our pick really.

Well, it doesn't matter who you root for because the end result is that all three characters are knocked unconscious, with an ironic "Home Sweet Home" sign falling behind them. There is less of a straightforward "good guys win through pluck and cunning, bad guys lose through suspicious and violent nature" ending than there would be for the later cartoon.

But this was not the first time this plot was used either. Come upriver with me to Famous Studios. Yes, Famous Studios. That's what they were called. They were the successor to the Fleischer studios which made Popeye cartoons, and they continued to make Popeye cartoons along with Casper the Friendly Ghost and other less well-known characters. One of these characters was Herman the Mouse, who starred in 1946's "Cheese Burglar." Usually he was paired with a cat named Katnip, and their relatively obscure cartoons were actually a bigger influence on The Simpsons' "Itchy and Scratchy" than the more famous Tom and Jerry.

Cheese Burglar:


Well, this is the story Freleng would use for "Stooge for a Mouse", all right. But one story element which didn't survive to either Freleng cartoon was that this cat and dog overhear Herman explaining his scheme to the audience (!), stop fighting, and fool Herman into thinking they've killed each other. They repair their friendship, something that Sylvester-Mike and Rocky-Mugsy would not be allowed to do. In fact, instead of having all three characters punished at the end, they all end up forgetting their quarrels in a state of drunkenness, and singing the same friendship anthem the dog and cat sang at the beginning.

In fact, that's another difference. Not only do this cat and dog manage to become friends again, but they are much more affectionate in general to each other than their later Freleng counterparts would be.

As for Herman, is he more sympathetic than the "Stooge for a Mouse" mouse or Bugs? Less sympathetic? Well, he comes across as more morbid ("The cat's death rattle! Music to my ears!") But... the cat and dog are more of a threat to him, and his need to steal from the fridge comes across as greater than that of Freleng's mouse. Again there is no clear "hero" or "villain", and so, while the makers of this cartoon were kinder on the cat and dog than Freleng would be, as in "Stooge for a Mouse" all three characters end up in the same state.

But this idea has been animated before. The roles of hero and villain are even more clear cut than in "Bugsy and Mugsy", and they are the other way around. Here is Columbia Screen Gems' "Cholly Polly", released 1942.


Cholly Polly:


The parrot fills the role later played by Herman, the nameless mouse, and Bugs. Once again he is trying to break up the friendship between a cat (Myrtle) and a dog (Harold). The difference is, well... the parrot is in no danger from the cat and dog, and he is explicitly depicted as, well, a Nazi. His objection to the cat-dog friendship is because he believes it to be unnatural. Herman and the "Stooge" mouse do tell their respective cat and dog enemies "A cat and dog should be enemies, not friends", but they have an ulterior motive - steal the food once the cat and dog have beaten each other senseless. The parrot does not have anything to gain from making Harold and Myrtle fight. He's just doing it For The Evulz.

As a result, the satisfying ending is that Myrtle and Harold realise that the parrot has been plotting against them and throw him out of the house.

Oh, and if you thought that the "Cheese Burglar" cat and dog were more friendly to each other than their later counterparts, check out Harold and Myrtle. Making them fight is like pulling parrots' teeth. It's only just before the very end that the parrot manages to make them fight... and then they realise that they've been tricked. In fact, this is the only time the two characters are one male and the other female. It's almost as if they are being presented as a married couple. Well, the parrot does object to them "sleeping together" at the beginning? Hmmm, could be.

Of course, during World War II there were a lot of anti-Nazi cartoons. But most of them were simple "We're the good guys, they're the generic bad guys" stories. The villainy of the Nazi character here, the parrot, is more specific. He is repulsed by an inter-species... friendship? Romance? Anyway, it seems like this is a rare example of an anti-Fascist cartoon being specifically anti-racist.

(Incidentally, there is a lot of romantic imagery for the cat and dog in "Cheese Burglar", and the cat's voice is slightly androgynous. But when the "Stooge" mouse accuses Mike the bulldog of being a "sissy" for "liking cats", specifically (the male) Sylvester... No, I'm sure that's not what he means.)

So there you go.
Nazi parrot tries to turn innocent cat and dog friends/couple against each other For the Evulz, and fails
becomes
Sadistic but hungry mouse tries to turn cat and dog BFFs against each other so he can get a bite to eat, succeeds for a while, and they call reconcile and get drunk
becomes
Vaguely hungry mouse tries to turn cat and dog good friends against each other so he can steal some food, succeeds, but ends up beaten up like them
becomes
Smart-aleck rabbit tries to turn wanted criminals against each other in order to see justice served, he succeeds with no ill effects.

I don't know if Freleng was influenced by the "Cheese Burglar", or if the people at Famous Studios were influenced by "Cholly Polly", but the similarities -- and therefore the differences -- are fascinating.

What do other animation fans think? Are there any notable similarities or differences I neglected to mention? Do you agree or disagree with any of my interpretations? Please let me know in the comments!

Hoch Hech!

Is anyone familiar with the Zagreb (Croatia) School of Animation?

I'm sure I've seen that Zagreb Film horse logo before, maybe on a Public Domain video. After which I would presumably have fast-forwarded through the cartoon, expecting there to be a culture and/or language barrier.

I think when most people think of Eastern European animation, they think of this:



From the Simpsons episode "Krusty Gets Kancelled", where kids' TV show host Krusty the Klown shows a cartoon starring "Eastern Europe's favorite cat and mouse team, Worker and Parasite!" The title, gloomy music and settings (a factory and a bread-line) are clearly meant to invoke images of the austere, work-driven Soviet Union at the time of the Cold War, and the joke is that it is neither entertaining nor comprehensible to anyone who doesn't live east of the Iron Curtain in the '50s.

(As a side note, in another Simpsons episode from the same time, "Mr Plow", Homer tries to buy a car from "Crazy Vaclav's Place of Automobiles", and is told that the car was built in a country which "no longer exists". I like to think this was the same country that produced "Worker and Parasite", whose titles are written in a fictional Slavic language. And the head animator of the Rembrandt Films Tom and Jerry series, animated and scored - but not written - in 1960s Czechoslovakia, was named VACLAV Bedrich! Coincidence?)

Soviet-era Eastern Europe may well have produced animated shorts which bring "Worker and Parasite" to mind. But the Zagreb cartoons from the 50s and 60s I have found have, I think, a universal appeal. They are generally dialogue-free but manage to tell stories through animation and music. I don't know if their creators had American animation in mind when they made them - were they trying to copy the style of U.S. cartoons, or react against it, or neither?

This cartoon, "Ersatz/Surogat", has the distinction of winning an Academy Award (an Oscar to you and me). It's very quirky and doesn't look anything like a U.S. cartoon... well, not a mainstream U.S. cartoon anyway. It's still easy for Western audiences to follow and be entertained by it, but putting it out as an example of Croatian animated film making kind of implies "they don't think the way we do".



The same director, Dusan Vukotic, was also capable of creating cartoons that were much more recognisable to people in the West. This one tells a story of childhood rivalry and ingenuity that's familiar to all who have been children, but still exaggerated in a suitably cartoony way. It's a bit like the final act of "Hare Today, Gone Tomorrow", where Buster and Babs fool Elmyra into thinking she's travelled to another planet.



The events from 6:15-6:50 bring to mind the fable of the blind men and the elephant.

Another director, Zlatko Grgic (who previously worked as character designer on Vukotic's cartoons) appears to have had two favourite themes: "No Good Deed Goes Unpunished" and "I Don't Know How To End This Thing". Here's his "Musical Pig". Watch as the poor pig brings happiness to all around him by his singing, and how his refusal to let them eat him anyway (!) causes conflict, strife, and even war!

Oh, and the knife-eating sound effects are painfully convincing!

From Dick... to Duck... to Pluck!

This is the Tiny Toon Adventure short "The Return of Pluck Twacy", part of the episode "New Character Day", one of the last episodes of the original 65-episode run. It was written, 'boarded and directed by Eddie Fitzgerald. The opening few seconds of the video are the end of the first segment of the episode. You can ignore that.



First of all, I'd like to clear up any confusion caused by the multiple Tracy/Twacys:

Dick Tracy is a private detective from a newspaper comic strip.
Duck Twacy is from the 1946 cartoon "The Great Piggy Bank Robbery". In this cartoon Daffy avidly reads a Dick Tracy comic strip, knocks himself unconscious, and dreams about being a Dick Tracy style character named "Duck Twacy."
PLUCK Twacy is from the Tiny Toons episode. It is the character *Plucky* dreams about after hearing a speech by Daffy in his Duck Twacy persona.

All sorted? Good. Why do I think there might be some confusion? Well, the segment is supposedly Daffy/Duck Twacy's audition tape, and yet most of it is about Plucky/Pluck Twacy. Also, at one point on his blog Eddie Fitzgerald said that *Pluck* Twacy was a character from a 1940s cartoon who he brought back for TTA. (although he later deleted that, either when someone else pointed out his mistake or when he realised it)

Finally, there is the title, The *Return* of Pluck Twacy. We have never seen Pluck Twacy before, and never will again. So why The Return, unless someone mistook Pluck Twacy for a character who had already appeared?

Anyway, ignoring these problems (which is easy to do after the first few seconds) this is a pretty fun cartoon. The scenes where Plucky bashes himself over the head in order to cope with the tickling are really funny, and the bit on the neon train (a reference, perhaps, to GPBR's "Neon Noodle") is gloriously imaginative, although some may feel it drags out a little.

Some TTA fans are quite hard on it, including one review (on the Tiny Toons Reference Guide) who says that it "sinks to the level of its inspiration", which sounds like a criticism of the original "Great Piggy Bank Robbery". So, it's probably not one for audiences who are into 90s cartoons but not the ones from the 40s. (well, unless there are actually 40s WB fans who don't like "The Great Piggy Bank Robbery" for some reason)

I can kind of understand the problems some people might have with it. There's nothing particularly distinctive to Tiny Toons about it, except in the opening and closing scenes, set in Acme Looniversity, and the point where Plucky gets the vision of Daffy/Duck Twacy giving him advice (that is, because it follows the TTA theme that these are the fans/disciples of the classic characters). Mostly it's a mash-up of multiple classic Warners cartoons, made by someone who is clearly a fan of them and saw this as a chance to make his own.

Obviously, the main set-up comes from Bob Clampett's "The Great Piggy Bank Robbery". The "aura" character is based on Hata Marie from Frank Tashlin's WW2 era "Plane Daffy", and "Tickle-Puss" is Sloppy Moe from Clampett's "Wagon Heels", who saves the day by tickling the villain into submission. There may also be an influence from Bob McKimson's "The Super Snooper" in the way the aura behaves towards Plucky, but the style is much more influenced by Clampett and Tashlin. The scenes where Plucky is surrounded by criminals with weird names, and he gasps as he lists them, is directly from GPBR, although it had already been given a TTA treatment in "Return of Batduck." (I feel the Batduck version works a little better, as it is more imaginative and unexpected, and making all the criminals parodies of Batman's Rogues Gallery gives it a life of its own. Putting it in a setting more directly influenced by GPBR feels less imagintive and more derivative.)

Some shots even seem to be traced from the original cartoons: the long shots of Plucky surrounded by the weird criminals - who all of a sudden look much more like the GPBR villains than the ones in the rest of this cartoon, and the part where Plucky leaps off the guillotine and faces-off the aura - the helmet which he puts on to protect himself from the blade makes him look even more like Daffy in Plane Daffy.

The animation is by Glen Kennedy's studio, which is probably the best choice for a Clampett/Tashlin influenced cartoon. I'm a lot easier on Kennedy than a lot of people, but their animation here is a lot weaker than on some of their other episodes. The scene where Plucky wakes up on the floor of the classroom is particularly bad looking (and there's a strange mistake, where he is seen writhing around for the first few seconds without anyone surrounding him... is he, like, dreaming that he's waking up in an empty classroom, before he actually wakes up in a full one?) Jon McClenahan of Startoons fame animated the introduction where Babs and Buster audition Daffy, and speech Daffy makes to the class, although the last shot of Daffy with the apple seems to be a different animator. It's a shame there isn't more of him, though. I'm sure that Eddie himself was happy to see it assigned to Kennedy, because as we all know he admires Glen Kennedy's work. But I'm not sure if Glen actually animated anything on this one.

Oh, and the ending takes Daffy's "manic depravity" (John Kricfalusi's description of "The Great Piggy Bank Robbery") to a new level. When Daffy woke up, he found himself kissing a pig in a mud pen, and was disgusted for about a second before whooping around excitedly, no doubt because of how much fun his dream was. But in Plucky's case, he bashes himself over the head with a mallet so he can return to his dream! (watch Daffy's encouraging expression at this point!) Kind of reminds me of a certain cop show that I won't name to avoid spoiling people.

I don't know what to say the monkeys won't do!

Like many people, I'd imagine, the first version of this song I encountered was the one featured in the first episode of Animaniacs.



(if the video is taken down by the time you read this, just do a google search for "Animaniacs Monkey Song" or better yet pop in your Animaniacs Volume 1 DVD!)

But I was pleased to find the original version was also available on YouTube:



Some people might call the Animaniacs version a "parody" of the original, but it isn't really... it's just the Warners and Dr Scratchansniff doing their own version of it. The tune is the same, and most of the lyrics are very close. The instrumental breaks are in the same places (accompanied by scenes of other Animaniacs characters doing their schtick), and some of Belafonte's interjections are repeated by the Hippos. "Play that thing!"

It was a surprise that the Belafonte original has only one monkey causing him grief... I guess we naturally think of monkeys coming in trios? (notice the poses the Warners are doing at 2:27!) They just upped it to three monkeys for the Animaniacs version because there are three Warners.


Verse 1: First two lines very close, original has a repeat of the lines, Animaniacs version has two new lines which are specific to the characters and setting. (in fact, the Animaniacs version avoids line repeats a lot more than the original, with more lines rhyming with "Don't know what to say the monkeys won't do" in the chorus parts.)

Verse 2: This is the most different from the original version. Belafonte has the monkey letting his girlfriend in and pouring her a glass of gin. Scratchandsniff has the Warners doing a dance for the Nurse and pouring biting bugs down his clothes. The only similarity is that the end of the second line ("and what do you think?" vs "and what could be worse?") are quite close.

Also, a common theme in the original is the monkey copying Belafonte's actions: "I do X, monkey does X too." The only time something like this appears in the Animaniacs version is here, and it's the other way around: the Warners make Scratchansniff itchy so *he* copies *them.* "Monkeys dance, then I dance too!"

Verse 3 is almost exactly the same, but with the Nurse in place of Belafonte's girlfriend.

Verse 4: Also very close, but this is where the exaggeration of the original starts. Belafonte's "cabinet" was laid to waste, but Scratchy's entire bathroom is. Belafonte has to shave with toothpaste... but the Warners actively shave Scratchy's *head* with the stuff.

Verse 5 continues this exaggeration. Belafonte brushes his hair with a shoe-brush, the Warners use one to shine Scratchy's (shaved in the previous verse) head. Belafonte "almost" goes down (the toilet, presumably), while Scratchy is not so lucky.

Verse 6 is even closer to the original than verse 3... which is quite easy to believe, as trying to make a stew out of the Warners isn't exactly Scratchy's nature. (He's not an Elmer Fudd type hunter/predator, but more like a long-suffering parent or teacher when we usually see him) New to the Animaniacs version is the ensuing chorus which puts Scratchy in the stew himself.


So, as you can see, most of the lyrical changes were small variations to make the Warners more actively annoying than the original.

Say... if you're interested in more Animaniacs commentary, check out Mike R's incredible in-depth blog Hello, Nice Warners!

Bosko The Minstrel

Those early rubber-hose cartoon characters, with their basic facial designs altered only by the shape of their ears and, occasionally, noses... it can be pretty hard to tell what kind of creature they're supposed to be. Indeed, they made a running joke of it many years later in Animaniacs, where people often wonder what species the Warners are, with their late-20s-early-30s inspired designs.

The Warner Brothers studio's first character, Bosko, fits the usual design pattern - white face, black nose, solid black eyes, and black... hair? covering the rest of his head. But he was apparently meant to be a human character. His ears, the usual species giveaway, look like simplified forms of human ears, compared to the large black things protruding from the tops of Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, Mickey Mouse or Foxy's heads. In fact, he was meant to be a *black* human.

Which seems quite a bizarre claim to make about a white-faced character, but when Harman and Ising took the character to MGM, they made him (and Honey) obviously dark-skinned human characters. I suppose when you think of the stereotyped depictions of black people that were common at the time, Bosko's white face could be seen as comprising large white eyes and large white lips... with the black portion behind his face being his skin.

Certainly, when Bosko and Honey were brought back for an appearance on Tiny Toon Adventures, they were redesigned to have floppy black ears atop their head... making them a more indistinct species like the later Warners on Animaniacs. So, to the people who made that episode at least, there was something controversial about their original appearance.

However, Bosko doesn't really read as a "blackface" caricature. Harman and Ising, and their staff, probably forgot that's what he was meant to be in the first place, or discarded the idea. Take a look at the final gag from this cartoon:



A bomb goes off in Bosko's face, covering it with... bomb dust or whatever, and transforms him *into* a blackface character, announcing "Mammy!" So if he had to be turned into a blackface character, what is he the rest of the time?

Another face-changing reptile

From Bob Clampett's "The Bashful Buzzard" (1945) You won't like this dragon when he's angry. Not only does he suddenly grow himself some teeth, but his head changes shape and size! It's not like we actually see his head changing on-screen... but Beaky Buzzard doesn't recognise the "mean" face when the dragon starts growling at him (0:58-1:08), so we have to assume either a) the dragon's head changed off-screen or b) Clampett assumed his audience would forget that they and Beaky had seen the "turtle" face a few seconds ago. (0:25-0:45)

By the way, anyone know where those "bringing home a baby bumblebee" lyrics orginated? Apparently there's a girl guides / girl scouts song with the same tune and the same lyrics, followed by "I'm squishing up / licking up / bringing (or barfing) up / sweeping up my baby bumblebee"... I wonder if this version predates or postdates Clampett's use here.

Fridge brilliance and Donald's Lucky Day (Disney, 1939)

The TV Tropes website defines fridge brilliance as a circumstance where your reaction to something you read, watch or listen to is one of confusion and annoyance, but which, at some unspecified point later (proverbially, when you are just going about your life, opening a fridge to get out some food or drink) makes you go "A-ha! NOW I get it!"

Hans Perk posted the animator drafts for the cartoon "Donald's Lucky Day" in August 2006. The following month, Mark Mayerson posted a mosaic of the short, a critique of the story and some thoughts on the animators. It's the critique of the story which I'm mainly interested here, I just provided the other links for background info.

Some of Mayerson's critiisms are deserved: for example, the cat just disappears after the bomb goes off, and the fish are eaten by a smarm of anonymous cats rather than the one who's been appearing throughout the cartoon, which isn't a very satisfying ending. (Actually, it suggests the poor cat was blown up or drowned, which probably wasn't their intention) It would have been better if it had ended with the "hero" cat chowing down on fish, and Donald doing one of his end-of-cartoon "aw, shucks" type chuckles.

However, another of his comments is that Donald "would have been luckier if he lost the package immediately and saved himself a lot of effort." However, this would be impossible, because... it was still Friday 13th! The bomb is supposed to go off at 12 o'clock, right? So, up until that happens, it's Friday 13th and Donald is having an unlucky day. After the bomb goes off, it's now Saturday 14th. Donald exclaims "This is my lucky day!" meaning the new day that's just started. In fact, in the opening scene with the gangsters, they refer to the bomb as a "valentine", so they're thinking of it as going off at the start of the 14th (February, that is) as well.

OK, I don't know if that's what the intention of the writers/animators was. If it was, I guess the main problem is that they didn't make it clear enough. So, here's my revised ending:

Donald gets covered in fish. He hears on the radio something like: "When you hear the sound of the tone, the time will be 12 o'clock, midnight. That's the end of Friday 13th. Did you all make it?" Donald, overjoyed: "Oh boy! This is my lucky day!" Then the cat emerges out of his hat, gobbles down a fish, and rubs against Donald's face. Donald chuckles awkwardly. End.

Everybody do the Kennedy Buster dance!

"Hare Today, Gone Tomorrow" was the first episode of "Tiny Toon Adventures" to be made, although seventeen other episodes were broadcast before it. It was written by Tom Ruegger, Wayne Kaatz, Gordon Bressack and Charles M Howell IV; directed by Ken Boyer and Eddie Fitzgerald, and animated by Kennedy Cartoons. You can watch it on the Tiny Toon Adventures Season 1 Volume 1 DVD.



In the first act of the episode Elmyra captures Buster, involving a lot of wacky high-jinks in Elmyra's house and a long phoney death scene for Buster.


The second act has Buster discovering Elmyra's other mistreated pets and setting them all free, but then getting re-captured himself.


The third act has the other characters, led by Babs, rescuing Buster and them all giving Elmyra a taste of her own medicine in an elaborate "Planet of the Bunnies" setpiece.

More thoughts on this episode from the animation fan community can be found on this discussion thread, where Speedy Boris describes it as a "very uneven mix of "80's adventure story" and [...] Looney Tunes-esque humor". In this interview Tom Ruegger seems to say that Fitzgerald directed the first and third acts, with Boyer directing the middle act. It makes sense that the middle act had a different director, as it is very different in tone. Although it contains a few gags, it doesn't have the Bob Clampett manic energy of the first or third act. (I'm not criticizing Ken Boyer, who directed several great episodes of the series) If Fitzgerald did direct 2/3 of the episode, though, it seems strange that most of the credited artists (storyboards, character layouts) are from Ken Boyer's unit.

Ruegger also describes the episode as "very bizarre half-hour story that feels more like three shorts", which suggests to me that each act had a different writer. I suspect that Bressack and/or Howell had something to do with the middle act where Buster releases the other pets from their cages, as similar scenes occur in "Sawdust and Toonsil" and "Hare-Raising Night", which they also wrote.

Apparently the third act was heavily re-written by Eddie Fitzgerald. I don't know whether the entire "Planet of the Bunnies" sequence was his idea, or whether he just expanded it and took it in his own direction, but it is a brilliant virtual non-sequitur. You might expect something like this to be the main part of an episode, but here it's just a bit on the end, which comes pretty much out nowhere.

It contains a lot of references to Bob Clampett's cartoons from the Golden Age of Warner Bros.


The giant pair of lips is from "Tin Pan Alley Cats" where jazz music sends a Fats Waller cat "outta this world" and into a WW2-era version of Wackyland. I don't believe they are announcing a science-fiction double-feature.


The scene where Buster and three other characters, disguised as Buster clones, all hide in Elmyra's bed and scare her seems to come from "Kitty Kornered" where Porky's cats disguise as Martians. Also, the little dance all the Busters do at the end of the scene was apparently inspired by the end of "Porky in Wackyland" where Porky discovers there are actually several Dodo birds and the one he has caught is not the last after all. And it contains a Clampett catchphrase "Now, we wouldn't say that!" That's three Clampett references in one short scene! It also inspired Glen Kennedy to create the Kennedy Buster Dance, something that would appear a lot in the episodes his studio animated.




Glen Kennedy, the animation supervisor of his studio, animated about two-thirds of this episode, (far more than usual) including the entire third act. His style is pretty easy to spot once you know what it is, but it really looks much more expressive in motion than these frame-grabs can show. One technique which I think is unique to his animation is when characters point up into the sky for no apparent reason.


Additionally, there are a few scenes which he doesn't appear to have animated, but which nonetheless contain some of his poses, such as a character running off-screen by stretching out of the frame and leaving his or her head behind.


The gag credit no doubt refers to the omnipresence of Glen's animation.


One short sequence, in which Buster dresses as a doctor, was by Jon McClenahan, when he was the only animator at his studio, StarToons, and was taking work from other studios. By his own admission he had not quite got a handle on the characters. He would go on to do great things in the rest of the series.


There are a few more scenes here and there which might be examples of his work before it grew into what it became. The shot above is from one such scene: it comes right after the "doctor" bit and seems to have been inspired by some of Chuck Jones' 1960s work.

You can understand why this episode was delayed instead of being the series premiere. Some of the character roles are pretty strange: Elmyra is treated as some sort of arch-nemesis, Babs is a presenter with nothing to do until the third act and who spends most of the time in her "Tinkerbunny" outfit. Plucky and Hamton make cameos outside the action (they show up out of nowhere during the "death scene", and only Buster seems to be aware of their existence). And Buster and Babs' accomplices for their plot against Elmyra are a strange mix of Furrball, Fifi and Tyrone Turtle!


Also, Charlie Adler hasn't quite got the hang of his Buster voice, especially during his death act. Acme Acres is vaguely defined as a "land of magic and enchantment".

The actual first episode to air, "The Looney Beginning" (an "origin story" which was the 48th episode to be produced), has more to recommend it as an introduction to the series, with Babs and Buster as the main characters, Montana Max as the villain, and the creation of Acme Looniversity. But I do kind of like the strange quirkiness of "Hare Today" - a look at how the series *might* have turned out.

Hello, all you happy people.

One of the presents I got this year was the DVD set of the theatrical Droopy shorts. It wasn't one of the first I decided to check out... in fact, unlike some of the other DVDs I got, I didn't stick it in my DVD player until a few days later! I guess this is because I had the feeling that these cartoons didn't represent the best of what Avery did at MGM, and that while I was watching them, something would remind me of a better Avery MGM cartoon, and I would wish I was watching that instead.

I think my negative feelings about the Droopy cartoons came from a specific group of them, from around 1950, which pitted Droopy against Spike the bulldog. They were built on a blackout gags formula, in which Droopy and Spike are competing for something, and so Spike tries various schemes against Droopy (either trying to kill him, or just make him fail at something) which all backfire in exactly the same way. The humour levels really seem to go down after the first four where he is pitted against the wolf.

As it turns out though, there were some other good ones made around the same time... "Out-Foxed", for example, and even "Droopy's Double Trouble", although it does feature Spike, is much more enjoyable to me than the five Spike and Droopy entries which came before it. This was the last Droopy cartoon Avery made before his sabbatical and brief replacement by Dick Lundy, and if the quality of the Droopy shorts are anything to go by, it was a much-needed break.


The following cartoons (on Disc 2 of the DVD set) are much more inventive, funny, and inventively funny. Even though "Three Little Pups" is a blackout-gag cartoon, it is still one of my favourites, and contains one of my favourite Avery gags (ironically featuring a bulldog)...






"Break it up, son. Joke's over."





Most of the post-sabbatical Droopy cartoons have a Western theme to them, and this may have been Avery's element.

Now, the last few shorts were directed by Michael Lah, and I was expecting the quality to plunge. But, interestingly enough, it doesn't! I'm not saying it was a similar situation to the Popeye cartoons, where the first Famous entries were better than the last few Fleischers - as I said above, the weak phase for Tex's Droopys came much earlier. I did enjoy them a lot more than those earlier "weak phase" Droopys though. "Grin and Share It" is based on the same formula, but, well, I prefer it. "One Droopy Knight" is largely a remake of the earlier "Senor Droopy" but I find the mythical knights-and-dragons setting more suited to the basic story than the bullfighting arena.



(the only thing that "Senor Droopy" has in its favour over "One Droopy Knight" is the live-action end gag)






Hmmm... it's only when getting that screengrab that I was reminded that Senor Droopy's opponent is the wolf, not Spike. Well, I'd still classfy it as one of the weaker formula shorts, not in the same league as "Dumb-Hounded" through "Northwest Hounded Police".

Kaa, the incredible shape-changing snake

From a Sterling Holloway stork to a Sterling Holloway snake...

I didn't notice this myself, I had read a very offhand remark about there being two different looks for Kaa in the Disney Jungle Book. So I decided to check it out:



Indeed, in the clip below (his second sequence in the film) he looks much cartoonier than in the clip above (his first sequence). His eyes are closer together and rise further above his head, his nose tapers out the way instead of in the way... and the general shape of his face allows for more variation in movement... actually, in the later sequence he almost looks like a serpentine Daffy Duck, say... mid-1950s, Chuck Jones unit.



The later design is certainly the better of the two, and probably the "definitive" look for the character, but I wonder why the earlier sequence has the different design? A common explanation would be that it had a different animator, but you'd think on a feature film like this they'd have a standard model sheet and diligent assistants to keep the drawings close to that model sheet. Another possibility is that they changed the design after they had already animated the earlier sequence, but surely they'd get someone to reanimate it, like they did with Dopey's soap antics in the washing sequence of Snow White. After Disney's death did consistency really fall apart?

As some people might not know, Woolie Reitherman, the director of The Jungle Book, was very fond of reusing animation. In this case, the scenes of Kaa unravelling (1:56 - 2:07 in the first clip, 4:55 - 5:00 in the second) are the same. This creates a continuity error: when he unravels in the second sequence, the way he's wrapped around the tree branches changes completely. It also makes the difference in the design stand out a bit more.

Oddly enough, some of the following footage in the second sequence is reused from the first sequence, while some is new. But, of course, even in the new footage he still has the (older?) first sequence design.

Oh, and if any of you are turned on by the thought of a ridiculously long snake hypnotising you and coiling himself around you... well, keep it to yourself, OK? ;)

A closer look at Snow White sequence 8A: Entertainment (part two)

Continuing from the previous post, this is an interesting sequence when it comes to casting as well, although the assignment of Snow White's scenes are enough to cause a headache!

Scenes 4, 49C and 58A credit two animators when Snow White is the only character on screen, and 23, 31, 37, featuring Snow White and the dwarfs, credit two Snow White animators (supervisor Ham Luske alongside either Grim Natwick and Jack Campbell) alongside one dwarf animator, despite the fact it would seem more logical to have one Snow White animator and two dwarf animators. To the list of scenes with two Snow White animators we can add 9, (Ham Luske and Paul Busch), 26 (Ham Luske and Marc Davis, Grim Natwick's assistant) and 28 (Ham Luske and Max Gray, who, as speculated before, could have been Luske's assistant)... and, following their example, 39 (Ham Luske and Amby Paliwoda). But they're maybe not quite as definite.

In fact, throughout the draft, no matter how many dwarfs are on screen, it is incredibly rare to have more than one dwarf animator credited. This sequence has several scenes of dwarfs playing instruments in the background while others do more interesting things in the foreground, yet each of these scenes credits only one dwarf animator. There could be an ommission in the draft, of course. Sequence 4C is full of them, and, in this sequence, we can assume that scene 49A must contain the work of at least one Snow White animator, even though only Spencer is credited.

The dwarf casting in this sequence partly follows some casting-by-character guidelines, and partly ignores them. Fred Moore and Bill Tytla get a few scenes, starting with some miscellaneous ones at the beginning. Check out Bashful's movements when he yodels in scene 5! Definitely the same animator who gave us Sneezy's convulsions in the "Spooks" sequence. Oddly enough, while Moore also animates the first half or so of the Tall Dopey scenes, it's Fred Spencer who animates the sneeze, despite the fact that Moore animated two of them in "Spooks".

There is a general sense of Dick Lundy "playing" Grumpy, with Marvin Woodward handling Bashful, Fred Spencer Dopey and Les Clark Sleepy. This type of casting can be seen in other sequences as well. However, there are no clear rules: for example, Les Clark animates scene 25A of Dopey picking up a symbal... although he is about to hand it to Sleepy, the latter dwarf is not in shot. Fred Spencer gets a quick shot (scene 40) of Bashful. Spencer animates Grumpy, Sleepy and Bashful in scene 53 (the three dwarfs to be fairly consistently cast, and usually *not* with Spencer!) Les Clark animates Dopey sliding down the pillar in scene 61. The uncredited Riley Thomson gets a few brief shots of various dwarfs towards the end, including an uncharacteristically energetic Sleepy in scene 49G.

There is no real consistent casting of the less prominent dwarfs, which, in this case, includes Doc! Also, Bill Tytla gets Happy's solo verse and tap dance at the beginning. Does anyone have any ideas why this might be?

I'd be remiss if I didn't mention the continuity error. Scenes 44 and 45, followed by 49E, show pairs of hands which, judging by the sleeves, must belong to Dopey, even though Dopey is currently standing on Sneezy's head and dancing with Snow White. The draft simply refers to "hands".

In this interview, Wilfred Jackson, who directed this sequence, recalls an animator who did several Dopey scenes but whose name he cannot recall. It seems very likely he's thinking of Fred Spencer.

Jack and Gus

Every Christmas for the past few years I've got one of the Looney Tunes Golden Collections, and was very sad to see there wouldn't be another one this year. However, one of the presents I got this year (one of the two I got on the 24th rather than the 25th) was the Popeye 1933-1938 DVD! Having checked out a couple of shorts with commentary, I realise that the Bluto voice actor who probably voiced Mr Elephant would be Gus Wickie rather than Jackson Beck. I guess I should have looked it up rather than relying on my assumption Bluto = Jackson Beck.

Oh, and happy Christmas or whatever you do for fun on December 25th to all readers of this blog! (All two and a half of you...) :)

A closer look at sequence 4-D "Spooks"

I think this was the first sequence to be animated after Bill Tytla's sequence 6-A "Dwarfs at tub washing" and Fred Moore's sequence 5-A "Bedroom". It was the first therefore to extensively use other animators on the dwarfs.

There are a few scenes by Moore and Tytla here, and they don't always seem to be cast with much rhyme or reason: Tytla was known for being best at Doc and Grumpy, and he does get most of the scenes where Doc gives orders and a few of Grumpy expressing his suspicion, but he also shares scene 39 with Babbitt, where the other dwarfs tell Dopey "We're right behind you!" I'm assuming Babbitt animated Dopey while Tytla animated the other dwarfs, but the way in which they are required to all speak in unison as a single unit goes against Tytla's deliberate intention to make all the dwarfs in the washing scene function as separate individuals, but it was probably what he was told to do, and he does get some slight variation in the chaarcters' gestures.

Fred Moore gets a couple of long scenes of comedy business, scenes 26 and 29, each measuring about 30 seconds and involving Sneezy's hay fever. Sneezy's almost snakelike contortions are a lot of fun to watch, but I can imagine it's the sort of thing Grim Natwick, which his anatomical realism, didn't like about Moore's animation!

Of the supporting animators, the ones who get the most sustained sections of footage are Art Babbitt and Fred Spencer, at the end of the sequence. Babbitt was assigned to Dopey, following his success with Goofy in the shorts, but got into a bit of trouble with management when he started improvising, something he always got away with in the shorts. In this sequence he animates Doc and the others sending Dopey upstairs, and Dopey reacting with (unusually vocal) terror at the sight of the yawning, stretching Snow White. Spencer takes over for the remainder of the sequence, when Dopey runs downstairs, and the others flee him, clobber him, and, after finally recognising him, ask him several questions about what he saw.

Both are fairly Dopey-centric scenes, with the other dwarfs mostly functioning as a single personality. Babbitt gets his fear and trepidation while Spencer gets his frantic energy and childlike suggestibility when he nods and mimes in repsonse to the other dwarfs' questions about what kind of monster he saw. Throughout the film Spencer was assigned to several Dopey scenes and scenes involving a lot of visual action.

There are a couple of scenes which must have been reinstated at the last moment - Scenes 17, where the dwarfs pass by the animals looking in through the window, and scene 25, where they discover the boiling pot on the fire. They are listed in the draft as being out, but this has been fixed in pen. Unfortunately there are no descriptions of the scenes, nor do we know who animated them...

Speaking of elephants...

...which I was... um... depending on which order you read the posts. This is the Fleischer studios "Color Classic" titled "An Elephant Never Forgets."



I didn't put this up online, I just discovered it one day when I was browsing a few years ago. It would be great if there's a version of it out there in "Popeye Meets Sinbad" quality but even this copy is *much* better looking than the one I found back then.

There are still a lot of great things about this cartoon to enjoy though...

- The unmistakeably adult voices of this group of, presumably kids. It sounds like Mr Elephant is Jackson "Bluto" Beck and Gus Gorilla is Jack "Popeye" Mercer.

- The opening skipping song. "Rock-a-diddle-di-do-one-three-three"? What does that mean?

- The fact that, when Ferdie Frog pretends to be both himself and his sister, he uses the exact same voice for both of them.

- The names of the characters... usually alliterative, or just plain "Mister", then we have a cockerel named "Rooster Joe."

- The fact that the (swan? goose? stork?) teacher has absolutely no problem with the fighting that's broken out. My sister says she comes across as another kid who's only playing at being a teacher, and given that all the kids sound like adults, who's to say she isn't?

Ken Glennedy

So, John Kricfalusi has posted up some of "Uncle" Eddie's Tiny Toons drawings on his blog. Interesting how he refers to the characters by the names of their Golden Age counterparts, and as being "babies" despite the fact that they are meant to be age 12-14 or so. I guess the Tiny in the name is kind of confusing, heck, before I saw any episodes, I thought the characters were called "Baby Bugs", "Baby Porky" etc. because that was the convention I knew about. Since I assume John K. knows better than this, I guess he's suggesting that the characters are rip-offs and immature, or something.

Fitzgerald was one of the first directors of the series (along with Ken Boyer, Art Leonardi and Art Vitello), and his name appears as a director on three of the earliest episodes, before his unit is taken over, first by Gerard Baldwin, then by promoted character layout / storyboard artist Rich Arons. After that Fitzgerald continued to serve as a writer and storyboarder (usually for the same unit, now under Rich Arons) and occasional director.

The subject of Kennedy animation crops up a lot in the comments. It has a bad reputation among TTA fans but I personally think it was just sometimes misused. Glen Kennedy himself animated (the majority of?) the first episode "Hare Today, Gone Tomorrow" and the segment "One Minute Til Three". (Sadly neither episode is available on YouTube, but you can find screengrabs at the above links)

In "Hare Today, Gone Tomorrow" the characters are not fully defined yet, and so a more "on-model" animation style might have helped to ground them as in some way consistent characters. "One Minute Til Three" on the other hand, is almost entirely devoted to Plucky's frantic mental state -- there is very little physical movement for the characters - and so Kennedy's wild distortions really make Plucky's feelings come across visually - it would be a pretty bland segment if Plucky stayed on-model the whole time. This is a similar situation to that described by Mark Mayerson in his 1980 article on Jim Tyer (and if you don't know who Jim Tyer is, then read this article and I guarantee you'll be seeking out certain Famous and Terrytoons shorts!).

Actually, Glen Kennedy (or at least Kennedy cartoons), Jim Tyer and John Kricfalusi do intersect in one TTA episode. The villain of the episode "Who Bopped Bugs Bunny" is a rival cartoon star named Stanley the Elephant, designed by John K. (his only connection with TTA) and based on the Terrytoons character Sidney the Elephant, originally animated by... Jim Tyer. Now, Glen Kennedy is only credited as a timing director on that episode, with Namcook Lee as animation director, but the scene where Stanley throws a diva fit with his director looks to my admittedly inexpert eyes like Glen might have animated it. It does look like it was animated by the Silver Age answer to Jim Tyer.

(Feel out of the loop because I'm talking about TTA episodes you've never seen? One solution to that: buy the DVDs! No, I don't get paid to write this, but it would be nice if I did.)

25/11/09 Edited to add: Jenny Lerew, another TTA charater layout / storyboard artist, has posted some of John K's Stanley the Elephant drawings on her blog, The Blackwing Diaries. Could anyone other than Kennedy have brought these to animated life?

A closer look at Snow White sequence 4A and 4B: the Heigh-Ho sequences

The drafts for sequence 4A Dwarfs At Mine and sequence 4B Dwarfs March Home From Mine are on A. Film L.A. here.

Apparently, these sequences were nearly cut from the film (Barrier p.225), in
which case the dwarfs would have been introduced in the following sequence when the animals hear their singing in the distance and hurry to watch.

One advantage of keeping them in is the fact that the diamond mine is a good and memorable set-piece. I'm not sure if the individual dwarfs get a better introduction than they would in their next appearance. They are in small groups rather than all at once, but only Dopey and to a lesser extent Doc (and Sleepy I suppose) get a chance to show their personalities. Although Grumpy, Happy, Bashful and Sneezy are introduced in close-ups with individual singing lines, nothing they do or sing indicates what types of characters they are... it was up to the animators to convey personality.

For the close-ups, Bill Roberts introduces Happy and Grumpy, Marvin Woodward introduces Bashful and Sneezy, Les Clark introduces Sleepy and Art Babbitt introduces Doc. Group shots, particularly of the four digging dwarfs, seem to have been fairly arbitrarily cast, with the same group of characters animated by Al Eugster, Marvin Woodward and Shamus Culhane.

Eugster complained that very little of his footage remained in the film. (Barrier p.224) He does have the glory of having animated the very first dwarf scene to appear in the film, but as of the washing sequence (the most recent draft sequence to have been posted up) that seems to be all. We shall see whether any more of his work survived...

Of course, it's supervising animator Fred Moore who gets the main character stuff here, with Doc inspecting the gems and Dopey as his comical assistant, who tries to amuse Doc by placing diamonds over his eyes, accidentally throws himself into the vault and hangs the key up right next to the entrance where anyone can find it!

Frank Thomas' one scene is also of these two characters: a brief shot where Doc calls "Heigh-Ho!" to the other dwarfs to let them know it's time to go home. Thomas was apparently the first of the non-supervising animators to be assigned to the dwarfs (Barrier p.212) and, as with his first assignment in scene 5A where they first meet Snow White, he seems to have been given the material that Fred Moore didn't have time to do and wasn't important enough for him to do -- like a stand-in for a leading actor!

Shamus Culhane leads the dwarfs out of the mine and into the next sequence where the dwarfs return home. Perhaps in an attempt to acquaint the audience with their individual appearances, the first scene of sequence 4B: Dwarfs March Home From The Mine was to be close-ups on each dwarf, animated by the other dwarf supervisor, Vladimir "Bill" Tytla. The scene did not survive into the film, and the numbering (it is numbered 3 but placed before scenes 1 and 2) suggest that the directors weren't sure exactly where to place it anyway. Some nice scenes by Shamus Culhane, but unfortunately the effects animator responsible for the waterfall is not identified on the draft.

A closer look at sequence 3B - Snow White meets animals

Definitely a Snow White craze - while at work this evening I saw a poster for a pantomime version of the story, and I overheard part of a lecture which quoted from a girl who had been to see another pantomime production of it in 1938. Probably one of the Disney-approved ones as they seemed to run the racket on Snow White performances at that time.

OK, open up the drafts on A. Film L.A. and stick Snow White in your DVD player, it's time to take a closer look at scene 3B - Snow White meets animals!

In Michael Barrier's book "Hollywood Cartoons" (which is what I'll probably mean when I refer to "Barrier" from now on) he mentions one of the problems which faced Disney and his employees during the making of the film was the casting of the dwarfs. It was impossible for one animator to handle all the dwarfs' footage, nor was it feasible to assign one animator to each dwarf as they spent so much time all on screen at once, interacting with each other. The result was to have several animators assign to the dwarfs, all of whom at some point animated *all* of the dwarfs, and therefore needing to learn the right way to portray all seven characters.

Presumably no such problem existed with the other group of characters drawn by a group of animators: the forest animals. They're less important to the story and less differentiated, with many being generic rabbits, squirrels and chipmunks. It's interesting to compare the designs to those used in Bambi, originally intended to be the second feature. They are more simply drawn than in the later feature, and I find this makes the rabbits more appealing than Thumper. The deer, on the other hand, I find both designs appealing, but the simpler Snow White design is probably less suited for a feature's main characters.

There are a few animals in this and later sequences who stand out as distinctive characters. Most memorable perhaps is the turtle, but there is also a family of deer and of bluebirds. No animator seems to have been consistenly assigned to these characters with the exception of the three bluebirds, who are usually handled by Eric Larson, including in a substantial section where the youngest of the birds sings with Snow White and hits a "sour note". This scene was obviously added to at a late stage, perhaps even during animation, because as Hans notes, scene numbers run from 15B to 15BBBBB!

Other than that, there are occasional consistent assignments: for example, Larson also animates both scene 9 where a group of squirrels flees into a tree trunk and 10A where they emerge from holes in the tree trunk. However, some assignments seem fairly arbitrary: while Bernard Garbutt animates scene 8 - a group of animals (inluding the doe and fawn) scurrying away, over a log, after Snow White wakes up, and scene 10B, featuring the same animals on the same background, the same set-up is animated at the beginning of the sequence in scene 3 by James Algar. No animator seems to "own" any of the animal characters, except for Larson with the three bluebirds.

All the animators working on this sequence were in Hamilton Luske's unit, as he was the supervising animator for Snow White and the animals. Barrier mentions he had seven animators in his unit: the three who animated the heroine (Grim Natwick, Jack Campbell and Robert Stokes) and the four who animated the animals (who he doesn't name but are presumably the four who animated them in this sequence: Eric Larson, Milt Kahl, James Algar and Bernard Garbutt). Luske also animated the Huntsman in sequence 3A and I'd expect he was the supervisor for the Prince as well, as he was animated by Grim Natwick and Milt Kahl. There are also two more mysterious names on the draft: Maxwell Gray and Tony Rivera. Gray animates the Huntsman in sequence 2B and Rivera's name appears alongside Campbell's, seemingly animating Snow White as well, in sequence 3A. It seems likely they were Luske and Campbell's assistants, respectively, and were assisting on the Snow White animation in this scene as well, but as the animals were also handled by members of Luske's unit, who knows?

Ham Luske actually drew a few of the animal scenes in this sequence himself, including scene 10, the first to feature the bluebird family who, as I mentioned before, were handled by Eric Larson the rest of the time. I wonder why this is. Did he have the technical expertise to animate the fancy flying they do, or did some person in authority feel that the supervisor should do the scene which introduces the characters?

In general Eric Larson animates the most scenes in this sequence and probably is most consistently assigned to specific characters. It's no surprise he became the supervising animator for all the (less anthropomorphic) animal characters in Pinocchio.

The draft Hans has been posting is not a final draft and so there are some interesting differences between it and the finished film. It contains several deleted scenes - this sequence has only one, 27A, and it already has a big question mark over it. There's also a small mistake: scene 15F has the same description as scene 15E, and should be something like "quails come out of cave". Other sequences contain many more scenes that were cut (or changed) later on -- keep checking both A. Film L.A. and this blog to find out more about them!

Snow White drafts!

Hans Perk has started posting the Snow White animator draft to coincide with the release of the "Plantinum Edition". Will this be the start of a Snow White craze of 2009, like the Pinocchio craze of 2007? If so, I'm not going to be late this time! While I don't have any studio documents myself, I thought I would post some of my own thoughts and discoveries about the information on the draft Hans has so kindly decided to provide.

The casting of the early features interests me... unlike the later films which Hans has posted the drafts for, in Pinocchio and Snow White there were units of animators assigned to each character. We often read about how Snow White was animated by Hamilton Luske (supervising animator), Grim Natwick, Jack Campbell and Robert Stokes (and there's a great article about it here), some of whom also worked on the other "realistic" human characters (Natwick on the Prince, Stokes on the Queen). There also seem to have been units assigned to two distinct *groups* of characters -- the dwarfs and the forest creatures. In the case of the dwarfs in particular, this type of casting seems to have caused a few problems, as recounted in Michael Barrier's book "Hollywood Cartoons", and it will be interesting to see how this is reflected in the assignment of scenes to animators. So you can expect quite a few more posts here responding to the Snow White drafts posted on A. Film L.A.

If you're gonna preach, for God's sake preach with conviction!

People often call this Tiny Toon Adventures segment "preachy". I'm not really sure why. In order to be preachy, surely you have to be preaching something. People say it's preaching against eating meat, but when you compare it to the great Simpsons episode "Lisa the Vegetarian" (executive produced by vegetarian David Mirkin) it's really just a cartoon run-around in a factory, and an amusing look at the attitudes to meat production in a world of anthropomorphic animals. (No-one whines about classic Bugs Bunny versus Elmer Fudd cartoons being "anti-hunting" soapboxes, but then, the world has many more meat eaters than hunters)



Of course, the captions "Me" and "David" are not part of the actual episode; they are annotations added by the YouTube poster. I'm interested in the story behind them...

I do rather like the "Happy the Cow" bit (which puts me in mind of Suicide Food) but the gender-confusion irritates me, as you'd probably figured out.

And of course the ending kind of hits you over the head with the message that "this is a fantasy world where even vegetables have feelings - it has nothing to do with real life. We're not suggesting you actually go vegetarian or something!"

I can't speak for other vegans or vegetarians of course, but I expect both we and omnivores have problems with this cartoon, and for completely opposite reasons! But maybe I'm wrong. What do you think?

The Pinocchio craze of Ought Seven

When I look back fondly on my days at University, somehow it's the Spring 2007 semester that gives me the most nostalgic glow. However, one of the things about that time which really put it on the map had nothing to do with University life. I refer to when Hans Perk posted the animator drafts for Pinocchio!

In order to understand why that was so great, I need to take you back to the summer of 2002. Some piece of stimulus -- probably the Rankin-Bass animated versions of The Hobbit and The Return of the King -- gave me a renewed interest in some of the old animated films - especially the ones from the late '30s and very early '40s: Snow White, Gulliver's Travels, Pinocchio and Hoppity (aka Mr Bug) Goes To Town.

I do remember having that kidhood feeling of fascination/terror regarding Pinocchio. It was probably the one of those films which I had seen the least often... and perhaps that was why it was the one which caught my interest the most, although it would be almost a year before I saw it again. I did read about it, though, in a book that had been in the house a long time, which I had also not looked at for many years: Christopher Finch's The Art of Walt Disney.

In this book I discovered some information about the making of Pinocchio which I probably hadn't paid attention to when I looked in the book before. I learned that different animators were assigned to different characters: for example, Jiminy Cricket's animators included Ward Kimball, Woolie Reitherman and Don Towsley, and Lampwick was animated by Fred Moore. I recognised the names of many animators, and had long been able to distinguish the directors of Warner Brothers cartoons (I could tell a Chuck Jones cartoon from a Bob Clampett cartoon, for example), but this was the first time I had really learned anything about what the actual animators did.

In summer 2003 I had rediscovered "golden age" animation, and I found the Termite Terrace Trading Post on the ToonZone forums. (If those links are confusing you, this was before the TTTP moved to the Golden Age Cartoons forums) And there I was in contact with people who were able to tell you which person was responsible for which character or which scene in almost any cartoon - usually the Tom and Jerry and Warner Bros. shorts. I did hear (read, that is) vague talk about how the Disney studio always kept meticulous animation records, but I knew that if I ever asked the simple question "Who animated what in Pinocchio", even if anyone knew the answer it would be far to big and complicated for them to post.

Then in summer 2006, I saw that some animation historians had set up blogs where they were posting old studio records - animation drafts which listed each individual scene (what we would usually call a "shot") and who animated it. One blogger, Michael Sporn, had even posted up the first few scenes of the Pinocchio draft! But those were the only pages he had. And thus, it wasn't until February 2007 that I was able to finally see that which I had hoped for all those years.

So, over the next few weeks, as Hans posted more and more pages of the animation draft, I would learn the answer to "who animated what." In fact, at the time part of my University work actually involved studying old censuses which had been put onto computer databases and learning what conlusions could be reached from them. So after each of those classes on Tuesday mornings, I'd put aside one set of historical records and check the A. Film L.A. blog to see if a different type of historical records had been posted.

It was the start of a kind of Pinocchio craze among animation bloggers, but that will have to wait for another post...