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I didn’t really know about animation smears until college. It was a time when my passion for animation had just kicked into high gear, and once I learned how to convert my DVDs into Quicktime files, the flood gates opened. I was like a kid in a candy store, scouring through hours of animation every day. As I looked through the cartoons, I began to discover some odd things occurring. A character would look perfectly fine in one frame, but for a few frames it would turn into an absolutely insane-looking mutant, before suddenly reverting back to normal form. Without any understanding of what these were, I had discovered smears.

Around the same time, my second year animation teacher at the School of Visual Arts, Celia Bullwinkel, gave an in-class lecture about smears. She explained to us what they were, and what purpose they served. She screened a few smear-heavy Chuck Jones cartoons like The Dover Boys, showed some still-frame examples, and gave us an assignment to animate one ourselves. Of course, every budding animator thinks the same thing when they discover smears: “I CAN USE THESE FOR EVERYTHING!” But soon one learn that smears are best used judiciously; otherwise everything you animate looks like it’s made of Jell-O. 

After some time passed, I began to appreciate smears outside of the context of animation, simply as still pieces of art. Somebody had to draw every one of these. It’s a truly creative and subliminal way of expressing artistic abilities, while at the same time serving the practical purpose of recreating an effect that happens naturally in live-action film.

Eventually, my friends said I should go ahead and make a blog about them, probably so that I would stop pointing them out while we were watching animated films together. So two years ago, I launched Smears, Multiples and Other Animation Gimmicks, never imagining that it would become as popular as it did.

Almost immediately after setting up my first post, followers started pouring in. I opened up submissions so that followers could submit their own images, and people began submitting smears from anime, foreign animated films, television shows, commercials, video games, Newgrounds Flash films, and even smears they had animated themselves. 

As of this writing, the Smears Tumblr has over 110,000 followers. I’m sure many followers simply find the images hilarious, but I believe there are plenty of us out there who think they are much more than just funny images. Either way, I’m glad people get as much of a kick out of these as I do. Perhaps a few young animation fans have been inadvertently enlightened on how much art, creativity and hard work goes into creating animation. That’s a good thing, I think.

After drawing a crowd of 15,000 attendees to Cowboys Stadium for a live simulcast of Mozart’s The Magic Flute, the Dallas Opera aims for repeated success this April with Turnadot. This year’s curtain-raiser, however, will be the world’s largest screening of What’s Opera, Doc?, displayed on the Stadium’s record-breaking 160-foot wide, 72-foot tall HD screens. 

Surprisingly, Cowboys Stadium was planned from the outset to bring high art into the lives of sports fans—Gene Jones, the wife of Cowboys owner Jerry Jones, is almost solely responsible for the Stadium’s museum-quality collection of contemporary art. This arena-turned-cultural center will provide the setting for the latest chapter in the love-hate relationship between animation and classical music.

With Fantasia, Walt Disney quite literally tried to align animation with the high arts, with ostriches unironically performing ballet pas de deuxs set to the “Dance of the Hours” from the opera La Gioconda. Eventually, animation and classical music became a tongue-in-cheek pairing; during the early 1950s it was commonplace to see Wile E. Coyote assemble a spring-loaded rocket launcher to the sounds of a lilting oboe. By the time Chuck Jones produced What’s Opera, Doc? in 1957, it was a way of saying “Screw ‘em,” to the established arts. “I never made a cartoon that didn’t contain some flick-of-the-wrist at the establishment of the day,” said Jones in Chuck Jones: Conversations.

This April, in a very public arena, Jones and his work will be embraced by the very establishment he parodied. Only now, as opera faces its biggest identity crisis, does it wholeheartedly embrace the exaggerated cultural conventions we’ve established over the years: busty valkyries, lovesick brutes and overdone pageantry. Keith Cerny, the CEO of Dallas Opera acknowledges that What’s Opera Doc? is “still creative, interesting, fresh, plays off the same stereotypes about opera that we’re addressing today.” Proponents of opera have realized that the best chance of fruitful survival is to laugh with us—if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em.

Ready…set…pre-order Tod Polson’s book about legendary Warner Bros. layout man Maurice Noble. The book is called The Noble Approach: Maurice Noble and the Zen of Animation Design. Publisher is Chronicle Books; street date is May 31, 2013. Retails for $40, Amazon price is $26.40.

I will be presenting a fantastic set of surreal cartoons at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art next Friday night. My show, Animating the Subconscious, is part of a series of film programs at the museum, under the umbrella title of The Surreal Screen, all of which prelude an upcoming exhibition there, Drawing Surrealism. My cartoon show will present 35mm vault prints of ten classic cartoons that explore “imagination’s more outlandish perimeters”. The full list is below, but highlights include Disney/Dali’s Destino, Fleischer Studios’ Betty Boop Snow White and Screen Gems cult favorite Willoughby’s Magic Hat (I can’t wait to see that in 35mm on the big screen). Join me on Friday October 19th at 7:30pm, at LACMA on Wilshire for a bunch of great cartoons that will blow your mind. For more information and tickets, click here.

FANTASMAGORIE
1908/b&w/1 min. | 35mm supplied by Academy Film Archive

BIMBO’S INITIATION
1931/b&w/6 min. | Fleischer Studios | 35mm supplied by UCLA Film and Television Archive

SNOW WHITE
1933/b&w/7 min. | Fleischer Studios | 35mm supplied by UCLA Film and Television Archive

LULLABY LAND
1933/color /7 min. | Silly Symphonies (Walt Disney Pictures) | 35mm supplied by Buena Vista

PORKY IN WACKYLAND
1938/b&w/7 min. | Looney Tunes | 35mm supplied by Warner Bros.

WILLOUGHBY’S MAGIC HAT
1943/b&w/7 min. | Phantasies (Columbia Pictures) | 35mm supplied by Sony Repertory

IMAGINATION
1943/color/7 min. | Color Rhapsodies (Columbia Pictures) | 35mm supplied by Sony Repertory

THE OLD GREY HARE
1944/color/8 min. | Looney Tunes | 35mm supplied by British Film Institute

DUCK AMUCK
1953/color/7 min. | Looney Tunes | 35mm supplied by Warner Bros.

DESTINO
2003/color/7 min. | Walt Disney Pictures | 35mm supplied by Buena Vista

The post about the 1955 Chuck Jones short A Hitch in Time was well received, so let’s complete the story. Jones made at least two more military propaganda films following that one—90 Day Wondering in 1956 and Drafty, Isn’t It? in 1957.

The gem of the bunch may be 90 Day Wondering. I’d seen some of Maurice Noble’s layout concepts for this short when researching the book Cartoon Modern, but regretfully, hadn’t seen the short. It is an absolutely fantastic example of the ‘cartoon modern’ aesthetic, with an astounding level of craft that is far beyond the needs of the plebeian ideas expressed in the film.

The first minute of the film has an expert piece of temporal and spatial compression. We follow the main character’s ecstatic journey out of the military and back to his hometown while he runs around in a whirlwind a la the Tasmanian Devil. It’s also a great use of animated movement to illustrate the inner emotions of a character.

When the main character is finally revealed to the audience, he has arrived at his hometown of Spooner, which also happens to be Maurice Noble’s birthplace (Spooner Township, Minnesota). Noble is at his peak of layout powers in this short. He plays liberally with exaggeration of shapes in the background, perspective, pattern and color, and thinks nothing of it to key some of the backgrounds in full color while using stark white backdrops for other scenes in the film.

The main character, Ralphie, is designed with more realism than one might expect of a Warner Bros. cartoon, but that is a direct consequence of the cartoon’s purpose, which was first and foremost to convince military personnel to re-enlist. Ralphie’s realistic design also plays a nice contrast to the cartoonier characters Pete and Re-Pete, who play the role of his conscience.

It’s a thrill at this late date to discover new Chuck Jones cartoons from the Fifties. It’s also educational. Looking at Jones films that I’ve never seen allows me to be objective about their quality in a way that I can’t be about the classic Jones shorts that I’ve seen dozens of times.

This trio of military-propaganda shorts that Jones made is phenomenally impressive. Jones’s crew brings a level of expertise and professionalism to the table that is woefully lacking (dare I say, completely absent) in much of today’s cartoon animation. If anything, the films should serve as a reminder that almost any idea or concept can be enhanced by animation if the animation is entrusted to filmmakers who are passionate about the craft of visual storytelling.

A Hitch in Time is a new one for me: a 1955 propaganda short directed by Chuck Jones that encouraged U. S. Air Force personnel to re-enlist. The cartoon appeared last year on the first volume of the Looney Tunes Platinum Collection.

What impresses most about this short are the production values. Layout artist Ernie Nordli and background painter Philip De Guard give a masterclass in composition and color.

There is absolutely no reason a didactic re-enlistment film like this needs to look so good except that the artists who made it didn’t know how to do it anyway else. They were craftsmen at the top of their game, and they managed to turn the most mundane material into something entertaining and beautiful.

Chuck Jones is at his peak as an artist, and his character layouts of the two main characters are lots of fun. The animation is equally expert. Although the movement plays second fiddle to Jones’s overpowering poses, it’s no mean feat to give life to designs as organic and complex as these.

The film is no classic, but it’s a must-see for any fan of Chuck Jones and Golden Age Hollywood animation.

(via Cartoon Retro)

Legendary Warner Bros. cartoon director Chuck Jones was born on September 21st, 1912. He passed away ten years ago at age 89, but this is his 100th year and Jones family is celebrating with three (count’em 3) special events in Southern California – all of the worth your time.

First and foremost – Chuck’s daughter Linda is presenting a Chuck Jones Centennial Celebration Film Festival on Friday September 21st (Chuck’s actual birthday) at the Alex Theatre in Glendale (at 8pm). The program will include a screening of 35mm cartoons from Chuck’s personal vault – with on-stage introductions by veteran animators Eric Goldberg and Carl Bell, and some animation historian named Jerry Beck. There will also be artwork on display and other surprises. Cartoon Brew readers can get a 20% discount off the admission price by using the promo code: Cartoonbrew921

The next night, Saturday September 22nd, from 6pm to 10pm The Chuck Jones Center for Creativity in Costa Mesa will host a gala fundraising event entitled Creativity Season, which includes a three-course sit-down dinner with wine, special presentations by celebrities, and live auction. Those celebrities will include writer Leonard Maltin, musician George Daugherty (Bugs Bunny on Broadway), director Rob Minkoff (Lion King), producer Jeff DeGrandis (Dora the Explorer), director Chris Bailey (Kim Possible), Kelly Asbury (Gnomeo and Juliet), Director/animator Eric Goldberg (Pocahontas) and many others.

Last but not least, Cal Arts is presenting Jones at 100 – a birthday celebration of Chuck Jones (Chouinard ’30) featuring a special screening of his classic films with remarks by John Lasseter in person. Its 8pm on Wednesday, Sept. 26, 2012, with a reception immediately following at REDCAT/Roy and Edna Disney CalArts Theater in Downtown LA. Tickets are $50. with proceeds to benefit the Joe Ranft/CalArts Alumni Scholarship and the Chuck Jones Center for Creativity.

What says “Chuck Jones centennial celebration” better than this kitschy painting of Bugs and Daffy riding motorcycles? According to the Chuck Jones Gallery, the artist Mike Kungl has created something of a masterpiece: “With his sleek styling, geometric patterns and luxurious color palette, he is able to evoke the sophistication of the Art Deco era and at the same time add a contemporary look to the beloved cartoon characters brought to such magical life by Chuck Jones.” The gallery is selling the limited edition piece for $600. Pay an extra $300 to have an artist “hand-embellish” the piece. For an extra $500, they’ll complete the deal and have one of their gallery employees whiz on Chuck’s grave.

Cartoon Brew | Permalink | 8 comments | Post tags: Animation Art, Chuck Jones

Golden Age animator Phil Monroe (1916-1988) is rarely discussed, even amongst animation cognoscenti, which is unfortunate because he had an amazing career. Over the course of his career, he animated for an honor roll of legendary directors including Bob Clampett, John Hubley, Chuck Jones, Pete Burness, Friz Freleng, and Frank Tashlin. Animation historian Michael Barrier has posted a never-before-published 1976 interview with Phil Monroe that he and Milton Gray conducted.

The interview delves into details that may appeal to only a small portion of our twenty thousand-plus daily readers, but if you appreciate classic Warner Bros. shorts and animation history in general, the interview is guaranteed to blow your mind. There’s even a great story about how Monroe got Chuck Jones and Friz Freleng to square dance with one another, even though “they were barely on speaking terms.” Barrier conducted a follow-up interview with Monroe in 1987, which he promises to publish online soon.

Cartoon Brew | Permalink | No comment | Post tags: Bob Clampett, Chuck Jones, Frank Tashlin, Friz Freleng, John Hubley, Michael Barrier, Pete Burness, Phil Monroe, Warner Bros.

Chuck Jones shows how to draw Bugs Bunny

Our friends at TVShowsOnDVD have reported on Warner Home Video’s plans to release Looney Tunes Mouse Chronicles on DVD and Blu-ray Disc. I guess that means it’s okay for me to discuss it here.

Because I’m involved as a consultant on certain Warner DVD projects, I have to sign a non-disclosure form preventing me from talking about them before the company makes them public (That said, I wish I could tell you about the stuff coming out later this year. Consider this a hint that some of the most sought after animation the company owns is headed to DVD and blu-ray within the next year).

This Mouse Chronicles set contains 2-discs and runs 133 minutes long, includes an all-new featurette (Of Mice and Pen) and audio commentary by several historians and animators. This collection began life as one of the series of Looney Tunes Super-Stars and was designed to showcase only Chuck Jones’ Hubie and Bertie and Sniffles cartoons. While some of these have already been released on previous collections, most of this material is new to video – and beautiful restored. The DVD & Blu-Ray come out on August 28th – $18.89 on Amazon.com. Restored cartoon titles listed after the bump.

Sniffles Cartoons:
Naughty but Mice
Little Brother Rat
Sniffles and the Bookworm
Sniffles Takes a Trip
The Egg Collector
Bedtime for Sniffles
Sniffles Bells the Cat
Toy Trouble
The Brave Little Bat
The Unbearable Bear
Lost and Foundling
Hush my Mouse

Hubie and Bertie Cartoons:
The Aristo-Cat
Trap Happy Porky
Roughly Squeaking
House Hunting Mice
Mouse Wreckers
The Hypo-Chondri-Cat
Cheese Chasers

Cartoon Brew | Permalink | No comment | Post tags: Chuck Jones

We spent most of yesterday morning laughing our fool heads off over my pathetic drawings in round after round of Draw Something. It’s like Pictionary on your phone or iPad. Years ago, gosh, maybe as long as TEN years ago, I used to play a lot of iSketch with a group of friends—that too was like Pictionary, but you drew with your mouse. Very tricky. Drawing with my finger in Draw Something is only marginally easier. But oh such fun.

One of the friends I’m playing with happens to be a professional comic book artist. His pictures are, as you can imagine, quite wonderful: comical works of art. I draw stick figures; he produces fully colored masterpieces. One of the game’s best features is that you watch your opponent’s (partner’s? it’s not a competitive game) drawing in real time. I’m sure this becomes tedious for my partners, as they watch me begin and delete attempt after attempt to produce a recognizable “butcher” or “runway” or “Angelina Jolie.” For my kids and me, watching the replay on our end, this game provides a spectacular peek into the mind of an artist.

Speaking of: here’s a clip Scott shared on Facebook today. Delightful and rather dazzling: Chuck Jones demonstrates how to draw Bugs Bunny. “If you’re going to draw Bugs, the best way is to learn how to draw a carrot, and then you can just hook a rabbit onto it. Simplicity itself.” Oh, so THAT’S how you do it.

Fear not! The dastardly Dan Backslide won’t win this round. The Dover Boys—Tom, Dick and Larry—have come to the rescue!

Actually, the quartet behind this brilliant classic cartoon tribute is a group of animation students who attend the School of Visual Arts in New York City. (I’ll post their names just as soon as I get the info.)

Most readers should be familiar with the Chuck Jones cartoon being celebrated, but in case you’re not, go and watch The Dover Boys at Pimento University.

Cartoon Brew: Leading the Animation Conversation | Permalink | One comment | Post tags: Chuck Jones, Halloween

The quintessential Father’s Day cartoon, not to mention an extraordinary achievement in the art of cartoon animation: Chuck Jones’ A Bear for Punishment. They don’t make ‘em like this anymore.

Cartoon Brew: Leading the Animation Conversation | Permalink | No comment | Post tags: Chuck Jones

TV Ontario, a public broadcaster in Canada, has an amazing archive online and here’s one for us. It’s an episode of Talking Film (1980) which compiles two interviews, one with Chuck Jones, another with Friz Freleng, with interviewer Elwy Yost originally conducted for a series called Saturday Night at the Movies. Much of it we’ve heard before, but there are a few new nuggets of information and opinion – and its certainly worth a view to spend a few more minutes with Chuck and Friz:

(Thanks, Mark Conolly)

Cartoon Brew: Leading the Animation Conversation | Permalink | No comment | Post tags: Chuck Jones, Friz Freleng, Warner Bros. Cartoons

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences will be hosting two back-to-back animation events in August. The first, on Thursday night August 19th, will be a panel on the art of animation voice acting. Panelists will include June Foray, Jim Cummings (Winnie the Pooh), Yuri Lowenthal (Ben 10 and anime) and Russi Taylor (Minnie Mouse), animation directors Bob Peterson (Dug) and James Baxter, and casting director Rick Dempsey. Voices of Character will be moderated by animation historian Charles Solomon.

The second program, the next night Friday August 20th, will be a screening of all nine Oscar nominated and winning Chuck Jones cartoons in 35mm. The program will include For Scent-imental Reasons (1949), So Much For So Little (1949), Mouse Wreckers (1948), From A To Z-Z-Z-Z (1953), High Note (1960), Beep Prepared (1961), Nelly’s Folly (1961), Now Hear This (1962) and The Dot and The Line (1962, pictured above).

Tickets for these events go on sale August 2nd, general admission is $5 (students with a valid ID $3). Both programs will start at 7:30 p.m. at the Samuel Goldwyn Theater, 8949 Wilshire Blvd. in Beverly Hills, California.