Animation - Test 4

Loves popular culture -- influences his gags. Influenced by George Lichtenstein "Lichty's" style (from the Grin and Bear It comic series), referring to moments of high emotion.

Often paired up with Rod Scribner (animator) – style derived from Lichty: 3D quality derived from various lines, influenced by cubism (unintentionally) and its constructed realities: time is not fixed.

Clampett is the Emotion director – it drives his gags and influences his animation style. His characters are also driven by emotion (especially Daffy).

He directs from feeling.

Typically uses mese-en-scene direction.

Self trained, but studied at Chinard

The Logical director – builds logical problems, cartoons solve them in "intellectual examinations"

Use of stylized backgrounds, which often contrast with the action.

Interested in character development – turning the character on its head – violating expectancies for the character.

Valued building a coherent film over gag construction.

Switched between mise-en-scene and montage over time

Organic use of modernism (with Noble: "I don't believe any cartoon is successful when you force a style onto it." - a jab at UPA).

Almost immediately, makes Daffy Duck and Porky Pig the stars they are today (gave them their defining characteristics)

Had a major effect on the WB Style: emphasis on timing ("Timing is everything."), character style, and fluid sexuality

Sets up shots like live-action film. Had a distinct style and look

Heavily influenced by Art Deco.

Robert Gribbrock (the primary WB layout artist at the time) retires.

Noble becomes Jones' primary layout artist in 1953.

Graphic style "push[es] ahead of reality." – a burlesquing of backgrounds. e.g. the extreme proportions of rock formations in the Roadrunner cartoons.

His style was already developed when he came to WB. He employed modernist techniques, but not based on any specific artistic discipline.

Believed designer should "have fun" in the designs to assist the total enjoyable effect of the cartoon. The backgrounds generate gags and unite them. "Visual giddiness."

Saw animation as a new (temporal) dimension in graphic design – including background action, camera movement, and shot length.

Provided detailed notes for his painter (Phillip DeGarde), allowing high control for a stylized texture in the backgrounds.

Birth of Daffy Duck: begins as an insane duck with some human characteristics, becomes (under Clampett) a passionate anthropomorph with some duck characteristics.

Won Academy Award.

The mature WB style is now visible.

(earlier) Egghead character (inspired by Dopey) becomes Elmer Fudd.

Bugs Bunny is also insane. His original design and personality are inspired by the rabbit in Disney's "The Tortoise and the Hare," but the later redesign by Bob McKinson leads to his anti-neotenous appearance.

Incorporation of synecdoche (hand for Bugs), sexual note (runs finger erotically over the carrot), fluid sexuality (Bugs vamping Elmer in drag), and a mock death.

Bugs is a "city character," while Elmer is a rural, neotenous character.

Includes a gag where Bugs "goes off model" (i.e. substantial change of the character's structure [e.g. Bugs stretching as he leans toward elmer] for the sake of a gag).

Avery's last film at WB – he leaves because Schlessinger cut one of the lines.

Animation by Bob McKinson (who created Bugs's model sheet).

Features fully-developed Avery timing, largely anthropomorphic Bugs and Daffy, both of whom are full cartoon "actors" – they play roles (i.e. Bugs Bunny playing a character) in their films.

Largely a montage film (cf. mese-en-scene films)

Imitates the angles and lighting effects of live-action features.

Gag-focused.

Use of both handpainted and transparent shadows (which use more expensive double exposure techniques).

Animator Volne White incorporates art deco and streamlining.

Filmic techniques of growing traps throughout, long pans, a montage sequence inspired by Battleship Potemkin.

Incorporation of melodrama.

Volney White's design of the evil lawyer is art deco-inspired (especially around his eyes), stylized, streamlined.

Effects: use of flashes (with double exposure)

Filmic: incorporation of extreme close-ups

Use of long pans.

A mature Daffy Duck – primarily shown as passionate, not insane.

Tashlin became a live-action film director, but his live films have the same gag-driven structure and similar comic techniques as his earlier animation.

Scribner's animation: use of a constructed reality (a la cubism). No in-betweens are used, instead 3 key drawings are fused in the viewer's mind to convey an emotion and make the scene more real.

Radical changes in form (departures from model) to show an emotional state -- shows the character's mind in a very different way than Norm Fergusson.

When the Prince is about to kiss Snow White, we see the simultaneous expression of all his states of mind -> allows us to perceive what he's thinking.

The cowboy is inspired by Red Skelton – Bugs torments the cowboy.

Some gags "go beyond the ick factor"

Important gag: horse runs off cliff, but comes crawling back to its edge – a classic Clampett gag.

A film with Bugs and Elmer.

Elmer is tired of playing the hunter, tears up his contract, and Bugs has to bring Elmer back by invading his dreams and tormenting him (a new reality).

Elmer's sexuality is especially fluid in this short.

Daffy's anthropomorphic character is playing Danny Kaye (in his Russian accent for the singing sequence).

Daffy is not crazy, but passionate – he is provoked.

This short is heavily inspired by pop culture (with the various book titles/gags) and employs character shifts and gender switches.

Heavily influenced by Dick Tracy novels.

Lichty in its realizations.

Use of passion, model distortions when times of high emotion, no logical underpinning.

Animator: McGrew – similar emphasis on background (violates the Schlessinger style), shows an interest in art deco design.

Deconstructing the hero – is the dumb character.

Low horizon, flattened perspective.

Hugely stylized character designs, movement. Non-mimesis, exaggerated colors of his style would become more mainstream during the war.

Rube Goldberg references (which would be more common in the Roadrunner films).

Layout artist: John McGrew – was interested in the effect of the background on the animation.

Introduces the notion of the supernatural, which drives the film – somewhat unusual for Jones (cf. Roadrunner, where the chase drives the film).

Minah bird's surrogate is the bush, the haystack – function as the same thing.

Heavily stylized background characters, exaggerated hills.

Lots of irrational events (uncharacteristic)

Bernice Polifka as layout designer – had a background in art, emphasized graphic conflict between foreground and background. Pushed a very aggressive layout design. For example, when Bugs lowers the chicken on strings, the chicken's color is present in the background and it becomes an outline only once it passes over this part of the background (Gaugin's influence).

Reincorporation of strong poses, which violate the Disney style common at the time. These poses allowed the body's shape to convey ideas as caricatured thoughts and emotions.

Dancing invades the sailors' mentality suggests the influence of Tex Avery.

Writer: Michael Maltese becomes influential at WB. Develops Bugs Bunny as an adult, a "counterrevolutionary" who fights against changes being imposed upon him.

An example of WB's shift to stories with 2 opposing characters.

Antagonist is an arrogant, short-tempered bully (the typical foil for Bugs, who is typically provoked, as opposed to in earlier cartoons where he is the aggressor).

Features the phrase: "Of course you know this means war!"

Jones/Noble

Detailed textures (e.g. textured transparency for glass)

Extreme colors, highly stylized, humorous futuristic design, expressivism.

Jones' autodidactism informs the elaborate gags.

Jones/Noble

Backgrounds are even more recognizably Noble's – more expansive, more fun.

The layout designs separate the fantasy and real worlds: fantasy is more colorful, has more contrast, and is brighter than the real world.

Jones/Noble

Noble's design includes extreme lighting, values creating forms (e.g. forms of trees and bushes made from the shapes of real bush/tree shadows), highly forced perspective (reminiscent of high contrast under stage lighting), balletic background design (reference to tutus: flesh tones and pinks).

Considered to be one of (if not the very) best cartoon ever made.

Includes 141 cuts – 3 times the normal number. The cartoon was much more lavish than other cartoons, so it had to be completed on the side.

Logic: the film is a satire of an opera, so it must follow the operatic conventions:
(except for the front of the stage)
e.g. the ending where Bugs turns to the audience and burlesques the sad ending (in this case, the death is not a mock death) of the cartoon.

Many references are made to Richard Wagner's symphonic opera: a General Work of Art (which uses multiple media in creating a greater result). This includes certain songs (e.g. "Ride of the Valkyries") and actions/plot elements (e.g. the plump horse riding in with the love interest [here, vamping Bugs]) from Wagner's operas.

Jones/Noble

The Roadrunner cartoon structure is inspired by "The Fox and the Grapes" (dir Tashlin at Columbia): fox goes to increasingly over the top lengths to get the grapes.

The Roadrunner cartoons demonstrate the Freling 2 character structure.

The Roadrunner is supernatural – he is immensely fast, and has perfect timing to avoid the Coyote.

The Coyote is vain – he wants to show off (to the audience) – but he is inept.

The shorts consist of "spot-gags" – those which do not last the entire film.

There is a separation between the pursuit and its objective – at some point, the Coyote wants to capture more than to have captured the Roadrunner.

The Roadrunner series is guided by logic. All episodes adhere to the following tenets:
1) The Roadrunner never leaves the road.
2) The Coyote is never injured by the Roadrunner; he injures himself.
3) The setting is the American Southwest – this allows the characters to be alone, and it conveys an ideological meaning (making the Coyote's struggle an "American struggle.")
4) There is never any dialogue.
5) The Coyote is never hurt or in pain; he is insulted.
6) The sympathy of the audience is always with the Coyote.

Boldly handled, simply mixed colors (bright, unadulterated)
"The 19th century at a higher temperature."

Divisionism (dots or strokes)
"Post-impressionism plus"
Includes Matisse, Derain, Vlaminck, Braque, Marquet
Use of strokes of color

Picasso, Braque (influenced from Cezanne's retrospective in 1907)
Ignores spatial conventions of the academic pictorial space
The first abstract art movement of the 20th century
New Realism – synthesizes a pluralism of realisms
"The point of cubism is to paint what you know is there, not what you see." - Gertrude Stein

Influenced all subsequent modern art

"French Dada" (where Dada is German, influenced by World War I and blaming it on the bourgeoisie)

Influenced by Cubism

Stridently anti-bourgeois, emphasis on mechanical expression (=automatism) -- especially marks that occur automatically

A new reality constructed from mingling reason and unreason, uncontrolled by aesthetic or moral consideration

Adherence to chance effects

A fasciation with dreams and the unconscious

At this point, Disney begins making features at the expense of shorts.