More Really Real
Like most buffs, I developed my addiction to old time animation by
watching great, glorious gobs of the stuff on T.V. One thing that
distinguished the really vintage theatrical type cartoon characters
vs. the made for television guys — they changed! As a kid, I was
probably unaware that these older films were made over the span of
decades by dozens of different creative teams. But I sure as hell
picked up on what I saw. Porky PIg is going to elementary school in
one cartoon, and then in the next one he’s all middle aged, filling
out his income taxes! And his weight! Up, down, up, down! Sometimes he looked positively tiny, and in other films you figure they just used a saucer to trace his outline!
Donald Duck, Woody Woodpecker, Betty Boop and the others all changed age, shape and proportion time and time again. Hell, Mighty Mouse seemed to have trouble staying the same size in one single cartoon! Logically, I guess these inconsistencies should have been
disorienting, but to me they made these characters more organic, more real… more human!
And, of course, made me love them all the more!
Dave Kirwan
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On March 2nd, 2006 at 12:00 am
Hey Dave:
I have a lot of cool original artwork done by my pal Chuck Jones that I’ll be posting!
Hold onto your seat!
Your Cartoon Pal……
Jeff
On March 2nd, 2006 at 12:00 am
..Thats all folks! -Steve
On March 2nd, 2006 at 12:00 am
If you look at the early Hanna-Barbera TV stuff, it all changed, too. Huck and especially Yogi, were quite different after their first few cartoons. Of course, in my humble opinion, sometimes folks just didn’t know when to let well enough alone. They redesigned “The Flintstones” models one too many times at least, during the course of the show’s original run.