Crazy Cute

I love when Scribner draws cute characters. They are reaaaallly cute - but kind of crazed too. It's like he's making fun of cuteness but at the same time likes it. he's torn - as am I.

This frame is genius!
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I have a theory about how Scribner evolved this jittery cluttered style.
The action in much of his work after Clampett happens within very confined spaces.

When he animated for Clampett, he was free to use the whole screen to move his characters in. Gestures could reach all across the wide open spaces.
The characters could jump all around within the big movie screen canvas.

When Clampett left, McKimson tried to control Scribner's animation - to "bring the characters back down to earth" as Friz once said to me.

Scribner's work in McKimson cartoons seems very claustrophobic - as if McKimson drew an invisible box around the characters and told Rod :"Don't let your characters stretch beyond the walls of this box." The box can pan across the screen, but the character can never take up more than 40% of the n/s, e/w axis.

FROM MCKIMSON'S "OILY HARE"Scribner's poses never quite make it to the extreme frame in McKimson's cartoons. -like they are not allowed to fully extend their arms.

FROM CLAMPETT'S "CORNY CONCERTO"
" No more of this Clampett stuff!"

Scribner's immense creative energy had to express itself somewhere, so now his characters began twitching and pulsating within the invisible conservative closet that McKimson confined them in. The characters' arms could no longer completely straighten out. Characters couldn't make broad distinct silhouettes anymore. Lines of action became crumpled and jagged because the characters could no longer stretch all the way to a final pose.
You can see in this commercial and in the animation Scribner did in McKimson's cartoons the results of the spacial confinement. The characters' eyes keep bugging out in accents, characters begin to move in one direction - but never complete their action, instead they bounce off the edge of a force field and recoil in the other direction. They can't move too far left, right, up or down, so instead they boil and throb with extreme energy and lifeforce within a small area. It's very frustrating!
It's also very funny but in a way that seems to be Scribner's way of rebelling against the post Clampett conservative landslide that eventually smothered the whole animation business.

With each passing year and decade, animation got more and more creatively confining. Other animators went along with it, some crumbling, others making due. Scribner held on to his full animation and cartoony roots the only way he could within the ever tightening straightjacket. His characters wriggled and fought to break through their arbitrary bonds.

This commercial may have been almost his last gasp. I have other Koolaid Bugs commercials like this that look like he worked on them, but that someone else went over and toned down.

WATCH BUGS AND ELMER TWITCH AND THROB


Note: the second half of the commercial is animated by a Chuck Jones animator- I'm guessing Benny Washam. It's very handsome, expertly timed and posed. If I had not seen the Scribner stuff next to it I would probably say it was great. I have only one problem with it. Unlike the Scribner animation, it's missing an essential ingredient of cartooning - it's not entertaining.






Very professional and crisp animation, but not very interesting.

The HB I Like

I don't like Tom and Jerry at all. I do like Hanna Barbera's TV cartoons from 1957 to about 1962. Really to about 1960. They are fun cartoons to eat breakfast with.They were on to a great thing for kids and then dumped everything good about it really fast.
The color and design in the early HB cartoons is pure candy.


I also like the simplicity. Simple, that is but with a method. Not simple without skill like today's simple. Modern TV is crawling with cartoons that look (and sound) like they are made by retarded 10 year olds. It seems like networks go out of their way to make cartoons amateurish and no fun. It's a complete mystery to me.This is proof that even on an extremely low budget you can at least make something fun to look at. And great voices don't cost that much either. HB certainly had those.

I loved the Jetsons as a kid because of its promise. It never quite lived up to its core elements though. HB was just too conservative to take advantage of what it had. I'll never understand it.
HB merchandise did take advantage of the style though. It was often more liberal with the designs than the studio itself.

I really liked when Dino was an African American.
I wish I could find more Dan Gordon storyboards for HB.
Someday someone will let me revive these characters. They are in my blood. I bet they would make a fortune.

Here's one of my favorite sites:

http://yowpyowp.blogspot.com/

I like it not just because its about early HB cartoons that I think it's good. It tells you lots of interesting history and behind the scenes stuff, plus he tells you about the music and shows lots of funny frame grabs:It's just what you want from a cartoon blog. Very pure.




I wish there were sites like this for WB and Fleischer. Tex Avery too. If there are, let me know. Maybe I missed them.