Popeye Reasons To Be Animated

Obviously, Popeye cartoons use many ingredients to make them so special. Throbbing is one of them.
Personality is another, but those are secondary qualities of cartoons. Well, actually maybe throbbing is pretty important since it is hard to imagine live action being able to throb to the beat.

But the one creative quality that is unique to animated cartoons is demonstrated artfully in this here clip.

POPEYE SHOWS US WHAT CARTOONS ARE ABOUT

There are 2 types of impossible gags here.

1) Visual Metaphor - the hand with the vice grip. It's a good gag, and appropriate to the character and story, but kind of obvious since it is half literary.

2) The Eye gag - this one is more creative because it just comes out of nowhere. When I show the clip at festivals, the hand gag gets smiles, but the eye gag gets huge laughs. it's less expected.

I wonder if this is one of Dave Fleischer's gags. I talked to Shamus Culhane and Myron Waldman and they both sort of complained about how Dave would come around and make them add gags that were really out there. Good for Dave, I say!

Rubberhead

another scene from my favorite cartoon

The way this guy moves is great


Not only is this idea funny, the way he erases Daffy is such a funny and rude action!

damn DVNR!

http://www.cartoonthrills.org/blog/Clampett/46PiggyBank/DaffyEraserHead.mov

Squirt Animation

Jones may have introduced "Smear Animation", but Clampett brought us "Squirt Animation"

DAFFY SQUIRTS

Imagination

Here's the weirdest scene cut I've seen.

Before the cut Clampett anticipates that something weird is going to happen by having the bonds bag throb and shrink into infinity.
Then the hammock rolls up.

The walls begin to quiver

and then morph into a completely different scene, but Hook is still there

The WAY it morphs is really controlled and fun too - it isn't just inbetweened from one background to another as in many independent stoner animated films you see in animation festivals.






and then Hook's take when he discovers he is in a different place is amazing






The 40s was a great time for experimentation and especially in the Clampett unit. Clampett would come up with crazy ideas out of nowhere and just try them - but them execute them so skillfully that they cause a really arresting visual effect that adds to the entertainment.

http://www.cartoonthrills.org/blog/Clampett/45/Hook/ScribnerHook2.mov

This scene leads to another series of genius cuts and accents that show just what a director can do in animation if he has skill, boldness and imagination. Almost any other director would have been just too cautious and conservative to take things to this level of imagination in so short a sequence. I'll post that later