Animators' scenes

[Matt Yorston]

One topic that has come up recently on this board that I REALLY enjoy discussing/reading about is the discussion of certain animators' style along with what scenes in which their styles flourished. I've picked up on this trait recently myself. It's easiest for me on the Lantz cartoons.

It's most commonly discussed on the Tom & Jerry series but I was wondering if any animation fans could clue me in which of the following WB scenes were animated by which people...

Who animated the scene...

... in "Fox-Terror" in which the fox puts the dog in a folding box, folds it, then sells it to Foggy as a lucky charm. After being thrown into a well, the dog seeks revenge, similarly folding Foddy and throwing him in the well.

... in "Wild About Hurry" where the coyote is riding aboard his rocket when he gets thrown off it and is JUST about to catch the Road Runner when he collides with a rock formation, flattening him completely?

... in "Feline Frame-Up" where Marc Anthony goes down to the basement and saws a circle around where he thinks Claude is but brings down the master instead?

... in "Dough Ray Me-ow" where Heathcliff and Louie play "William Tell"?

... in "Often an Orphan" where Charlie acts out his "city" monologue ("Look! It's the towers! THEY'RE FALLING!")?

... in "Baseball Bugs" where the Gashouse Gorilla disguises himself as the umpire and calls Bugs out (only to have Bugs trick him into calling him "safe").

... the finale of "Wild Wild World" where Cave Darroway enters an elevator only to have the wires cut sending him into the basement?

You'll notice I didn't include many Freleng cartoons here. That's because Freleng's animators are much easier for me to differentiate then McKimson's or Jones'. I can identify any scene by Davis, Chiniquy, or Ross (but, of course, I'm not always infallible; hence why I included the "Baseball Bugs" scene). And, of course, I can pick out any scene by Rod Scribner. I know he does Foggy's frantic search for the egg in "The Egg-Cited Rooster" (My egg's GONE! Here, egg, egg, EGG!), Sylvester pounding on the lighthouse door in "Lighthouse Mouse", Egghead Jr. driving the baseball right down Foggy's throat in "Little Boy Boo", and probably the Prince Chawmin' kissing scene in "Coal Black".

[angilbas]

Greg Duffell is the expert on Warner's animators; his posts at alt.animation.warner-bros are well worth reading. As for Matt's questions, I have no firm clues, so please bear with my guesses...

Warren Batchelder was Mckimson's best animator from the late 1950s to the end of the classic era. He may have done uncredited work in "Fox-Terror" and "Ducking the Devil."

Emery Hawkins earned an excellent reputation and worked in Art Davis's unit. He probably did at least some of the key scenes in "Dough Ray Me-ow." (I think he animated the title character in "Bowery Bugs.")

Charlie's "city" act in "Often an Orphan" was likely animated by Ken Harris.

Here's what I DO know:

Abe Levitow animated Porky's belly in "Robin Hood Daffy."

Ben Washam made Bugs's upper incisors taper to a point; this is prominent in films such as "Rabbit Seasoning" and "Rabbit Rampage."

The scene in "Out and Out Rout" in which the Coyote plucks a flower was animated by Virgil Ross -- who did many of the better-moving scenes in Larriva's cartoons.

-Tony

[Howard Fein]

I suspect it's Virgil Ross who did the Bugs vs. umpire "Out-Safe" argument. Bugs' face is somewhat more pear-shaped and convex, and his mouth narrower, as it is when he does long speeches (as in the beginning of A HARE GROWS IN MANHATTAN, when he speaks to 'Lolly').

Ken Harris did the famous Momma Bear "I'm Just Wild About Father" dance in A BEAR FOR PUNISHMENT; his almond-shaped eyes and widely elongated open mouth are easily spotted.

Harris also created what I call the 'get a load of HIM!' pose used extensively by Jones. One character stands mutely with a smirk on his face :rolleyes: , pointing at the other character with an outstretched thumb, as if to say "Silly, isn't he?" See THE CASE OF THE MISSING HARE (Ala Bahma at Bugs), FOX POP (the tough fox ringleader at the wannabe 'silver fox') and RABBIT HOOD (the Sheriff at Bugs).

A variation of this pose, with dialogue (a mocking mimic of the previous line) is used in, among others, WEARING OF THE GRIN ("L-l-leprachauns-") and WHAT'S OPERA DOC ("Spear and magic helmet-").

Then there's Harris' classic subtle quickie side-view eye-shift, one of the defining features of a Jones cartoon. See TWO'S A CROWD ("You will take care of the puppy, won't you, Claude?"); ONE FROGGY EVENING (the first time the man sees the frog do his stuff); ROBIN HOOD DAFFY (Porky reacting to Daffy's continued offstage slamming into trees); TRANSYLVANIA 6-5000 ("Telephone? Oh, yes, telephone-").

Yes, it IS fascinating dissecting which animator did what scene.

[Mibbitmaker]

There is a certain way with mouths during speech I noticed long ago that I associated with McKimson-directed cartoons, though I may have noticed it in both McK and Davis cartoons from the late 40s/very early '50s.

My later notice of this quality, with big, exagerated mouths and mouth movements with prominent tongues and not-so-subtle small circles with "o" and "oo" sounds (where, with Bugs, the rabbit teeth would disappear).... I noticed that quality the first time I saw Kitty Cornered (my first viewing of Clampett at his most frenetic) in the scene with Porky in bed with the "men from Mars" ("...but that's silly. Well, goodnight."). Which animator did that? Is there another animator that draws 'em like that in McK's unit, with the Clampett animator being in the Davis unit, maybe Hawkins? Maybe Bob or Charles McKimson (noting a similar mouthing in Bugs Bunny Gets The Boid during "Keep yer shoit on, Lady! The kid's okay. Look!", a clear McKimsom animation) in the McKimson cartoons?

[Matt Yorston]

It could be Manny Gould or Rod Scribner.

[angilbas]

In "War and Pieces," it looks like most of Wile E's movements were animated by Ken Harris or Richard Thompson, while the bird was handled by Tom Ray and Bob Bransford ... with a few exceptions.

The bird's slow-motion run was done by Harris.

When Wile E. dips his brush in the can of Acme Invisible Paint, he does so under the guidance of Harris or Thompson. He's facing the right edge of the screen. Suddenly the camera angle switches so that Wile E. is facing left, and it's obvious that he's being handled by a different animator. He almost looks like the Rudy Larriva Coyote! My guess is that Bransford applied the invisible paint. After the accident, Harris or Thompson animated the fish.

The shotgun sequence looks like Harris's work, from the Coyote's smirk as he carries his weapon, through his puzzled expression as the gun behaves like a peep-show projector (I'm assuming that Harris devised the puckered-mouth look which also appears in films like "There They Go-Go-Go!", "Whoa-Be Gone!" and "Beep Prepared"), and the bird's enthusiastic response to "Secrets of a Harem" (Teletoon's print includes all of this bit).

Not all of my guesses may be right, but it's fun to speculate. :D

-Tony

[Cartman]

I can always tell when a cartoon was animated by Chuck Jones.

[Larry T]

Originally posted by Matt Yorston

... in "Baseball Bugs" where the Gashouse Gorilla disguises himself as the umpire and calls Bugs out (only to have Bugs trick him into calling him "safe").


That WAS Virgil Ross- in the mid-80s I went to an exhibit or original WB animation which went through Toronto and there was a few original animation drawings AND the dopesheet with Virgil's name on it.



Rod Scribner probably animated the Prince Chawmin' kissing scene in "Coal Black".

You're RIGHT!! That WAS him- again I saw a distribution layout and he was allotted that scene in Coal Black, among a few others liek the scene where she sings "I Washes all day....and I get the Blues In The Night", and the "What's cookin' honey?" scene.


Matt, I looked at those scenes you mentioned in "Yukon Have It" and "Pigeon Holed", and the whole opening scene in "What's Sweepin'" and that is DEFINITELY NOT the same artist. The scenes in "Yukon" and "Pigeon" closely match the SECOND artist in "What's Sweepin" pretty well- so that must be Laverne, starting from the scene where Woody walks by the vendor's stand and starts eating the apples. It kind of looks like there's four animators in "Sweepin".... one doing all the opening sequences up to the Woody as a cop stuff (The one I'm trying to figure out)- then the next one kicks in- then a third one does all the trapeze stuff- and a fourth one seems to get all the distance scenes, like the bicyclists on the tightrope and the scenes where they fly thorugh the air. If Abrams, Patterson, and Harding were the only credited ones, who could that be? I read somewhere that during the work shortage at Lantz in the early 50s, Walter did some of the animation himself. The animation style seems to disappear right around "Belle Boys" but I'll have to watch all those cartoons again to pinpoint exactly which cartoon loses this artist. That woudl kind of make sense as well- when there were enough people available, he stepped out of production and back into the distribution. Maybe Sogturtle can enlighten us on the ins and outs of talent in the Lantz studio around that time ????

[angilbas]

The opening scene of "Tweety's Circus" has brilliant animation (probably by Virgil Ross) of Sylvester singing and prancing on a fence.

In "To Beep or Not to Beep," the first bit with the Coyote and his cookbook was animated by Ken Harris. More distant shots -- in the chase scene and the catapult sequence -- may have been assigned to the less experienced animators (Bob Bransford, Tom Ray).

-Tony

[angilbas]

Most of the newer footage in "Hare-Abian Nights" was animated by Ben Washam, with the same dental style seen in "Rabbit Rampage" and "Rabbit Seasoning.

"Compressed Hare" appears to have a lot of Ken Harris work. When Wile E. says, "You're staying for lunch, all right...you ARE lunch," that's Harris talking ... at least with his pen. Harris probably handled Bugs's dialog as well.

On the other hand, "Mad as a Mars Hare" has little evidence of the Harris touch. Looks like Jones let his newer animators (Bransford and Ray) do most of the work.

-Tony