Modern Looney Tunes Character Designs

[Jack]

So, do you like the way the characters are usually drawn on publicity art and merchandise? Or how they were drawn in the 90s cartoons?

This poll only counts the designs used now or in the last decade, not the designs used in the old cartoons.



Jack:D

[Thad Komorowski]

I voted:

Sometimes, it depends on the merchandise/cartoon/commercail and the character depicted

I REALLY like the new Woody Woodpecker, Chilly Willy, etc. designs, but I really wouldn't want to HUG one of those new Woody dolls. That's why have the good old one. The new LT designs are good.

-Thad:D

[Sveven Dvorking]

between the inferior 1991 designs, and the inferior 2001 designs.

[Jon Cooke]

Sometimes, it depends on the merchandise/cartoon/commercail and the character depicted

Yeah, I also voted for that. The current designs usually look okay. However, I do tend to get sick of seeing the characters in the *exact same* generic poses all over the place. How many times have we seen this Bugs pose (http://my.ohio.voyager.net/~dhoover/clip/cgwen0009.jpg) ... or this one (http://my.ohio.voyager.net/~dhoover/clip/cgwen0038.jpg) ... in recent years? :p


I REALLY like the new Woody Woodpecker, Chilly Willy, etc. designs, but I really wouldn't want to HUG one of those new Woody dolls. That's why have the good old one. The new LT designs are good.


Yeah, those new Woody dolls are pretty hideous looking... take a look at them at the Universal Studios website: here (http://store.universalstudios.com/images\products\1047245.jpg) and here (http://store.universalstudios.com/images\products\1047243.jpg). Yikes...

On the other hand, the Chilly Willy (http://store.universalstudios.com/images\products\1049717.jpg) doll is adorable.


-Jon

[Matthew Hunter]

I voted the same. When not worn out, the marketing designs are good. I'll agree, I'm sich of the Bugs Bunny clipart. And how many times have we seen the pose of Tweety making an effeminate gesture or Tweety throwing up his arms and smiling? I do like the designs though, they are very true to the original cartoons. I particularly like the way Sylvester and Wile E. Coyote are handled, but then again they are my favorites anyway. What bothers me is that we are seeing less and less of those 'lesser" characters. When was the last time you saw something with Charlie Dog, Henery Hawk, Slowpoke Rodriguez, Marc Anthony,Cool Cat or Porky Pig on it? Other than that, the designs they use are great.
-Matthew

[J Lee]

Too many times nowadays the people using the WB characters seem hell-bent on putting modeling on the characters, whether they need them or not. If they have to interact with real people like in "Space Jam", I can understand putting shadows on the characters a little bit, but doing it in other cases just makes them seem heavy, which is not what you want from characters who are designed for fast action.

The early 1990s Bugs done by the Terry Lennon-Greg Ford team or Darrell Van ****ters seemed to be modeled on Chuck Jones' designs from "Operation Rabbit," while Daffy's design looks to have borrowed heavily from Jones' "Duck, Rabbit Duck!" look. Some of the later cartoons in the 1990s don't even do that, and the ones Jones was involved in tend to make the characters overly-cute, which was also a problem with Jones' made-for-TV work between 1976-80.

[Thad Komorowski]

Jon, I've seen another Woody doll which was MUCH cuter. One of the new dolls had the exact design of the FOX Woody, which was nice, and huggable. This doll (http://store4.yimg.com/I/wickedcoolstuff_1647_760936) is much cuter than the images Jon posted.

-Thad:D

[Jack]

I voted for "sometimes, ect. ect. ect...."

I love the new Woody design, it's like the 40s one, but those dolls look evil.:eek:

I don't like the way Daffy usually looks, always the same expressions, it seems (but I prefer the 40s-early 50s design, and I know WB will never use that again, but Looneytunes.com ACTUALLY shows Daffy and Porky together like friends and he's smilling!...). I also like how Daffy looks in the "Bugs and Daffy" opening.

Bugs can look pretty bad sometimes, but this question was posted after seeing a Bugs Bunny cutout advertising Six Flags Great America ("Where fun runs wild!") that I really liked. Bugs was chubby, but not too chubby, and he wasn't too tall, about the size of a kid or midget. I think it was like pose number one that Jon Posted, but seeing it bigger made me like it more.

By they way, nobody mentioned the third most used Bugs pose, taken from one of those definitive McKimson model sheets. It's Bugs in a very energetic running pose.

On the other hand, the "big smilling Bugs head" logo at the beginning to "Carrotblanca" scares me.

I don't like how Jones draws any of the characters in his limited editions, though. They are stuffy looking with flatish rounded heads and the same expressions.




Jack:D

[Sveven Dvorking]

Originally posted by Matthew Hunter
What bothers me is that we are seeing less and less of those 'lesser" characters. When was the last time you saw something with Charlie Dog, Henery Hawk, Slowpoke Rodriguez, Marc Anthony,Cool Cat or Porky Pig on it? Other than that, the designs they use are great.

Porky Pig is NOT a 'lesser' character! Out of all the WB characters, he appeared in the second most cartoons! It would be a shame if he is really thought of as low as the others on your list.

[Matthew Hunter]

I'll agree, Porky is a major character, but he is one of the least-merchandised. We see his picture now and then, but he barely does anything anymore. I don't particularly like Porky, but I like most of his cartoons. As I've said before, Porky is a straight-man, everyone else delivers the laughs and Porky is funny because he never seems to get the joke. I wish I had some sort of Porky item in my LT collection, I've never seen a Pez dispenser of him, I don't have his PVC figures (Although I know they exist) and I don't think I've ever seen a stuffed animal or statue or anything either. Same with Charlie Dog, he was in enough cartoons to appear on merchandise, wasn't he? Certainly more justifiable than his space counterpart, K-9.
-Matthew

[Jon Cooke]

There was never a Porky PEZ dispenser (they made a *Petunia* one, though --- go figure...). I actually have three Porky PVC figures, my favorite is Porky as the Eager Young Space Cadet! Don't forget, Porky will be getting his own postage stamp later this year!! So, we may be able to buy some cool Porky stuff at our local Post Offices soon.


-Jon

[Matthew Hunter]

Actually, I had ONE Porky Pig pvc, it had Porky waving his hands in the air in his blue jacket and red tie. And, I believe it got stolen when I had some school project years ago that required us to bring old toy figures for some science experiment with water...that's all I remember about it, and someone ripped him off. Go...FIGURE! nyuknyuknyuk! By the way, Porky's not the only PVC of mine to suffer a demise. In fact, he is just MIA, there were some that were FUBAR. For example, I had a Wile E. Coyote that got half-eaten by the dog. There was also the time some friend of mine thought it would be fun to tear up stuff and picked a Daffy Duck figure....I was a little angry, though, when he pulled off the head and then flushed the head and body down the toilet. How THAT didn't cause a plumbing backup is a phenomenon I'll never understand, or how HE escaped getting HIS head flushed in the toilet....;) Oh, and then there was the christmas where I put the LT character figures on the electric train, and another Daffy figure fell off onto the track. I walked into the room later to find the train derailed and the duck missing a leg and his head. No matter, I have replaced a couple of those and I have over 50 pvc LT's now, and I keep them out of reach of animals, small children, and trains.
-Matthew

[Mibbitmaker]

Wile E. half-eaten by a DOG? Natural way for the poor guy to end up! :D

I generally don't like the "modern design" of the characters that much. I do think that, in the cartoons they make these days, the animation makes up for the designs, though.

I'm just a sucker for the late '40s designs, especially Daffy Duck.

[JaGSQ]

Here's an easy reason Porky isn't so well merchandized: People see something on your jacket or shirt and they think it's a symbol of your personality. Taz is a tough guy. Bugs is a smart-alleck. Daffy's crazy. Do you really wanna have something that says, "Hey, I'm a fat pig!"?
As for designs, I like plenty of the retro early 90s takes. The only thing I don't like are the Chuck Jones designs. Chuck admitted he didn't even think he had a style for many years. But you notice almost every character he did after the studio was closed looked the same. "He always draws himself," a friend once told me, and it's true. His drawings are impressive on their own, but they're really stereotypes based on character. He even once said, "The easiest way to draw Bugs Bunny is to draw a carrot and then hook a rabbit on to it."
Chuck's characters are often overly round (A throw-back to his days trying to copy Disney) and you'll notice they elaborate the character traits he made of the characters. He emphasises Daffy's greed and other traits he defined in his body posture. His Tom from Tom and Jerry has bushy eyebrows to show the attitude of the hunter hunting his prey like the Wile E. (This isn't a great interpretation, either. Tom was never after Jerry because he was hungry. He was after Jerry because he wan't to beat him silly)
Chuck developed the Road Runner and Wile E. (Wasn't he the only director to handle them?) and so he can draw them rather well without guidelines. Surprisingly, he also drew up the final model sheet that gave us our present day Porky. So why does he give him a big head, eyes, and make him fat when we know he isn't ?
Really, most of the best character designs came from Robert McKimson who was famed for drawing characters without guidlines. That's probably trie because they were in his drawing style. That's debatable, though, because in the 50 Years And Only One Grey Hare book, several director's illustrations of Bugs are shown. McKimson's is close to the original, but has huge eyes and a tiny body. Clampett's is close, except he over does every line and curve. Friz's is rather impressive considering he believed he couldn't draw well (Though his drawings showed obvious character through their troubled lines.) and Sam only looks like Sam because he's short with a gun and a red mustache.
But the retro-90s versions are great because they're sleeked down to make the characters look new and easy to characterize for the new animators, plus they pretty much all keep the classic features.

[Sveven Dvorking]

Originally posted by JaGSQ
Chuck developed the Road Runner and Wile E. (Wasn't he the only director to handle them?)

I would say not. Since Chuck Jones was at MGM during 1965 and 1966, I doubt he directed the Roadrunner cartoons released in those two years. Remember, those Roadrunner showings are also classic cartoons:D

[Matthew Hunter]

Well, Jones left in 1963 or '64, and there were two Road Runner cartoons directed by Robert McKimson, and one by Friz Freleng and Haweley Pratt.. After that the cartoons with the characters were done by Rudy Larriva, and while funny, these are NOT Jones' versions. They could have been , but the difference is obvious....budget. I happen to like them a lot, but most people change channel.
-Matthew