Smear Around the Corner

Chuck Jones did it one way. Bob Clampett did it another.

Both directors (and Friz Freleng) employed smears to move characters from one frame to another. Jones’ animators, guys like Bobe Cannon and Lloyd Vaughn, stretched a character like a balloon. Clampett’s animators seem to have preferred brush lines, which also indicate speed.

Here are two examples from “An Itch in Time” (1943). Five drawings from pose-to-pose, less than a half second.












Somewhere in a 1943 U.S. government copyright catalogue may exist the original credits for this cartoon. But the Blue Ribbon release that everyone has seen has shorn them. The credited animator is unknown.