Monday 6 May 2013

Land of the Coyote

Before Maurice Noble stylised settings for the Chuck Jones unit, audiences were treated to the work of Bob Gribbroek. He retired to New Mexico where he had spent some of his younger years so perhaps he had an affinity for constructing the southwestern playground of Wile E. Coyote.

Gribbroek was the layout artist on “Operation: Rabbit” (released 1951) with Phil De Guard creating the backgrounds from his work. Here are a few shots in the opening minute.

4 comments:

  1. The Cartoon has a 1950 copyright date, but the film was actually released on January 1952 as many sources such as IMDB claim.

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  2. Blame that on 1) Technicolor backlogging and 2) Warner backlogging.

    Starting in 1947, cartoons started getting longer to be released ("Mouse Mazurka", the cartoon that was an influence on the Snooper short that Yowp reviewed on 5/4/13, is an example, being copyrighted in 1947 (as the PROD 1075?-see What About That.com's or Dave Mackey.com's WB cartoon PROD# links,-identifies)-as the 1950s Blue Ribbon print gives a 1948 copyright, but anyway, it was released in 1949). Columbia, Paramount and WB took to Cinecolor shorts which helped a lot for the most part. So both you and references and the cartoon's date are all correct, Anonymous.:)(In 1952 the delay stopped and it was just from one year to another).Steve

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  3. The Dixon Evening Telegraph (Ill.) of Dec. 11, 1951 has "Operation: Rabbit" playing with "Painting the World With Sunshine" and the short "A Laugh a Day" with Art Gilmore.

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  4. I'm an art curator working on a traveling exhibition that includes paintings by Robert Gribbroek from the late 1930s. He was part of a group in New Mexico called the Transcendental Painting Group. I have a question to ask you about the cels you posted from "Land of the Coyote." Can you send me an email? thanks, Michael Duncan, michaelduncan@sbcglobal.net

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