Thursday 23 May 2013

What's Clobberin'

“Inconsistency” describes the Walter Lantz cartoons of the early ‘50s. Even within a cartoon, characters can be rubbery in one scene, drawn with thick ink-lines in the next one and rendered fluidly in the next one. None of them are animated as well as the cartoons before Lantz closed his studio temporarily at the end of the ‘40s and lost great talent like Ed Love, Fred Moore, Pat Matthews and Ken O’Brien.

One somewhat rubbery scene is in “What's Sweepin',” directed by Don Patterson, where Woody clobbers a shop owner and Wally Walrus (both voiced by Dal McKennon). Here’s an in-between before Wally’s hit. No speed lines or smears; just Woody stretched a bit to indicate speed and gravity.



Here’s an extreme from a little bit earlier in the scene. Wally’s off-balance and cross-eyed in the background, like something out of a Terrytoon.



The scene’s partly animated on twos. Paul J. Smith, La Verne Harding and Ray Abrams get the animation credits.

1 comment:

  1. Wally's eyes, face and general body proportions in the first screen cap look like a West Coast version of Jim Tyer's mangle and squish style. But even with the distortions, there's too much symmetry with the curves in Woody's body design for it to be a full Tyer simulation.

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