Here’s an example from The Mouse Comes to Dinner, released in 1945. Jerry sets up the situation.
Check out Tom’s varied expressions.
Huh?? He’s seen something and turns to check it out.
He realises. There’s an eight-frame (half-second) stare at the camera as the flames rage, just long enough to register with the audience. Then the reaction (some random frames).
If you’re looking for a logical story in this one, forget it. The maid sets out a full dinner, then disappears. She’s gone so long, Tom has time to call a girl over to join him to eat it. But where are the dinner guests? Who leaves a dinner sitting on a table that long to get cold? Why doesn’t she hear the noise Tom and Jerry are making (like she does in other cartoons)?
Oh, well. The cartoon exists so Tom and Jerry can show off their range of expressions (and the cat can get beat up), and Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera’s animators were able to draw excellent ones for a good many years.
Pete Burness is part of the H-B unit on this short, with Ken Muse, Ray Patterson and Irv Spence.
One of the things old cartoons teach you is that cats have no feeling in their tails until their tail reaches the point where it's connected to their rear end.
ReplyDeleteI had an aunt who hated cartoons like this one and who would complain that they should make *nice* Tom and Jerry cartoons where the cat and the mouse learned that it was more fun to cooperate and be nice to each other and get along than it was to fight.
This looks like Ray Patterson. He’s so good.
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