Tuesday 27 August 2024

Chicken Fingers

Here’s an example of one of the things animation had to give up when it went to made-for-TV cartoons.

Look at the positions of The Rattled Rooster’s fingers in this scene as he’s left in mid-air when a worm sprays him into the sky with a hose. That kind of subtlety cost too much time and money for a television cartoon budget. (Virgil Ross was great at this kind of thing in the Freleng unit).



The rooster realises where he is. Down he drops.



Dave Monahan is responsible for the story in this 1948 Warners cartoon from the Art Davis unit. Davis’ animators on this one are Don Williams, Bill Melendez, John Carey and Basil Davidovich. This one doesn’t do much for me, though I do like the design of the rattlesnake. As a Davis fan, I am happy this one got restored; it was previously on laser disc.

3 comments:

  1. Hans Christian Brando27 August 2024 at 07:24

    Those poses and expressions are incredible. You can't do that with CGI, 2D animation software, or AI, either.

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  2. I am also happy that this cartoon is restored with its now original titles. I hope we get it as part of a collectors choice real soon. There is an incident of reused animation in the same cartoon. I wish I could describe it vividly, but if you watch the cartoon, there is a gag that is run twice and that’s the gag! When the incident happens, the first time, a character looks at the other character and says “… I dare you to do that again!“ Sure enough, it happens again, actually rerunning the same footage that we just saw. In this case, the idea works.

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    Replies
    1. I agree, Anon. A number of Warners cartoons have been upgraded from old laser discs and look so much better. I'd like to see this (and them) on a BluRay release.

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