There’s potentially good animation that’s lost in the odd staging. Whether McKimson was responsible or layout man Cornett Wood was responsible, I don’t know.
Here are a few examples (and there are more) in A-Lad-in-His-Lamp (1948). In the frame below, the genie, who was on the right half of the screen, has gone back in the lamp.
There’s a take as Bugs sees Caliph Hassen Pheffer coming for him. But the take is off-screen. You can’t see the animation.
McKimson’s cartoons go from huge open mouths to teeny mouths like the drawing below.
Bugs leaps into the air before running away. I really don’t get the point of having Bugs in mid-air when you can’t see the top half of him. It seems like a waste of an animator’s work.
McKimson’s shots can be either too close or too far. Below are consecutive frames. Look at the dead space in the second one. You can’t read the expressions later in the scene.
McKimson liked perspective animation in his earliest cartoons. You’ll see characters running toward the camera and back. Here’s a perspective example from this cartoon.
The genie is a fun character and would have got more laughs in 1948 as he was recognisable to audiences then. His character was lifted from the Alan Young radio show, the upper-crust, East Coast millionaire Hubert Updyke III, complete with catchphrases. This was Jim Backus' first cartoon appearance.
Chuck McKimson, Phil De Lara, Manny Gould and John Carey are the credited animators. Dick Thomas went from forest to caliphate in his backgrounds.
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