Pat Matthews - "Jungle Jive" Animation

This is a short clip of some of Pat Matthews' animation in the Shamus Culhane directed short "Jungle Jive". I love the way Matthews animates a character being surprised. A quick pop straight up with little to no inbetweening. There's a lot of that in his scenes from the Woody Woodpecker short "Banquet Busters".

Dan Gormley - "The Isle Of The Mechanical Men"

This story is from Dell Four Color Comics #280, drawn by Dan Gormley. Great cartooning going on here.

Bruce Timm - "Lust For Life"

Here's some great art by Bruce Timm. I'm not a fan of Vampirella comics but I am a fan of Bruce Timm. Any chance that some publisher will pay him loads of money so he'll quit Warner Bros. and draw comics full time? Probably not.

Famous Era Popeye Model Sheets

Here's a few Popeye model sheets from the Famous studio days. I really like the Famous Popeye's made in the 40's but the series definitely ran out of gas in the 50s. Anyone know if that's Tyer handling the scene in "Mess Production" when Olive punches in at the timeclock? Looks like it to me.

Our Gang #46

The interior covers of Our Gang with Tom #46 feature comics with a few of MGM's one-shot characters. The front interior features the two buzzards from Tex Avery's hilarious "What's Buzzin' Buzzard?" and the back stars the wolf, called El Wolfo here, from the Harman/Ising short "The Hungry Wolf". I don't have too many issues of Our Gang so I don't know if these guys made any other appearances or if any other characters were resurrected. Droopy usually gets the interior covers under the name Happy Hound. This comic if from 1948, about six to seven years after those two cartoons were released.

Fox and Crow - "Unsure Runts"

Here's one of the better Fox and Crow shorts, "Unsure Runts" directed by Howard Swift. Grant Simmons was one of the animators on this one. I had a bit of a problem encoding this one, there's about 10 seconds beginning at 1:10 where it freezes. Sorry about that, just couldn't get it encode properly.

Andy Panda Comics

Some slick inking, as usual, by Dan Gormley on these two pages from Dell #326.

Bob Cannon, Animator vs. Bob Cannon, Director

I love Bob Cannon's animation, particularly the few cartoons he worked on with Tex Avery and the Fox and Crow UPA shorts. It's quite loose and energetic. His work under Chuck Jones is great, "The Dover Boys" being my favorite. Though it's interesting that as a director the animation is more conservative and organized. I suppose that the emphasis placed on design at UPA was in part to blame. I'm not knocking his UPA shorts, I'm quite fond of them. Well, most of them. "The Oompahs" is boring as hell. Here's a some clips to compare.

Bob Cannon Animator

Bob Cannon Director

Tom and Jerry - Rexall Magazine Cover

Just to make up for yesterday's horrible Tom and Jerry post, here's a great picture of Tom and Jerry from the April 1949 issue of Rexall magazine.

Tom and Jerry - Filmation Goodness

Of all the revivals of Tom and Jerry since Hanna and Barbera's original theatricals I have to say that the 1980 "Tom and Jerry Comedy Show" produced by Filmation is hands down the best. You could make the case that the shorts rival HB's MGM classics. The chase scenes look like they could have been animated by Irv Spence himself, they're so good. Enjoy some art from "The Great Mousini" and "Invasion Of The Mouse Snatchers". Fortunately, someone was kind enough to upload the cartoons to youtube.

The Great Mousini

Invasion Of The Mouse Snatchers