McKimson's Direction Toolbox

WATCH THIS SEQUENCE OF FOGHORN ESCAPING DOG

I always liked the way this sequence flowed, so I thought I'd see how it was directed by analyzing it. It turns out to be different than how I expected.

I'll give you my thoughts later.

Happy Father's Day

There is he, the man who inspired all my wackiest stuff!
And what inspires him.

Happy Father's Day, Dad!

Happy Father's Day From The Big Chicken

When I was about 10, My Dad decided it was time for me to become mature and start thinking about saving for the future and to forget childish things like cartoons.
He was dumbfounded and frustrated to find me still watching them as a teenager.
Every Saturday afternoon at 5 I would bring a Salisbury Steak TV dinner downstairs and sit on my Dad's chair in front of our "Space Command" color TV set to watch the Bugs Bunny Show.
I'd get through half of the first cartoon when I would hear my Dad stomping down the stairs. "What the Hell are you watching down here? What!? CARTOONS! Aren't you a little old to be watching this crap? When are you gonna grow the F*** up?"
Then he'd kick me out of his chair. "Let me see what you think is so Goddamn funny!"
He'd lean forward and tilt his glasses on his nose so he could see the cartoons better. I had a theory that Dads had trouble making out cartoons; that adults were too serious to see fantasy figures and that they would just see colored blobs floating across their TVs and think the set was broken. But Dad would chuckle at some of the Bugs Bunny or Roadrunner stuff; he could make out the images when someone got hit or blew up. The blobs would come into focus for pain scenes.
But then like clockwork, after the first cartoon was over, the middle cartoon would come on and it would start with a Foghorn Leghorn title card. All of a sudden I could see my Dad's eyes focus. Now he'd get excited. He'd sit up and twist around in his chair. "Hey, wait a minute, is that the big chicken??! I love that guy!" I think he thought Foghorn, unlike Bugs and Daffy, was not a cartoon - that he was a real guy because he could totally follow all the gags and action.
As soon as Foghorn started smacking and shoving the dog or other characters around, he would begin to laugh really loud. He also loved Foghorn's loudmouth fast talking sales pitches. He was always trying to convince Henery Hawk that he wasn't a chicken, that the dog or cat was a chicken and this killed my dad. He really thought Henery was a dumb kid, like me.
Dad would laugh so hard at this stuff that his glasses flew off his head.
I liked Foghorn a lot too, but watching my Dad lose it made me laugh even harder.
Foghorn Leghorn is one of the greatest cartoon characters in history because he's such an identifiable type. He's just like our Dads! Totally in command, thinks he's smarter than everyone else, and when he doesn't get his way through reason, he shoves and yells at you till you understand the logic of his inate beliefs.
I always loved when Dad would come down to yell at me about being too old for cartoons, because I knew I could count on Bob McKimson and Foghorn Leghorn to make him bust a gut and prove I was right.
After the cartoon was over, he'd realize that he'd just been laughing at something really immature, be embarrased and then get even madder than when he first came downstairs to yell at me. He'd pick his glasses up off the floor and stab them back onto his head, lunge out of the seat and start back up the stairs. He'd give me one final disgusted glance" This stuff is STUPID! Grow UP!"
But he'd be back next week to laugh his arse off again at the big chicken.
It was a highlight of every week for me. Foghorn was one of the few things we agreed on. We argued about The Beatles VS Elvis but totally were in synch about our beloved big chicken. He brought out the testosterone in us and taught us family values.

So Happy Father's Day, Dad and I'm sorry I'm not there to have a shoving and yelling contest with you!


http://www.cartoonthrills.org/blog/McKimson/47/47CrowingPains/FoghornSylvesterHeneryEgg.mov
Frustration, beatings and yelling are manna for Dads.







Hey, isn't this a cool way to render shadows on a character? I always loved this scene!


http://www.cartoonthrills.org/blog/McKimson/47/47CrowingPains/SylvesterHeadFoghornLightning.mov

foghorn smacks dog - big antics for big pain

Here's something that's just plain funny and universal.Solid drawings, great staging, appealing (in a manly way) and speaks to real humanity.
To make big hits stronger, you gotta use really big antics and leave them on long enough to build up power before the actual contact which barely registers onscreen.



This is so well thought out and aims solely to give the audience the biggest entertainment possible. It uses the same principles as Disney, but doesn't overdo it to the point where the action distracts from the acting or the gag. When he uses secondary actions he focuses the action on the main action. A lot of late 30s animation used too many secondary actions happening all over the character and made it hard to see hat the main actions of the characters were. Some Disney animators continued this practice to the end. Pete offered an example of this kind of thing from the Aristocats a couple of posts ago in the comments.
Bob McKimson completely directs his animation and staging to make the entertainment point come across clearly -which makes him a great director.
He doesn't confuse your eye with a lot of extra superfluous overlapping action, or too much squash and stretch and general animator show off stuff. He knows how to communicate with the audience and does it with extreme precision.
I think maybe why McKimson tried to constrain Scribner so much in his cartoons was because he felt Rod would have too much going on in his actions that distracted from the main point. It kind of backfired though, because Scribner in McKimson's cartoons had his characters move around and twitch within McKimson's prescribed "legal area" as if they were trying to wriggle out of a straight jacket. - I have clips of that stuff too. Maybe I'll show that in a later post. It's funny and sad at the same time.


I don't know who animated this, but it's very direct, powerful, to the point and most of all funny as heck.
http://www.cartoonthrills.org/blog/McKimson/47/TheFoghornLeghorn/foghornsmackssmall.mov

40s cartoons - McKimson and our Dads

McKimson understands humanity - not in all its layers and subtleties, but in its basest elements. He knows what's funny about our basic urges.Some critics may think this is low-class and too simple and I would disagree with that. Most cartoons miss human nature altogether. They not only don't catch the "subtleties" and varieties of human nature - they don't even see the basic truthful essentials of human motivation. The fact that McKimson can milk so much entertainment from man's most primitive qualities puts him way ahead of the vast sea of animators past and present.
Animation has a few formula styles, but most of them lack a basic ability to observe anything from the real world and add it to the potential magic of cartoons. These 2 qualities - realism in character motivation and wild imaginative fancy are the 2 hardest things to achieve in animation. McKimson is slim on the wild fancy, but is strong on the realism - the recognizable human motivations that we can easily identify with.
Disney cartoons are completely abstracted from human motivation or character. Walt created a small handful of simple animated stereotyped characters. Other animators who are Disney fans will continue copying these naive unrealistic character types in fully animated features probably forever. They get all their ideas not from observation of life or their own imaginations, but from other Disney films - or now from Pixar films, the successor to Disney.So-called "realistic" cartoons - prime time cartoons that wish to be compared to live-action sitcoms miss a true observation of humanity in another way. Their characters don't act, talk, move or portray any normal recognizable human characteristics. They move like zombies and speak like cartoon-writers, who have little in common with actual people.So back to the infinitely superior McKimson characters.
Watching his cartoons is like when you were a kid listening to your Dad and his friends playing poker.
They are all yelling at each other, shoving, calling each other stupid and laughing uproariously at each others' misfortunes.
You are witnessing a strange and compelling demonstration of grown up maleness in its rawest form.Not only does McKimson understand men conceptually; he and his team have crazy skills in bringing the characters to life on the screen.
McKimson's solid poses and careful timing gives his actions and abuse a ton of power and humor. This isn't something that just any animators or directors can do.


McKimson was the absolute best at it. None of his actions are arbitrary or culled from stock animation techniques. He doesn't randomly use tons of overlapping action or too much squash and stretch just for the sake of it, like Disney animators tend to do.His animation and timing is thought out and executed to give the story, characters and actions clarity, humor and power.

Every time I see this scene I laugh out loud because of how true and expert it is.

A FUNNY BEATING