Scribner the Genius, the Sweet Guy

I personally think Rod Scribner was the most talented and versatile animator in our whole history. He worked in lots of different styles: He animated the wildest and best acted scenes of the 40s, then transitioned into the more stylized designy UPA world of the 50s. Many other classic animators tried to make the transition and never quite got it. A few excelled. Scribner jumped at the challenge and created a whole form of motion that matched the designs.


Here he is at what I think was the peak period of animation history-the mid 40s in Bob Clampett's super unit.

Eddie has a great analysis of what makes cartoon animation so much different than any other medium. Here's the scene in motion below.

http://cartoonthrills.org/blog/Clampett/BucarooBugs/ScribnerBucarooRedsmall.mov

Watch it then go read Eddie's theories. Then come back to hear a little story about the human side of Scribner, the complete genius who animated this.

http://uncleeddiestheorycorner.blogspot.com/2008/02/cartooning-lessons-by-scribner-and.html

You know, Clampett and his animators were not just animators. They were also great comedians. They control the animation and make all these wild actions flow around perfect comedy timing and staging.

Watch you favorite stand up comic and study his pauses, his poses, the way he or she focuses your attention on certain points of the jokes and their acting/reacting. This is all a high amount of skill in storytelling.

Imagine having to learn those difficult skills and also the crazy amount of animation skill that goes into 40s cartoons. Egad!

Among all these top animators, Rod was the star.

I also really like Bugs' personality in these cartoons. He's playful, rather than spiteful like he became later. A much more appealing down to earth kind of wiseacre.

A story of a warm wonderful man who also just happened to be a genius

Rod Scribner's granddaughter Julie has some really sweet stories about her funny Grandpa. It's great that she shares this with all his fans who barely know anything more about him besides the fact he was probably the most creative single animator in our whole history! It's really cool to see how such a talent was also a loving family man.

Maybe you could let her know in the comments how much you appreciate his talent and her generosity in sharing some stories about this cartoon hero!

Sweet “Papa” Scribner
Papa gave me my creativity, and I will never forget him, or the qualities that he possessed. He was a wonderful man, very funny, and so special to us all. I am attaching three photos: One of Papa and I when I was only about 3 or 4. I had a favorite doll named Drowsy, and he used to tease me about taking it from me. (you can see I had an old and a new one!).

Anyway, you can see what a stylish dresser he was. He did smoke cigarettes, and I don't remember him without one. The other two photos are of pictures that my husband had framed for me from Papa. He worked with Charles Shultz, and did the films like, "Snoopy Come Home".



Rod Scribner, my Papa, was a great grandfather, and used to bring my sisters and I pastel crayons, and drawing tablets. He would sit on the floor and show us how animation worked by drawing a character on 3 pieces of papers, and then flipping them quickly before our eyes.

The funniest story I have of Rod Scribner is when he told my sister and I to be creative, and after he left, we took all the pastel crayons he gave us and drew all over our bedroom walls until they were covered. We were so proud to show our Mom, but when she came in , she shrieked and made us scrub it off until the wee hours of the morning. When Papa heard of what we did, he held his stomach and laughed until he almost fell down. We weren't laughing because of course it took us hours to clean off the mess. Papa was always pulling pranks, and we loved him for that. You would always see a smile on his face, or his funny laugh, and it was contagious.

Eddie will be envious of Animation’s Greatest Salad Maker
The biggest secret I have about Rod Scribner, is that he invented a salad dressing that we have thought about patenting, and selling. If you enter our family, we joke about having to kill you if you ever find out the secret to "Papa's dressing". No one has died yet, but no one has yet to make it the way it's meant to be made (outside of the family that is!!) Some have tried, ALL HAVE FAILED!

That is it for now. I will have more later. I hope that I have given you some insight into Rod Scribner's life. He was a beautiful man, and one I am proud to call my PAPA.

Julie

Thanks a lot Julie! We sure love your Papa!

Buckaroo Bugs Clips

http://cartoonthrills.org/blog/Clampett/BucarooBugs/fillings.mov



http://cartoonthrills.org/blog/Clampett/BucarooBugs/horserun.mov

Buckaroo Bugs - RED HOT RYDER

Hmmm... the damn lawyers at Warner Bros. are taking down all the clips. I guess they don't want free publicity for their cartoons.

Here's some more great stuff from Buckaroo Bugs.

Note that before you see Red Hot Ryder you hear Yosemite Sam's voice and the whole gag is his stock routine you see later in a million cartoons, only it's done best here-the first time it was ever animated.



I think the character and routine comes from a Red Skelton radio character-anyone know the name of the character?

Look at the way everything is animated and timed. This is pure love of movement and funny movement.Why do we not have any full animation in these 200 million dollar features that come out 5 times a year now?

The whole damn thing is excitement. What a great way to start a cartoon!

Here, now look at a way toned down, mechanically timed limited animation version of the same routine and you can see how important good animation and direction is to the effectiveness of a gag.

Coming Soon- Chuck Jones

By the way, I'm going to start posting great animation from Chuck Jones cartoons soon. He's my second favorite director. A very strange career he had too. His best animation didn't coincide with his funniest cartoons. In the early 40s he used very imaginative full animation and gave his animators much leeway, but his timing and characterization and gags were not very sharp yet. By the time he let his writers give him funny story material and he learned to draw funny expressions and tightened his timing-in the mid to late 40s, he started sitting on his animators more.

Maybe I can find a couple cartoons where both things are happening at the same time as they did in Clampett's cartoons. To Duck Or Not To Duck comes to mind.

Buckaroo Bugs - best horse in a cartoon ever

Here's Bob at his wildest.

The horse scrambling to get back on the cliff just kills me.

Now THIS is a cartoon!

I don't know who the animator is...any of our panel of experts know?

It's really solid and crazy at the same time. Manny Gould?

This is one of the funniest Bugs Bunny cartoons ever and ironically is one of the cartoons a couple "animation critics" point to as evidence that Clampett didn't understand Bugs Bunny.

Mike Fontanelli has a funny saying about animation critics.

Buckaroo Bugs - switch animators in the middle of a scene and flaccid pistols

Here's an odd thing Bob would do once in awhile. He would take a scene and give part of it to Rod Scribner and then the rest to Bob McKimson. I don't know whether he did that as a practical joke on the two opposite animators or whether he had some casting reason, like one animator was better suited than the other to certain actions.

In the beginning of the scene look at the way Red Hot Ryder's guns wobble like limp you know whats.

That's more of my favorite style of animation movement that I can't figure out why the world stopped doing it. Just a guess: because it's not "realistic"?



The animators change MID-WAY THROUGH CARROT CHEWING!

Scribner animation






And the very next frame is...
McKimson animation!
Note how Bugs' legs all of a sudden become thick. This is the beginning of Bob McKimson's "stubby period". Shortly after this cartoon, McKimson became a director on his own and started drawing all his characters with short stubby legs, pot bellies, small craniums and eyes, and big jaws and fat lower lips. Clampett told me that McKimson was his top animator, but that he would have to lean on him to draw the characters cuter with bigger eyes and more appealing design which wasn't natural to McKimson. Once he got his own unit, he was able to draw more in his own pure style.





In McKimson's own cartoons all the characters had the same basic personality; they were all assholes or "Loud-mouthed Schnooks" who shoved each other around looking pissed all the time-even the normally mild-mannered Porky became a bully-like character in McKimson's world.

I have a theory about why he treated the characters this way and I will tell it in some later posts about McKimson's hilarious cartoons...if you want to hear it.