Animation Influence - Exaggeration and Fast Motion

 

About a month ago I talked about my biggest animation inspiration, and that was Disney's Illusion Of Life and more or so the behind the scenes of animation created by Disney's Nine Old Men, which is my favorable option when experiencing the massive entertainment company.

I talked about Disney's character designs and what I liked about them, but it's obvious that I'm not focusing and liking only Disney related stuff, as I like alot of other animation things like at Warner Bros, Fleischers and MGM.

What was rare for Disney animators to master was the zany smears. Looney Tunes cartoons were mostly more comedic and energetic. 

I love this type of stuff. It makes the animated films have more appeal and personality, and the characters act more alive.

You don't get to really see too much smears anymore in modern animation especially like this since they used a hand-drawn brush tool, this was such a successful thing to do back in the 40s-50s.

I want to show you an actual example of when you should correctly use the smears in your drawings. 

This is from Rabbit Fire (1951) one of the most timeless Looney Tunes cartoons. Here's one of my favorite takes from that film. This scene Bugs Bunny is in drag as a hunter, and Daffy plays as the playful but also vicious pet dog. I love that Daffy's tail is a toilet plunger. 

You can see closely the reaction of Elmer when he gets bit by Daffy. It's also quick too, which makes the smears useful and perfect in every single way imaginable.

Then Elmer goes for a quick "YEEOWW!"

If your planning to become an animator one day and you believe that there should almost be no limits to it, then I should highly recommend you looking into these.

Not only do smears help but also wild-takes, these were popular in Tex Avery's and Tom and Jerry cartoons because MGM's studio was loaded with more imaginable possibilities, not to mention some of the best animators got to work for the studio to prove their extraordinary talent for cartoony but visually stunning moments like Walter Clinton, Ed Love, Irv Spence and my personal favorite, Ken Muse.

Warner Bros and MGM were also masters of Squash and Stretch.

Another great animation technique is the dry brush tool.

I want to show you something that is equal parts cool and exicting, I got the chance to try out Digicel Flipbook and here's what I animated.

So your probably thinking, "SNG, why does the dog on the right have no floppy ears?" Because to me, it felt perfectly fine to animated without him having any. This was my first go on Digicel Flipbook, so I'm getting used to the techniques.

I'm extremely not expecting every single animated film to be cartoony, wild or over-the-top at all, in fact, some of the best looking animated films don't need to be zany, animation is quite the medium, because people can allow to come up with solutions to what feels good them and how they challenge or entertain audiences. 

In my personal opinion, films that only focus on characters that don't have a ton of energy or dialogue, makes a film stand out the most. I actually seen some people have mixed feelings on films like Bambi or even Dumbo and those to me are important. There are cases where animation films don't tend to be all happy and fun, and stuff like Dumbo meeting his mom, or the still frame of Bambi's tears are part of the masterful charm and greatness of those two films. It doesn't immediately make you feel miserable or upsetting whatsoever because the films actually have good endings to them, so there is some overcoming obstacles. 

I think that's why cartoons exist and animated movies are the preparation. Cartoons are more for audiences that want a more straightforward and comedic premise. I'm on the minority of being both those sides.

So what do you think? Do you agree with what I said? Do you want to quickly access the post I was talking about earlier? 

Here's the link to the related post.

https://sngexplorationblog.blogspot.com/2025/05/more-on-disney-animation-recent-drawings.html?m=1