Looney Tunes was such a life-changing experience to me. I don't know why, but when I immediately loved this franchise, I couldn't stop being obsessed with it.
While I still respect Looney Tunes nowadays, I don't seem to admire it as much as I used to. There's more average characters than good ones. I often feel like some of these characters don't even need to exist.
The only characters I still care about is the main ones like Bugs, Daffy, Porky, and Foghorn Leghorn.
They all appear in a commercial. It's one of my favorites because it doesn't feature the other flawed characters.
Looney Tunes doesn't always make good cartoons, heck alot of them were only made because of hierarchy and screeching audiences wanting every short to be Sylvester and Tweety and Coyote shorts from now on.
My favorite era from Warner Bros. is the shorts made in 1948-1949.
The animation was fantastic, the plots of the cartoons didn't feel too redundant and there was alot of powerful voices coming from Mel Blanc.
In this lineup of cartoons, directors like Art Davis, Chuck Jones, and Robert McKimson have made some of the best cartoons I ever seen in my life.
Take an example like in Daffy Duck Hunt where Porky and Barnyard Dawg sings Jingle Bells, Porky notices it's April and not December and this happens.
This is one of my favorite reaction scenes in film history.
People might say that the early 40s and 1953 is considered the best years for Looney Tunes but I still have alot of problems with them.
This is a list of all the shorts made in 1948-1949. The highlighted purple parts are the ones I actually liked.
Out of all the 57 shorts, only 7 I actually didn't like. That's impressive.
Like I was saying this era barely had any involvement of redundancy. There was not too much Sylvester and Tweety and there wasn't a sign of many Hippety Hopper and Roadrunner cartoons yet. There was always variety, and the slapstick felt bouncy and sharp. The outlines to the characters all felt appealing and the wonderful music by Carl Stalling made all these cartoons work perfectly. Making this era of Looney Tunes highly remarkable to this day.
I always find the first appearances of characters to be the best.
My favorite Coyote and Roadrunner cartoon is Fast and Furry-Ous. Every gag works. Which is what staggers me about what came later. Not saying that all of Coyote's experiments don't make sense, they just don't feel structured for over dozens of cartoons.
Note : This is from the same cartoon. I'm talking about.
Let's start from humble beginnings.
Looney Tunes's first star was Bosko. Back in the early 30s, every cartoon studio had to break loose to make a Mickey Mouse wannabe. And this was an exception to Warner Bros. Let me just say, I didn't like this character, he was too much related to Mickey, and the character designs were really weird even for the era. He's supposed to based off of black minstrel shows, I never really had a problem with that stereotype, but it is rather unpleasant at times.
I like some of his cartoons like Bosko's Picture Show, Big Man From The North and my favorite, Ride Him Bosko but I never saw the appeal. He looked less hideous and more natural in his MGM cartoons.
A Cartoonist's Nightmare is the first Looney Tunes cartoon that actually got enjoyment out of me. There was so much creativity to it, then there was I Love To Singa, Fella With The Fiddle, Rover's Rival, Katnip Kollege and Fagin's Freshman and it felt like Looney Tunes started to get impact on audiences.
Back in the 30s, everyone would only watch Disney. Sounds exicting but kinda feels heartbreaking for other cartoon studios.
I would assume Looney Tunes got the popularity it deserved in the mid 40s.
Did you know what Disney made back when the best of Looney Tunes aired?
Disney back then still made good movies, and Goofy improved but on the other hand there were either boring Pluto cartoons, and those horrible Donald and Chip and Dale cartoons where Donald had a more dumb personality.
That being said, what made Looney Tunes such a special treat back in it's golden age eras were the spirited energy and magnetic characters. I know they might be less than 10 minutes, but a time to watch something like Three Little Bops, and guilty pleasures like Coal Black, it hits differently than other cartoons.
If you play these two cartoons over something like the 50s Coyote and more depressing Sylvester shorts, it's the opposite of entertainment. Seriously anyone should do it, on their devices. It's fun if you ask me.
In terms of what directors I like the best, Bob Clampett easily wins. I think it's because he was needed back in the 40s. His high energy and ordinary animations influenced me.
I also find myself liking Chuck Jones's relatable sense of humor at times. While I have mixed feelings on him in the 50s to 60s, his 40s to early 50s outlook to animation was great.
I think I stopped caring about Looney Tunes being perfect until I saw the late 60s. Stay away from those as possible.
Here's what I didn't like about them.
They have Daffy's arrogant personality pitched to the extreme minimum making him more unlikeable.
The Coyote and Roadrunner cartoons had the worst music cues in cartoon history.
There are some exceptions, I did like a little bit of the Seven Arts Era, cartoons like A Taste Of Catnip, The Solid Tin Coyote, and Corn On The Cop have clever gags and concepts, and believe me, I didn't think the animation was that bad.
Things started to become good again with Looney Tunes. I love the animation and storytelling to the early 90s shorts like Carrotblanca and Invasion of The Bunny Snatchers.
Looney Tunes started to have feature films and the modern era Looney Tunes episodes made in 2020 were genius.
Things are looking good for Looney Tunes nowadays.
Don't click off this if your a big Chuck Jones fan. This isn't going too hard.
I have no harsh feelings to say about Chuck Jones's work specifically Looney Tunes. I think alot of his cartoons are highly influential and funny to me. But in my taste, he isn't one of the greats as being a director. I do have problems with his cartoons.
For one thing, I cannot stand some of his Coyote and Roadrunner cartoons for some reason. They really did not hit as much as I used to like them back then. I think it was how the Coyote actually used his products. For some of the shorts, he feels like he's just using them for the sake of just looking at them.
Whenever that happens my personal experience is that the Coyote is actually the stupid one himself that he forgot he's going for his meal, the roadrunner. Besides the roadrunner is just there, but he's the more smarter one and I actually kinda relate to his let-live, fast moving nature.
I also had some problems with Pepe Le Pew's cartoons as well. I like Pepe's romantic personality and the fact that the cat, Penelope senses his awful smell but Pepe himself is hugging her so strongly that she can't escape is such a weird but clever concept. But I would say some of these can go a little too far in my taste, most of them are extremely repetitive and unwatchable.
That being said I don't dislike Chuck Jones, he is a talented animator but like with Robert McKimson, Art Davis, and especially Bob Clampett, it's safe to say that he's fine but not as fantastic as the others in my opinion.
But as an illustrator?
Count me in, he's definitely way more interesting with doing art than actual cartoons.
This is an unpopular opinion, but his paintings he made after the classic looney tunes went to its final stage and onwards, are actually brilliant.
I have never seen Coyote dream of him actually catching the roadrunner. I wished that was what the Coyote and Roadrunner cartoons were actually like instead of the same plot of him catching the same thing over and over again.
I feel more drawn to Sam and Ralph's cartoons since in those, there are cartoons where the introduction is different and they have more characters by sometimes talking to each other.
I'll admit it, both of these paintings are gorgeous.
Robin Hood Daffy is probably one of my favorite Chuck Jones cartoons in the later era. I admire this one. Daffy's expression here is too impeccable.
Imagine what Foghorn Leghorn would've been if Chuck Jones made him. Promise me, it would've been alot less funnier and more wiser. I like his design though.
This is by far my favorite painting from Chuck Jones. Daffy + Fantasia's Sorcerer Apprentice would've been a hilarious parody.
I really like this Pepe Le Pew painting. This feels more "aesthetic" than the others I showed you so far.
Of course Chuck Jones himself was going to consider painting his more iconic scenes in his cartoons especially with Rabbit Of Seville, and I love it. This is coming from one of my favorite all-time frames in a cartoon ever.
Cartoon gags matter in cartoons, even classic cartoons. In fact, all of these gags you've seen have been created and invented by golden age animation studios like Warner Bros. and MGM.
The most famous gag is definitely the eyes popping out. It's easily been done in a hundred cartoons already.
I enjoy the jaw dropping gag in cartoons. It's extremely expressive and really fun to animate.
Another timeless cartoon gag is when a character's eyes have some sort of symbol like a heart to show someone expressing love.
They also have money eyes. That means they can feel the sense of being rich and seeing a bunch of dollars and cents.
Eh... sometimes they can get a little too hard with the eye symbols.
Powerpuff Girl's reboot made them have these happy emojis on their eyes and it kinda doesn't make sense and it's a little weird. Just stick to heart or money eyes.
An overlooked gag is the Screwball sign. How clever.
The lumps gag has to be my favorite out of all the classic cartoon gags because it can be so painful or just silly. It's incredible detail at times and it's a gag I want to do mostly in my cartoons.
Dredd The Moose is probably going to get the most lumps.
The sign gag is extremely well known in the Coyote and Roadrunner cartoons.
The sucker gag is definitely genius.
Gags like having the characters naked (in a appropriate way) is also funny. It mostly happens to characters like Donald, Foghorn Leghorn and Daffy.
Lastly, the jackass gag. Yes. When I first seen this gag, I was mind-blown that the animators could do whatever they want, and not care about how kid-friendly they want to be. I mean back then these cartoons were mostly aimed at adults in theatres, but nowadays I swear they need to bring this gag back. If that's not the case, then I'm doing it!
I did some sketches my own gags and zany drawings last year, and I'm really proud of it.
Next post I will be talking about my 10 favorite Looney Tunes shorts. Stay tuned 😁
