The Coach - How To Play Football (1944)

 

There's this great sequence from a Disney cartoon called How To Play Football (1944) starring a bunch of Goofy clones. I think it's a decently funny short, but this particular scene with the coach was animated beautifully by John Sibley. 

He's one of my favorite animators of all time. He animated most of the Kinney Goofy shorts and has an expressive yet cool and almost powerful sense of artistic ability. The coach here shows off a very tough and likeable pose.

He does a unique walk, and does a solidly great trick of letting go of the cigar and a second later he grasps it with his teeth. 

The next following frames are a bunch of lively and fun drawings of The Coach's arms flailing around, and anticipation.

So fluid and interesting.

I'm telling you this happens in all of a matter of seconds, these type of scenes are fast paced and erratic, but honestly in an appropriate way.

Here's use of the dry-brush technique. 

This is a fantastic and well-drawn pose. 

So as this one. 

It's gets even better every time. 

This one is especially badass. Yep, I'm saying it. The camera zooms in rapidly here.

I swear when it comes to people complaining how Disney isn't trying to go for a wacky and quirky style of humor, they haven't seen these cartoons. They remind me alot like Avery.

I remember chuckling at the coach's voice when he says "NOW GET OUT THERE and FIGHT!" It's really funny and rubbery. 

Feel free to watch on Toontales. 

https://www.toontales.net/short/how-to-play-football/

The Best Animated Scene Of All Time

 

The late 40s-50s Kinney Goofy shorts have always had interesting fluid animation in them. Their mostly animated by really overlooked and talented Disney animators like Woolie Reitherman (Nine Old Men fame), Hugh Fraser, and my favorite John Sibley.

Speaking of Sibley, he animated one of my favorite animated scenes of all time. It's all jammed pack with poses, exaggeration, funny mouth movements and insanity in 10 seconds. The video cut out the part where he jumps out of the picture, but it's still very great.

If you're curious on what the cartoon is called it's No Smoking (1951)

Check out the channel Josh H. he's fantastic, makes alot of fun animation reels, great banner too.

https://m.youtube.com/@joshh9431

Here's additional art.

Disney's Portrayal Of America's National Pasttime

 

Happy Opening Day to baseball players and fans alike. ⚾️ 

This hilarious Disney short focuses on the cartoony antics and shenanigans of playing the all natural sport, that is baseball. Jack Kinney has made other cartoons involving sports. Football, Fishing, Skiing, you name it. They were all classics.

I think what makes this short funny is how the gags work and the lively animation. Disney always was the best with animating characters but here it's done with mastery. I believe John Sibley was a part of this project, because he's one of my favorite animators as of now. 

The poses are also stellar and the right amount of attractive. It's like your ready to take your picture, it's awesome. 

Now I'm not choosing this short because it isn't as funny as Baseball Bugs or Batty Baseball, but it's probably the best of the 3 with the animation and slapstick. 

You can see the dry brush smears with the frames of the baseball bat, it's been a classic cartoon staple and I LOVE it!

Classic studios including Disney always had an era where they made the best cartoons. Looney Tunes's best was 1948-50, Fleischer's probably 1931-1933, MGM 1949-1951, and I think Disney's absolute greatest spot for the best cartoons were around 1940-1943. They had alot of expressive and conceptual ideas for almost every cartoon and you can tell that the humor and voices started to feel more free and varied.

Back to How To Play Baseball, after rewatching this one, I realized how much funny moments is amounted in this cartoon. I don't think people realize that what's funny in animation is sometimes the stuff that doesn't actually work in real life. That's what's here with Goofy trying to swing the ball but it keeps on moving and missing. It's so off the wall that I have to give it additional credit. 

I also think the moments where the character is just standing there minding their own business relates to how I am in real life. I respect well drawn and relatable sense in films.

And we get more drybrush smears. Nice. 

It's so silly that baseball teams especially in the major leagues have these truly weird and funny names. This short makes fun of either the Boston Red Sox or Chicago White Sox and I think them naming different colors is clever.

I think the crew at Disney at that time has made the best walk and running cycles in animation history. 

Especially the animators who worked for Jack Kinney and Jack Hannah. I like both of them and they continue to entertain viewers to this day. The Preston Blair book is really useful if you want to know how to animate movements like this!

Even when at times the animators are drawing the most intense and stretched frames in the entirety of the short.

I don't think this is as subtle and funny to watch than some of the other Goofy shorts but it's still really amusing and has an amazing narrator voiced by Fred Shields.

I always wondered if Tex Avery the genius behind cartoony gags and fast pacing reacted to these cartoons. Did he experience them? I would love to know. This was 1941, just about that year when Tex Avery arrived to MGM.

Never knew a ball would rip and become a piece of yarn.

I can definitely believe people hysterically laughing too much with this scene. It was pure insanity and really rare for it's time. Goofy running while the base is stuck on his shoes is comedic perfection and in the vain of small details that make this highly watchable.

Like I was saying earlier, Happy Opening Day!

The Importance Of Jack Kinney

I'm willing to talk about Jack Kinney again because he's one of the most influential animation directors in my life. His Disney cartoons are so unique compared to other directors and the fact he can make something so real and hilarious, needs more recognition than just the critically acclaimed Silly Symphony shorts or Disney movies. 

Around the late 40s, Jack Kinney's animators had more smoothness to their cartoons and felt more relaxing to watch. You can look at George Geef's hands and they feel so unique. I want to strive animating like this because it feels so rushed but patiently drawn.

Disney directors such as Ben Sharpsteen, Clyde Geronimi, and Jack King can be alot of fun, but I think Jack Kinney mastered that type of fun for Disney to be a little more funnier and comedic.  

Something like How To Play Football or Hockey Homicide can be a little too erratic and nonsensical in my taste, but hey if Disney can pull off that amount of energy, I'm not complaining. I think the first cartoon Jack Kinney made that was it's golden age was Tennis Racquet (1949). The humor was taking on a more modern approach.

Not only that but Jack Kinney revamped Goofy into making him a family man and a outgoing citizen, and that was one of the best decisions in the history of cartoons because I admire this version of the character.

This is one of my favorite poses. I'm not sure who drew this frame but it is absolutely wonderful. 

I think John Sibley was the more important ones from the crew. He was definitely iconic for alot of reasons. He animated most of the war-time era cartoons. 

 

He did animate my favorite scenes from No Smoking (1951). Let me tell you Jack Kinney hired some of the best animators in animation history. They believed in realism and acting as much as other people do. 

John Sibley was often nicknamed The Goof Master for animating over a ton of Goofy shorts during its classic era.

I think the reason why Jack Kinney didn't get too much love from Disney fans was that the shorts themselves nowadays are kinda edgy for new audiences, and that people don't give enough credit to the directors who worked on the classic disney shorts. I guess it's just Looney Tunes that people are crediting the directors. 

It's kinda sad because Disney is one of the most powerful animation studios in existence. And without these brilliant masters, who would know what the world will be?

I was glad I experienced Disney cartoons because if I didn't I wouldn't be able to draw as well as I used to. 

I have talked about animation more than half of my blog. I talked about Tex Avery, Bob Clampett, and Robert McKimson already. As well as talking about my own animated franchise, Artmania. 

I have more to talk about with Jack Kinney a while back so check this one out if you haven't. 

https://sngexplorationblog.blogspot.com/2024/11/jack-kinney-disney-at-its-best.html?m=1