Remediation - Project Plan

Research Report – 3D Animation

Kenneth Brown

In this report I will be outlining and explaining my research so far into the animation industry between 1930 up until the 1960’s. The main focus will be the most prolific and iconic companies and animators of the era. These were the men that set the stage for what animation has become today and without their influence we would not have any of our most loved cartoon celebrities.

Two years after the creation of Walt Disney Studios and the first use of music and sound in cartoons came the first appearance of yet another industry giant. This was Warner Brothers, whose most notable achievement of the time is Bugs Bunny and his various companions in humour. Bug’s was not the first however. Porky Pig came onto the scene in 1935 and was the first of the WB’s characters to hit stardom. It was also around this time that Tex Avery became the animation director for WB and proceeded to revitalise the studio. Above all Avery’s most important goal was to drive the company away from Disney and create a unique corporate identity for Warner Brothers, which is seen in most animation from the time.

In 1938 Chuck Jones’s first animation, “The Night Watchman,” was released. Chuck was an American animator, cartoon artist, screenwriter, producer, and director of animated films, most memorably of Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies shorts for WB. He directed many of the cartoons that starred Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Wyle Coyote and Sylvester and Tweety Pie.

This period of time is referred to now as America’s Golden Age of Animation and the reasoning for this could not be clearer. By the 1960’s we had feature length animations, Snow White being the first and debatably still the most famous. Even today the characters that were created remain iconic to us. Cartoons of the Golden Age are frequently seen in modern day advertising for the reason that they are immediately recognisable.

Two contrasting series worth looking closely at are the Bugs Bunny cartoons, which began running in 1942 and Hanna Barbera’s Flint Stones, first seen in 1960. These are good examples because they both approach the task of entertaining people in very different ways. Bugs Bunny’s strengths lie mainly in his character. The use of animals in animation is something that was coined very early on. Rabbits are timid and scared creatures in real life so for an audience to be shown a rabbit with a cheeky, mischievous demeanour was love at first sight, so to speak. Bugs had as much charm and likeability as any human character if not more. And when we look at the shows style of comedy, we frequently see Bugs portrayed as being smarter and inherently more likeable than humans. It is this juxtaposition I believe that set him in such high regards with his audiences.

The Flintstones however, approached the task of entertainment in an entirely different way. The first thought that occurs when trying to identify the shows main attraction is that it must be the time period. Setting the show in prehistoric times was arguably the main point of the cartoon, once again personifying elements of nature for entertainment. Upon closer scrutiny though, I believe that the main appeal lay in the situational, family based comedy that the Flintstones provided. Where, on one hand, we have Bugs Bunny locked usually in one on one face offs with the likes of Elmur Fudd, the Flintstones would usually presents us with an everyday family situation such as Fred losing his job or buying a new car. This allowed audiences to connect on a different more personal level. This is the shows main strength because even though it is set in an almost alien world, it still manages to relate to its audiences through everyday means.

So what do I hope to take away from this research?

Hopefully I can incoorperate the atmoshere, or at least create something similar, to the Bugs Bunny method of doing things. My main character is to be a robot, so my main aim here is to create a personality for him that really makes him likeable. Bugs Bunny had full use of his voice which is a limitation my character has. This presents the challene of animating him in such a way that makes his feelings fully understood. In that respect the Flintstones way of doing things is helpful as quite often the dinosaurs in their cartoons were voiceless, yet remained charming in a very human way through both facial and bodily expression and exaguration.