{"id":13597,"date":"2014-09-26T00:01:14","date_gmt":"2014-09-26T07:01:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cartoonresearch.com\/?p=13597"},"modified":"2014-09-24T22:00:30","modified_gmt":"2014-09-25T05:00:30","slug":"animation-anecdotes-181","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cartoonresearch.com\/index.php\/animation-anecdotes-181\/","title":{"rendered":"Animation Anecdotes #181"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"donald-duck-fight\"Donald\u2019s Fighting Pose<\/strong>. In the earliest Donald Duck cartoons, the little quacker was quite pugnacious and audiences immediately laughed when he took his fighting pose. That pose was created by animator Dick Lundy who stated, \u201cThe fighting pose was used whenever Donald reached his frustration level. I had him lean forward, chin out, arm straight out and fisted while the other arm with fist was swaying back and forth. His one foot was out straight, heel on floor, the other foot under him as he hopped up and down, quacking. For its time, the action was considered quite violent.\u201d<\/p>\n

Snoopy\u2019s Voice.<\/strong> In 1995, animator and director Bill Melendez recalled that when working on the first Peanuts special, cartoonist Charles Schulz wasn\u2019t very happy with the attempts to have Snoopy make a noise that sounded a lot like \u201carf arf\u201d or a real dog. Melendez stated, \u201cI thought about it and tried different things. I ended up recording myself going \u2018wow-wow-wowww\u2019 and sped it up so it had a quick funny sound like \u2018bup-bup-bup\u2019. It gave Snoopy a unique voice.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"boots-virgin_small\"<\/a>Melendez\u2019s Two Animation Dreams<\/strong>. In 1995, animator and director Bill Melendez was working on producing two dream animation projects. \u201cThe Boots of the Virgin\u201d by Earl Shorris and \u201cThe Whale\u201d by Jeremy Lucas were planned to be full length animated features based on books that were out of print. Melendez first developed the ideas for these features in the early 1980s and by 1995 he was still looking for financing. <\/p>\n

Melendez found the first project, \u201cThe Boots of a Virgin\u201d in an airport bookstore. \u201cThe title just struck me,\u201d he said. \u201cWhen I finished the book I knew I had something. It was such a great story that could only be told through animation.\u201d<\/p>\n

Prior to every bullfight, matadors pray to a statue of the virgin, the patron saint of bullfighters. The prayer is for protection and guidance during the fight. The bullfighters cross themselves and stand up and say \u2018But I shit on the boots of the virgin\u2019. Melendez explained that it was a \u201cbullfighter\u2019s macho way of complimenting the saint for her protection\u201d.<\/p>\n

\"whale-150\"The actual story is about Sol Feldman, a young Jewish man from Michigan who inspired by the writings of Ernest Hemingway about bullfighting, moves to Mexico to become a bullfighter but in the process is exposed to some bizarre characters including a philosophical roach named Sam.<\/p>\n

Melendez had all the character designs and storyboards completed. As for the voice, Melendez said, \u201cI always thought Sol would be somebody like Woody Allen. His kind of voice would be perfect.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Whale\u201d was the story of a killer whale who would be portrayed as both predator and prey. The killer whales and other sea creatures would not talk but the natural sounds they used in the wild would be incorporated and the story would be carried by the animation. <\/p>\n

Melendez was thinking of some narration done by the crew of a whaling ship that would help bridge the life of a whale from one stage to the next.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is a romance of the sea,\u201d enthused Melendez. \u201cBut it\u2019s from an unusual point of view, that of a killer whale.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"marc-anthony-me\"The Bulldog Expression.<\/strong> In 1995, animator and director Chuck Jones revealed, \u201cThere\u2019s an expression from Bulldog in \u2018Feed the Kitty\u2019 (1952) where the lady asks him, \u2018What are you up to now?\u2019 Bulldog turns and looks at her with a facial expression which gets a laugh every time. Every time. When I was doing the drawing, it took me 67 tries before I found the right expression.\u201d<\/p>\n

Chuck Jones on Daffy Duck.<\/strong> \u201cThe way I work the character is that I try to find part of me in the character,\u201d explained animator and director Chuck Jones at an art gallery in 1995. \u201cMany people know that we used Leon Schlesinger\u2019s voice, the lisp, for Daffy (Duck). But there was another part of Leon that existed in Daffy. Leon had the attitude of \u2018I\u2019m not going to be nice to people on the way up cause I\u2019m not coming back down\u2019 and Daffy would feel that way, too.<\/p>\n

\u201cDaffy rushes in and fears to tread at the same time. As Daffy once said of Bugs (Bunny) \u2018It\u2019s better that it should happen to him than to me. I\u2019m different than other people. Pain hurts me.\u2019 I gave him those lines out of my own feelings.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bakshi on Tarzan.<\/strong> \u201cOne of the best animated films I\u2019ve seen come out of Disney was the \u2018Tarzan\u2019 (1999) movie. I wasn\u2019t crazy about the story or the design on Tarzan\u2019s face, but the traditional animation was spectacular,\u201d said Ralph Bakshi.<\/p>\n

\"Iwao

Iwao Takamoto<\/p><\/div>\n

Takamoto at Disney.<\/strong> Animator and production designer Iwao Takamoto spent time at the Manzanar Relocation Camp in California during World War II. When he was roughly twenty years old he applied at the Disney Studio and was hired in 1945.<\/p>\n

When he phoned to schedule an interview, the woman on the phone reminded him to bring a portfolio. He had no idea what that was so he went to the nearest five-and-dime store and bought a couple of inexpensive drawing pads and spent the weekend drawing anything he could imagine.<\/p>\n

The day of the interview, Takamoto arrived in typical casual teenager clothing and his drawing pads.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn the office, I sat next to these people wearing suits and ties and carrying big, impressive looking portfolios. It didn\u2019t affect me,\u201d Takamoto later remembered. \u201cI guess I was too stupid back then. I was curious so I listened in on their conversations. They were from these art schools and talking about things like \u2018If they don\u2019t hire me here, I think I\u2019ll go to Warner Brothers of MGM\u2019. Meanwhile, I didn\u2019t even know those places had animation studios.\u201d<\/p>\n

The interviewer studied Takamoto\u2019s two drawing pads and asked him to wait a few minutes. \u201cI was later told that the interviewer had gone over to the animation building and asked the experienced animators for their opinion. I guess the guy wanted their assurance that he wasn\u2019t nuts about wanting to hire me then and there. The funny thing was that I had no idea what the animation art field was all about,\u201d recalled Takamoto who was asked if he could start work the following Monday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Donald\u2019s Fighting Pose. In the earliest Donald Duck cartoons, the little quacker was quite pugnacious and audiences immediately laughed when he took his fighting pose. That pose was created by…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":13601,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[114],"tags":[327,127,148,965,104],"class_list":["post-13597","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-animation-anecdotes","tag-bill-melendez","tag-chuck-jones","tag-donald-duck","tag-iwao-takamoto","tag-ralph-bakshi"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cartoonresearch.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13597","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cartoonresearch.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cartoonresearch.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cartoonresearch.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cartoonresearch.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13597"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/cartoonresearch.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13597\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cartoonresearch.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13601"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cartoonresearch.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13597"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cartoonresearch.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13597"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cartoonresearch.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13597"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}