History of Re-Animation

The Rabbit of Seville released in 1950 by Warner Brothers is an excellent example of the cartoon brilliance of Chuck Jones. Since the dawn of animation there have been two distinct "genetic lineages" of animation the artistic (most often abstract) side exemplified by Oskar Fischinger and Lye and the comic slap stick for the masses side represented by Bray Studios, Warner Brothers, and Walt Disney. In the Rabbit of Seville Chuck Jones is able to bring the two together in an almost seamless merging to created a brilliant example of both and bring artistic musical representation to the general masses. Bugs Bunny and Elmer Fudd perform their typical antics but in an symphony of cartoony silliness that both satisfied the antic craving child in you and the intellectual side at the same time. While retaining the symphonic artisticness Chuck Jones can still deliver comic punches with the barest of character expressions and movements showing how he has truly mastered the medium....

Walt Disney's Steamboat Willie is one of the first early animations to exhibit many of the qualities modern viewers expect in an animation. The movement was fluid, if not anatomically correct but the noodling of the joints and bodies are still done in modern animations and were a common animation technique of the time, which could easily be seen to have evolved from the earlier use of silhouettes and quickly drawn then re-drawn chalk techniques in common animators. With the addition of sound (and Disney's choice of it) it set the stage for the whimsical repeating cartoon antics of a main character and his opponent in this case Mickey Mouse and Pete (other examples; Bugs Bunny and Elmer Fudd, Popeye and Bluto, etc). This basic story plot and two characters opposing each other would be the staple for animated shorts for decades to come. The animation is an excellent example of the silly cartoon violence that would eventually come under fire half a century later as promoting vi...