Well, here’s everyone’s favourite meece hater being chased by a robot cat in Kit Kat Kit in an endless Hanna-Barbera loop.
There are only three drawings in this chase cycle. Note the difference in the position of the smeared Jinks feet. Jinks stretches out in one drawing. Meanwhile, the robot goes up in one of the drawings. The animation is by Ken Muse.
It takes 24 drawings (one second of film) for Jinks to reach the same house behind him in the background. Here’s the cycle that ends the cartoon. It’s a little slower than what’s in the cartoon. For all we know, Jinks is still being chased.
The background is by Frank Tipper, the ex Walter Lantz animator who had been working at one of the commercial studios, with the layout by Ed Benedict.
It's the old "quantity over quality" argument. Were we better off with 32 episodes a year or the six or seven per year MGM and Warner would have gotten out? As I kid, I really appreciated seeing new stuff, even it was just new to me, and the only way that was possible with brand-new made-for-TV cartoons was to cut costs and time as much as they could. A two-drawing loop in a theatrical release only became acceptable after Hanna-Barbera proved that fans didn't much care. Today, of course, this type of thing is only present on Fox's prime-time crap; today's H-B equivalents are far more fully animated than anyone would ever have expected thanks to technology. But the original, first decade of H-B cartoons will always be far superior because they're actually funny, the characters are more appealing and better designed, and the voice actors were better. So even today, I'd still answer, "yes." Two-drawing loops, or not.
ReplyDeleteWell, here's what perplexes me - producers today have technological advances, a larger talent pool, overseas labor, and six month (or more) lead time. Yet, with all those advantages, are unable - or unwilling - to have a finished product that looks half as good as peak era H-B that was produced in-house, with much tighter budgets and deadlines.
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