Sunday 22 July 2018

Huck the Cartoonist

The artists in the early Hanna-Barbera cartoons all had loads of animation experience and were quite capable of giving their characters interesting and good expressions.

Here’s a neat one of Huck, promoting an “amusin’ cartoon” starring Pixie and Dixie.



This comes from one of the little cartoons before the main cartoon. In some of them, Huck's lips stuck way out when he said the “ooo” in “cartoon.” He does it in this bumper but not as exaggerated as elsewhere.



Here’s Bill Hanna’s budgetary fantasy. There’s no separate animating, inking and painting. It’s all done at once! Just use a paint brush and it wipes on all the necessary colours and ink lines.



Pixie and Dixie rush off the paper to see their own cartoon.



By the way, Don Messick wasn’t called in to record in this session. Daws Butler plays Pixie and Dixie.

9 comments:

  1. what animator is this ? i wanna guess carlo vinci but i'm partial.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Didn't the sound cutters at Hanna-Barbera use the music from Loopy De Loop on the last couple of Huck/Quick Draw/Yogi cartoons made for the 1961-62 season, Hokey Wolf, Snagglepuss, Yakky Doodle, The Flintstones, Top Cat and the Wally/Lippy/Touche cartoons?

      Delete
    2. Matt, I don't know if the cues were originally written for Loopy, but they do appear on a number of the H-B series around that time. The last ten Huck cartoons had scores from Hoyt Curtin's music.

      Delete
  2. i love when huck wears this hat ! the pointed jagged brim. the detail in this scene is gorgeous. the push pins holding the paper on the drawing board. the top of the ink bottle. the brush. the chair. the sharp pencil. having the characters draw was a fantastic idea.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Don Messick rarely seems to show up in any of the bumpers that I've seen. If his characters appear, they seem to be unusually silent for the most part.

    ReplyDelete
  4. And to think how much different Hanna-Barbera would be if Huckleberry Hound actually worked there...

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. OR...if more characters like these, rather than the late 1960s-onwards like "rock group" types that even the animal characters were shoved into to (the Catt.Cats, and a few others), or than the realistically designed meddling kids type shows, and the still later 1980s shows had appeared, if early 60s type shows like these were still made (and Ed Benedict designs, and the music, Hoyt Curtin and the 1950s cartoons's outside stock libaries were used,rather than the scores post 1967..)

      Delete