Chuck Jones

An inspiration to us all

Charles Martin "Chuck" Jones was an animator, cartoon artist, screenwriter, producer and director of numerous animated films, being more memorable for many Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies shorts, he directed many of the Looney Tunes classic shorts, with three of them ("Duck Amuck", "One Froggy Evening", "What's Opera Doc?") being later on inducted into the National Film Registry. Others famous Looney Tunes works by him include the "Hunting Trilogy" starring Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck and Elmer Fudd (The first film was also notable for starring both Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck).

I absolutely love Jones' distinctly recognizable art style, despite how controlled and 'calmed down' his art style (Which apparently might have been a reason for his feud with colleague Bob Clampett as they were polar opposites when it came to their character styles) was as compared to many other cartoon artists at the time, the man was still able to give his character amazingly hilarious expressions and the right amount of exaggeration without going overboard and making it seem like they were going on an acid trip (Uhm not referring to anyone in particular here...).

Perhaps the only thing I did somewhat (I repeat somewhat) dislike about his art style was how "girlish" most of his eye designs seemed at times (What with the long eyelashes… because gosh, sometimes I forget Jerry is a guy when watching his shorts), but eh it works most of the time, especially for humorous reasons (I always thought how amazing Bugs Bunny looked in drag when Chuck Jones drew him).

To me there is a form a beauty from his more controlled way of drawing, I mean zany exaggeration is all well and good, especially for the types of animations he had worked on over the years, but you just don't see work like his very often. (And I suppose that is why, aside from his own Tom and Jerry episodes, I loved the ones done from 1950 to 1952, the animation style used for those episodes are also quite controlled)

There are just far too many amazing works he has done to refer you to, dear reader, but I am sure you must have at least seen most of them by now if you are interested in animation. I suggest however to check out most of his work in the 1960s if you haven't, honestly I love nearly everything he has done.

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