Where does your inspiration come from? Chuck Redux thinks this photo of Chuck Jones sitting in the high desert outside of Los Angeles in 1961 on the folded-down convertible top of his Ford Consul painting is inspirational. There's beauty all around us everyday, whether it is the wet pavement on 35th Street in New York City or the dry, parched desert of southern California, and all that's needed is for one of us to stop for just a moment (put down that digital device now!) and look for it. See, it's right there.
Please share with us where you find inspiration to be creative in the comments section!
Photograph of Chuck Jones courtesy the Chuck Jones Center for Creativity.
"It's a Scweam!" is a day brightener at the corner of Market Street and 5th Avenue in San Diego's storied Gaslamp Quarter. Should you find yourself there with your Smartphone, make sure to scan the QR code in the lower right for more information...who knows what you'll find if you look hard enough.
On April 17, 1937, a star was born. Tex Avery's "Porky's Duck Hunt" premiered in theaters nationwide and audiences were introduced to a duck unlike any other duck in cartoon history. He was wacky and wild, some might even say crazy, but the germ of an idea was born, and the directors and animators at Warner Bros. took the nutty, black-feathered guy and made him into the star he is today, Daffy Aloysius Dumas Duck.
Daffy Duck starred in 134 +/- cartoons and arguably reached his apogee in the hunting trilogy directed by Chuck Jones: "Rabbit Fire" 1951, "Rabbit Seasoning" 1952, and "Duck! Rabbit! Duck!" 1953.
"I have watched with fascination his [Daffy's] growth from his earliest haphazard puerile personality, through adolescence, to the splendid bombast of his maturity in the fifties. Daffy has become the spokesman for the egoist in everyone, but he remains always undaunted by the inevitable requital: the fear of consequences that makes cowards of the rest of us." --Robert D. Tschirgi, M.D., PH.D., professor of Neurosciences, University of California, La Jolla, February 14, 1985
"The first surfacing of that part of my character that was later to show up in Daffy Duck occurred at the age of six. My sixth-birthday party, to be precise. I was immensely proud--it seems to me that all my life I have taken the most pride in things over which I have little or no control. Even though I had older sisters, it never occurred to me that anyone had ever become six years old before, and the splendid cake, candles bravely ablaze in salute to my maturity, was ample evidence that I had entered manhood.
"Having blown out the candles and, as a side benefit, managing to send most of the smoke up my little brother's nostrils, I was handed the knife, my first baton of any kind of authority in six misspent years, and was told to cut as large a piece as I liked. At this point Daffy Duck must have had, for me, his earliest beginnings, because I found to my surprise and pleasure that I had no desire to share my cake with anyone. I courteously returned the knife to my mother. I had no need for it, I explained; I would simplify the whole matter by taking the entire cake for myself. Not knowing she had an incipient duck on her hands, she laughed gently and tried to return the knife to my reluctant grasp. I again explained that the knife was superflous. It was impossible, I pointed out with incontrovertible logic, to cut a cake and still leave it entire for its rightful owner. I had no need and no desire to share.
"My father thereupon mounted the hustings (he was nine feet tall and looked like a moose without antlers) and escorted me to my room to contemplate in cakeless solitude the meaning of a word new to me: "selfish." To me then, and to Daffy Duck now, "selfish" means "honest but antisocial"; "unselfish" means "socially acceptable but often dishonest." We all want the whole cake, but, unlike Daffy and at least one six-year-old boy, the coward in the rest of us keeps the Daffy Duck, the small boy in us, under control." --Chuck Jones writing in his autobiography "Chuck Amuck" 1989
All drawings are by Chuck Jones, graphite on paper, circa 1950s through mid 1990s.
When Chuck Jones's 1949 short animated film starring Pepé le Pew, "For Scent-i-mental Reasons" won the Oscar for best short animated film at the Oscars held in March of 1950, he received many congratulatory telegrams (of course, he did not get the actual Oscar statuette, that honor was bestowed upon the producer, the irascible Eddie Selzer), but of all of the congratulations, the telegram below, from the inimitable Tex Avery is perhaps the most delightful. This artfact will be on display at the soon-to-open Chuck Jones Experience at Circus Circus in Las Vegas.
You might very well look at this image and ask yourself, "What do these characters have to do with our nation's founding?" Well wonder no more, here's the story as told to us by a very wise person...
In the middle 1970s Chuck Jones was producing and directing several half hour TV specials based on the George Selden "Cricket in Times Square" books and characters. The last of a trio of films starring Harry Cat, Chester Cricket and Tucker Mouse was "Yankee Doodle Cricket" and as was often the case with Chuck, he made a thorough investigation of the period (revolutionary, my good fellow!) and while working on model drawings, the look and feel of the film, he took that left turn at Albuquerque and created the drawing that was used as the line for this hand-painted limited edition cel that stars Pepe le Pew, Bugs Bunny, Elmer Fudd and Yosemite Sam as they witness Daffy Duck applying his "Daffy Duck" (did you think I was going to say his "John Hancock"?) to the Ducklaration of Independence.
Each "Ducklaration" in the edition has been hand-painted by expert cel painters, one color at a time (from darkest to lightest) on the reverse side of the acetate (cel) sheet, Chuck approved each by hand-signing each example. To add this special work of art to your collection, please contact your Chuck Jones Gallery art consultant and you will receive two free tickets to "Bugs Bunny at the Symphony" on Saturday, August 6, 2011 at the Verizon Wireless Amphitheater, Irvine, California and two free tickets to the Chuck Jones Big Draw on Sunday, August 7, 2011 at SOCO (South Coast Collection) in Costa Mesa, California, a $150.00 value! San Diego: 888-294-9880; Santa Fe: 800-290-5999; Tustin: 800-959-7175.
"Old Glory" limited edition hand-painted cel created from an original drawing by Chuck Jones for his 1939 film of the same title that had Uncle Sam demonstrating to Porky Pig why learning the Pledge of Allegiance was important. Edition of 39 examples, 12.5" x 10.5" and hand-signed by Martha Sigal, one of the original Leon Schlesinger Productions ink & paint department denizens. Purchase this cel from your Chuck Jones Gallery by July 4, 2011 and receive 2 free tickets to the August 6th performance of "Bugs Bunny at the Symphony" at Verizon Wireless Amphitheater in Irvine, California as well as two free tickets to "The Chuck Jones Big Draw" a family event on Sunday, August 7, 2011 from 11 AM to 5 PM, held at SOCO (South Coast Collection) in Costa Mesa. Call San Diego: 888-294-9880 or email SanDiego@ChuckJones.com; Santa Fe 800-290-5999 or email SantaFe@ChuckJones.com and Tustin 800-959-7175 or email Tustin@ChuckJones.com for more details and to place your order.
As happens here, on our way to other things we stumbled across these two beautiful Daffy Duck model drawings by Chuck Jones (graphite on 12 field animation paper.) They so perfectly capture the character of Daffy (Chuck once remarked, "I dream of being Bugs Bunny, but I wake up Daffy Duck."), that it was imperative we stop and share them with you. And because they are so classic, we're following them with Chuck's 1953 masterpiece, "Duck Amuck". Enjoy!
During his tenure as vice-president in charge of children's programming at ABC television, Jones produced and directed three half-hour television specials based on stories from Rudyard Kipling's "The Jungle Book". In 1973, the story of a young boy raised by wolves in the jungle, premiered to immediate acclaim. Narrated by Roddy McDowall, Mowgli learns about the love, justice and the jungle code of loyalty.
Early storyboard by Jones with a nascent Mowgli in the upper right corner.
Pre-production model sketch of Mowgli by Chuck Jones. You can begin to see how Jones is determining the character and personality of Mowgli through his use of the drawn line.
Production layout drawing by Chuck Jones. Providing hundreds of layout drawings for each of the films he directed, Jones here has clearly defined the character of Mowgli and establishes the model from which the animator's created the mood and movement of each scene.
What better way to start your Memorial Day weekend than enjoying 6 minutes and 1 second of Chuck Jones's inspired animation, but first let's take a look at 3 of his layout drawings for his 1952 Road Runner and Wile E. Coyote cartoon, "Going! Going! Gosh!"
Wile E. Coyote (Carnivorous Vulgaris) attempts to catch the Road Runner (Accelerati Incredibus) nine different ways in this cartoon.
Even his backside is expressive which puts to rest the canard that the 'eyes have it.'
There is nothing sadder than poor Wile E. hoisted on his own petard.
P.S. There's just a little bit of Italian at the beginning of the film...
There really aren't enough superlatives to adequately describe the beauty of this short film. From its perfect screenplay to its totes awesome animation and all of the ingredients in-between (layouts, voice over, sound effects, color, pacing) Chuck Jones's 1966 Oscar-winning "The Dot and the Line" will always be a perfect work of art.
Robert Storr, Dean of the Yale School of Art has said, “Great art is essentially work that has proven inexhaustible in terms of value it gives to those who pay attention to it. It says ‘I am in the present tense despite the fact that I was made five or fifty years ago.’”
We had stumbled upon this advertisement that MGM had placed in Variety when "The Dot and the Line" was nominated for an Oscar on our way to something else, but it stopped us long enough to share it with you and to share the animated film as well. Enjoy!
