THE Cartoon/Animation thread (Discussion)

You must have a double region DVD player because their setting is not the same as ours. If there weren't the case I would have bought a load of cartoons on DVD from the US via Amazon, EBay etc but as far as I know it only plays the European region stuff. Ah yes I forgot that, nice one mate.

It was a region one disc,my first DVD player was multi region.You're right though,Amazon and EBay are a goldmine for stuff like that.

As mentioned above The Perils of Penelope Pitstop had a great voice-over man in Gary Owens. He started out doing comic announcements on the successful and wacky comedy/sketch show of the 60's 'Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In' Dan Rowan and Dick Martin were comedians and they were the mainstay of the show along with Goldie Hawn, Ruth Buzzi, Jo-Anne Worley, Henry Gibson, Arte Johnson(those four would also lend their voice to cartoons later) Anyway Owens had a great voice and would go on to appear in other cartoons including Blue Falcon(Dynomutt, Dog Wonder), Captain Caveman(announcer) Swat Kats(Commander Feral)and Space Ghost.

From time to time I want to do a feature on the greatest cartoon voices. To start this series here, in my opinion is THE greatest voice of all time: Mel Blanc

One of my cartoon heroes was the late, great Mel Blanc. He actually started out doing sounds like a broken-down car on the radio series for the great US comedian Jack Benny. It would stand him in good stead later as he would do cartoon cars occasionally but his most famous creation was the voice of one Bugs Bunny. When doing that voice(his accent was Brooklyn sass) Mel would crunch on the famous carrots so beloved by his character but when he'd finished he would spit them out because he hated them!. Mel also did Daffy Duck, Porky Pig, Sylvester & Tweety Pie and Yosemite Sam among his many, many voices but the one he couldn't do was Elmer Fudd(that was left to Arthur Q Bryan although when he died Mel took his place) He always seemed to identify with Daffy the most because like him he was wacky and a bit wild too but he based the rasping voice on Leon Schlesinger, his Warner Bros studio boss who gave him his first credit when he asked for it. Later Mel worked for Hanna-Barbera creating some great voices such as Barney Rubble of The Flintstones and Cosmo Spacely of The Jetsons Dino the Dinosaur, Secret Squirrel, Speed Buggy, and Captain Caveman, as well as voices for Wally Gator and The Perils of Penelope Pitstop. He also did three voices for the 1970's live-action/animated film, 'The Phantom Tollbooth' including Officer Short Shrift.

On 24th January, 1961, Blanc was involved in a near-fatal car accident. He was driving alone when his sports car collided head-on with a car driven by 18-year-old college student Arthur Rolston on Sunset Boulevard. Rolston suffered minor injuries, but Blanc was rushed to the UCLA Medical Center with a triple skull fracture that left him in a coma for two weeks, along with sustaining fractures to both legs and the pelvis. About two weeks after the accident, one of Blanc's neurologists tried a different approach.(this is contested though) Blanc was asked, "How are you feeling today, Bugs Bunny?" After a slight pause, Blanc answered, in a weak voice, "Eh... just fine, Doc. How are you?" The doctor then asked Tweety if he was there, too. "I tawt I taw a puddy tat," was the reply. Blanc returned home on 17th March. Four days later, Blanc filed a $500,000 lawsuit against the city of Los Angeles. His accident, one of 26 in the preceding two years at the intersection known as Dead Man's Curve, resulted in the city funding the restructuring of curves at the location.

Blanc began smoking cigarettes when he was nine years old. He continued his pack-a-day habit until he was diagnosed with emphysema, which pushed him to quit at age 77. On 19th May, 1989, Blanc was checked into Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles by his family when they noticed he had a bad cough while shooting a commercial; he was originally expected to recover. Blanc's health then took a turn for the worse and doctors found that he had advanced coronary artery disease. He died on 10th July at Cedars-Sinai, at the age of 81. He is interred in Hollywood Forever Cemetery in Hollywood. Blanc's will stated his desire to have the inscription on his gravestone read, "That's all folks", the phrase that was the hallmark of Blanc's character, Porky Pig.

His son Noel would continue his work doing various voices including Bugs Bunny along with new voice artist Joe Alaskey. The late Kenny Everett was a friend of Noel and he recorded some special 'advertisements' and shorts for his radio show which were hilarious. The poignant thing for me was a picture of all Mel Blanc's cartoon characters standing in front of an empty microphone stand, their heads bowed in tribute.

Sources: My memory, Wikipedia(although not wildly accurate at times) and book '50 Years And Only One Grey Hare'

If you can still get hold of it, and you might be able to find it on Ebay or Amazon I highly recommend the book "The Art of Hanna-Barbera" by Ted Sennett. It's a weighty tome but a wealth of information and a great source of cartoon trivia too. There are some ludicrous prices around but it shouldn't cost more than £25-£30.

^ great book.

Going onto a different technique,I have a wonderful documentary on tape called Dinosaur!(1985).We recorded it in the late 80s when it was shown on ITV I think,hosted by Christopher Reeve it featured go motion dinosaur sequences animated by Phil Tippett.He'd originally done a short entitled Prehistoric Beast a few years earlier which led to this.I still find stop and go motion animation enthralling to watch in the midst of the saturated and often heartless CGI films that Hollywood pumps out.

Yes very true that type of animation is very time consuming yet the results can be amazing. Take Morph(from Vision On to Take Hart and later The Adventures of Morph) for instance, simple medium Plasticine with each tiny movement taking an age to do; one camera shot/frame is taken each time so it can take a whole day to make to say make him wave. It takes great skill and patience to produce a whole sequence which may only last a few seconds on screen. Imagine how long it took the legend of stop-motion animation Ray Harryhausen to make one his Sinbad films from the 1970's. I remember going to see 'Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger' which featured a huge stop-motion tiger and a giant wasp. The effects were amazing but the work it took must have been painstakingly long. I have huge admiration for anyone that takes the time and trouble to produce this kind of work.

Same here.The films of Ray Harryhausen are so influential,I've just ordered Jason and the Argonauts on blu ray.I can't wait to see how good it looks.

Yes that was quite a film Jason and The Argonauts but there was also those classic children's shows made by Gordon Murray, Camberwick Green, Trumpton, Chigley, Pogles Wood etc All of those were stop-motion and must have taken bloody ages to produce by Bura and Hardwicke.

Willis O'Brien did some great stuff pre-Harryhausen,King Kong(1933)being the most well known.The famous Kong vs The Meat Eater(T-Rex)scene was actually test footage that was so impressive director Merrian C.Cooper insisted it be in the film.