Drawing Influence - Chuck Jones
(Or... learning that PEOPLE make cartoons!)
Before I could even read the comics in the newspapers, I could watch cartoons on TV. And BOY did I watch the HELL out of a lot of cartoons. Seriously, like most kids, I was obsessed.
Growing up in, of all places, Amarillo Texas in the late 70s, I watched every cartoon I could get my eyes on, but above all else I loved BUGS BUNNY!
I mean, who DIDN’T? But quickly, my enjoyment began to morph into something different when I watched “The Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Movie” on TV (or possibly video) in the early 80s. See… it included a lot of my FAVORITE Bugs and Daffy cartoons and started with a whimsical little wraparound segment with Bugs in his big mansion in a smoking vest talking about his “fathers” and one in particular named “Chuck Jones.”
I KNEW that name. I’d seen it on the credits of a LOT of great cartoons. Okay, sometimes it said “Charles M. Jones”, but I was already also a Charlie Brown fan so I knew that Chuck was a nickname for Charles. But the point was, that my wee kid brain started making CONNECTIONS.
The name “Chuck Jones” was seen on a LOT of cartoons I loved. Those quirky Tom and Jerry toons that caught my attention and looked edgier and different had his name. My favorite Loony Tunes shorts had his name on it. THE MFing GRINCH HAD HIS NAME on it!
My kid brain exploded with a stark realization: “PEOPLE MADE CARTOONS!!!”
And, as it turned out, some people made cartoons I liked better than other people. They made the characters LOOK cooler or move better or be funnier. I’d learn about what all the OTHER people did later on, but at that moment, my mind had expanded to accept a new reality: “People made cartoons, and I was a people!”
At that moment, my path was set and my course laid in. I was going to draw stuff like the stuff I loved! I was gonna be a cartoonist of SOME kind!
I was gonna be people! And so I got serious. It was only 1982 when I started making my own comic strips with a little dog named Dandy and I’ve never really stopped. And while I make comics and not animation, the things I learned and absorbed from Chuck Jones cartoons has never NOT been visible in my work.
From my love of breaking the 4th wall with a wry look to my desire to “animate” even locked poses and give them as much life as possible, I studied the HELL out of his work for decades. I still do!
Charles M. has been a major influence on me as well.
Please tell me to knock it off if you already have, but did you read his autobiography “Chuck Amuck”? If you haven’t, get a copy as quickly as you can: his opening chapter on his cat Johnson has been a major influence on my writing since I first read it in 1988, and his story on how Daffy Duck got his distinctive voice nearly ruptured me from laughter.