Dec 2, 2020

Ross Bollinger on "Duck Amuck," the cartoon that changed me.

This week's edition of The Animation That Changed Me features Ross Bollinger. The series features top artists and industry luminaries discussing animated works that have had a profound impact on them.

Bollinger is the creator of a web series called Pencilmation, which humorously depicts a graffiti artist's ongoing battle with his creator, and has amassed nearly 9 billion views on Youtube, making it one of the most popular animation channels on the platform. Bollinger's choice was the "Chartist". Bollinger chose "Duck Amuck," a short film from Chuck Jones' classic "Merrie Melodies. Bollinger:

I absorbed all the Looney Tunes classics every Wednesday at my grandparents' house when I was a kid. We didn't have cable TV at home, so I may have pioneered the concept of "binge watching" back then. It was on this long Wednesday afternoon when I was in elementary school that I first encountered "Duck Amuck". I was riveted. Witnessing Daffy Duck have his world literally dismantled before my eyes by an omniscient artist (who eventually turned out to be his nemesis Bugs Bunny) was sheer genius.

There are so many incredible Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies that it would be impossible to list them all. Chuck Jones, Fritz Fluellen, Tex Avery, and many other great talents set the bar very high for comedic character animation during their prolific careers. Few studios could have come close to what Warner Bros. (and Disney) accomplished during this period. The masterful execution of the animation medium during the golden age of animation was nearly flawless and inspires me daily.

An excerpt from "Duck Amuck" follows:

At age 16, I was teaching myself Macromedia Flash. After seeing "Duck Amuck," I decided to create my own take on the concept of "creators vs. creation" and named it "Pencilmation. That animation became the first episode of my eponymous web animation series. I can say with certainty that the animation literally changed me.

I believe that the entire Merrie Melodies cartoon division began as a way to sell sheet music from the Warner Bros. library. Can you imagine if Warner Bros. started a cartoon division today to get artists like Bruno Mars and Rihanna to dance? What a testament to creativity. Put all those talented people together in one place and let them create, and magic happens. (As long as the deadlines are met: ...... Haha.)

I can't think of any flaws in "Duck Amuck," and even if I could, I wouldn't be the kind of person to critique a classic. Is there anything that Shakespeare did not do well in "Hamlet"? Looney Tunes forms a sturdy pillar in the short history of cartoon animation, and I would feel foolish even trying to point out its flaws...

Is the relationship between creator and creation meaningfully different in the age of digital animation? Computers present digital animators with all sorts of fascinating little shortcuts, but the truth is that almost all of them seriously detract from the overall aesthetic of the creation. Digital animation (especially CG) simply does not get old, but classic hand-drawn animation is timelessly beautiful.

However, one cannot blame the computer. Compared to pencils and brushes, which have been around for thousands of years, computers have only been around for a few decades. It is the fault of hasty creators tempted by shortcuts, but there is no substitute for hard work and dedication, especially in animation.

There are other examples of "meta" storytelling in animation that I admire. Don Hertzfeldt's "Rejected" immediately comes to mind as a hilarious and surreal take on meta-storytelling: the "spoon is too big." Hertzfeldt was an analog forerunner of the entire "random comedy" movement on the early Internet. Excellent.

[Osvaldo Cavandoli's] La Linea is another example: hundreds of episodes of artists torturing their creations with catchy 1970s music, along with a distinctly Italian sense of design and a comedic twist.

Of course, I've often reviewed "Duck Amuck," too. That moment when Duffy tries to strum his guitar instead of notes and suddenly it starts sounding like a machine gun. It gets me every time.