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July 27

Art style

I was re-watching my Looney Tunes DVD this evening and was struck by the different styles of background illustration they used. There's a style in particular I found striking, the one used for the exterior shots (and, to a lesser extent, the interior ones) in Deduce, You Say!. You can get a sense of it here. Limited pallet, but unusual colours, and a surprising amount of line detail. More atmospheric than most other examples of Chuck Jones's style, but he did do similar stuff in Transylvania 6-5000 and a few other places. Almost - but not quite - film noir. Is there a particular name for this style of illustration? Matt Deres (talk) 02:22, 27 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Looks rather sloppy to me, in that the lines that should be parallel aren't drawn parallel and the perspective lines are a bit off. When I think sloppy, rather basic animation, and a limited color palette, I think The Pink Panther Show or anything by Seven Arts. StuRat (talk) 03:49, 27 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

It's probably worth mentioning that the backgrounds in most Jones cartoons were designed (and usually executed) by Maurice Noble, not by Jones himself. Noble used a variety of styles, depending on the situations to be depicted, as can be seen in the various "scenes" of What's Opera, Doc?, for instance. As our article says, "The graphic look of his backgrounds could vary widely from film to film; he tried to make the backdrop fit the mood of the film." Deor (talk) 10:31, 27 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I would associate that style particularly with UPA. According to our article, limited animation seems to be the technical term for it. Tevildo (talk) 12:10, 27 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Chuck Jones's Warner Brothers cartoons weren't examples of limited animation (the term refers to the animation of the characters, not to the backgrounds). Occasionally, the design work, as in The Dover Boys, is somewhat suggestive of the UPA style, though. Deor (talk) 18:11, 27 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]