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Good animator? Good director?

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Good animator? Good director?

Hey, I just bought the Looney Tunes Gold Collection Vol. 3 dvds a few weeks ago. In one of the cartoon's commentary (I forget exactly which one right now) animation veteran Bill Melendez said something rather interesting. "Bob McKimson was a poor director because he was a great animator while Bob Clampett was a great director because he was a poor animator."

I guess this question would be more for someone who has had a lot of experience in this industry. Is that above statement usually the way, that poor animators make good directors and good animators make poor directors?

Haredevil_Hare's picture
Order my book Jesus Needs Help on Amazon or download on Kindle. You can also read the first 18 pages of my next book for free at this link: The Hap Hap Happy Happenstance of Fanny Punongtiti

Order my book Jesus Needs Help on Amazon or download on Kindle.

You can also read the first 18 pages of my next book for free at this link: The Hap Hap Happy Happenstance of Fanny Punongtiti

It is a load of crap. Don't pay any attention to it.

"Don't want to end up a cartoon in a cartoon graveyard" - Paul Simon

It is a load of crap. Don't pay any attention to it.

I must agree with you on that, at least.

EDIT: Saying that a "good animator has to be a poor director" and that a "poor animator has to be a great director" is like saying that Bach was a poor composer because he was a great organist or that Bach was a poor organist because he was a great composer, which is certainly not true. This guy, this "animator" Bill Melendez has some problems.

Good animators make good directors because one who has animated for some time will know what he/she can or cannot geta way with, and knows the limitations of animation in film, and makes the best of these limitations. I have been a firm believer of this for all my time in the business, and honestly do not believe I could haev ever directed cartoons without having animated extensively first.

"Don't want to end up a cartoon in a cartoon graveyard" - Paul Simon

It is a load of crap. Don't pay any attention to it.

Haha. Too funny Wade.

Aloha,
the Ape

...we must all face a choice, between what is right... and what is easy."

I think the "Hare" is just waiting for "Harvey" to get riled up again. Maybe he misses the drama that erupts here every now and then.

And I echo the "Ape"'s great comment to "Wade", and we've had our differences (Wade and I) in the past, but you were right on target.

Pat

Pat Hacker, Visit Scooter's World.

Here I am: all "riled up." ;)

Some of you are confusing the word "great" with the word "good." Melendez (Looney Tunes animator and Charlie Brown director, though probably great at neither) said "great," not "good."
Being great at something is entirely different than being good at it. Most people aren't great at anything, although good at many things.

Melendez's larger point might have been that people usually can't be great at everything. A person usually has to focus his energies and try to be great at one thing or another. Being a director requires an extroverted set of skills, while being an animator requires a more introverted set of skills. In some ways, they are polar opposites.

I'm not saying it's impossible to be great at both animating and directing, I'm just saying that it seems to be rare.

Harvey, just have to say it: "Got to love you, you're the "baby". To quote the "Dinosaur" show. I can always count on you to spice things up.

Pat

Pat Hacker, Visit Scooter's World.

With all due respect to Mr. Melendez, Robert Mckimson was a great director.

Not a Jones, Freleng, Tashlin, Clampett or Avery but a great director nevertheless. His earlier stuff after Clampett like Walky Talky Hawky was great.
What basically happened was as time went on, Mckimson known to be an all round nice guy, very compliant; not known to complain, would sort of get stuck with the B list animators after Jones and Freleng took the best.
But if you ask me, those cartoons were well directed albeit with weaker animation. His latter cartoons tended to be very talky but maybe it was his way (as others had their way) of dealing with the corners being cut.

May we all be not as great as him.

"Bob McKimson was a poor director because he was a great animator while Bob Clampett was a great director because he was a poor animator."

I disagree with the word "because." But I certainly agree that good animators don't necessarily make good directors or that poor animators necessarily make bad directors. Both disciplines take a different set of skills, and one person might have more of one than the other.

Isn't richard williams writer of the number 1 selling animation book *the animators survival kit* a fantastic animator and director???

hmm...that guys comments smells a bit shit.

I don't think being a poor animator is any guarentee that you will be a good director, but I think what he means is that a good animator may focus on the animation, at the expense of the bigger picture, where as someone who is more interested in the storytelling possibilities of the medium may find all the technicalities of animation very tedious. If you look at the best directors at Disney in the nineties, you will notice that many of them come from a storyboarding background. Compare this to director/animators, like Williams and Bluth, and you can see how this makes for a different type of film. Thief and the Cobbler is certainly an interesting film, it is so obsessed with unusual visual effects, that it will never engage with an audience as well as the similarly themed Aladdin.

It's certainly possible to be both a great animator and director. Brad Bird is a perfect example of this, but bear in mind that he did storyboards for years. However some animators are just so into their craft that they will never make for good directors. There's also the personality aspect of it, where great animators can somtimes be a little introverted and spend hours hunched over an animation disk, but don't really have the leadership qualities or social skills to direct.

i dont think bill melendez was saying it in a broad sense that "every good animator is a bad director and every bad animator is a good director". i think he was talking about in his own personal experiance with the two directors bob clampett and bob mckimson.

of what ive read and heard about those two animators/directors, i can see where bill melendez was coming from. they were very different directors, clampett seemd to have a very strong idea of the overall picture and the feeling and energy he wanted in each scene, and he let his animator use their creativity to bring that out. while mckimson on the other hand, seemed to be very controlling. his animation all planned very carefully. thats something that bill described, that mckimson gave the animators a lot of poses and drawings precisley how he wanted the action and acting to turn out.

so i guess from bills point of view, going to one opposite to the other, i can see how he could come to that conclusion. clampett wasnt the best animator, but he knew how to bring out the best in his animators (especially scribner), and mckimson was one of the best animators there (imo), so i guess he was a bit more controlling in his direction.

anyways, just my thoughts on the subject.

i dont think bill melendez was saying it in a broad sense that "every good animator is a bad director and every bad animator is a good director". i think he was talking about in his own personal experiance with the two directors bob clampett and bob mckimson.

of what ive read and heard about those two animators/directors, i can see where bill melendez was coming from. they were very different directors, clampett seemd to have a very strong idea of the overall picture and the feeling and energy he wanted in each scene, and he let his animator use their creativity to bring that out. while mckimson on the other hand, seemed to be very controlling. his animation all planned very carefully. thats something that bill described, that mckimson gave the animators a lot of poses and drawings precisley how he wanted the action and acting to turn out.

so i guess from bills point of view, going to one opposite to the other, i can see how he could come to that conclusion. clampett wasnt the best animator, but he knew how to bring out the best in his animators (especially scribner), and mckimson was one of the best animators there (imo), so i guess he was a bit more controlling in his direction.

anyways, just my thoughts on the subject.

That is absolutely right, Brien. Bill was just going by his own experiences.

Melendez was a pretty decent animator. I can usually pick out his work in Clampett's, Davis', or McKimson's cartoons. But I certainly disagree with his sentiments.

Graphiteman already mentioned that McKimson was a pretty good director (at least he certainly was between 1946 and 1952-ish. Also, switching writers from Warren Foster to Tedd Pierce really altered his output.). But, Melendez forgot to mention that Bob Clampett was also a pretty good animator. I mean, it was Clampett who did the first animation of Daffy leaping on the lake shouting WOO HOO WOO HOO that made him a star. It was that animation that was partly instrumental in giving Clampett the director's chair. However, Bill Melendez was still at Disney's when all that happened so all he saw was Clampett as the director.

Yeah, I pretty much agree with what everyone has said here. Some animators could make good directors and some can't. Tex Avery even said something to this effect in an interview "Some animators think they've got what it takes to be a director but they haven't got it. And some wouldn't even take the job if you gave it to them."

John K. took a swipe at Chuck Jones in one of the other commentaries in a similar nature. He said "Chuck was so into his own drawing style that he didn't want to be upstaged by the animators". This is of course false. I mean, sure Jones would make a pose drawing for practically every single foot of film but he didn't boss his animators around. Two of his favourite animators were Ken Harris and Ben Washam because they would take Jones' pose drawings and add their own touch to them. He much preferred that to some of the others who would just trace over Jones' drawings and use those as keys.

Order my book Jesus Needs Help on Amazon or download on Kindle.

You can also read the first 18 pages of my next book for free at this link: The Hap Hap Happy Happenstance of Fanny Punongtiti

Geeze "Hare" it seems like you have to pigeon hole everything into your comfortable little cubbies. You must be young. You'll get more forgiving and flexible as you get some age to you.

Pat Hacker, Visit Scooter's World.

Yeh, we all seem to be describing different parts of the elephant.

There're so many outside factors affecting a director's vision...especially today.
Could there be a lousey film but good directing? You just look at what was handed or dictated to the director and you compamentalize what he or she did?

................ Davis'.............

Now there's a guy I wish who had more of an opportunity.