The Quietly Elegant Background Art of Looney Tunes
The Gaze looks at the quietly elegant background art of Looney Tunes cartoons, noting how when the characters are removed, the screen is still filled with gorgeous liminal space.
When you strip LooneyTunes from all its characters and movement and music, you discover this hidden dimension filled with beautiful images that are abandoned, silent, and kind of creepy sometimes. It's the completeopposite of what Looney Tunes is. Filled with life and very loud. These background images are liminalspaces. Spaces that are usually filled withlife, but are now dead silent.
He further explains how the art was created through layout designers and background artists.
Layout designers come upwith the designs and the lighting and the cameraangles for each shot of the cartoon, and those initial designs are then used by the backgroundartists to create the actual backdrops. These artists are the unsung heroes of the Golden Age of American animation. An age that ran from the 1930s up until the early 70s.
He also showcases the work of Maurice Noble, an iconic background artist whose career spanned more than six decades.
One of the things he quicklythrew out the door was a style of realism thatwas often used at Disney. ...He said that if you have characters that are mainly lines and flat color, you should follow the same approachin your backgrounds. And if your characters arecaricatures of reality, your background art should be a caricature as well. For instance by adding lots of exaggerated imperfections or by using stretched out and distorted perspectives.
Finally, he notes how famous works of art inspired the background artists.
Okay, first take a look at this background from a Looney Tunes cartoon. And now lookat this painting by Edward Hopper. Here's a De Chirico and a Looney Tunes background. LooneyTunes, Rockwell Kent. Salvador Dali, Looney Tunes. Looney Tunes, David Hockney. You just cannot lookat these backgrounds without noticing some art references. In fact the images are little works of art themselves. They don't need the Looney Tunes characters and the music and all that jazz to becomplete.
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Here are some examples courtesy of Looney Tunes Backgrounds
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via The Awesomer