I would have never guessed from the animation that it was Tex Avery.
…but wow, how about the liberal use of that bug spray. The lady is shooting it around like it’s an air freshener!

You’re not the only one who gets sad when he turns on the TV set and looks at what passes for cartoons nowadays. I feel like a crabby old man sometimes; but to fight it, I work on getting the word out to the up and coming crop of animators. It’s up to them to bring great animation back.

Good gracious! Many many thanks for posting this.

I’m saddened to think of where it has gotten to as well. I’d personally like to see someone out there for once try something a tad bold and daring in a commercial besides the usual grind.

I’m reminded in the western section of Germany, there was a popular series of commercials (supposedly totaling 500 in all), featuring a man often called “HB-Männchen”, the ads were for a brand of cigarette called “HB”, and the character gets into a problem resulting from his actions, leading him to explode into the air, and a voice goes “Stop my friend, why go nuts, have an HB cigarette instead.” These ads were aired on TV from the late 50s to the early 70s when cigarette ads were banned on German TV, but continued on in the cinemas until ‘84. Here’s a sample…
1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12

I agree with you and Stephen. It’s saddening to see that most animation today doesn’t come close to the quality of the old stuff. But hey, as one of those (hopefully) up and coming crop of animators I’m going to do my damnedest to bring it back. :)

Now, I loved that short. But to bring that kind of quality back, you will have to do a LOT of things in this culture, which quite frankly can’t happen unless bad stuff start to happen. (I’m not sure if its from the 1960’s or 70’s). It is only then when people who care and I mean truly care will shine.

It comes back to modern art vs 15th-19th century art- those type of arguments. Until we have an definitive answer, and the process of cutting the wheat from the chaff trully start- we wont have this type of simple but great animation again. Its gonna be some 15-30 years before any body can be compared to Jones/Avery etc again honestly.

On a similar note, take a look at these great Starkist tuna commercials. Both the Raid bugs and Charlie Tuna were great favourites of mine. Today, the only thing that appeals to me are those rather charmin’ Charmin ads with the bears.

http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=starkist+tuna&search=Search

Great stuff. I was lucky enough to work with Tex at Hanna-Barbera back in the eighties. He truly was a funny guy.

I’ll take this stuff any day compared to the over animated, over rendered junk that passes for animation today.

Speaking as an unoffended animator for one of the companies you mentioned. No one can compete with the wonderfulness of Tex Avery. It would be nice if you and others who compare commercial and classic theatrical shorts to modern TV animation, remind the folks that the budgets and time per footage were and are more generous. Even today most of the better animation is in commercials. A fairer comparison would be TV animation of yesterday vs. TV animation of today. Same goes for commercials and features. All and all, I believe series animation has improved while feature and commercial animation has either stayed the course or slid a bit with exceptions on all counts. Anyway great posts as always.

Tex directed this at Cascade Prods., about 1968-69. It was animated by Irv Spence, just look at that classic take and zip out! Irv was a great animator and a good teacher.

Yeah, hindsight is 20/20. I agree with Bob for the most part. The thing is, Cartoon Network has a look, they call a style. I’m willing to bet that the problem is not the animators fault, it’s how cartoons for TV are produced. There seems to have been a lot more artistic freedom given to people like Tex Avery, after all, when he was working on Looney Tunes he was able to have a lot of creative control. Clients, budgets, and schedules dominate the reason why TV animation is not the hand-drawn crafted animation before. But there are a ton of what I would consider well animated Flash and commercial animation today.

The picture is bigger than just young animators “not pushing themselves”.

Great post! I’m 52 years young and several years ago gave up practicing medicine after 20 years to switch careers and concentrate on animation and music, two loves that were on the back burner way too long.

When I started in the early 1990s I was doing hand-drawn pencil animation and working with some great talent. Now it’s “faster, cheaper” like it’s never been before. I’m a 2D guy and always will be and learned FLASH to keep on working. Just finished a stint on a kid’s TV show in NYC. One-half hour to produce every 2 weeks with a crew of no more than 6 animators. It was entirely symbol-based - which does have its own charm if done properly. It reminds me of digital puppetry. When I’m working on a FLASH animation, I look over at my animation disc and pegbar and just sigh! When I’m able, I try to hand draw and scan some animation directly into FLASH for that classic look.

I still do my own thing - the traditional way in pencil - for my own personal growth as an animator. There is so much more control this way. Look at the great Milt Kahl scene Mike Sporn posted on his SPLOG today!

Again, great post!

I grew up in the 70’s watching Bugs Bunny cartoons, the Muppets, the Flintstone’s etc. I’d say a large section of my brain contains images of exploding cigars, penguins crying ice cubes, anvils landing on people’s heads etc. Anyway as a kid, there was always lots of quality entertainment. In the 80’s animation became more limited and crappy…I remember watching shows like Spider man and Rocket Robin Hood and feeling ripped off that they kept repeating the same animations. Shows like GI Joe, Carebears etc. have to represent a cartoon low point. At least the Cartoon Network has reintroduced a level of artistry to cartoons. Shows like Samurai Jack and Foster’s Home for Imaginary Friends are beautifully designed (some of those backgrounds blow my mind). Maybe we aren’t living in the hey day of the Warner Brothers era but it’s not 1980 either.

What sort of a psychopath sprays Raid outside?

“Everything I see in the mainstream is generic and blandly animated—as long as it moves across the screen, it’s good enough.”

Then you’ve never watched “Ed, Edd & Eddy.”

The Tex Avery commercial is nice, a great treat to see, but I really love the unobjective Nick/CN/Disney Channel ragging. Wonderful return to form, Amid.

There’s a much-loved Australian animated commercial from 1962 for Mortein fly spray. It stars a dirty fly called Louie with the a bad wiseguy accent done by an Australian.
Just saw this Avery Raid ad for the first time, and it doesn’t seem clear which year it was made, and whether it was one of a series starring the same characters. Wondering which came first, Louie the Fly or Tex’s Raid bugs.
On an unrelated topic: love the Cartoon Brew redesign, which Jerry Beck’s book on animation could also do with. It’s very well-written and deserves much better layout.