Foreword copyright © 1987, 2013 The Maurice Noble Estate.
Preface copyright © 1987 by The Chuck Jones Center for Creativity.
Text copyright © 2013 by Tod Polson.
Page 174 constitutes a continuation of the copyright page.
“LOONEY TUNES” including “BUGS BUNNY,” “DAFFY DUCK,” “ROAD RUNNER,” “WILE E. COYOTE,” “PEPE LE
PEW,” “ELMER FUDD,” “SAM SHEEPDOG,” “MARVIN THE MARTIAN,” and “RALPH PHILLIPS” used courtesy of Warner
Bros. Entertainment Inc.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without written permission from the publisher.
ISBN 978-1-4521-2738-5
The Library of Congress has cataloged the print edition as follows:
Polson, Tod, 1971The Noble Approach: Maurice Noble and the Zen of animation design / by Tod Polson.
pages cm
Includes index.
ISBN: 978-1-4521-0294-8
1. Noble, Maurice. 2. Animated films--United States.
3. Animation (Cinematography)--United States. I. Title.
NC1766.U52N637 2013
791.43’34092--dc23
2012031595
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Contents
9
PREFACE
BY Chuck Jones
10
FOREWORD
BY Maurice Noble
13
PROLOGUE
14
INTRODUCTION
16
SCHOOL DAZE
18
SLUMMING IT AT DISNEY’ S
21
THE DISNEY STRIKE
23
THE WAR YEARS
25
DEVELOPMENT OF THE WARNER BROS. STYLE
27
DEVELOPMENT OF THE NOBLE STYLE
27
COMPARISONS TO UPA
28
3-D AND JOHN SUTHERLAND PRODUCTIONS
30
THERE AND BACK AGAIN
33
THE END OF AN ERA
34
THE MGM YEARS
38
RETIREMENT
44
A NEW BEGINNING
46
LEGACY
48
STEP 01
Getting Started
48
WORKING WITHIN YOUR LIMITATIONS
50
WORKING AS A TEAM
54
STEP 02
Story
55
VISUAL STORYTELLING
60
STEP 03
Breaking Down the Elements
61
STORY BEATS
61
STORY ELEMENTS
66
STEP 04
Research and Inspiration
67
USING REFERENCE
80
STEP 05
Design
81
THUMBNAILS
83
WORKING IN THE CORRECT ASPECT RATIO
85
SUPPORTING THE CHARACTERS
85
SWEATY FUN
86
THUMBNAILS TO WORKING DRAWINGS
88
VALUE
91
TESTING VALUE
91
STACKING VALUE
93
FRAMING WITH LIGHT
94
CONTRAST
97
SIMPLIFYING ELEMENTS
98
STEP 06
Color
99
THE BASICS
102
COLOR PERSONALITY
103
THE PALETTE
103
SIMPLIFYING THE PALETTE
104
COLOR THEMES
104
COLOR FOR QUICK CUTS
105
COLOR CHORDS
114
COLOR CHORDS AS THEMES
115
CHARACTER COLOR
116
VISUAL HIERARCHY
118
COLOR REFLECTING PERSONALITY
119
ANALOGOUS AND SPLIT-COMPLEMENTARY CHARACTER COLORS
120
COMPLEMENTARY CHARACTER COLORS
124
DESIGNING CHARACTER COLOR IN MODERN TIMES
124
SATURATION
124
DULL COLORS AGAINST BRIGHT
125
PAINTING WITH SPIT
126
COLOR SKETCHES AND COLOR KEYS
146
LIGHTING TESTS
148
STEP 07
Layout
152
GRIDS AND COMPOSITION
153
GRID ELEMENTS
153
HORIZONTAL AND VERTICAL LINES
153
DIAGONALS
155
RHYTHM AND SPACING
155
COUNTER-RHYTHMS
155
COMPOSITIONAL THEORIES
155
THE RULE OF THIRDS AND RABATMENT
156
ABOUT THE RULE OF THIRDS
157
ABOUT RABATMENT
159
PANS
160
PARALLAX
161
FRAMING WITH ELEMENTS
163
DEPTH
163
PERSPECTIVE
163
MULTIPOINT PERSPECTIVE
165
DISTORTED PERSPECTIVE
166
STEP 08
Final Film
168
IN CONCLUSION
170
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
171
INDEX
174
IMAGE & ART CREDITS
Maurice as the timid matador in Bully For Bugs (1953). Layout by Chuck Jones
Note from Chuck Jones to Maurice Noble, date unknown
To the grandson he hoped could come to
know him a little better through these
pages . . .
. . . and for all those still creating with
passion, for no other reason than the joy
of it.
PREFACE
I Have Sent for You, Dodgers!
Chuck Jones on Maurice Noble
If you describe Maurice as he would appear in the telephone book,
you will have an exact idea of my respect and love for him.
But I tell you what he was not. He was not “my good right arm.”
“My good right arm.” What a splendid term. How nice it must be to be called a “good right arm” by
your director if you are a writer or a layout man or a lead animator.
There’s only one drawback: a right arm, or a left arm for that matter, is stupid. It has no volition of
its own. It only does what the prejudice and predilection of the director tells it to do.
As a right arm, Maurice Noble was an absolute failure. He had ideas, which is a pretty stupid thing
for a right arm to have. His sense of color and design was, and is, vastly superior to mine, which, in a
right arm, should be suicidal. He has a superb sense of humor, which is, in normal circumstances,
almost profane for a right arm or a layout man.
But fortunately for Maurice and fortunately, to the point of survival for me, I had discovered years
before he magically appeared in my unit that there are only two kinds of talent worthy of identification:
one that you find, if you are very lucky, as a small, scrabbly little talent within yourself (this is the one
you continually doubt and always, if you make any claim to artistry, of which you are constantly
suspicious) and two, the talent to surround yourself with talent. Of the two, the only one I am
confident that I possess in abundance is the second.
If a lawyer who defends himself in court has a fool for a client, then a director who tries to acts as
his own background or layout man, lead animator, or sound editor is doomed to be spastically
handicapped by his own limitations. It is not only necessary that he hire people in each department
(except direction) of talent superior to his own, he must demand that each of them approach the same
problem with a different background and viewpoint. For myself, I do not want a writer who thinks he is
a director. I want him to have the confidence, and the knowledge, to know that I consider him far
better at his job than I am. Mondrian said that the supreme joy of artistry is working within a
discipline. Mike Maltese, Ken Harris, Ben Washam, and Maurice Noble, among all those many
uniquely talented people I worked with, knew because I tried to exhibit it in the only form of respect
and honor I understand how necessary to the final film was their confidence in the contributions they
made through their individual disciplines and artistries.
Maurice seldom tried to provide animation gags per se, but he created a world where animation
could flourish. If, for instance, in What’s Opera, Doc? he felt there was a lack of the flesh and frippery
common to classical ballet, he designed the backgrounds in flesh tones and the trees as tutus. If, as in
one of the Martian–outer space films, he got tired of all those film-studded mysterious planets, he
simply designed a city of delicately hued transparent plates floating in space. In Duck Dodgers in the
24½ Century, whose production design was freely asserted by George Lucas as having been a great
stimulus to his Star Wars films, Maurice designed a forty-story rocket ten years before John Glenn had
graduated from high school and vastly superior in design to anything seen at Cape Canaveral, plus the
only gantry crane worth viewing.
Maurice’s visual jokes never intruded on the orderly advance of the story—if any story I ever
directed could be called orderly.
He enhanced every story. He stimulated all who worked with him. He always used the concerto
form: once he was on board with the story intent, every inspirational sketch he contributed was a
variation on a theme. He never showed off, but he showed up every layout man I have ever known by
his honesty, his devotion to his craft, and his devotion to the film at hand. This is never more vividly
demonstrated than in What’s Opera, Doc? Without Maurice Noble, who excited, moved, and
stimulated us all, that film could not have been made.
As the scientist said to Daffy in Duck Dodgers, “I have sent for you, Dodgers, because the world
supply of great layout men is appallingly low.”
CHUCK JONES
LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA
1987
(From the introduction to Maurice’s Winsor McCay Lifetime Achievement Award, presented by the International
Animated Film Society for creative excellence in the field of animation.)
FOREWORD
Designing for Animation
While there has been much written about the art and techniques of
animation, little has been said about the overall look and backdrop
that animated characters play against. To be more specific: the art
direction, staging, design, and layout of an animated film. Over the
past few years I have had the pleasure of coming out of retirement
and sharing my knowledge and experiences with a whole new
generation of young people. Many have asked me to write down some
notes on design, and the “Noble approach.”
I would also like to say that my success as a designer is in a large part due to the many talented
people I have worked with over the years. Chuck Jones, a director who trusted my vision and gave me
the freedom to explore it. Mike Maltese, a writer with a “pixie” sense of humor. Ken Harris, Benny
Washam, and Abe Levitow, talented animators all. And of course Phil DeGuard, the background
painter who helped bring my vision to life.
For all these opportunities thank you, also, to: Walt Disney, Dr. Seuss, Friz Freleng, Frank Capra,
John Sutherland, John Rose, Frank Tashlin, Norton Juster, Mrs. Chouinard, Henri Matisse, Braque,
Michelangelo, Botticelli, Brueghel, Hieronymus Bosch, Arthur Rackham, and Adam and Eve.
The real art of animation is filled with ideas and beauty and is a never-ending joy.
MAURICE NOBLE
LA CRESCENTA, CALIFORNIA
Portrait by Yousuf Karsh
Maurice and Tod doing some serious research in Turkey.
Examples of Maurice’s notes on which the Noble Approach is based.
PROLOGUE
A Design and Life
Philosophy
“Originality is a quality over which an artist has as little influence as
over the shape and distinction of his features. All he can do is be
sincere and try and find out the things that really move him and that
he really likes. If he has a strong and original character, he will have
no difficulty in this, and his work will be original in the true sense.” —
From The Practice and Science of Drawing (1913) by the English artist Harold Speed (1872–1957)
If anything could be said about Maurice, it would be about the originality and sincerity of his art,
and his sincerity as a person. Five minutes with the man would give you a strong sense of why his films
looked the way they did. His jokes (if you could call them that) were so bad that you wanted to groan,
but you had to laugh, which only encouraged him more. His cornball humor and pixie sense of fun
would inform you of why the rocks in Road Runner country were balanced the way they were. And why
his perspective was just a bit off-kilter. But as big of a ham as Maurice pretended to be, he was also a
sensitive and thoughtful visual poet. He had a passion for making beautiful images that touched and
moved people. More than anyone I’ve ever met, he loved beauty, and he loved life. He conveyed this
on the screen, and to everyone whose life he touched. As great of an artist as Maurice was, he was an
even greater human being.
The text for this book started years ago when Maurice began working with a group of us at Chuck
Jones Film Productions. At eighty-three years old, when most men his age were, in Maurice’s words,
“dead, or enjoying their retirement,” Maurice was concerned with training a new generation of
designers. He would look at our work and, instead of simply talking to us, would write long notes
about what he felt were the strengths and weaknesses of our designs. He did this with great effort
because his eyesight had gotten so poor, and because we all had so much to learn. The notes he gave
us would turn into long discussions. And long discussions turned into ideas that we all still ponder.
For the few of us lucky enough to be called his boys (which also included a few girls) he not only
changed the way we viewed art, he changed the way we looked at life.
Maurice never claimed to have any design secrets, and some of the ideas about design that are
offered in the following pages can be found in some of the most basic texts dedicated to the subject.
What is unique about Maurice’s work is the way he put these ideas together. Studying under Maurice,
we all soon learned that how Maurice designed films (i.e., his design technique), wasn’t nearly as
important as why he designed films the way he did.
Noble dreamed of sharing his ideas on film design with a larger audience in book form. Though he
completed many pages of notes, he unfortunately passed away before his dream could be realized.
This book isn’t meant to be a complete retrospective of Maurice’s life or work. Rather, it is what he
wanted, an outline of his design philosophies, illustrated with some of his designs.
Although Maurice had intended this book to be more of a working textbook, with each chapter
outlining a step of his process, I thought it was important to also include some stories, and at least
give a little background information (pun intended) about the man. I’ve also combined a few of the
steps in his process for clarity, indicating the areas where Maurice’s original plan has been changed.
Maurice rarely gave what you would call traditional lessons in design; they were more like
conversations. Many of his pearls of wisdom were hidden in the stories he would tell. As you read this
book, imagine, if you will, hearing his stories the way we heard many of them: seated in Maurice’s
studio, in the midst of art from his remarkable career, stacked, stashed, and hung around the room in
an order that only he understood. At the center of this controlled chaos, propped next to the
animation disc that had served him so well, was the man himself, once described by Stan Freberg as
the “world’s tallest elf,” gray hair mussed, a slight smirk on his face, and a devilish twinkle in his eye.
Maurice often told many variations of the same stories throughout the years, depending on his mood
and who was in the audience. We were relatively young, so we usually got the PG-rated versions of
things, with a naughty word thrown in every once in a while to get a reaction from us.
The following pages are taken from notes he had started, as well as interviews and lectures he had
given, and memories from the “Noble Boys” and other “young” people he trained and worked with.
To Maurice when I knew him, a “young person” was anyone under the age of seventy-five.
TOD POLSON, NOBLE BOY
CHIANG MAI, THAILAND
MARCH 2011
INTRODUCTION
Setting the Stage
Maurice Noble is best known for the fun, graphic layout design work
he created for Warner Bros. and MGM Studios in the 1950s and
1960s. His animation design has been so influential that many refer to
the highly stylized animation design from Warner Bros. simply as the
“Maurice Noble Style.” But how did Maurice’s stylized approach to
design develop? Where did it come from?
Maurice’s art education began on May 1, 1910, when he was born in the small lumber town of
Spooner, Minnesota. (Maurice’s birth records actually show that he was born on May 1, 1911. But
since this is Maurice’s book, I’ll leave this and most other facts just where he left them.) As he was
growing up, his mother, an amateur musician and painter, passed on what she knew about art to him.
More important, she passed on a simple philosophy that would extend to every aspect of his life, and
was repeated to us, his trainees.
Maurice’s mother taught, “The greatest asset an artist can have is a curious mind, and the courage
to explore it.”
If there was one concept that Maurice would have wanted readers to take away from his book, this
would have been it. He never claimed to have any specific artistic influences, but rather, like a
sponge, took in everything around him and made it his own. Maurice would often seek experiences
outside of his comfort zone, such as studying classical Chinese painting in Beijing while in his
seventies. For Maurice, the experience of living in an unheated concrete student dorm was as
important as the painting lessons themselves. Maurice’s mother had introduced her children to
artists such as Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci; classic elements would always remain a part of
Maurice’s work. As a child Maurice was deeply impressed by the Native American and Mexican art he
saw when his family moved to New Mexico; they would remain a lifelong passion. As he grew older,
his interests expanded to other cultures, particularly those of Persia and the rest of Asia. Shards of all
these things, both consciously and unconsciously, found their way into his work.
In his youth, Maurice developed an insatiable appetite for the arts and devoured every textbook he
could find on art technique and history. However, Maurice’s dream of becoming an artist was
sidetracked after his father succumbed to tuberculosis, and he was forced to leave high school in
order to support his mother and siblings. In early 1929, a frustrated Maurice wrote in his diary:
Oh Lord, what shall I do? I want to go back to school; but how can I? Mother will
worry herself sick about bills, and Mother is the only reason I stay out of school. . . . I
crave education, enlightenment, beauty, love; the worthwhile things. I believe I have
a rich endowment which I must develop. . . . Oh God help me to find myself! Help me,
help me. . . . Such selfishness! But is it selfishness to want to better myself? . . . My
ambitions, hopes, and brains, all are going to pay bills. I feel an inward fire of
inspiration and hope. I have confidence in myself and with lots of training and lots of
time, I will turn out something worthwhile in oil batik or what have you. All art is so
connected that I do not see why one cannot work in more than one line. Would it be
selfish for me to go ahead and develop this gift, a divine gift? Sometimes I feel that I
should be a welfare worker, a missionary, a teacher, and sometimes nothing. Time will
tell.
. . . I can’t find anything to stir my soul but art, and art is something I get so little of.
Maurice was able to supplement his day job as a ditch digger by practicing his art at night and
Sunday afternoons. Inspired by a piece of batik received as a gift from his missionary uncle in
Thailand, Maurice began creating and selling his own batiks. Then, risking what little savings he had
been able to accumulate, he purchased a small printing press. Maurice began selling greeting cards of
his own design, and soon the little press had more than paid for itself. Later, during the Christmas
season, Maurice was forced to leave school for several weeks in order to keep up with the demand for
his cards. Eventually his design work caught the eye of Capitol Records, and they contracted Maurice
to design several album covers.
With the family on more solid ground financially, Maurice returned to finish his high school
education in the fall of 1929. Armed with a strong portfolio, he applied to one of the best art schools in
the country at the time, Chouinard Art Institute of Los Angeles.
A few moments in a Noble journey.
A Noble Christmas at the children’s dept. of Robinson’s department store in the early 1930s.
SCHOOL DAZE
Maurice became a student at the Chouinard Art Institute in 1930. There he continued his education
in drawing and painting under such notable teachers as Lawrence Murphy, Millard Sheets, and Don
Graham. Maurice excelled at his studies and held one of the first one-man watercolor shows at
Chouinard. He also received one of the first two full scholarships offered at the school. The second
scholarship was awarded to fellow classmate Mary Browne Robinson, better known by her married
name, Mary Blair. Mary, of course, would become another pillar of midcentury animation design.
They were often compared to one another throughout their careers. And though differing in style,
there is little doubt that the two influenced each other’s work. Maurice discussed Mary Blair in an
interview with Nancy Beiman in 2000:
Mary and I [were] what you call “a thing” at one time, but Lee Blair had a car and he
beat me out. It was the Depression, and she and I were the poor church mice of the
school. Mary and I had painting and design classes together. After painting class,
children who had a lot of money would often throw away leftover tubes of paint.
Then Mary and I would pick the stuff out of the trash bin. She also used to take the
paper towels out of the washroom and paint on them. Mary and I used to do a lot of
sketching together, meeting at different places, drawing each other, and painting with
watercolors.
Mary was a unique talent. But I don’t think you could mistake my design for her
design. It’s like any other art medium. There will be certain areas where people do
unique things. What’s the difference between a Picasso and a van Gogh? I’m not
comparing our talents to that, but on the other hand maybe we are the modern artists.
I do believe that animation is a fine art. I think Mary Blair contributed to the fine art of
animation, as have I.
At the beginning of the second year of his studies, one of the biggest department stores in Los
Angeles, Robinson’s, invited Maurice to design its annual Christmas display. The Great Depression
had not been kind to Maurice’s mother and siblings, and once again he reluctantly left his studies in
order to support them. At the time, Robinson’s was the department store in the Los Angeles area. The
clientele included many of Hollywood’s biggest stars. And through entrances flanked by uniformed,
white-gloved doormen, customers were made to feel as if they had entered another world. The store
displays and distinctive decorative themes of each department were an important part of the
Robinson’s shopping experience. Maurice approached his designs for Robinson’s with the same
confident graphic sensibilities that would later define his animation work, bold shapes often spiced
with a twist of humor. His Christmas display was such a glowing success that what was planned as a
semester’s leave of absence from Chouinard became full-time employment at Robinson’s. He would
never return to the school to finish his studies. For the next few years, his design sensibilities would
shape every department of the store, including the exterior of the Robinson’s building itself, for which
he submitted design ideas when it was modernized in 1934.
Though Maurice found his work at Robinson’s creatively satisfying, he still struggled to support his
mother and extended family. Frustratingly, Maurice’s requests for a raise always fell on deaf ears.
Maurice’s student compositions, early 1930s.
Pink elephants on parade from Dumbo (1941).
SLUMMING IT AT DISNEY’S
At the time, the Walt Disney Studios was expanding and looking for background painters. Recruiters,
already aware of Maurice’s painting and design work, gave Maurice a background test, after which
they offered him $100 a month, $10 more than he had been making at Robinson’s. Armed with a bit of
leverage, Maurice returned to Robinson’s hoping to finally get his raise. Maurice explained in a 1989
interview with animation historian Michael Barrier how he came to join Disney:
I told my boss at Robinson’s, “I’ve got a chance to work down at the Disney Studio.”
He asked, “How much are they going to pay you?” I don’t know what possessed me,
but I lied and told him, “They offered me fifty bucks a week.” That’s two hundred
dollars per month! He’d been paying me ninety dollars a month at Robinson’s. He said,
“I’ll double your salary.” Imagine, in one jump! I said, “You son of a bitch! I’ve tried
and tried to get a raise, and you have never even offered me a cent more. You
couldn’t pay me enough to stay here!” I put on my hat and walked out the door. At
Disney’s the first assignment I got in the background department was an apple with a
worm hole which I could render. I thought, Oh my God! What have I gotten myself
into?
According to Maurice, he hadn’t seriously considered a career in animation before this. Cartoons
of the day were relatively crude, and for a serious artist to work in animation was, in his words,
“slumming it.” Maurice shared with me: “I had visions of creating something as beautiful and
powerful as the Sistine Chapel, works of art that would move and touch people. Little did I know way
back then that animation would be the format that I would do it through; I quickly became fascinated
by the medium.”
Maurice began his animation career as a background painter on the Silly Symphonies shorts in
1934. He contributed his talents to such classics as Water Babies (1935), Elmer Elephant (1936), The
Country Cousin (1936), Woodland Cafe (1937), and the Oscar-winning The Old Mill (1937). Though he
never finished his education at Chouinard, in a sense Disney brought Chouinard to Maurice by hiring
many of his old mentors from the school to teach at the studio.
His work grew by leaps and bounds. Over time Maurice moved to work as a background/layout
artist on the studio’s first feature, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. He was soon given more creative
freedom and began working as a color coordinator, inspirational sketch artist, and designer on films
such as Bambi, Pinocchio, Fantasia, and Dumbo. However, creative freedom came with certain
frustrations. On Bambi, Maurice had proposed several very graphic design solutions for certain story
points, particularly the forest fire sequence, only to have them rejected in favor of a more realistic
approach. However, every so often, a more graphic take would make it to the screen, such as Dumbo’s
“Pink Elephant” sequence, which Maurice helped design. It was at Disney that Maurice said he first
began formulating his personal approach to animation design.
In 1938, architect Frank Lloyd Wright visited the Disney Studios. There Wright screened a copy of
The Tale of the Czar Durandai (1934), a Russian short film directed by Ivan Ivanov-Vano. The film was a
stark contrast to the stylized realism of Disney and featured striking graphic design that referenced
Russian folk art. There were several screenings of the film, which intrigued a number of Disney’s
staff. John Hubley, and several others that would start the groundbreaking studio United Productions
of America (UPA), have cited the film as a major inspiration. It’s unclear how much these screenings
affected Maurice, but knowing of his love for design and folk art, it’s easy to guess that the film only
added to his frustration with the graphics at Disney. While we were training under Maurice in the
early 1990s, one of the first assignments he gave us was designing folk tales using ethnic art as
inspiration. These would form the basis for his proposed short film series, Noble Tales.
Maurice’s concept sketches for The Old Mill (1937).
Maurice created literally thousands of concept sketches over a two-year period for Bambi (1942).
Backgrounds (top row) and conceptual color work for Disney’s Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937).
Frames from The Tale of the Czar Durandai (1934) by Ivan Ivanov-Vano.
Stills from the UPA designed and produced Private Snafu short—A Few Quick Facts About Fear (1945). Directed
by Zack Schwartz.
THE DISNEY STRIKE
By the early 1940s Maurice had worked his way up the Disney ladder. He had relative creative
freedom, was able to support his mother and family, and was driving a Plymouth. Risking everything
he had worked so hard for, Maurice joined the strike against Disney in 1941. He shared with me what
he was feeling at the time: “I give all credit to Walt as an innovator and visionary. He helped develop
animation into the great art form it is today. But so many artists at the studio were working ten, twelve,
and more hours a day yet were unable to pay their rent. I could have probably had a job for life if I
would have just kept my mouth shut. Many could have said something but didn’t. It wasn’t fair to the
guys on the lower rungs, so I walked out against Disney.” To give you an idea of how bad things got,
Maurice told director Mike Cachuela that he had to cook for some of the artists living in the bushes
behind his house. This was on top of the boarders he had taken in from the studio. Any savings that
Maurice might have had were wiped out.
The strike was a success, but on his return to the studio it was clear that Maurice was no longer
welcome. His office was moved to a former broom closet that was so small he had to stand up to open
and close the door. He received no new assignments and had no visitors other than when he received
his paycheck. Maurice described this to me as a traumatic experience, but he refused to leave the
studio until receiving his severance pay. Not long after, World War II broke out, and Maurice enlisted
in the Army Signal Corps.
To give a sense of how deep passions about the strike ran, animator Mike Polvani and I once
attended a “Pioneers of Animation” reunion dinner with Maurice more than fifty years after the
strike. I was shocked to find that some of Maurice’s former Disney coworkers still held a grudge,
while others, such as ever-youthful Ward Kimball, greeted Maurice with a smile that only Ward could
pull off and the hug of a long-lost friend. The strong reaction from many of his ex-colleagues
bothered Maurice and had obviously troubled him for many years. He later confessed to me, “For a
long time in the industry, if you weren’t working at Disney, you weren’t quite top drawer. It’s not true,
of course, but that’s the perception. For years I’ve taken a lot of guff for the ‘cards’ I designed at
Warner’s.” (Maurice was referring to insults by some that his work was somehow cheap and flat, like a
card.) In 1993 Maurice was honored by The Walt Disney Company for contributions he’d made to the
studio. It was about this time that Disney Features asked Maurice to consult on some of their projects
in development. This recognition by the studio after so many years meant a great deal to him.
The Disney strike had left a large number of talented artists unemployed. Many joined the war
effort; others formed their own companies and took advantage of government contracts for training
films. Since many of the wartime films tended to target a more sophisticated adult audience, directors
and designers were freer to experiment in ways they had never been able to before. Zack Schwartz,
John Hubley, and others began committing daring, bold, graphic statements to film in companies
such as UPA and Columbia Pictures. Animation was finally able to join the modernist movement that
had been happening in illustration and fine art for the previous two decades, a movement that Disney
itself would finally join in the 1950s.
Various Maurice concept sketches and stills from the Private Snafu series (1942–1945). Many shown here from
Operation Snafu directed by Friz Freleng (1945).
The army had trained Maurice as a war photographer. But being the perfectionist he was, he took too long to compose
his photos and was transferred out of the unit. As fate would have it, his former photography unit was wiped out early
in the war.
A few of Maurice’s desert-inspired tile designs.
THE WAR YEARS
After some training as a war photographer and aircraft illustrator, Maurice eventually found himself
under the command of Colonel Frank Capra in a film unit headed by Major Theodor “Dr. Seuss”
Geisel in Hollywood. Among other things, Maurice began working on a series of propaganda training
films starring a character named “Private Snafu” (SNAFU was an army acronym for “Situation
Normal All Ffff . . . ouled Up”). Maurice and company would create design keys for the shorts at “Fort
Fox,” the nickname of the Fox studios during the war years. These keys were then adapted across
town by the staff at Leon Schlesinger Productions, the studio that produced Looney Tunes and Merrie
Melodies for Warner Bros. The Snafu films would be the first of many collaborations between
Maurice and director Chuck Jones. It would also be his first collaboration with Friz Freleng and John
Sutherland Productions. Without the stylized realism of Disney to contend with, Maurice was also
finally able to explore a more personal approach to animation design.
After the war, Maurice worked as a freelance designer, and very briefly as a background painter, in
the Chuck Jones Unit in 1946. Though when asked, he was unable to remember exactly which films he
had worked on or how long he had been there. In fact, many of Maurice’s memories just after the war
were confused, blurry, and befuddled. He described this period to me as his “wandering-in-thedesert years,” which were among the darkest of his life. Shortly after enlisting, Maurice, with the
impulsiveness of many going off to war, had gotten married. Over the next few years, he and his wife
had two daughters. As the war drew on, the marriage fell apart, and soon after the war his wife left with
their children. Though he continued to support them financially the best he could, he wouldn’t
reconnect with his daughters again until they were adults. Their relationship would always be
strained.
After leaving the service, Maurice was broke, depressed, and physically ill. For a time he lived in
the California desert and started a business selling handmade tiles of his own design. The designs
were good; unfortunately for Maurice, business was not. Destitute, he stayed with his mother, who
slowly nursed him back to health. Eventually Maurice took a job in St. Louis supervising a crew
making filmstrips for Church-Craft, an organization indirectly connected with the Lutheran church.
The film strips typically consisted of religious, geographic, educational, or children’s stories. In St.
Louis Maurice fell in love with and married Marjorie Phillips, a feisty, clever ad exec working in the
same building he did. Maurice and Marjorie moved to California in early 1951 after he received an
invitation to join the Chuck Jones unit as layout designer. Chuck and Maurice would work together on
and off for the rest of their careers, creating some of the greatest shorts of the golden age of
animation.
McGrew took inspiration from modern art and graphics, such as posters from the WPA and applied these ideas to
animation.
Frames from The Aristo-Cat (1943), designed by John McGrew and painted by Gene Fleury.
The Dover Boys of Pimento University (1942), designed by McGrew and painted by Fleury.
Stills from The Unbearable Bear (1943), Designed by McGrew and painted by Fleury.
DEVELOPMENT OF THE WARNER BROS. STYLE
Many assume that Maurice was the first to bring a more graphic style of design and layout to Warner
Bros. animation. While Maurice probably had the most distinctive individual style of any Warner
Bros.’ layout artists, and surpassed much of what had been done before he arrived on the scene, the
stage had in fact been prepared by Chuck Jones and designer John McGrew years before.
One important change that Jones made in his unit in the early 1940s was the use of a single
layout/design artist and a dedicated background painter. Not only did John McGrew draw the
background layouts, but he also painted small color sketches that background artists Paul Julian, and
later Gene Fleury, could reference. Previously, all directors, including Jones, had used a communal
background department, where the designs and backgrounds produced were usually substandard.
John McGrew told historian Michael Barrier in a 1995 interview that “Art had two basic ideas:
watercolors must be pale, and to start, you always did a wash of yellow ochre on the paper, and when it
was dry, you would color it—you didn’t paint it, you colored it. The word that Chuck used was not very
elegant; he said it was ‘shit-brindle,’ which is a pretty good description.” The approach Jones and
McGrew took worked so well that eventually the communal background department was disbanded,
and every director in the studio worked with a dedicated layout and background team. Jones caught a
lot of flak at the time because his cartoons looked so different from anything else in the studio. In spite
of this, he continued to encourage a climate of experimentation and collaboration within his unit.
Maurice had been intrigued by many of Jones’s films from the early 1940s, mentioning The Dover
Boys (1942) in particular. But he also felt that some of the films were over-designed, having
backgrounds that often over- powered the characters, a sentiment that John McGrew himself shared
about much of his own film work. Though now greatly underappreciated, many of McGrew’s films are
landmarks of animation design and helped inspire the wave of highly designed, graphic cartoons that
followed.
John McGrew left for the war, and Fleury’s wife, designer Bernyce Polifka, replaced him in the
Jones unit. Though having had no such affiliation for many years, McGrew would be blacklisted after
testimony by Gene Fleury to the House of Un-American Activities Committee for his ties to
communism, connections that Fleury and Polifka also had. His career essentially over in the United
States, McGrew would live in Europe for most of the rest of his life. But McGrew had left the door for
graphic experimentation wide open, and Polifka stepped boldly through it. Her experience in graphic
and product design gave a distinctive look to some of the films she worked on at Warner Bros., such as
Wackiki Wabbit (1943). Maurice knew both Bernyce and Fleury personally, and had worked with Gene
during the war. He admired the couple’s great designing abilities, but not particularly their work for
Chuck Jones. Though Maurice felt many of their ideas were graphically interesting, he also felt that
many times they had pushed the designs so far that they detracted from the characters. Many would
agree.
It is worthy to note that Dave Hilberman, who would later cofound UPA, designed a number of
beautifully graphic films at Schlesinger’s for director Norm McCabe and later Frank Tashlin in the
early 1940s, such as The Daffy Duckaroo (1942) and Confusions of a Nutzy Spy (1943). These films aren’t
as well known today primarily because of their racial stereotypes and the fact that they were made in
black and white. Hilberman would also be blacklisted after testimony by Walt Disney to the House of
Un-American Activities Committee.
Though Maurice claimed not to have been influenced by the films that came before him, he
certainly took note of what he thought worked—and didn’t work—stylistically.
In 1944, longtime Looney Tunes producer Leon Schlesinger retired and sold his stake in the
animation company he had built to Warner Bros. Eddie Selzer took over the seat in the executive
office, and the studio was rechristened Warner Bros. Cartoons, Inc. Through the years, Schlesinger
had managed his studio with a fairly hands-off approach. As long as the films came in on time and
budget and continued to earned money, he was willing to give his directors fairly free rein in design
and content. His approach obviously worked: by the time Schlesinger retired, Bugs, Daffy, and Porky
were the most popular cartoon characters in America.
Frames from Wackiki Wabbit (1943), designed by Bernyce Polifka and painted by her husband, Gene Fleury.
Eddie Selzer managed to take a different approach, working hard to endear his key staff to him by
being more involved in the filmmaking process. Not long after he took over, director Bob Clampett,
depending on whose story you believe, was either fired or quit because of creative differences with
Selzer. Director Frank Tashlin also left about this time. Director Friz Freleng turned in his pencil and
threatened to quit after a disagreement with his new boss, only agreeing to stay after an apology from
Selzer. The love Chuck Jones and Eddie Selzer had for one another couldn’t be measured—because it
didn’t exist. In a 1998 interview with animation artist Tom Sito, Jones described Eddie Selzer as
“pure evil.” It was no accident that Jones’s work was often overlooked by Selzer when deciding which
shorts to submit for the Oscars each year.
Bernyce Polifka and Gene Fleury left the studio during the war, replaced by background painter
Robert Gribbroek and layout artist Earl Klein. Gribbroek would go on to become Chuck Jones’s main
layout designer into the early 1950s, before transferring to Robert McKimson’s unit. Jones would
continue making great cartoons in the latter half of the 1940s, his posing, cutting, and timing nearing
their zenith. Stylistically, though, most were no match for his earlier experiments. In a 1980s
interview with director John Kricfalusi, Friz Freleng revealed that after the war years, he and Chuck
Jones had made a conscious effort to “bring things back down to earth.” It’s easy to guess that Selzer
would have wanted his directors to conform to a more uniform studio style.
In early 1951, Maurice replaced Robert Gribbroek, who according to Maurice was “off raising
chinchillas in New Mexico.” Not far from the truth: Gribbroek was in fact a member of the
Transcendental Painting Group of abstract artists based near Taos. For being an abstract painter, it’s
ironic that Gribbroek’s designs were the least stylized of Chuck Jones’s layout collaborators’.
Maurice said of him, “Grib drew well, and his layouts and camera were solid; let’s just say his pictures
worked, but they weren’t very exciting to look at.” Robert Gribbroek would work on and off for Jones
and other directors at Warner Bros. for most of the rest of his career. In 1959 Gribbroek went into
semiretirement after winning $10,000 and the title of “Cookout Champion of the Year” in a national
cooking contest. Eventually he was fired by Jones at MGM in the 1960s for refusing to take artistic
direction from Maurice. Gribbroek died in New Mexico in 1971.
A rough layout for the titles of Mouse-Warming (1952).
DEVELOPMENT OF THE NOBLE STYLE
Maurice’s style at Warner Bros. developed over time. Many of his early films basically maintained
Gribbroek’s look, and some even incorporated a few of his old layouts. Though Maurice’s first screen
credit at Warner Bros. was on Rabbit Seasoning (1952), he had actually taken over a number of shorts in
various stages of production from Gribbroek, including Feed the Kitty (1952) and Mouse-Warming
(1952). Maurice described to me what it was like for him in his first days with the Jones unit:
When I first started with Chuck I had never laid out a picture before. Design, sure, but
I had never made working layout drawings for an entire film. For the first few days I
was really sweating blood. Then I noticed a stack of old layouts sitting in the corner. I
studied what Grib had done, and with the help of background painter Phil DeGuard,
some of the animators, and the camera man, by the end of the first picture, I had a
pretty good handle on what I was supposed to do. But oh! Was it ever painful!
As Maurice became more comfortable with the technical side of layout, he began to play more with
style. In contrast to Jones, Maurice described Eddie Selzer to me as “a funny little man.” And other
than an incident that included a telephone and Maurice kicking a hole in the wall, Maurice and Selzer
seem to have gotten along fine. One thing that would have appealed to both Jones’s and Selzer’s
sensibilities was Maurice’s logical approach to animation design. Maurice explained this basic
design philosophy to me while working on Noble Tales in the late 1990s: “With Chuck we were trying
to make a complete statement with the backgrounds and characters working in harmony. If you have
characters that are primarily line and flat color, why not take the same approach with the
backgrounds?” Maurice elaborated further in a 1991 interview with Harry McCracken:
I’d always had in the back of my mind that super-realism in the backgrounds behind flat
animation was not the right approach. So when I got the opportunity, I started to
place more emphasis on shape. I started to leave off the airbrush and create the
spaces by shapes instead of a lot of fussy shadows and so forth. I tried to create each
frame to support the action, and not clutter up anything or interfere with a gag or bit
of action. The style just evolved little by little.
COMPARISONS TO UPA
United Productions of America (UPA) made a handful of sophisticated, avant-garde films throughout
the mid 1940s and early 1950s. The studio developed styles and techniques in animation that
influenced other studios throughout the U.S. animation industry, including Walt Disney.
The flat art style Maurice developed in the 1950s was inevitably compared to the graphic films of
UPA from the same period. Though both Maurice and the designers at UPA may have sometimes
arrived at a similar place graphically, their basic design philosophies were quite different.
In 1991 Harry McCracken asked about the influence of UPA on Maurice’s work at Warner Bros.
Maurice answered:
I’ll be very frank and say I don’t believe I was influenced by UPA at all. I did my own
thing. In fact, I refused to go over to UPA. I preferred working with Chuck at Warner
Bros. I think UPA outsmarted itself in overdesigning and being kind of smart-assed. In a
sense they were walking in their hallowed artistic halls. I think I can honestly say that
I’ve never designed anything that I didn’t think was going to communicate to the
audience. After all, you have to have an audience.
Maurice told me a story that summed up his feelings on UPA’s design approach: “I never took the
UPA approach to design, style for style’s sake. I went over to UPA one time and looked around.
Bernyce Polifka was there, doing some interesting things. I asked her how her designs related to the
character and story. She said, ‘I don’t know, but I sure had fun.’ To me, that’s no way to design a film.
Design should support the story, not the other way around.” Maurice confessed that he found much
of UPA’s work very interesting, especially the early work of John Hubley. He admitted that even his
adversary, Jules Engel, had done some very innovative things. It wasn’t simply the work that turned
Maurice off to UPA, it was the artsy-fartsy, better-than-thou attitude of the designers there.
Light tests from a Maurice designed DuPont commercial produced at John Sutherland Productions. Mid-1950s.
A color key for It’s Everybody’s Business (1954).
A background from Warner Bros.’ first 3-D cartoon, Lumber Jack-Rabbit (1954).
3-D AND JOHN SUTHERLAND PRODUCTIONS
In early 1953 Maurice left for John Sutherland Productions after being refused a raise by Eddie Selzer.
He left on good terms however, with Selzer offering to match Sutherland’s offer at the last minute. But
after learning that Maurice had already signed a contract with Sutherland, Selzer simply shook
Maurice’s hand and let him know that the door to the studio was always open to him. By coincidence,
shortly after Maurice left the studio, Warner Bros. closed their entire animation department. The
story goes that Jack Warner had decided that 3-D films were the wave of the future. But after
producing one 3-D cartoon, Lumber Jack-Rabbit (1954) with Chuck’s unit, he was worried that 3-D
cartoons would be too expensive to produce. So he closed the studio. Animator Greg Duffell, who
owns several pieces of art from Lumber Jack-Rabbit, explained to me that each of the background
layouts would have probably been painted and shot under camera twice to get the desired 3-D effect.
Maurice would have had to dumb down the backgrounds so that they would work together and so
painter Phil DeGuard wouldn’t keel over in the process.
Maurice’s feelings about the film were revealed to me on a summer day in the late 1990s.
Animation artist Chen-Yi Chang, who is known for his character design work for films such as Mulan
(1998) and Tarzan (1999), and I were having lunch with Maurice. Chen-Yi had brought a book along
that featured some of Maurice’s art, and he flipped to a double-page spread of some layouts from
Lumber Jack-Rabbit. Chen-Yi is like Maurice in many ways, especially in his passion for design and his
honest, straightforward approach to things. In other words, when it comes to art, he tends to call
things as he sees them.
Ernie Nordli’s proposed opening for What’s Opera, Doc? (1957)
He said, “Maurice, I’ve been looking at this book for a while now, and most of your artwork in here
is great! But this page, it’s not as good as the rest of the stuff, what happened?!” I was about to choke
on my sandwich. Maurice took the book, looked at it, and smiled knowingly. Then he wrote, “You are
right!” across the page.
Warner Bros. decided to continue making 2-D cartoons and reopened the doors to the studio in
late 1953. During the closure, most of the artists had found other employment. Even Chuck Jones had
gone to Disney to work on, among other things, Sleeping Beauty. In rehiring the crew, Selzer had to
match or exceed what the artists had been making during the layoff. The already tight film budgets
became even tighter. It’s likely that at least a few of the films Maurice had designed before leaving,
such as Claws for Alarm, were designed for 3-D, but were stopped mid-production during the studio
closure, only to be finished in 2-D after the studio reopened.
At John Sutherland Productions, Maurice worked on a variety of industrial films and commercial
projects. One of Maurice’s gems from this period was a graphic experiment called It’s Everybody’s
Business (1954). Because Maurice was illustrating a narrative rather than supporting personality and
story with design, he was able push the many graphic aspects of the film more than he had at Warner
Bros. He made a conscious effort to differentiate his work at Sutherland’s from his more satirical
work on Looney Tunes. This is something he would also try to do with his work at MGM in the 1960s.
Several capable layout designers filled in for Maurice while he was at Sutherland’s. Ernie Nordli,
whom Maurice had known since his early days at Disney, worked for much of 1954 and 1955 in the
Jones unit. Nordli took an even more graphic approach than Maurice had and created some strikingly
beautiful, if unevenly designed, films for the studio. Robert Givens contributed a few well-designed
pictures during Maurice’s absence. Robert Gribbroek also returned to the Jones unit during this
period, retaining his more conservative style. Nordli departed from the Jones unit quite suddenly in
1955, leaving several unfinished films behind him which probably included Bugs Bonnets and Barbary
Coast Bunny, both released in 1956. Another film Nordli left behind was What’s Opera, Doc?
Ernie Nordli was one of the few layout designers Maurice said he actually respected. He explained
to me that while he felt Ernie was a great artist, he had the unfortunate habit of leaving projects
midway through. In the late 1960s Chuck Jones and Maurice fired Nordli from MGM for not showing
up to work for weeks at a time. Soon after, he committed suicide. In a 1989 interview with Michael
Barrier, Maurice related that “Ernie was a lost person . . . It became very sad and complicated.”
Color keys for the Bell Telephone Science Series’ Gateways to the Mind (1958).
THERE AND BACK AGAIN
After finishing his work at John Sutherland Productions, Maurice returned briefly to St. Louis to work
on film-strips. He had been promised a stake in the company there, but these promises were never
realized, and he soon grew weary of the bureaucracy of the organization. True to his word, Eddie
Selzer rehired Maurice in mid-1955. Upon his return to the studio, Maurice began work on what
would become one of his most famous films, What’s Opera, Doc? (1957). According to Maurice,
Nordli’s earlier work on the film had been fairly conservative and was thus discarded for something
much more satirical.
Despite budget restrictions, or perhaps because of them, Maurice’s design styling at Warner Bros.
in the late 1950s was nearing its final evolutionary stage. Many of the films Maurice designed in this
period would be counted among the greatest of the golden age of animation, classics such as Boyhood
Daze (1957), Hareway to the Stars (1957), and Robin Hood Daffy (1958). Along with the regular lineup of
Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies, the Jones unit took on a number of special projects, including 90
Days Wondering (1956) and Drafty, Isn’t It? (1957) for the U.S. military.
Longtime production manager Johnny Burton took over the reins of Warner Bros. Cartoons from a
retiring Eddie Selzer in 1957. Burton began to explore the possibilities of television, helping produce
The Bugs Bunny Show. The same year, Chuck Jones wrote and directed, with Maurice designing,
animated sequences for episodes of the Bell Telephone Science Series.
In 1958 Maurice was made an offer he couldn’t refuse and returned to John Sutherland’s to help
design the industrial film Rhapsody of Steel (1959). The film was a high-budget affair for the
inauguration of the Pittsburgh Amphitheater’s stainless-steel retractable dome. Though Eyvind Earle
was credited as the film’s art director, Maurice related to us that he had designed it and Earle had
simply painted his designs. The design team was composed of an amazing crew that included Tony
Rivera, Victor Haboush, and Frank Armitage. Maurice spent about a year on the film, and it would
remain one of his favorites.
Eyvind Earle was always a sensitive subject with Maurice. Much like Mary Blair, Earle had found
great success at Disney as a concept artist, background painter, and then art director on films such as
Sleeping Beauty (1959). But Maurice felt Earle’s work, in contrast to Blair’s designs, was inappropriate
for animation. He told us that while much of Earle’s fine art was “striking . . . though repetitive,” his
film design was “like hugging an iceberg, far too cold and unemotional to really work in animation.
Background design is all about conveying emotion and supporting personality. Eyvind’s work fails to
do this.”
Many of animation’s great designers were quite territorial and had a very particular scope of design
that worked for them. This narrow span of right and wrong gave these artists resonating voices in the
industry but also limited the range of what they felt was acceptable design.
In 1958 writer Mike Maltese left Warner Bros. to find success at Hanna-Barbera Studio on shows
such as The Flintstones. The absence of Maltese was a huge blow to the Jones unit; the absence of his
warmth, wit, and satire can be felt in many of the cartoons that followed. Eventually, writer John Dunn
would fill in for Maltese, sharing story duties with Chuck Jones.
Stills from John Sutherland’s Rhapsody of Steel (1959).
Concept paintings from Kiss Me Cat (1953).
Color keys for Nelly’s Folly (1961). Maurice felt the premise for Nelly’s Folly was “dullsville” so he pushed the
graphic quality of the design styling. The film went on to receive an Oscar nomination.
THE END OF AN ERA
When Maurice returned to Warner Bros. in 1959, he found that Chuck Jones had become so busy
wearing his various creative hats of producer, director, and now writer in the absence of Mike
Maltese that, as Maurice told me, “After a time, Chuck would basically take my drawings and stick
them into the character layouts.” As if Jones weren’t spread thin enough, he was also moonlighting on
a script for a feature with UPA called Gay Purr-ee (1962). Warner Bros. later picked up distribution for
the feature and discovered that Jones had worked on the film. He was fired in 1962 for breach of
contract for his involvement.
With Jones’s hectic schedule, Maurice stepped in to help pick up the slack. His duties included
not only the regular theatrical shorts but also segments for TV and special projects such as the Bell
Telephone Science Series. These extra responsibilities meant Maurice also had less time to focus on
design and layout. He soon began laying out films with the assistance of a number of very talented
artists including Bob Givens, Dave Rose, Owen Fitzgerald, and Corny Cole.
As a result he began receiving codirection credits on many of the films he worked on. In a 1991
interview, Maurice discussed this change with Harry McCracken: “I would go in and check the
animators, maybe sit in on a recording session. I was just all over the place, kind of pulling things
together, ironing out a lot of spots while Chuck was going ahead with the next picture.” But in a 1971
interview with Joe Adamson, Maurice confirmed, “Even codirection with Chuck meant that he had
the final say-so.”
Throughout the 1950s, the Jones unit produced an average of ten six-minute cartoons a year. Each
cartoon would be in production for about a year, with stories often in development for several years.
Maurice would spend an average of five weeks designing and creating background layouts per
cartoon. More time would be given to certain special cartoons such as Duck Amuck, From A to Z-Z-Z-
Z, and What’s Opera, Doc? These films could take up to seven weeks to design and layout. The extra
time was often stolen from what Maurice likes to call “baseboard pictures,” cartoons such as Kiss Me
Cat (1953) that were easier to paint and design because so many of the layouts were of simple
checkered floors. Maurice could often get through a Road Runner picture in as little as one and a half
weeks. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, more Road Runners were made for just this reason. Maurice
explained that often when Chuck Jones would want to try out something more special and unusual, he
would have to bargain with management, trading several Road Runners for something more
interesting. The up side of this way of working was that the crew was able to create a few really great
pictures each year that they really cared about. High Note (1960), Beep Prepared (1961), Nelly’s Folly
(1961), and Now Hear This (1962) were all nominated for Oscars after Maurice’s return in 1959. The
down side of this methodology was that many would associate much of Maurice’s and Chuck Jones’s
later work with cheap, limited animation. This perception would dog Maurice for many years.
In 1961 Dave DePatie replaced Johnny Burton in the executive office and would close the studio
two years later. It was about this time that Maurice redesigned the classic Looney Tunes logo with
something more modern. In a discussion at Cal/Arts in 1977 Maurice quipped, “We were trying some
new titles. . . . It worked so well that they closed the studio.” Soon after Jones’s departure from Warner
Bros., his unit was dissolved. Maurice did a bit of uncredited design work for director Robert
McKimson, and then began design on the animated segments of the live-action feature The Incredible
Mr. Limpet (1964). Maurice had fond memories of working on Mr. Limpet, having created some
beautiful artwork for the film; he was especially proud of his work on the “Deep Rapture” sequence.
Maurice praised camera man Johnny Burton, Jr., on the fine work he did on the film in spite of the
primitive equipment he had to work with.
A concept sketch from The Dot and the Line (1965).
THE MGM YEARS
In 1963, after a brief hiatus, Maurice rejoined Chuck Jones and most of the former Jones unit at
Chuck’s new studio, Sib Tower 12 Productions (later to be renamed MGM Animation/Visual Arts) to
work on a series of new Tom and Jerry shorts. The films at MGM had a more luxurious schedule and
budget than the films at Warner Bros. While most of the films aren’t particularly memorable,
Maurice’s production designs are gorgeous. Although he had designed many remarkable films
throughout his decade-long foray at Warner Bros., the 1960s gave him the time and opportunity to
explore a variety of subjects, styles, and techniques. He considered the films at MGM to be some of
his best work. Along with better working conditions, Maurice also felt he was maturing as an artist. He
told me, “Most designers really only begin to understand design and how to use it at around age forty.
Then really only master it by their fifties and sixties. From there an artist can continue to improve and
hone their craft, or they can make a quick decline, depending on their passion.”
At MGM Maurice was also reunited with his old commanding officer, Theodor “Dr. Seuss” Geisel,
to work on How the Grinch Stole Christmas! (1966) and Horton Hears a Who! (1970). The Grinch was one of
Maurice’s favorites of the period, but, strangely, for many years Ted Geisel never expressed how he
felt about Maurice’s design work for the film. In 1991, during Geisel’s memorial service, Geisel’s
doctor relayed the following message to Maurice: “Ted wanted me to tell you how much he loved
Grinch, especially your work on it.” Amused, Maurice later told me, “This was typical of Ted, always
getting in the last word.”
Among other things, Maurice codirected two films: The Bear That Wasn’t (1967), based on the book
by a Warner Bros. alumnus, director Frank Tashlin; and The Dot and the Line: A Romance of Lower
Mathematics (1965) written by Norton Juster, which won the Oscar for best animated short film.
During the production of The Dot and the Line, Chuck and Maurice’s working relationship became
strained. Evidently the executives at MGM had seen an early treatment of the film by Chuck and didn’t
like it. In a 1989 interview with Michael Barrier, Maurice explained what transpired next:
Somebody from MGM came to me and explained what the situation was, and asked,
“Do you think you could do anything with the film?” I said, “If I have complete control
over it.” So Chuck, with a big scowl on his face, came in and threw all the pieces on
my big brown bookcase; he stacked the whole picture like this: plunk, plunk,
plunk . . . and stalked out of the room. I wouldn’t let Chuck see what I was doing with
it; it was a very touchy situation. But I knew that I couldn’t do anything with it if he was
going to be sucking his thumb on it. The thing got the Academy Award, and he has
never mentioned it to me to this day.
However, after Maurice’s pass on the film and before all the awards that would follow, Chuck wrote
Maurice the following personal note:
Maurice, I have just gone over your treatment of The Dot and the Line in the squalid
absolute of my own solitude. I think it is very nearly flawless and I think Norton Juster
will think so too. My warmest congratulations for a stunning performance. – Chuck.
A Maurice color storyboard panel from How the Grinch Stole Christmas! (1966).
A rough layout from The Grinch with color indications for background painter Phil DeGuard.
From Off to See the Wizard (1967–1968).
Color sketches from the “Deep Rapture” sequence of The Incredible Mr. Limpet (1964).
Concepts sketches from The Phantom Tollbooth (1970).
Chuck Jones concept sketches for Tim Burr Wolf.
A layout with color notes from Tom and Jerry.
Maurice designed a variety of other projects at MGM. Among other things, in 1967 and 1968
Maurice worked on animated segments of the MGM-produced live-action TV series Off to See the
Wizard, a show based on characters from The Wizard of Oz (1939).
Maurice tried his hand at title design for several live-action films. Unfortunately, most of his titles,
including those for The Maltese Bippy (1969)—working title The Strange Case of !#&%?—the plot of
which revolved around a porn star and vampires, never made it past the concept stage. In fact, many
projects that Maurice helped design at MGM were never produced. These were often concepts for
proposed features, short films, and TV shows. Some of these concepts, such as Tim Burr Wolf, later to
be rechristened Timber Wolf!, would reappear at Chuck Jones Productions in the 1990s.
To keep up with his various assignments, Maurice often enlisted the talents of layout artists such as
Don Morgan and Oscar Dufau. Along with his longtime associate Phil DeGuard, Maurice also
worked with such painters as Bob Inman and Hal Ashmead in the background department.
The animated feature The Phantom Tollbooth (1970) would be Maurice’s final film at MGM, and their
animation unit would close soon after its release. Although the reception to The Phantom Tollbooth was
lukewarm, Maurice was proud of his work on the film. He described it to me as a “virtual design class
that implemented everything I knew about film design.”
During the late 1960s Chuck and Maurice’s relationship grew more and more strained. Maurice
explained to me: “Chuck just wasn’t giving the films the attention they needed. I was running my fool
head off pulling things together, trying to make them work . . . staying late, working weekends. Chuck
was always leaving early for his many social engagements. He was too busy being Mr. Jones.”
I asked Maurice why he had continued working with Chuck if he felt so strongly about the
situation. He replied, “I have a lot of respect for Chuck. He was always working on interesting things;
always experimenting and trying stuff out. Unlike other directors, Chuck let me do my own thing. For
that, I owe him a lot.”
After leaving MGM, Maurice began work at DePatieFreleng, a studio headed by veteran Warner
Bros. director Friz Freleng and Dave DePatie, former head of Warner Bros. Cartoons. There Maurice
designed a trio of Dr. Seuss–themed films: The Cat in the Hat (1971), The Lorax (1972), and Dr. Seuss on
the Loose (1973). Jones would help produce and storyboard The Cat in the Hat before starting work at his
own studio, Chuck Jones Productions, in 1970.
Maurice took advantage of his retirement and sketched and traveled throughout Asia and Latin America.
A late 1980s/early 1990s brochure advertising Maurice’s serigraphs.
RETIREMENT
While at DePatie-Freleng, Maurice and his wife, Marjorie, purchased a beautiful Spanish-style
house in the La Crescenta hills, just north of Los Angeles. Slowly Maurice converted his garage into a
studio. After finishing Dr. Seuss on the Loose in late 1972, Maurice retired from animation to focus on
his personal art, his music, and growing flowers with his Marjorie. “Drawing,” Maurice told me,
“takes different skills than designing,” and he worked hard to sharpen his painting and drawing skills.
To help give his studies structure, Maurice often took figure drawing and painting classes in the L.A.
area. What kind of student was Maurice? His teacher at Glendale Community College, artist Shanna
Galloway, had this to say:
It’s difficult to think of Maurice as a “student.” I was barely over thirty when he began
several years of classes with me—and he had won several Academy Awards. I had
seen and loved The Dot and the Line when I was in grad school.
Maurice was very loyal. He came by class once to sign in when he was unable to
attend. He was always on time and seated on the front row. He was a delightful
presence in the group and never overbearing because of his reputation. He had that
rare quality that a teacher appreciates. His charm and attentiveness set a tone in the
classroom.
He supplemented his classes with numerous painting trips throughout Latin America and Asia. On
one such trip, Maurice fulfilled a lifelong dream of studying traditional Chinese painting at the
Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing.
Along with his ever-present watercolors, the main focus of Maurice’s personal art was a series of
hand-pulled serigraph prints. The prints were beautiful, but like the tiles he had created decades
earlier, he found difficulty selling them. At one point, Maurice set up a stand along a street near his
home and tried selling his art for $25 a print. Even then, he had trouble getting anyone to take them off
his hands. It wasn’t until the 1990s, with the help of gallery owners like Steven Grossfeld of Gremlin
Galleries, Linda Jones Clough, Heidi Leigh, and others, that Maurice finally found some success with
his personal artwork.
A few of Maurice’s paintings from his studies in China.
Examples of Maurice’s personal serigraph print work. Though he loved animation, Maurice had waited for many years
for the time and opportunity to make art for himself.
In 1979 Chuck Jones produced, directed, and with Mike Maltese cowrote Duck Dodgers and the
Return of the 24½th Century as part of a TV special called Daffy Duck’s Thanks-for-Giving. Maurice and
artist Ron Dias were designing the film, but sometime during the production Maurice blew up,
making it clear that he no longer wanted to work with Chuck. In response, Chuck wrote to Maurice, “I
can of course, understand you’re not wanting to work anymore, and now I realize how wrong it was for
me to ask you to leave your retirement hiatus to help on Duck Dodgers II. . . . In spite of anything your
superb sketches are the essence of Duck Dodgers II.”
For a time, Maurice considered a teaching position offered by the University of Hawaii. The deal
fell through when the university discovered that he hadn’t completed his undergraduate degree.
Maurice received the Winsor McCay Lifetime Achievement Award in 1987 for his contributions to
the art of animation. Chuck Jones introduced Maurice at the ceremony and expressed his
appreciation for Maurice’s contributions on many of his best pictures. This went a long way to
smooth over any hard feelings Maurice may have had toward Chuck. (The speech is printed in part as
the preface to this book.)
By the late 1980s, Maurice was completely broke. In order to pay his mortgage, he reentered an
industry that was radically different than the one he had left. To make matters even more difficult, he
had been diagnosed with macular degeneration: he was going blind. About this time, Maurice did
some development work for Ralph Bakshi on Dr. Seuss’s Butter Battle Book (1989). At Bakshi’s Maurice
worked with a group of young artists that included Ed Bell, Jeff Pidgeon, and Rich Moore, among
others.
In early 1990, Maurice was hired at Warner Bros. to work on episodes of Tiny Toon Adventures, a TV
show that basically incorporated junior versions of Looney Tunes characters. Upon receiving the
materials for the episode he was supposed to design, “Duck Dodgers, Jr.” (1991), Maurice proceeded
to work in the same manner that he always had. Instead of just designing locations based on the
storyboard, he began analyzing the story, writing notes and suggestions about how to improve the
storytelling visually. This of course didn’t jive well with Warner Bros.’ slick, modern TV animation
pipeline. But once Maurice began designing, the entire crew became really excited by the beautiful,
classic-looking Noble designs he produced.
To everyone’s surprise, when Maurice’s episode came back from the overseas studio, it looked
terrible! Mike Kazaleh, who cowrote the “Duck Dodgers, Jr.” episode with Maurice, and director
Kent Butterworth related the following to Thad Komorowski in 2008: “Maurice came up with all the
crazy landscapes and machines seen in the beginning of the cartoon. He originally designed the
settings in nice, flat colors, but the background artists at Wang Films in Taipei (where this episode
was produced) couldn’t believe we wanted them flat, so they used airbrush instead.” However, David
Marshall, the overseas supervisor on the project, shed light on the fact that the Taiwanese crew was
“incredibly jazzed by Maurice’s background keys.” But he was “given strict orders from the show’s
producers to ignore Maurice’s notes.” David continued: “The U.S. producers didn’t know or care
who this old guy was, despite the fact that the art looked fantastic!” The irony of all of this was that
“Duck Dodgers, Jr.” was supposed to be a send-up of one of Maurice’s most famous films, Duck
Dodgers in the 24½th Century (1953) . . . and was written to be a sort of flashback to the original film.
Sketches for Duck Dodgers and the Return of the 24½th Century (1980).
Not long after, the show’s senior director, Eddie Fitzgerald, had the unenviable task of firing
Maurice from Tiny Toons. Eddie was kind enough to share some of his thoughts about Maurice and his
style with me:
I was and am a huge fan of Maurice Noble. I absolutely love what he did for Chuck. I
loved him so much that, in spite of my fear that he might seduce the studio into
accepting a limited style, I agreed to work with him. I’m a passionate believer in full
animation. . . . For me, the problem with Maurice’s style was that it was anchored in
the public imagination with limited (or semi-limited) animation.
Maurice became disgusted with the whole uncreative, factory-type methodology used in
producing modern TV animation, saying, “I tried to make a good cartoon, and got fired for it.” He
would never work in television again.
A few of Maurice’s rough concept sketches for “Duck Dodgers, Jr.” (1991).
Maurice sketches from various space pictures. Reoccurring themes followed Maurice through his career, and with
each picture he tried to push these themes further and further.
Beginning in the late 1980s classic animation art became quite collectable. In order to make ends meet, Maurice sold
off a portion of his personal collection. In the process he met a whole new generation of animation fans.
Maurice with his trainees from Chuck Jones Film Productions. From left to right: Lawrence Marvit, Scott Morse,
Maurice Noble, Tod Polson, Don Hall, Ricardo Barahona.
A NEW BEGINNING
In 1993 Chuck Jones and his daughter, Linda Jones Clough, started Chuck Jones Film Productions
with plans to develop a variety of long- and short-form projects. They dreamed of making a creative
studio environment reminiscent of Warner Bros. in the 1950s. Maurice jumped at the chance to work
on theatrical shorts, and was brought on board not only to help oversee the art styling of many of these
projects, but also to train a group of young designers from the California Institute of the Arts
(CalArts). After his “Tiny Toon experience” Maurice had become deeply concerned about the welfare
and future of young artists. He and Jones committed themselves to passing on their knowledge,
teaching a new generation of artists a better way of putting short films together. This desire became
the seed of this book.
In 1994, after a portfolio review and a brief interview, Scott Morse, Don Hall, Ricardo Barahona,
and I were invited to intern with Maurice. Lawrence Marvit recounts how he came to join the studio a
bit later:
Maurice was an animation artist with classical leanings. This he made clear to me the
first day I met him.
I had heard that Maurice Noble and Chuck Jones had reteamed to make theatrical
shorts. So I called and asked about internships. The person on the other side of the
phone promptly said there were no positions open. So with no way in, I figured I’d try
the front door . . . literally. I drove to the studio where I was told . . . “Yes, Maurice
Noble is here, but all the internship positions have been filled.” I pleaded “Can I at
least show him my work?” Grudgingly they took my portfolio and told me to wait in the
lobby.
After waiting one of the longest half hours of my life I was told, “He would like to
meet you.” The butterflies in my stomach went ballistic as I was walked to his office.
There he was: the legend. Rather short and dressed in an apron to avoid getting paint
on him. He shook my hand and had me sit down. At this point I was about to vomit
butterflies. He opened the portfolio to a series of still lifes. “Were you looking at
Tintoretto when doing these?”
That was not what I was expecting. He was right. Tintoretto is of course one of the
great painters of the Italian Renaissance. The pictures were based on some ideas of
how Tintoretto used space, which I had been studying independently with another
fantastic artist named Glenn Vilppu. At the time I knew less than ten people who cared
about this type of classical composition stuff. It had no real application in film and not
much in illustration; I just found it fun. It turned out that Maurice thought so as well.
Roughs from a Marvin Martian promo spot, directed by Darrell Van Citters.
We chatted for a while and then he handed me a stack of photocopies of Chuck
Jones’s drawings and a treatment. Maurice said, like it was the most normal thing in
the world, “I’d like several pages of rough drawings by next Wednesday.” I had
officially gotten my first assignment!
All of us had a different manner in which we related to Maurice. I was someone to
talk about old modes of composition with. This isn’t to say we didn’t talk about
animation design; we did. A lot. But more often than not it was through the filter of old
painters. At one point I had taken a pad of preprinted storyboard panels and was
slipping Maurice the occasional Tintoretto-inspired still life. He referred to it as our
dirty secret.
The animation team was composed primarily of students from Sheridan College in Toronto, and
included Ben Jones, Herman Sharaf, Warren O’Neill, and Greg Whittaker. This Canadian force was
supplemented by CalArt-ians Joe Moshier and Eric “Panama” Koenig. The animation trainees were
guided by veteran animators Greg Duffell, Tom Decker, and Mike Polvani. Recent CalArts graduate
Jim Hull was the storyboard department and worked directly with Chuck, Don Arioli, and Stan
Freberg.
We all worked long and hard hours. But the gang running the studio—Chuck, Linda,
producer/director Steve Fossatti, and manager Rose Long—tried to make sure that Chuck Jones Film
Productions was a fun place to work. To break up the day there would be impromptu wrestling
matches and fierce chair-basketball games. Linda made sure each of us carried a rubber fish with us
one day of the week to ensure we didn’t get too serious at the office. We had life drawing classes and
film screenings of original Technicolor prints of the cartoons. Stars like Debbie Reynolds and
Quentin Tarantino would just pop in from time to time to see what we were doing. The best part of all
is that we were making theatrical short films! What could be better? We pitied our classmates, those
poor slobs who were going to tiny, unknown studios like Cartoon Network and Pixar. It was an
amazing experience. Unfortunately for a lot of us, we were perhaps a bit too naïve to realize how lucky
we really were.
As often happens, good things came to an end.
Though Maurice continued to consult for Chuck Jones, in 1995 he joined Turner Feature
Animation (later to be renamed Warner Bros. Feature Animation) as a development artist and design
consultant for various projects at the studio. At Warner Bros., Maurice helped mentor another group
of young gifted designers that included Lou Romano, Ricky Nierva, Mike Stern, Don Shank, Kevin
O’Brien, and Jenny Lerew, among other youngsters. Maurice also worked closely with industry vets
such as Kelvin Yasuda, Rick Schneider, Sylvain Despretz, Dan Jeup, and Brad Bird. Scott Morse, who
was instrumental in getting Maurice hired at Turner, and Lawrence Marvit had left Chuck Jones and
continued to study under their mentor at Turner.
Throughout the rest of the 1990s Maurice would consult and lecture for companies such as Pixar,
Disney, and DreamWorks. In a 1998 interview with historian Karl Cohen, Maurice explained his
consulting duties: “I don’t give lectures, I give conversations. . . . I check work out with the young
artists. I try to suggest where they can make improvements. I work with young directors. We talk over
story and story points. In other words I’m the old guru.”
In 1997, Maurice formed two companies. Maurice Noble Productions was to concentrate on design
consultation and commercial projects. And with a number of his trainees, known informally as the
“Noble Boys,” he formed Noble Tales, a company dedicated to creating high-quality short theatrical
films with an ethnic twist. With Noble Tales, Maurice added yet more trainees into the fold, including
designers John Korellis, Cynthia Ignacio, and Jorge R. Gutierrez. Feeling that music was just as
important as the visual element, Maurice also involved musicians Ryan Baker, Craig Snoke, and Billy
“Keys” Benson. Several dozen Noble Tales stories were developed to various stages of finish under
Maurice’s watchful eye. Each film concept was designed to incorporate different styles and
techniques. Research trips were taken that included a workshop with a shadow-puppet master in Java
and trips to Angkor Wat guided by members of the Cambodian royal family. One particularly special
trip was to the McKean Rehabilitation Center for leprosy patients in northern Thailand. Maurice’s
uncle, missionary Dr. James McKean, from whom Maurice was given his middle name, had set up the
facility in 1908. Maurice had always looked up to his uncle, visiting the hospital several times over the
years . . . and toyed with the idea of setting up a studio in Thailand.
One of several logos from Maurice’s proposed film series, Noble Tales.
The final background, from Maurice’s final Road Runner short, Chariots of Fur (1994). Background painted by Jill
Petrilak.
A number of L.A. studios showed interest in producing properties from Noble Tales, but eventually all
those deals fell through. Al Tudi Tuhak (1999), produced as my student film at CalArts and narrated by
Maurice, was the first short to come out of the Noble Tales series. Both Maurice and former UPA
designer and head of the CalArts experimental animation program Jules Engel served as mentors on Al
Tudi Tuhak. They both took a hands-off approach in helping guide the project, giving advice only
when asked or when they saw problems. The important thing for Maurice was that the film developed
in the proper way. Eventually the film received the Student Academy Award, and was nominated for an
Annie Award. The night of the Oscar win, Maurice pulled me aside and said, “You are beginning to
understand design, but you sure can’t direct.”
In 2000 James Wang, owner of the Wang Film Group, offered up his Thai studio to produce a Noble
Tales short in exchange for training his crew in design and preproduction. Maurice became very
excited by the idea of making a film in Thailand, and it was decided to put The Pumpkin of Nyefar, a
short story that Maurice and I had written in Turkey, into production. But as we prepared to leave,
Maurice’s doctor discovered a medical condition that made it too risky for Maurice to fly. The
thought of not being able to travel and work on the production was too much for him to bear. After
some thought, Maurice made the same sort of bold decision that had defined his career, and opted for
risky surgery. Before going under the knife, Maurice asked me to complete The Pumpkin of Nyefar and
his design book (The Noble Approach) if anything should happen to him.
On May 18, 2001 Maurice James Noble passed away at his home, surrounded by loved ones.
Along with Noble Tales, Maurice had a number of personal film projects that he had wanted to get off
the ground, including an abstract film about the atom bomb and a charming Christmas story drawn
from his childhood. But as Noble Boy Ricardo Barahona put so eloquently, “New ideas and projects
took to his heart and we all hoped that somehow they would materialize. However, these new
aspirations came at a point too late in life, his passing coming with the new century.”
LEGACY
The Pumpkin of Nyefar was finished in Bangkok in 2004, codirected by Mark Oftedal and me. It was a
labor of love, with many of the Noble Boys and friends volunteering their ideas, time, and talents in
helping to see the film to completion. A third film, Escape of the Gingerbread Man!!!, which was imagined
by Maurice as a “mad romp through the Irish countryside,” was completed at the Monk Studio in
Bangkok in 2011. It was coproduced by Noble Tales, the Monk Studios, and the Animation Workshop
of Denmark. More films from the Noble Tales series are currently in various stages of production and
scheduled to be finished as time and finances allow.
After years of discussions with Warner Bros. over the use of images from their collection,
Maurice’s design book, The Noble Approach, is at last in print by Chronicle Books, at least in as close a
version to his wishes as I could make it.
Maurice had always been grateful for the scholarship that allowed him to get a start on the art
education that he otherwise would have been unable to afford. Wanting to help promising young
students in the same way, Maurice started the Maurice and Marjorie Noble Scholarship Fund. At
present, the scholarship is offered to outstanding first-year students at UCLA, USC, CalArts, and San
Jose State University.
Of course Maurice’s biggest legacy will always be his film work, and the many lives he touched over
the years. He once wrote, “Giving to others of your store of knowledge tends to strengthen one’s own
knowledge.” Unlike many of his contemporaries, Maurice was always generous with his time, and his
knowledge.
If you look closely at the fabric of most any modern major animated production, feature or TV, it’s
likely that you will find a thread of Maurice in the seams. Many of the artists Maurice trained, worked
with, and inspired have become major creative fixtures throughout the industry. Most continue to
practice and impart many of his design ideas, adding to them a bit of their own imagination. Some of
these artists have generously contributed their thoughts in the pages that follow. The response to this
project was so overwhelming that regrettably there wasn’t room enough to accommodate everyone
that wanted to contribute.
Though perhaps he never became the major gallery painter he had dreamed of in his youth,
Maurice’s personal prints and watercolors have found their way into many respectable collections
throughout the world. His animation art is beloved by collectors and continues to command high
prices on the art market. Maurice once told me “Animation is the new, modern, art form; the next
natural step in the evolution of painting.” And like the classical artists of old that he so admired, I
believe Maurice’s work will continue to touch and inspire future generations with its wit, humor, and
poetry. Art director Mike Giaimo, who first introduced me to and fostered my appreciation for
Maurice’s work while I was still a student at CalArts, sums up Maurice’s art so much more poetically
than I ever could:
What is the “Noble style”? What makes Maurice’s work so distinctive, unique, and
appealing? The key to understanding his work lies in the world of opposites: his touch
is light and easy, yet sure-handed. It is fanciful and whimsical on the one hand,
dramatic and bold on the other. It is decorative without being fussy, and solid without
being overbearing. It is never strained or overwrought.
In his work there are both masculine and feminine traits—a perfect design synthesis
of yin and yang.
Smart cinema language and a confident use of line, shape, and color all contribute
greatly to the Noble style, but perhaps the most defining (and less tangible) key to
understanding Maurice’s sensibilities lies at the inner core of the man himself—his
integrity.
Though we see on the surface of Maurice’s work charm, sophistication, and
playfulness, there is an underlying sincerity and truthfulness that holds all the design
elements together. This is why his work is so honest and engaging. With Maurice there
is never a visual false note or misstep.
What is the Noble style? It is artistic authenticity, which is timeless.
If you would like to read about Maurice’s life in more detail, please pick up a copy of Stepping into
the Picture: Cartoon Designer Maurice Noble (University Press of Mississippi, 2008) cowritten by
Maurice and Robert J. McKinnon, and Noble Boy, written and illustrated by Noble Boy Scott Morse
(Adhouse Books, 2006).
Ready to start designing? We thought we were, too!
STEP 01:
Getting Started
Maurice created literally thousands of concept sketches over a two-year period for Bambi (1942).
WORKING WITHIN YOUR LIMITATIONS
When Maurice first selected a small group of young artists to apprentice with him at Chuck Jones Film
Productions in the early 1990s, we, like many young twenty-somethings with a bit of animation
training, figured we already knew pretty much everything there was to know about designing animated
films. For our first assignment, Maurice gave each of us a short film premise to begin concept
sketches on. These were various ideas that Chuck was considering putting into production. Putting
brush to paper, we proceeded to eke out the most lavish, dramatic images we could muster.
When Maurice came by to check our progress, he kindly informed us in his inimitable way that we
“had no idea of what we were doing.” What he said next is the subject of the rest of this book and
would take us years to get through our heads. In regard to our newest masterpieces, Maurice
explained that we had just created what he liked to call “pretties”: lovely, often striking designs made
for the sake of design without any real thought to story, budget, or the needs of the picture at hand.
Maurice challenged us to think about what we were designing and why before creating artwork. He
continued to explain:
Before beginning design on any project, I try to figure out what my limitations are,
primarily time and budget. A big budget feature will have different limitations than a
TV show or a personal film project. You may be a fantastic artist, but you will have
failed as a designer if you can’t get your vision up on the screen because you have
designed a film that costs more than the budget allows or is more difficult to complete
[in] the time you have scheduled. I call this “student film syndrome,” overambitious
projects that fizzled out or never saw completion because of budget or time reasons.
Sadly, this happens all the time in the professional world as well. I’m in no way
suggesting that you underdesign your film projects. I’m just suggesting taking time and
budget into consideration before you begin the design process. If you want a picture
that is big, elaborate, and beautiful, but the budget doesn’t allow it, you substitute
something else. Your job as a designer is to make the best picture possible within your
limitations.
Maurice encouraged us not to become frustrated by these limitations. He showed us that with a
little ingenuity, a designer can use certain restrictions to take their designs in directions that wouldn’t
have been thought of otherwise. Of course, not knowing quite as much about animation design as we
at first thought we did, it was difficult to define exactly what our limitations were. This takes time and
experience. If you’re new to animation, here is a brief checklist that may help you before starting
design on a project:
What are the expectations of the studio, producer, and director?
This needs to be clear; if they don’t know, you are in trouble. An open, ongoing discussion with the
producer and director is the best way to make sure your vision makes it to the screen.
How much time do you have to design the film?
Just like a marathon, plan your pace so you can finish the race. You may find yourself on a project
with no development time. Or you may find yourself with too much development time, where the
design style is noodled so much that it loses its spark. Just try to plan ahead.
How much time is there to produce the film?
Design a film that can be produced in the time allowed. Much of this depends of course on the
budget and on the size of the production team you will be working with.
What is the budget?
Design a film that can be made for the budget; don’t over-underdesign. If you are new to
animation, check out films that are in a similar budget range to see how they were handled.
Maurice would test his concepts under camera before committing to a design approach.
What is the story?
Know the story as well as you can; it will guide your design.
Is the animation limited or full?
A film’s design should complement the style of animation in the film.
Who is your audience?
Be clear who your audience is: families? kids? adults?
Where will the production be?
You would prepare an overseas production or coproduction differently than one staying under one
roof.
How long is the film?
Just because a film is shorter doesn’t always mean that the budget is smaller.
It is sometimes difficult for even an experienced designer to quickly gauge many of their
limitations. After all his years in the business, Maurice would still consider the limitations of each film
he worked on carefully. Eventually, once he felt he had arrived at a solution artistically, he would test
his design ideas under camera before committing to a specific approach. Maurice often called these
“light tests,” which would include a character cel set up over a background or rough background
concept painting. He did this not only as proof of concept for himself and the crew, but also to iron
out any problems that he may not have foreseen. If you feel that you have settled on a design approach,
do a test background with a character setup to see how long it takes you. Then multiply that by an
estimated number of setups. Of course this will only give you a rough idea of how long things will take.
But it’s infinitely better than not knowing at all. Working in CG can bring more and different
limitations, but it can also give you more design options. This is even more reason to take a few test
scenes to completion as proof of concept.
WORKING AS A TEAM
Maurice always acknowledged that much of his success as a designer was as a direct result of the
people he worked with. Not only because of their talents, but also because of the camaraderie they
built as a group over the years. At its very best, animation is a team sport. Each of the major players of
the Jones unit of the 1950s would go on to do great things as individuals. But they never again reached
the heights they did together. There were many reasons for this, but Maurice cautioned us never to
take good working relationships for granted. Heidi Leigh interviewed Maurice in 1997 and asked him
to recall some of the really wonderful things about working at Warner Bros.:
Teamwork with the crew at Warner Bros. created an element of synergy that is
nowhere to be found in this day and age, with animators floating around from studio
to studio the way they do. There were a group of guys that really knew each other,
and we were, in the truest sense of the word, a unit. Mike Maltese and Phil DeGuard
were probably my two best friends, and we would bounce ideas back and forth until
we had something really good. Mike wrote the storyline, I would come up with a wild
drawing, and the ideas would start flying. Chuck worked in the animation to the
backgrounds and was a master of timing. He was also a great artist; he could really
draw. . . . None of us could have done it alone, and I will always share the glory for
these great cartoons with everyone who had a hand in creating the cartoons.
Maurice encouraged developing close working relationships with everyone on our crew. But he
also revealed that forming and maintaining these relationships can sometimes be tricky. He
continued to explain that many artists who have strong creative vision also have egos. (Though he was
addressing us at the time, I naïvely assumed he was talking about someone else.) Maurice added that
having confidence and vision was a healthy and even necessary part of being a good designer. But he
also stressed that finding balance in our relationships was crucial, because much of our own success
as designers may in fact lie in the hands of others, especially the director, camera man, and the
background painter. As an example, Maurice explained his approach to working with the background
painter:
One of the most important partnerships a designer or art director will have is with the
background painter. A good painter will have thoughts, ideas, and suggestions that
can improve a design. A good art director will know which suggestions to take, and
which suggestions don’t really fit into the overall production. Many inexperienced or
insecure art directors will reject idea after idea, simply because it’s not their idea. I
guarantee a background painter isn’t going to give inspired work if they feel as if they
are just a wrist. It’s important to make the painter feel as if they are being creative,
but you also want them to do it your way. This is a very tricky balance.
Maurice added that when an artist on a team does good work, an art director should go public,
telling the producer and director about it; this will not only help raise morale, it will also help inspire
more good work.
In a modern CG studio, an art director’s relationship with the lighting, rendering, and compositing
departments is similar to that which Maurice had with the background painter and cameraman. Learn
the strengths and weaknesses of your team, then design your productions to take advantage of what
they are good at.
Of course the most important relationship a designer can have is that with the director. Jill
Petrilak, who worked as Maurice’s background painter in the 1990s, made an astute observation
about Maurice’s relationship with Chuck Jones:
One thing about Maurice and Chuck is that they always kept a certain distance. They
worked together, they admired each other, they loved each other, but they weren’t
best friends. Maurice wanted to have that edge, where they could argue a point, but
not have friendship get in the way of work.
Maurice confessed that through the years, he and Chuck had sometimes had heated discussions
over a design approach. He remembered moments when Chuck and Mike Maltese would get into
shouting matches over a story point. Maurice explained to us, “Creative arguments are all a part of the
creative process. Ideas can be honed and improved when challenged. It’s a good thing! If you are
working with people who are as creative and passionate as you are, differences in opinion are going to
happen. As an artist, you can’t take these arguments personally.” Maurice added, “No matter how
strongly you feel about an idea, at the end of the day the director is still the director.”
In 1977, Maurice discussed this give-and-take relationship between designer and director with a
young group of students at CalArts, a group of youngsters that included future directors Darrell Van
Citters, Nancy Beiman, John Musker, Brad Bird, and John Lasseter:
The first thing you have to realize is that when you are designing a film, the director is
the director. This is sometimes very hard for the super-ego to understand. It’s the
director’s responsibility to pull all the elements of a film together, including the
design, and make something that works. The director is responsible for this even if he
has an art director. If the art director goes off on the wrong track, then you get a foulup on your hands artistically.
As a designer, or art director, I’ll try my darndest to sell an idea that I think is good,
graphically or artistically, to the director. But, if he doesn’t buy that idea, you have to
back down and you have to gracefully say, “Okay, I’ll do it your way.”
Selling graphic ideas to the director is one of the most important—and most stressful—duties a
designer can have. Through the years Maurice developed a method where he managed to sell a high
percentage of his design ideas to Chuck Jones and yet keep his blood pressure down. When pitching
ideas to Chuck, Maurice might show a few sketches. But more often he would present an almost
scientific list of reasons why a certain design approach was right for a particular story. He related to
me:
Maurice and his famous “One-Finger Salute.” Caricature by Warren O’Neil.
To be a successful designer, being able to sell a good idea is just as important as
coming up with the idea itself. It’s hard to sell something simply because you think it
feels right. You have to be able to logically discuss why it feels right. Be prepared to
defend your ideas, but also listen to suggestions. As a team you just may come up with
visual gags and ideas you hadn’t thought of previously. You may have to go through
this process several times, until you find something you are really satisfied with.
As a designer you will constantly be trying to sell your ideas to someone. Believe
me, everyone on the crew will have an opinion of how the film should look. You have
to make them believe in you and your ideas. Be confident about what you are doing:
explain your work, but don’t be critical of it. Let it stand on its own and speak for
itself. There were many times when I wasn’t sure if a design approach I had would
actually work on-screen. But I sure wasn’t going to let anyone else know that! Many
of the young designers I work with will show me work and say something like, “This
part of the composition isn’t very good, is it?” Or “I should have probably pushed that
more.” My reaction to this is, why are you showing this to me then? You haven’t
convinced me that this is the approach we should take on a picture. If you believe
enough in your work to present it to someone else, then stand behind it. Let others be
critical of your ideas, whether good or bad. Sometimes when you experiment you will
fail, but if you don’t push things, you will never do anything interesting.
Maurice admitted that a young, inexperienced designer is going to have more trouble selling
interesting design ideas to their director. He explained that by building trust over time a good
designer will eventually gain more freedom to experiment artistically. This is where developing
relationships is so important. Understanding the frustration of a class of young talent, Maurice
suggested patience as a good route to take, and then added:
You will find that most people are resistant to new design and style ideas and are
usually more comfortable reworking things they have seen before. When you are
trying to break new ground, you will often find that the creative powers controlling
the project may not like a lot of your ideas as a designer. They may even take the
picture in a direction that you don’t agree with. This in no way means that your work is
bad, it just means their taste isn’t as good as yours. Just suck it up and save your ideas;
you may be able to use them later. Perhaps not on the same picture—but eventually
you will. Be a rebel, but be willing to compromise, and work as part of a team. Just
remember that every production you work on is a collaboration. The director is the
head of that collaboration, like it or not. And the producer pays you. Just give them
the one-finger salute (not to their faces), do your job, and keep trying to push things
as far as you can. If you are difficult to work with, you can be sure you will have no
creative influence at all on the next project.
Later, one of the Noble Boys took Maurice’s lesson to heart and gave the one-finger salute to his
director during a creative discussion. Frustrated, this director phoned Maurice not knowing quite
what to do, explaining “The guy’s work is great! And he does a lot of it! But, he’s so headstrong and
difficult!” As you can guess, in spite of all his talent, this designer was soon invited to leave the
company. It’s not always about the quality of the work. It’s about the work and working relationships.
STEP 02:
Story
Background art from The Phantom Tollbooth.
Don’t Give Up The Sheep (1953). An example of a Mike Maltese/Chuck Jones outline. The outline is from
December 1950, with the film being released in January 1953. Many of the story concepts were developed and kicked
around for years before they ever hit the screen.
VISUAL STORYTELLING
From our first day working with Maurice, he let us know beyond question how he felt about the
graphic storytelling qualities of animation design and the use of scripts. Other than recording scripts
for the actors, written scripts were never used on the shorts at Warner Bros. The “writing” was in the
drawing, based on story outlines for structure. Maurice felt written scripts, more often than not, were
a hindrance to a creative visual story process:
Scripts should merely provide a skeleton to work off of, and only be part of the
process. Animation at its best is a visual graphic medium. The modern animation
industry is cursed with writers, producers, and even directors who would rather be
making “live-action” films. Instead of telling beautiful, graphic, animated stories and
taking advantage of all the visual potential animation has to offer, what are being
made are essentially bad live-action films. There are exceptions, but very few. The
biggest problem is that most scripts are verbal and not visual. Many recent animated
features contain way too much dialogue and have situations that really don’t present
themselves in a graphic way. One drawing in a storyboard can often say as much as a
page of description, and many times a drawing can say things that words could never
say. Go back and look at Bambi, or any of the other classics for that matter, and think
about how a script would have been crafted for these films. The scripts are sparse,
because very little dialogue is needed to get across the emotion and storytelling.
Maurice wanted to describe the story process that had been used at Warner Bros. in this text
because he felt it was the most important part of his design process. The more a designer knows about
a story, the better grasp they will have on how to design it. He explained that a story will directly
influence the colors chosen, shapes used, and the amount of light and shadow employed in the
graphics, and that the design must always be “appropriate” to the story being told.
In the Jones unit of the 1950s, story man Mike Maltese would usually “write” the stories going into
production, meaning that he would usually create a short written story outline that described the basic
idea for a film. The outline would then be pitched to the writing/directing teams of all units of the
studio in what Maurice called a “No ‘No’ Session.” These sessions were called this for the simple fact
that for the two hours or so that the outlines and gags were being discussed, there could be no nos.
Only positive suggestions were allowed. Then armed with new thoughts and suggestions Mike would
expand his outline into story- board form. Mike’s boards would consist of thumbnail drawings that
put over the idea of the story. The drawings were very rough, but the charm, the gags, the dialogue,
everything was there.
Once Mike had a draft of the storyboards ready, they would be pinned up on large boards and
discussed in another session. After this, the boards would be revised by Mike or adjusted by Chuck as
he created his character layouts loosely based on the boards. Often Chuck would get caught up in the
story as he was creating these character layouts, and twist and change the material in the boards to fit
his vision.
Though rarely taking an active role in the No “No” Sessions, Maurice often sat in the background,
taking notes, wanting to understand the story at hand as best he could. Then, depending on the
schedule and story, he could be asked to start submitting design ideas anywhere in this process.
Chuck would usually present a rough storyboard or, in many cases, a rough outline to Maurice that
he wanted explored. Then Maurice would start cooking up graphic ideas of what he thought was the
most appropriate direction to take the story. Maurice explained that as he began exploring design at
this stage, he would begin to get ideas for new aspects of the story: visual gags, staging ideas, and
sometimes a complete dramatic change in the story itself. After working out his graphic approach for
a few days, he would meet with Chuck again to discuss these ideas. Many times these ideas would
spark something in Chuck, and he would weave them back into the story as he developed it and laid
out the animation. Other times Maurice’s ideas would make little impression. Maurice described this
working relationship to me as “give and take, where we would bounce ideas off of each other.
Sometimes my ideas would stick, and sometimes they wouldn’t. But there was almost always exchange
of ideas, and building up of material.”
Michael Maltese doing what he did best; pitching a story to the creative crew at Warner Bros. (1) Mike Maltese (2)
Chuck Jones (3) Friz Freleng (4) Eddie Selzer and his assistant. (back row left to right) Ted Pierce, Bob McKimson,
Warren Foster, and John Burton.
Mike Maltese storyboard drawings for Tom and Jerry, produced at MGM in the mid-1960s.
A great example of this style of collaboration was on What’s Opera, Doc? Maurice thumbnailed
dozens of visual ideas for the film, which he then presented to Chuck. These weren’t pretty
presentation drawings; they were ideas. It didn’t take much for Chuck to understand the direction
Maurice was going visually. Many of these were thrown out, but Chuck was able to pull a number of
Maurice’s visual ideas back into the storyboard and character layouts. This back and forth way of
working is one of the reasons What’s Opera, Doc? is such a standout.
A designer’s influence on story became clearer to me when Lawrence Marvit and I were making
development sketches for Jones in the 1990s. Inspired by Maurice’s tales of an open-story forum, we
came up with some story ideas for the film we were working on and presented them to Chuck. He went
over everything with us, then without looking up from the drawings said, “The last thing I need is a
layout man who wants to be a story man.” For better or worse, in the end Chuck used a few of our ideas
in the story, but it was clear we were never to submit story ideas directly to him again.
However, there were many times after that when Chuck would see the story possibilities in one of
our designs and weave it back into the story. On Another Froggy Evening (1995) we were working on a
caveman sequence and made a simple painting of Stonehenge as a joke. Chuck took the drawing and
built a small sequence around it in his character layouts. This inspired a coliseum in a Roman
sequence, and threads of the idea found their way throughout the film. In this way we found that
sometimes one drawing could influence the way a story was told. The more visual ideas we put down,
the greater impact our design would have on the story. This exchange of ideas, as Maurice taught, was
part of our job, and a healthy part of the story process.
Noble admitted that this back-and-forth method of working took a bit more time than working
directly from a script. But I think most would agree that the results are far more satisfying than simply
illustrating a soundtrack. He told me, “There is a reason why people still watch ‘the golden oldies’
again and again decades after they were created yet can’t remember what they were watching on TV
the previous week.” I asked Maurice shortly before he died if there were any other reasons he felt the
old films were better than most of the modern stuff. He replied:
There is more talent working in the industry now than ever before, but sadly the vast
majority won’t have the opportunity to work on really good creative stories. The
problem isn’t always the type of stories being told; it’s more in the way these stories
are being told and developed. There is no room for visual exploration. There is no
time for thought and craftsmanship. There isn’t the chance for crews to build trust and
synergy.”
To me it has always made more sense to create films that people want to see over
and over than something cheap that people will see once and forget. If the studios
would think a little more about quality visual storytelling rather than the fast buck,
they would make far more money in the long run.
Maurice’s philosophy of filmmaking—and life—is summed up well in a quote from the philosopher
William James that was found among his things after his passing: “The great use of life is to spend it
for something that outlasts it.”
Maurice idea notes from Fantasia. Maurice would start with lists of ideas, then expand on the best ideas visually.
Exploratory thumbnails from What’s Opera, Doc? Keeping visual ideas rough allowed Maurice to explore a variety of
approaches quickly.
Notes from Maurice to Chuck Jones on the title sequence of Boyhood Daze (1957) and Maurice’s ideas implemented
in the final film.
Many times Maurice’s visual gags and staging ideas were incorporated into the films, such as this spider idea for
Claws for Alarm (1954), and many times they weren’t. Here Maurice suggests a Jeep and a sports car, but in the end
it remains a jalopy.
Gag drawings from Claws for Alarm (1954). Maurice probably made a dozen sketches or more of “ghost gags,” most
of which never made it past the sketch stage but may have led to other ideas.
STEP 03:
Breaking Down the Elements
Lightning from What’s Opera, Doc? (1957). Special effects shouldn’t be forgotten in the design process.
Even elements such as these noise makers from Horton Hears a Who! (1970) must be designed to fit in with the
overall style of the film.
STORY BEATS
The next step in Maurice’s process was to examine the board, or outline, and break down the story
into smaller parts called story beats (or story moments or sequences, all of which he used interchangeably).
Story beats are normally the more important moments of a story, reflecting large changes in setting,
mood, or emotion. Different stories will have a different number of story beats, but most stories will at
least have a beginning, middle, climax, and end. This is a good place to start thinking about your
design. You probably won’t want to give the opening of a film the same color, value, or design
treatment as the love sequence, climax, etc. But in writing all the major story beats down, it will be
easier to organize your thoughts and will help direct your research.
Keep in mind, stories in development are in a constant state of flux, and story beats may change as
a result. This is all just a normal part of a healthy story process, or rather, should be a normal part of the
process. It wasn’t entirely uncommon for Maurice to have a sequence he had been developing
suddenly cut from a film.
STORY ELEMENTS
Maurice would then break his story beats down further into what he called an elements list:
Once I have gone through the story material and talked things over with the director, I
begin making written notes about the different elements, locations, and environments
that I will be designing. Yes, I actually write these notes down. The amount of design
that often needs to be done on a picture can be staggering. It’s easy for things to fall
through the cracks. Your list will grow and change as the film develops.
Maurice added that every film will have different needs. But the more specific you can be with your
elements, the better. Here are some thoughts he shared with me:
Location: Where is the story taking place: an English castle? A New York deli? Outer space? Really
think about the details that will make a place feel unique. The more specific you can be, the easier it
will be to research and design your picture. If the location is generic, is there a way you can set it in a
more unique and specific location? Challenge yourself by making a location you may have seen
millions of times different and special.
Time: Are you designing a period piece? If the story isn’t specific about a period, could it be set in
a different time? Perhaps it could make the story fun and more interesting: the more specific you can
be, the more fun it will be to research and design. Audiences really appreciate those little touches, and
it will really make your work stand out.
Time of Day: If the script isn’t specific, time of day can help push the mood of the story. A
moonlight stroll can be more romantic than one at 2 P.M. A battle at sunset can be more dramatic than
one at 10 A.M. List down time ideas, and see how they work into the overall story.
Special Sequences: Are there sequences that need special consideration? Is there a musical
sequence? A dream sequence? Are there flashbacks that need a different design treatment? Title
cards or a title sequence that may also need special attention? Notate these early in the design
process; they may take extra time.
Much like when meeting a person for the first time, titles are important because they are the first impression an
audience will have of a film. They should entice the viewer and in some way give a taste of what is to come. This is
one reason Maurice often began a project by experimenting with its titles.
Well-designed effects will support the mood of the story. Such as these concepts from the opening of Horton Hears a
Who.
Props: Props are any elements, other than the characters, that will be animated. Will the character
be interacting with any specific elements? Such as, will the character make the flowers wilt with his
odor? Or, what kind of anvil will drop on our character’s head? The more specific you can be, the
easier it will be to keep track of the elements you will need to design. The animators will need to work
with these elements as well, so it’s good to keep them in the loop. See if they have ideas and
suggestions. I’ve seen many films where the animators designed the props themselves; most of the
time these elements didn’t fit in with the overall world and surroundings of the film. I’ve also seen
films that were well designed, but the designer really didn’t understand the needs of the animation.
The elements looked good—until they had to move. Always remember, animation is a collaborative art
form. There is no room for ego; design supports the characters and story, not the other way around.
Mood: Break the story down into basic moods and emotions. Mood is directly related to story and
will affect many of the artistic decisions you make. Your design must support the mood and emotion
of each scene. When you write these down, it helps you focus on the overall film and lets you plan how
you will transition from one mood, or section of the film, to another. Are you designing a satire, a
serious drama, or both? There really are such things as funny and serious shapes and color
combinations. Try to keep all these in mind throughout the design process.
Gags: While writing isn’t your main focus as a designer, if you get some funny visual ideas while
researching, write them down! If you have time, do some loose scribbles to show the director. Just
make sure you get your design work done first!
Maurice would start each picture with a simple list, which would inform and direct his research.
From there, he would write more lists about specific sections of the film, grouping related beats into
sequences. Eventually these lists would be culled, then turned into drawings.
Effects such as wind, rain, and smoke should be considered early in the design process. Here, Maurice explores some
scenes from What’s Opera, Doc?
Maurice in the process of having sweaty fun.
STEP 04:
Research and Inspiration
An inspirational sketch from Horton Hears a Who.
Maurice would collect folders of interesting images which he would later use for inspiration and reference.
USING REFERENCE
Most of our early research with Chuck Jones consisted of watching classic Jones/Noble cartoons and
printing out our favorite designs. It was a wonderful three days. When Maurice saw all his designs
plastered up in my work area, he asked, “What do my designs have to do with the story you are working
on now?” And of course he was right. I was thinking about style and not about what was most
appropriate for my story. Maurice made it clear that he wanted to pass along his approach but didn’t
want us to mimic him or his past work. He explained:
Be careful not to reference other animated films or animation artists when designing.
This is a problem I see with many animation artists. I will lecture and visit various
studios and will see stills of films I’ve designed pinned up on the wall. I don’t know how
many times I’ve been asked to critique a designer’s work and thought, “Gee, this is
something that sort of looks like something I’ve designed.” Or “Oh, that’s an Eyvind
Earle tree.” Or, “that looks like Mary Blair.” While looking at animation art that you
love is fine for inspiration, and is a great way to learn, it is very difficult to come up
with fresh and new design ideas this way. You have to find your own voice as a
designer.
Finding your own voice is infinitely harder than mimicking a great artist. This is the real difference
between a designer and a stylist. Noble Boy Lou Romano struggled with finding his own voice as a
young artist and reflects on what Maurice taught him:
Maurice was a great mentor. He was always encouraging and thoughtful. But he also
had a mischievous sense of humor that was infectious. He was very down to earth and
seemed to teach without teaching. As time goes by the things I learned from him in the
short time I knew him have had a deeper resonance for me.
I was always impressed with his enthusiasm and level of energy. He taught me that
maintaining a curiosity for life and new ideas was key. This is what kept him young and
productive. I think by “curious” he also meant being curious about your own ideas and
your point of view.
I did a drawing once, which I had labored over to get the style just so. I was
pleased with it and showed it to Maurice, who seemed a little frustrated by it. “Lad,
everybody is drawing like this,” he told me. “I want to see you draw the way you see
things.” His teaching was never a demand. He would gently but purposefully nudge
you in a certain direction. It really made you think and go deeper. “What does the
world look like through my eyes?”
This is the single most important thing he impressed upon me. I think he was always
asking himself this question. The personal work he did during his time away from
animation is proof of this. It is still inspired and bold, but perhaps more sensitive and
introspective. He was always reaching for more and growing as an artist. With
regards to those later pieces, I remember Maurice saying he had never done
printmaking but wanted to try it. What may have started as an experiment became a
medium he mastered. Apart from his talent and experience I think this was due to the
fact that he had complete confidence in drawing the world the way he saw it.
In support of this concept, director Pete Docter was attempting to bring a fresh, graphic look to his
film Monsters, Inc. (2001) and brought Maurice in as a consultant.
Many of us at Pixar are huge fans of Maurice’s work. He clearly recognized the
strength of the hand-drawn medium is in its two-dimensional, graphic nature. Rather
than fight this, he embraced it and pushed the work to be even more graphic and bold.
It made perfect sense and was such a beautiful use of the medium.
Maurice’s love of light at texture is apparent in his personal photo work. The magic is in the details. These weren’t
meant to be great pieces of art to be displayed; rather they were his attempts to capture a moment or feeling. He
would often file his favorite photos away with the idea of revisiting some details during research at a later date.
Watercolors were part of Maurice’s life even before he became involved in animation. Many of his graphic film ideas
were literally drawn from life, often coming from direct observation, then skewed through the Noble filter.
I remember when Maurice came up to visit us at Pixar, we had all these framed printouts from his
work at Warner Bros. hanging on the walls, and we pressed Maurice as to how we could get more of
that great two-dimensional graphic design into what we do. Maurice looked at us funny and told
us . . . we shouldn’t. We are doing 3-D, and that was 2-D. You have to design to the strength of the
medium. That really impressed me, because even after a lifetime of pushing design in a strong,
particular direction, Maurice thought like a designer, not a stylist. He saw instantly what was required
for the situation and was willing to reinvent everything and approach the design from a completely
different way.
Even so, we’ve learned a lot from studying Maurice’s work, and at a very basic
level we try to approach our films in the same way Maurice did: by caricaturing, not
just reproducing. In the same way the great caricature artist Al Hirschfeld found ways
to make a few lines look more like a particular person than a photograph does,
Maurice found ways to make a snow-peaked mountain or the landscape of the
American Southwest feel more like those places than they really do in person. That’s
what we really want from animation: a distillation of the truth, with all the irrelevant
parts removed; a kind of visual reduction sauce. It’s the strength of animation as a
medium, and it’s what Maurice Noble did so well.
Maurice suggested that the best way to bring originality and sincerity to your work is to really look
at the world around you. He challenged me to expand my life experiences beyond the edges of the TV
screen:
Look to life and nature for inspiration. Draw (literally) from your experiences.
Travel, read, visit museums, study the art of other cultures. Get a little beyond your
comfort zone. Look at artists who aren’t involved in animation. Your designs are really
just an extension of yourself. Keep building on the design resource library in your
head. Make it a point to explore life, gain new experiences, and see new places. If
you have the same influences, teachers, and experiences as everyone else, it will be
difficult to make your designs really stand out. It is important to know what is being
done, and has been done, but to be truly innovative you have to look beyond that.
The world of Horton Hears a Who! was inspired in part by Maurice’s many trips to Hawaii.
Maurice then went on to explain that he cleaned his desk at the start of every picture, never
referencing designs from previous films, even if those designs had worked well. You would never find
any graphic inspirations hung up in his work area. The only art he would ever have over his desk were
working drawings from the film at hand.
Ashamed, I cleaned my desk, and Maurice proceeded to outline his approach to design research:
Once I have made my notes, and feel I know the story and characters fairly well, I
begin researching the picture. I will spend a few days (or however long it takes) going
through my reference: books, films, magazines, and whatever else I find useful. At this
stage I don’t begin drawing. I look at my research and try to soak in as much
information as I can, making mental notes. When turning natural things into designs,
pick the most outstanding characteristic of what it is you are designing. For example, if
I’m designing a French chair for a Pepé Le Pew cartoon, I may note, “swooping, curved
legs, high arched back,” then later use this general mental impression to guide my final
designs.
I suggest putting all your research materials away once you start designing and
never refer to them again. This may prove difficult at first. But I’ve found that if you
are tied too closely to your reference, your designs will tend to look stiff. You will
miss out on many fun design opportunities.
Maurice would collect images that he liked in small folders. Some of the images would be magazine
articles or museum catalogs, whatever happened to move him. Sometimes he would flip through these
folders for inspiration during the research phase.
In a 1971 interview with Joe Adamson, Maurice discussed the influence art reference had on him:
I’d be influenced indirectly, put it that way: Giotto, some of the early Italians, Chinese
and Japanese art, Persian miniatures and their beautiful design and color. My tastes
gravitate to this. You can see a certain relationship there, because most of these
things are pattern things. I wouldn’t say I deliberately sat down and decided that this
ought to have a little smattering of Corot, or that should be a little bit like van Gogh. I
know there are certain designers that will do this, and you can always see it come
through. But I think I can honestly say that I design for the demands of the medium.
One of the keys to Maurice’s research method was his amazing visual memory. Over the years he
had built a huge pictorial library in his head by training his mind to recall unique details of objects and
places around him. He encouraged us to do the same. Maurice imparted that one of the best ways to
develop visual memory and hone observation skills is to draw. The main focus of this exercise isn’t
about developing good draughtsmanship. In this case, what drawing really does is forces you to
observe an object or place in ways you normally wouldn’t. Maurice challenged me to find unique
characteristics in everyday objects and places around me that I may have never noticed before.
One of Maurice’s former instructors, Millard Sheets, taught:
You must carry a sketchbook with you all the time, and unless you make one drawing a
day—not for the sake of a drawing, but to learn something about something you
didn’t know about (there isn’t a house, there isn’t a place in the world that doesn’t
have something that you ought to investigate)—you aren’t being true to yourself.
Maurice added that, when observing from life, many of the unique properties of an object or place
may not be physical; they could be emotional. He explained:
You can’t draw a forest really well unless you have been in one. When I design, I’m
not so interested in showing what a forest “looks” like; I’m more interested in showing
what a forest “feels” like. That’s almost impossible to do if you have never been in
one. If you can capture the feeling of a place, this will give your work a very unique
quality. I tend to design from what I know. Subjects I’m not as familiar with, I try to
explore. When your designs are based on what you know, and have experienced, it
gives your work much more substance. I call this “stepping into the picture.”
Inspiration from the Kimberly Crest Mansion found its way into a number of Maurice’s films, including What’s Opera,
Doc?
Here’s a brief look at where Maurice drew inspiration from for a few of his best known films:
What’s Opera, Doc? (1957)
The design motifs for What’s Opera, Doc? were inspired in part by the Kimberly Crest mansion in
Redlands, California. Maurice spent part of his childhood in Redlands and had admired the gardens
as a boy. The Kimberly Crest motif found its way into a number of Maurice’s designs, including the
“Dance of the Hours” sequence of Fantasia.
More inspiration can be found in one of Maurice’s favorite films, Frank Capra’s Lost Horizon
(1937). If you watch the film carefully, you will see a number of visual ideas that Maurice brought into
his own film work, including What’s Opera, Doc? and How the Grinch Stole Christmas!
Robin Hood Daffy (1958)
The forest in Robin Hood Daffy was inspired by trees and parks in the area of Los Angeles where
Maurice lived and worked. The satirical themes of the film were pushed even further by Maurice’s
saturated palette, and the use of rubber stamps for leaves, flowers, and grass. Some of these same
parks had found their way into Bambi.
Forest inspiration. Maurice was more concerned about capturing the “feeling” of a place he was inspired by than being
accurate about representing it physically.
Castle Rock from the Carol M. Highsmith collection at the Library of Congress.
A Maurice painting of Monument Valley’s Castle Rock.
Maurice reference photos from Descanso Gardens, one of Maurice’s favorite haunts since he was a teenager. The
gardens inspired many of his professional and personal projects through the years.
The Road Runner Series (Jones/Noble 1953–1994)
The Road Runner is perhaps the most iconic of Maurice’s work, simply because there were so many
films made. Maurice had a lifelong love affair with the American Southwest and spent many years of
his youth in New Mexico. Throughout his career Maurice would brave the heat to paint in places like
Monument Valley and Arches National Park. He proudly claimed to be the third “white man” to
traverse the Grand Canyon from rim to rim, on foot, with no water, in a day. How he knew this, I have
no idea, but it made a good story.
Bryce Canyon tunnel caricaturized in To Beep or Not to Beep (1963). Photo by Bang-On Phothi-In.
Falling at the Feet, Kangra 1810–1815
If you look closely, you will find folk art influenced design throughout Maurice’s work. On the top a Maurice flower
study, on the bottom, a Chinese paper cut. Maurice’s home was virtually a museum of Asian art, and it had a great
influence on his own work . . . if even in an indirect way.
Persian and Indian miniatures influenced Maurice’s use of space in Broomstick Bunny.
STEP 05:
Design
A final Phil DeGuard background from Ali Baba Bunny.
Each of these thumbnails is the result of several pages of rough sketches. Maurice worked very hard to explore a
location deeply.
Once we had pondered our limitations, familiarized ourselves with our
stories, and gotten a heavy dose of research under our belt, we were
excited to jump into design. Maurice reminded us that as we moved
into our thumbnails (small, quick drawings that provide a blueprint
for the scene) we should always keep two things in mind. He said, “A
film designer’s job in animation consists of basically two things: (1)
supporting the story through design and (2) staging the characters.
THUMBNAILS
As a trainee, it seems I was almost always moving too quickly into what I thought were final designs.
Maurice was constantly urging me to give more time to developing my ideas, and encouraged me to
work in a way that made the best use of this time. Using the elements list as a guide, Maurice
suggested putting down as many written and thumbnail ideas as I could while the reference was still
fresh in my mind. He elaborated on this for me:
The best designers make certain they are on sure footing before settling on any one
staging idea. Many inexperienced artists skip thumbnailing altogether, or make two or
three small roughs. And it shows! No amount of great color or paint technique will
improve a lousy composition.
He paused, and then gave me a kick in the shin to make sure I remembered this lesson.
Starting rough and not getting specific too early will allow you to keep your design
ideas flexible. Many designers I’ve worked with are tempted to try making beautiful,
finished pieces of art right away. But by doing this, they are really limiting the number
of design ideas they can quickly explore before deciding the direction the picture will
take. You wouldn’t start a marble sculpture by working out the small details; film
design is the same way. The amount of time you get to develop a project is limited. The
more ideas and work you have, the more design possibilities you will have to choose
from.
Under the threat of further pain I came to understand that the early thumbnail stage is all about
exploring as many ideas as possible quickly. This meant that at the beginning of his process, Maurice
would often spend as much time writing down possible design, gag, and staging ideas as he did
sketching. The faster he could put down ideas, the faster he could eliminate stinkers. He explained
that often it’s much faster to write down a visual idea, such as “snowy mountain peaks with green
valley” than to actually draw it. If one of these ideas struck a chord, he might then explore it visually in
thumbnail form.
Many of Maurice’s early thumbnail drawings were a sort of shorthand about a particular concept
that he could call upon later. In the margins of his thumbnails Maurice often notated possible gags,
staging ideas, and additional avenues a concept might take. Many times he would write a note
reminding him self what the thumbnail drawing itself was about.
Maurice continued to explain his process:
When I first start working out ideas for a picture, many of my first sketches aren’t
staging anything. But I always keep the story and possible animation setups in mind. At
this point I’m more interested in experimenting with shape, pattern, and size
relationships, trying to get something that looks exciting, unusual, and fun.
Thumbnail sketches for the Nutcracker Suite of Fantasia (1940).
Maurice added that when making thumbnails at this early stage, not to worry about detail, rather
think in simple shapes and broad strokes. Working small and simply helps clarity. If your thumbnails
don’t work small, they aren’t going to work blown up on a film screen.
Some of Maurice’s early shape exploration might include very rough loose color ideas. These
would have been used as a sort of proof of concept to himself and Chuck Jones before taking the
designs further. But as Maurice got more specific with staging, he would almost always work in black
and white. Be careful that you don’t get caught up in the trap of focusing on color at this point. Kick
yourself in the shin and think of Maurice. Color will come later.
Once a general approach for pattern and shape language had been found, Maurice would narrow
his rough sketches down to the ones he thought worked best. Then, using these, he would begin
exploring angles and staging setups for specific story moments, often creating numerous pages of
tighter thumbnails based on one rough idea, and continuing to sketch until he felt he had fully
explored the best staging possibilities. He once said, “I usually try to explore each story point in many
different ways. Rarely is your first staging idea going to be your best.”
Exploratory drawings from Bambi. Maurice would explore a story moment from many different angles until he found
something that worked.
WORKING IN THE CORRECT ASPECT RATIO
It was crucial to Maurice that his sketches were at the same aspect ratio as the final film frame, even in
the early thumbnail stage. He taught:
Keep your sketches to the same proportion of the final film. Just as a fine art painter
uses a canvas to paint his work, a film designer uses the screen. Many times what
seems like a good idea in sketch form falls apart when you try to put it into the proper
field proportion; it will also save time. Occasionally a good thumbnail sketch can be
blown up and cleaned up for a working layout. And sometimes an exploratory sketch
can be worked directly back into the storyboard.
To make things easier during the feverish passion of drawing, Maurice created his own set of cardboard templates at
various sizes that he could trace off quickly. These were based on his animation field guide (also known as a field
chart or graticule and widely available commercially today). Even when working digitally, make sure you are working
to the correct aspect ratio. It will save you a lot of pain and heartache over the course of a film.
Maurice would often pre-visualize a setting by writing about it, such as this descriptive write-up for Crawford, a
project in development at MGM/Tower 12 in the 1960s.
To Hare Is Human (1956). Home sweet hole.
SUPPORTING THE CHARACTERS
It’s easy to get caught up in the scribbles. When thumb-nailing, it’s important to pause from time to
time and examine if your designs are still supporting the story and characters.
Usually, character designs are set by the time the environments are being developed. It’s important
that your thumbnails and general design approach supports these designs. Maurice explained:
The styling of the film, backgrounds, props, etc. must be appropriate to the character
design. Normally you wouldn’t want to design a complex, realistic environment for
highly stylized, flat, cartoony characters, and vice versa. Every character and element
should feel like it lives in the same world. At Warner Bros., I felt that the background
styling should have the same treatment as the characters. So we began painting
flatter, more graphic backgrounds with cel-paint. The cel-paint we used on the
backgrounds was the same cel-paint that we used on the characters. It just seemed to
make sense to me and tied everything together nicely. Disney was going for a softer,
more realistic treatment at the time. This type of art direction would not have worked
as well there.
Background and layout design is in many cases like a cartoon character, a caricature
of reality. How much does Daffy really look like a duck? Or Bugs really look like a
bunny? Don’t be afraid to use the same sort of logic in your layout design. Of course,
the amount of caricaturization you use in design will depend on your story.
To Maurice, it wasn’t enough to support the way the characters looked. He emphasized developing
ideas that reflected the unique personalities of the characters that would populate the worlds he
created. An example Maurice often gave was his design approach to Bugs Bunny’s home:
As you find a good direction with your thumbnail sketches, step back and see if they
really fit the story and character you are designing to. Many times when I would begin
designing a film, I would look at my sketches and ask myself, “Would Bugs feast on
carrots in a place such as this?” If not, then I would need to rethink the world I was
creating for the character.
Maurice’s designs of Bugs Bunny’s home describe Bugs’s personality perfectly. The backgrounds
not only expose Bugs’s carrot addiction but also reveal his simple yet refined tastes. Earthen walls,
wooden furniture, and natural materials disclose Bugs’s practical, honest, down-to-earth nature.
The subtle contrast of his modern art and good books expose that he’s intellectual and cultured,
without punching you in the face. None of these details were in the storyboards but go a long way to
tell you about the character and bring a depth and reality to the environment.
Maurice worked hard to make his environments feel lived in; this brought a certain richness and
depth to his work that many other layout designs lacked. In 2000, he gave a few pointers to
director/producer Dave Thomas about creating interest and bringing out unique details in the
environments he created:
• Never be generic; be specific.
• Look for the imperfections and flaws that make a thing unique.
• Dent and ruin things!
• Start with reality—then make it cockeyed. This adds character. For example, on a trash can, skew
the lid, break the handle off, give it overstuffed garbage bags.
• Make your world look “lived in.” Add everyday objects, trash in the street, patches in the curtains, a
nail coming up from a floorboard.
• Look for a variety of shapes, make it interesting—nothing pristine.
• Add shadows cast from off-screen, etc. There is an entire world outside the box that you are
designing that the audience can’t see.
• Look for natural forms and silhouettes in nature, the “edge” of a bush or tree. The silhouette of a
maple tree is different than that of a pine tree, etc.
• Show the backs and sides of things. For example flowers in a vase: show the sides, backs, and fronts
of the flowers.
SWEATY FUN
Chuck Jones worked with a number of talented designers throughout his career, but he always
maintained that Maurice was his favorite. Technically, Maurice wasn’t any more skilled than many of
his contemporaries, but what Maurice brought to his designs that most of his contemporaries didn’t
was a cornball sense of humor and a sense of fun. Many artists working in the 1950s created good
designs; Maurice created designs in his distinctive style that would also make you laugh. Audiences
remember Maurice’s work because he created iconic details, such as the trees on Planet X, that don’t
feel forced, for the reason that they fit so naturally with what Chuck Jones was trying to do with the
characters. Behind the bow tie and façade of the grand master of the short film, Chuck Jones was a
quirky dude, with a biting, surrealistic sense of humor. In Maurice, he had found a designer that
complemented and enhanced his own satirical take on animation.
All this is part of Maurice’s design approach that he called “sweaty fun.” Don’t worry, parents, you
can still read this section to your children before bed at night. In the simplest terms, “sweaty fun”
means it takes a heck of a lot of work to inject humor and the element of fun into a design. Maurice
described it this way:
People often don’t realize how hard you have to work to make something look fun and
interesting. I used to sweat blood sometimes just to get a setup to look right. It’s not
enough to make a design function; it must push mood, emotion, and storytelling.
Making something look fun is one of the most difficult things you can do, but the
audience will really appreciate it. If you are designing a comedy or satire, don’t be
afraid to be ridiculous with your shapes and forms. If it makes you laugh, it will
probably make the audience laugh too.
Maurice went on to say that all animation design, including dramas, should contain humor and an
element of fun. Though humor is a key to Maurice’s approach, it only describes part of this
philosophy of “fun.” In this, Maurice is also discussing a deeper sort of intangible joy that sets his
work apart. It’s the examination of a story, moment, or place and infusing a bit of himself and his own
experiences into the work, taking it to another plane. Sweaty fun is an element of design that at many
levels only comes from an artist’s soul when they dig really deep, a sort of sincerity and vulnerability
that bubbles to the surface when an artist must look into him- or herself. It may sound hokey, but
Maurice and I discussed it numerous times. That, balanced with technical skill and intellect, gives
something unique to a design. “Sweaty fun” is kind of a corny term for a design philosophy, but you
would expect nothing less from Maurice.
THUMBNAILS TO WORKING DRAWINGS
After exploring a story point thoroughly, Maurice would go through his stack of thumbnails and select
a few that he felt held promise. These would be enlarged and developed further, focusing more on
composition and value (the play of light and dark in a composition).
He would then take one of his enlarged thumbnails and copy the rough linework of the composition
onto another piece of paper. Then using this line art he would often create half a dozen black-andwhite value studies, using markers, ink, and pencil, until he found something he felt he wanted to take
further in color. He could often be in this step of the design process for days, until he found just the
right play of values.
In the mid-1990s, Maurice was experimenting with value sketches on a film for Warner Bros.
Feature Animation. I stopped by his desk; Maurice was hunched over his light table, tracing off a
rough line environmental drawing onto a new piece of paper in pencil. Using this copy he would
experiment with value and perhaps color. From the pile of sketches scattered around his table, I could
see that he had copied this layout at least a dozen times. Hoping to uncover some hidden design
secret, I asked, “Is tracing the original drawing better than photocopying it?” He stopped suddenly,
and looked up with a strange expression. Then he suddenly hit himself in the head and exclaimed,
“No!” Apparently he had been using this method at the studio for months, with a photocopy machine
just down the hall. From then on he was able to nearly double his output.
Before jumping into color, Maurice would figure out his values during the clean-up process.
VALUE
One of the most potent weapons in Maurice’s design arsenal was his unerring sense of value. He told
me, “A lot of attention is given to color, and while of course color is very important, in my opinion,
value is even more important. If your composition is working in value, you can use almost any color
and it will work reasonably well. Good color will be icing on the cake.”
This might be simplifying things a bit because, of course, color was a crucial part of Maurice’s
design approach. But he also wanted to stress the significance of value to a young crew chomping at
the bit to jump into color. Maurice observed that most inexperienced designers tend to do exactly
that.
Maurice usually thought of value as either tints or shades. He broke them down this way:
Value Scale
Tints: Tints are created when white is added to a base color.
White
High light
Light
Low Light
Middle Value: Often, but not always, the pure base color of the paint.
Shades: Shades are created when black is added to a base color.
High Dark
Dark
Low Dark
Black
One of the first things Maurice pointed out about value is the fact that the eye is naturally guided to
the area of highest contrast, the area of darkest dark against lightest light, in a composition. As
designers we can use this fact to make characters read (are visible to the audience), even in a complex
background setup.
Here are a few simple examples to make this point clear:
No Focus (above left): All values fall within a very small range, thus the eye isn’t
attracted to any particular area of the picture plane. This isn’t always a bad thing. But
there should be a reason story-wise for not having focus.
Split Focus (above center): Many inexperienced designers make the mistake of having
too many areas of focus competing for the eyes’ attention. This greatly weakens any
design statement they might have.
Strong Focus (above right): There is no question about where the eye should look.
This is a dramatic, high-contrast example, to make the point clear. A designer might be
able to add several other minor focal points into the background for added interest
and depth. These focal points should never be of equal value or fight for attention.
Reduce the contrast in these areas if the focus of a composition becomes muddled.
Here are a few more not-so-subtle Maurice examples; the eye goes exactly where it is supposed to. If you squint, you
will be able to see how he used contrasts to really focus the composition.
Monochrome filter tests.
Twilight of Man (1926) by Rockwell Kent, courtesy of Denison University.
Twilight of Man stacked value image.
TESTING VALUE
By analyzing some of Maurice’s work and breaking them into values, there is no question where the
highest area of contrast is. His characters always read.
This is getting a bit into the realm of color, but only to emphasize the direct relationship between
value and color. When working in color, Maurice would check his values using red and blue filters,
sometimes called monochrome filters. Generally he used red filters, but if a composition had a lot of
red in it, he used blue. Using filters reduces color to simple tones, allowing an artist to see and
compare values in a composition. This was important to Maurice in making sure the highest area of
contrast was either the characters, or the area around the characters. Keep this value relationship in
mind when you are exploring black-and-white values when sketching. Eventually these value studies
will be translated into color.
STACKING VALUE
As a young man, Maurice’s use of value was greatly influenced by artists such as Rockwell Kent, Paul
Landacre, and Lynd Ward. One of my great treasures is a first edition copy of N by E (1930), signed
and given to Maurice by Rockwell Kent, then signed and given to me by Maurice.
When I first interviewed with Maurice, I had no idea of his interest in printmakers of the 1920s and
’30s. By coincidence two of my student films had been inspired by the art of Rockwell Kent and Lynd
Ward. He recognized the influence, studied my drawings, and told me that he thought I might have a
knack for color. At the time I thought it was an odd statement because my portfolio was primarily black
and white. But over time I came to recognize that an understanding of value was the first big hurdle in
learning to use color.
One of the strengths of Rockwell Kent’s work is his use of value, and specifically the way that he
stacked value. In Kent’s most complicated compositions, even though he allows certain portions of
shape to fall into shadow, elements remain distinct. Stacking values means exactly that, stacking light
on dark on light, and so on. When a portion of the composition gets light, a dark value goes against it
to make sure the shape reads. When a portion of the composition gets dark, a light value is put against
it. Compositions in color should be no different.
Maurice thought about stacking values in the same way, especially when it came to staging
characters. He always made sure that the characters read by creating layers in front of and behind
them that were of different values than the characters themselves. In this way he separated
background, foreground, and midground layers with value to support the needs of staging and story.
Sometimes something subtle, such as a small white “spotlight,” is all you need to pull the eye in to where you want it to
go.
Exploratory sketches from Boyhood Daze (1957). Framing Ralph in a pool of light also gives a feeling of intimacy.
Maurice’s version of Alice. His use of spotlights here are both intimate and dramatic.
The use of spotlights in What’s Opera, Doc? gives a feeling of super-drama.
FRAMING WITH LIGHT
Just as in theater, a designer can easily use a spotlight to build areas of contrast and pull the eye
anywhere they need in a composition. Maurice loved light and often exploited this technique to frame
characters, frequently using cast shadows and light from sources such as off-screen windows to
indicate a greater world outside the confines of the camera lens. Thus inspired, a few of us went a bit
light crazy, using spotlights in nearly everything we designed. Maurice soon showed us the error of
our ways, explaining that we should only use this technique to support story. He explained that the
best use of spotlights was to support drama, as in What’s Opera, Doc?, or intimacy, as in Ralph’s
bedroom in Boyhood Daze. In the end we realized that if we used such a dramatic approach where none
was needed, it would be difficult to support the story with design during truly dramatic moments.
Casting shadows and light from elements outside of the picture frame, such as a window or trees,
really helps expand the world the characters are in beyond what we see on screen.
Another artist who influenced Maurice’s use of light was Gustave Doré. The way he used value and
dramatic spotlights to illuminate certain portions of his compositions had a profound effect on
Maurice, each composition having a clear primary and secondary focus of value. Maurice has pointed
out that the biggest difference between animation design and illustration is the amount of time a
viewer has to spend with an image. In illustration, an artist can be more subtle, because the viewer has
the opportunity to spend more time with the art. In animation design it is a rare luxury to spend more
than a few seconds with an image. The focus has to read quickly and clearly. Movement and color all
help with this focus, but everything begins with value.
If he needed a mountain range to feel sharp and jagged, then the snowy peaks on the mountain would be soft and
curvy. The snow made the sharp edges even sharper.
CONTRAST
Another important element of design Maurice discussed was contrast. So far we have only discussed
contrast in term of value (i.e. light vs. dark). However, contrast is a term that can be used to describe
any opposing elements of design. For example: cool vs. warm, sharp vs. soft, etc. Noble Boy Lawrence
Marvit discusses a conversation he had with Maurice on just this subject:
In design there are constants, no matter the medium; at the end all that matters is how
a composition makes you feel. Maurice once said to me late one night, “No matter
how technical you get, it’s only there for one reason, to emote.” You have to know
how you want a design to feel. Without that, then all the technique in the world won’t
help you. Conversely, if you know what you want to say, but have no means to say it,
you’re also lost. This seemed to annoy Maurice the most. An idea isn’t enough, the
technique isn’t enough. You need both.
Maurice had both.
Maurice wasn’t an artist that worked only from his gut. He worked really hard figuring out how he
wanted something to feel before even putting pencil to paper. Often he would look at a composition I
had done and ask, “How do you want it to feel?” After I had answered, he would directly, almost
mechanically go through a process of making the picture feel that way. This isn’t to say it was lacking
in subtlety, just that it was extremely direct. If the problem was stated simply, clearly, then it could be
solved simply. Simplicity is a key factor in effective design.
I think part of Maurice’s incredible effectiveness was due to his understanding of contrast. He
knew that it was this contrast that made things seem more of what they are. For example, if he wanted
something to feel warm, then he would add something cold in the picture. As he told me once, “there’s
only so much yellow and orange you can put in a picture. If he needed a mountain range to feel sharp
and jagged, then the snowy peaks on the mountain would be soft and curvy. The snow made the sharp
edges even sharper.”
One time I was designing a shot of Daffy Duck walking out over a long bridge. I wanted the bridge
to feel really high in the air. I put all these buildings in the background almost up to the top of the
frame. Maurice looked at it, cut out the city, and then put the skyline below the bridge. “If you want
the bridge to feel high, then everything else has to be lower than it.” The contrast was clear: one thing
high, the other low. Oddly this seemed to make it less cliché, not more, as one would expect. If you
know the mood or point you want to convey, you can explore an idea deeper as opposed to wider.
People in animation often talk about contrast as if it in and of itself were the Holy Grail.
Unfortunately this tends to make every shot action oriented. Maurice had a different philosophy on it.
He would say to dial the contrast down if it had to be a quiet scene, and up if it was an action scene. It
was the range of emotions he was looking for; a wider range being obtained from one scene in
contrast to the next.
The most important thing I learned from Maurice in the course of our friendship was to
enjoy the act of designing . . . To enjoy pictures.
I miss spending late nights in his studio discussing pictures over coffee.
“If you want the bridge to feel high, then everything else has to be lower than it.” Sketches by Lawrence Marvit.
Be specific, not generic. Even when simplifying forms, Maurice was always specific about what he was designing. He
rarely designed a generic plant, rather he would draw details from the incredible wealth of shapes and forms of the
foliage around him.
The Thai Kanok. Many cultures simplify complex forms by containing them in simple shapes. Maurice did the same.
A few simple examples of tree shapes.
SIMPLIFYING ELEMENTS
Most traditional animation design, especially the satirical designs Maurice created at Warner Bros.,
are simplifications of reality. For example, the trees in many of Maurice’s films often don’t look much
like trees, but we don’t question that they represent trees. When we started out at Chuck Jones Film
Productions, it was sometimes difficult for us to gauge how, and how much, to simplify elements of
our compositions. Maurice acknowledged that often a designer’s biggest challenge is creating
exciting, unusual forms that also have enough basis in reality to keep an audience grounded. He
related that there was a rich visual language of symbols that designers can tap into when simplifying
and abstracting forms:
Throughout history man has created images and symbols to represent the world
around him. Look at the art of any “primitive” culture, going all the way back to the
cave paintings of early man. The paintings and drawings that were created weren’t
attempts to depict nature in a realistic way; they were attempts to show the inner
essence of things, the spirit of a deer on a hunt, the shape of a demon that lay just
outside the protection of the campfire. Usually this art can be traced to storytelling
and man’s attempts to explain the world around him.
Sophisticated symbols are used by tribes to represent the world around them. The
images weren’t random; they had purpose and were trying to convey information.
Everything you design, whether it be a tree or a rock, should do the same. How you
choose to simplify forms will be what makes your designs special and unique.
Animation design works in a similar way to primitive art. The designer is breaking
down the known world into symbols that help tell a story, an abstraction and
representation of reality. Today our world is still made up of a simple visual language
and symbols that represent ideas in that language. For example, it is highly likely that a
well-educated forty-five-year-old PhD will draw the same tree, stickman, or a happy
face as a five-year-old child halfway around the world. As designers we use these
symbols as a starting point and then move beyond that, finding our own unique way of
abstraction. All natural forms, even the most complicated, can be traced to basic
elements found in nature. As a designer it is your job to decide what way is the most
entertaining way to design an element, make it read as what it is, not be distracting,
and fit with the needs of the mood and story. At best, these abstractions will be warm
and relatable, not just symbols, but living, breathing characters.
Maurice taught us to think about our designs in simple shapes. One of the challenges I personally
faced was simplifying complex forms like trees and flowers. As always, Maurice had ideas on the
approach I should take:
Using simple shapes is a very good thing, but a designer must be specific with what
they are designing. Let’s look at trees and flowers, for example. I don’t know how
often I have seen the “lollipop” tree example. One could almost do anything to make
trees that are more interesting than these. If you look to nature, you will be surprised
to see how many varieties of simple shapes there are.
At a loss for interesting tree shapes? Examine how different cultures simplified tree forms, such as
those found in Persian miniatures or Chinese paper cutouts. You would be hard-pressed to find
anything as exciting in modern animation, and many of these images have been around for hundreds
of years. Look at the rich variety of patterns and textures some of these works possess. This treatment
obviously wouldn’t work for all stories. But as a designer you can be inspired by sources from
everywhere and anywhere. As Maurice often told us, “Don’t copy; rather learn to file shapes and
forms into your visual memory. Then, later, you can call upon these images to help you solve design
problems.”
Many cultures, including Thai and Celtic, use controlled graphic forms to give a geometric quality
to the art. Maurice said:
Use a simple basic shape (circle, square, etc.) as a rough guide. Then add leaves,
branches, to give your tree a more natural feel. The best way to come up with unique
tree designs is to go outside and observe them! Look for small details that you can
incorporate into your design to make them special.
When designing, always try to be specific, and always try to show the object you
are designing from various angles: front, side, and back. In the example on the far left
of the opposite page, you can tell what kind of flower is which from just the
silhouette. The overall shape of your design is a good place to start . . . but remember
there are three dimensions. Even in a highly stylized film, you want your elements to sit
in space. Use overlapping forms and lines that describe the form to give a sense of
dimension.
STEP 06:
Color
A Phil DeGuard background from Duck Dodgers in the 24½th Century.
RYB subtractive color wheel.
CMYK additive color wheel.
“No one uses color as well as Maurice. He is the Master.”—Chuck Jones
Before discussing Maurice’s process of transferring his black-and-white drawings into color, let’s
first look at some of his thoughts about color itself.
Maurice used to tell us, “In a film, the two first things that an audience responds to emotionally are
music and color.” While he loved design, Maurice had a real passion for music. He loved to listen to
it, and he loved to play it. To Maurice, good music touched emotions in a way no other art form could.
And his ideas on color were very much in tune (pun forgivable) with his approach to music.
Depending on the needs of the story, he could turn the chroma (intensity) down to a barely audible
hum. Or when something more dramatic was needed, he could turn the hues up as far as Technicolor
would allow, shaking the very seats of cinema halls. For Maurice, color was his emotional link from
the story to an audience. But, as in every element of Maurice’s design, he made sure that color never
upstaged the characters and, more important, always pushed the story.
THE BASICS
This chapter is an examination of Maurice’s thoughts on color and assumes that most readers will
have had some basic color theory. For those of you who haven’t studied color before, there are a large
number of good resources available. A strong knowledge of color basics will vastly improve any
designer’s work. That said, Maurice wanted to include some notes about color basics to use as a
reference point for some of the ideas that will follow:
Color is a mental thing: just what each individual sees. Color is not in the object but is
the light it reflects. The textures of all objects greatly influence the color. Where
there is no light, there is no color. Light is not a tangible thing. We see color because
certain wavelengths are reflected by objects, while others are absorbed. We call this
the light spectrum and approximate it with pigments (paint) in what we call a color
wheel. The color wheel just helps us simplify color to make it easier to understand.
There are two theories of light: prismatic and pigment. Prismatic color theory deals with light only
and how it is reflected and combined to make colors. Pigment theory deals with colors reflected by
pigments and their combinations.
Maurice used the traditional pigment color wheel as reference when he talked to us about color
theory. Despite that, he was very familiar with prismatic color theory and frequently used additive
color combinations in his work as well. Explore as many ideas and theories as you can. As you become
comfortable with color, you will find out what works best for you. Exploration and experimentation
are the keys to good color work.
At the studio, Maurice’s way of communicating color ideas to other artists was based on the range
of Cel-Vinyl paints, developed by the Cartoon Colour Company of Culver City, California. But
Maurice also used it on his color sketches and everything else that was related to color. He knew every
color and shade by memory, and after working with him a while, so did we. If Maurice said, “Make
this object vermillion 4,” everyone knew exactly what he meant. Art director Susan Goldberg, who
worked with Maurice on Fantasia 2000, had a poetic view of Maurice’s use of Cartoon Colour callout
numbers:
The Cartoon Colour range of cel-vinyl paint.
Cool colors tend to recede and warm colors advance.
Maurice always reminded me of Beethoven, who at the end of his life could no longer
hear his beautiful compositions, and Maurice with his disintegrating eyesight could
only see his work in his head. I know that he basically dictated his paintings to the
artists by using cel color numbers, brilliant to the end!
Generally speaking, the color wheel is divided into cool and warm colors. Cool colors have a blue
base, and warm colors have a red base. Then there are colors such as green and purple that can lean
toward cool or warm depending on how they are mixed. It’s good to be aware that color also has
dimension. The eye is more sensitive to red, thus warm colors seem to advance and cool colors retreat
when viewed on the same plane. This effect is even stronger when cool and warm colors are viewed
together. As designers we can take advantage of this interplay in our design.
I once asked Maurice to explain his process in developing color ideas for a film. He confessed that
most of his approach to color and design was instinctual. He explained that once he started designing
color on a film, he was primarily applying color ideas formed during his research stage, leaving the
rest to experimentation. He said, “People often ask me if I use color reference; it really depends on
what I’m doing. Color is emotional for me, so I usually just paint with my gut. That doesn’t mean I
stick a brush in my belly button. It means that when I read through a script or look at a board I begin to
visualize what a scene might look like. I do what feels right to me.” Maurice then admitted to me that
there were no real rules with color. Good use of color will be as varied as the stories being told, and the
designers who are applying their personal interpretation to these stories. He said, “The key to good
color is to think about why you are using the colors you are.”
Seeing that I was still not quite satisfied with his answer, Maurice offered to let me take him to have
a hot turkey sandwich. Food always inspired him to say many things, some of which were useful.
A color key from Drafty, Isn’t It? Maurice often used warm light, and cool shadows, or alternately cool light with
warm shadows to create interest and depth.
The primitive colors as seen in this bison from the Altamira cave ceiling.
COLOR PERSONALITY
While digging into his mashed potatoes, Maurice continued to explain that all colors have emotions
and cultural meanings associated with them, and that as designers we can take advantage of this. At
the time we were working on a series of folk tales, and he reminded me that different cultures
associate different meanings to colors than we did in Burbank. However, thinking about color
personality could be a useful tool when first starting out, as he expressed it:
Be careful to use these ideas as a rough guide, and not as a rule. In time, using color
will be[come] second nature.
White, black, and red are the most powerful colors you can use. I like to call them
the primitive colors. If you go back far enough in time, you will find that these are the
base colors for the art of almost any culture. Black is as dark as you can go, white the
lightest. Red has the most energy. In animation, these colors are usually used sparingly,
primarily as accent colors.
White is often associated with purity and cleanliness and is often used as an accent. White
represents light, triumph, innocence, purity, and joy. I love doing scenes with snow because the
characters then become the accents. White is the lightest color in the paint box and will always draw
the eye to wherever it is in the composition. I rarely use pure white, usually tinting it a bit by adding
another color. The exception perhaps is in the whites of the eyes of the characters.
Black is a powerful color that is often associated with darkness, evil, and night. Black is also
associated with extreme sophistication: black tuxedo, black limousine. Black is the darkest color you
can use and can really attract a lot of attention on-screen, especially when placed near a light color.
This works well in characters’ eyes. I usually use black as an accent and very rarely use pure black. I
usually give it a tint of something else, making it lean to the warm or cool side. Otherwise it can look
like a hole in the screen. Sometimes I will give large areas of black a slight texture. Black can be quick
striking if used correctly.
Many people relate red to fire, passion, and anger, and it can be used to show irritation. I use red
in small doses, usually as accents to draw the eye. Red can be very dramatic and can really help get
across emotion for very intense scenes. Be careful with red: certain shades tend to turn an
unappealing brown on-screen. I tend to use vermilion, which has a bit more of an orange-red tint. I
find that this usually reproduces better on-screen. Also if you are designing for television, be aware
that manufacturers tend to add red to monitors to warm up flesh tones. This will oversaturate and
“blow out” certain reds in your composition. To be safe, test your color schemes on an actual TV
monitor (or two) before committing to a red palette.
Pink is just red tinted with white. Add white to any color and you will dilute its power. Pink takes the
passion and fire of red and tempers it with the purity of white, making it something much lighter and
sweeter.
Many people relate yellow with happiness, sunshine, and light. It can also be related to heat and
dryness (Road Runner country). It is the lightest, most luminous color. Yellow is often used in
decoration and is found in abundance in nature, more so than red. If you are trying to achieve a
golden yellow, let’s say for the hair of a young girl, experiment with yellow-greens, even leaning
toward lime. I have found that it has more life on-screen than a pure yellow. Always mix cool yellow
with greens, and warm yellow with reds, for pleasing oranges and greens.
(Note: Maurice usually thought of color in regard to how it looked when shot on film. Some of his
ideas may work differently when working digitally. The key is to test and experiment with your color
combinations for best results.)
Normally gold signifies wealth, luxury, and charisma. However gold is difficult to use in film, and
tends to turn dark brown or even black on-screen. I stay away from metallic paint. Try variations of
ochre or olive green; metal is one of the few times when I’ll throw in a little airbrush. Gold is usually
considered a neutral.
Many people relate blue to nature, the sky, night, and the ocean; it shows peace and distance. It
also signifies truth and wisdom. Blue is found in large proportions in nature (sky) but least seen in
flowers. All distant things take on a bluish cast. I often use an aqua color for skies. I have found that
this retains more energy and saturation on-screen than a bluer tone, which can tend to look gray on
film.
Green, a mixture of yellow and blue, takes on the character of both colors. Green is found in
greatest proportion in nature and represents growth and freshness. It is classified as a cool color, but
it can be cool or warm according to the amount of blue and yellow mixed into it. It is neither exciting
nor depressing. When used in other than small spots it should be dulled. In decorative spots it may be
used in full purity. This applies to all colors. The larger the spot, the less should be its purity.
Orange, a mixture of red and yellow, has some of the passion of red and the cheeriness of yellow.
It’s warm and vibrant, like leaves in autumn. Orange is used sparingly in nature, but more than red.
Intense versions of orange should be used sparingly in decoration.
Peach is also a tint of orange and takes on the cheery qualities of its base, tempered with white.
Technically brown is considered a shade of orange and so has many of the same attributes. But
brown’s connection to Mother Earth is worth mentioning. It’s more earthy, stable, and subtle than a
purer orange base. Many shades of brown, much like gray, can tend to suck life out of a scene. I rarely
use a pure brown in design.
Purple is a mixture of red and blue and takes on the character of both colors. Ordinarily it is
thought of as the most dignified color, as it is used in church. It also denotes imperial sovereignty and
royal dignity, hence the expression, “born to purple.” Purple is very depressing when used in large
amounts. It’s cool but may be called warm according to the amount of red or blue in the mix.
Gray is considered a neutral color, though it can be tinted warm or cool. Be careful when using
gray in large amounts, as it can often suck the life out of a scene.
Silver is a variation of gray, and is also considered a neutral.
Maurice hinted that if we got some coffee and pie it might inspire him to remember a few more
details about color. “À la mode?” I asked.
THE PALETTE
Though Maurice had a large range of colors to choose from, his basic color palette often consisted of:
deep green, cool yellow, warm yellow, vermillion, magenta, dark blue (Mt. blue), turquoise, white,
and black.
There would be variations on this palette depending on the needs of the film. But this is often
where he would start. Maurice always thought of his colors in terms of cool and warm and would
divide his palette accordingly.
SIMPLIFYING THE PALETTE
One problem designers often face is knowing which color combinations to use. Even with Maurice’s
supervision, we often floundered with color on a composition for days. It might relieve you to know
that it wasn’t easy for Maurice either! In our case though, the problem was often a bit more obvious.
We, as Maurice explained, “often used too much color.” Luckily, he also gave some good advice on
ways to simplify our color palette using color themes and color chords.
There is no mistaking the exterior for the interior here. Yet they use the share the same basic color scheme. The
yellow of the Martian Maggot is unmistakable.
COLOR THEMES
When designing in color, Maurice always encouraged us to keep it simple, and to design with a color
theme (also called color scheme) in mind. He taught:
Designing different locations with distinct color schemes will help avoid confusion,
especially when quick cuts are involved. The simpler you keep it, and still keep what
you’re designing relatable to an audience, the better. It’s much more difficult to
design with a palette of three colors than eight. But working with fewer colors will
usually look more appealing.
I’d key [a scene] all the way through. If a series of actions happened in a given
room and then moved into another room, there’d be a color scheme for one room and
then a color scheme for the next room. . . . By reusing a color, indoors and out, you
risk confusing the audience, because they will look the same. Just change it when you
go indoors.
Maurice gave unique color themes to the environments he designed in Duck Dodgers. Planet X has a
striking blue-purple color theme, impossible to confuse with those of the Earth and the spaceship
interiors. Both ships share the same simple blue, yellow, red, and gray color palette, but Maurice has
chosen one of these colors to dominate the overall color theme in each ship: blue-gray for Dodgers’s,
and yellow for Marvin the Martian’s. There is a color relationship to tie the ships together, but he has
made each distinct by playing a warm palette against a cool one.
COLOR FOR QUICK CUTS
Another great example of using distinct color themes for quick cutting is from 90 Days Wondering
(1956), which Maurice designed at Warner Bros. for the U.S. Military. In the story, Ralph Phillips
comes home from the army, surprising his family. The film cuts quickly to their various reactions.
Cut to Mom ironing in the kitchen. Thrilled!
Cut to Dad shaving in the bathroom. Delighted!
Cut to Sister on phone in the living room. Tickled!
Cut to Baby Brother torturing the dog in the yard. Moved!
COLOR CHORDS
Another suggestion Maurice had for simplifying our color palettes was color chords. In musical
terms, a chord is a certain set of notes that are played simultaneously. There are chords that can
inspire the soul—and there are chords that can inspire you to shoot the musician. The same is true of
color. Certain color chords, that is particular combinations of colors, seem to work better than
others.
Millard Sheets, one of Maurice’s painting instructors at Chouinard, said:
A painting must have a color chord or it isn’t worth a damn. I don’t care how you
painted it or when it was painted, a painting without it loses. It doesn’t last. It
disappears in time. But a picture can be very modest if it has this magic of a special
color chord and a value relationship and design sense that will go on.
Most, but not all, musical chords are based around a root note. Color chords for the most part are
also based around a root color. The most frequently encountered chords are called triadic, so called
because they consist of three distinct colors.
Maurice considered black, white, gray, gold, and silver as neutral, and didn’t include them as
colors in his color chords. But he often used them as accents, and sometimes as a base color.
Here are several types of color chords, or schemes:
Analogous Color Schemes
Analogous color schemes usually contain three colors next to each other on the color wheel. Choose one
color to dominate your composition, with a second color to support it. The third color is often used
(along with neutral colors) as an accent. Be sure to carefully control your values and range of
saturation.
Color sketches for an unspecified project compared to an additive analogous color chord. If you are wondering about
how the ugly green tassels opposite fit in; this particular hue would shift to a golden ochre when shot on Technicolor
stock. The magentas would lean toward a more neutral gray.
Complementary color scheme from Abominable Snow Rabbit
Complementary color scheme from What’s Opera, Doc?
Complementary Color Schemes
Colors that are opposite each other on the color wheel are considered to be complementary colors, for
example red and green. Maurice used complementary schemes from both subtractive and additive
color palettes in his work. Here are some examples.
Complementary colors are tricky to use in large doses but work well when you want something to
stand out, such as characters. The way these colors react and vibrate off of each other, especially at
full saturation, make complementary color schemes popular in illustration and advertising. As always,
choose one color to dominate the composition, with the complementary color in a supporting role.
Black, white, and grays will usually be used as accents.
Note that when saturated complementary colors are placed directly next to one another, an optical
illusion of a “line” between the two colors will often appear. These volatile color combinations can
also cause a TV screen to react in undesirable ways. Always test your color before committing to an
approach. Complementary schemes must be controlled with value and saturation so as not to be
distracting.
A color key from My Little Duckaroo.
A color key for Feline Frame Up.
Split-Complementary Color Schemes
The split-complementary color scheme is similar to the complementary color scheme. But instead of
using one color, split-complementary schemes basically use an analogous scheme as the base, with a
complementary accent, usually warm tones with cool accents or cool tones with warm accents. Just as
in an analogous color scheme, there should be a dominant color. Use of complementary and splitcomplementary color schemes can give a fun, fresh look to a design. Maurice especially liked to use
this scheme in his more satirical films. The split-complementary color scheme is often a good choice
for beginners, because it is relatively easy to use.
Triadic Color Scheme
A triadic color scheme takes colors from three points evenly distributed around the color wheel,
essentially forming a triangle. It’s easy to get a composition that looks a bit like a patchwork quilt if
you aren’t careful how you balance the colors. As with any other color scheme, it’s best to let one color
dominate, using the other two as accents.
A color key for 90 Days Wondering.
A color sketch from The Road Runner.
A Rectangular scheme from 90 Days Wondering.
Rectangle Color Scheme
The rectangle color scheme is essentially a double- complementary scheme. Because the color
relationships are so strong, it’s even more important to let one color—or one analogous set—dominate,
leaving the others as accents.
A square chord from Feline Frame up.
A Rectangular scheme from Lighthouse Story.
Square Color Scheme
The square color scheme shares many of the same qualities and challenges as a rectangle color scheme.
Square schemes are particularly challenging because the colors used are distributed at four even
points over entire color wheel. Balance of hue, saturation, and value are as important as always,
letting one color dominate.
A color key from My Little Duckaroo (1954).
COLOR CHORDS AS THEMES
Maurice would often carry a certain color chord throughout an entire film, varying the amount of
colors used in different locations. A certain blue may act as an accent in one scene and as a backdrop
in the next. A designer can create interest by varying the size and amounts of colors used over a
composition. Color from the characters can be echoed in the background color to unify a picture. Or
try color isolation, where colors that don’t exist in the background can be used to make a character
stand out. It all goes back to the story. Keep in mind that color, like value, can become spotty if spread
evenly over a composition. Give areas of color focus.
There are more color chords out there and many ways to use color. Maurice told me, “In time,
color will become second nature, and you will come up with your own unique approach.”
CHARACTER COLOR
Now that we’ve talked over a few color ideas, let’s get to the knotty problem, designing the film. For
the moment, keep all your thumbnail ideas and value studies in mind, but put them to the side until
later. The first and most important stage of Maurice’s color process was designing color for the
characters. All other color decisions in the film, including the backgrounds, would be designed to
support and enhance these character color choices. Maurice taught us, “Play everything to the color
of your characters: make them read, read, read at all times. They are the actors and the reason for
making the darn film.”
Early in the preproduction process, Maurice would usually get rough character designs from
Chuck Jones that would be used to create character color models from. Sometimes these would be
final designs, and many times these would be character concepts that were still in development.
Maurice explained this process in a guest lecture at CalArts in 1977:
Chuck did his own character designs. But I would work with him in setting up the color
and sometimes simplifying or enhancing a character. We’d talk it over and I’d say,
“Look, why don’t we drop this off, or, we need a little more detail.” It was his decision
at the end whether he bought or didn’t buy an idea I had. Say you had five buttons on
a coat. It’s always cheaper to draw three, or one, than it is to draw five. These are
production cost decisions. If you’re going to do ten thousand drawings and you have
five buttons on each drawing, that’s a very expensive business.
Then Maurice would trace off copies of Chuck’s character drawing onto a piece of animation
paper, and either with colored pencils or cel-paint start experimenting with different color schemes.
He explained to me, “Your character must read over a fairly wide range of values. This may take some
time, and I often try several variations of all the characters. Even the old standby characters like Bugs
and Coyote evolved over time and would vary in color from picture to picture.”
An isolated color can be affected by the color of its environment. Bug’s Bunny’s gray would change from film to film,
and director to director depending on the needs of the story.
VISUAL HIERARCHY
Just as in background compositions, before going into color think about the areas of value and focus
on the characters. Maurice always used a visual hierarchy in his work, meaning that he chose certain
elements of a design to be more important than others. If everything on a character has the same level
of focus, the audience won’t know where to look. Most characters communicate with their eyes, facial
expressions, and hands. Maurice focused on these areas and chose values and colors that would
support acting and personality.
Eyes: When designing color on a character, the most important spot you probably want the audience
to focus on is a character’s head, especially the area around the eyes. This is the area of the character
where he or she or it will express emotion. Traditionally, the eyes are white or very light, with dark
pupils. As mentioned earlier, contrast will draw attention to itself. Maurice rarely used pure white on
characters, even their eyes, preferring to use an off-white. Maurice also used spots of saturated
color, say in a nose, a hat, or a tie, to bring the viewer’s eye into the region of the character’s head.
Many times these accents would be yellows, reds, or an isolated color not found elsewhere on the
character or background. Often Maurice used color complements of the character or background
color in these accents to make them pop.
Hands: Hand gestures reinforce emotion and help guide the eye. Traditionally, many characters wear
white or light-colored gloves. The designers weren’t just trying to make a fashion statement. Props
can also assist in guiding the eye. The bright orange of Bugs Bunny’s carrot became a useful tool in
helping lead the eye.
It often took a day or two for Maurice to arrive at a good color solution for the main characters of a
film. Even the regular cast of Warner Bros. characters got the beauty treatment for each new role.
Maurice wouldn’t simply pull out a tube of Bugs Bunny gray from an earlier picture; he would think
about the needs of the story of the film in front of him. By the time he got to coloring characters,
Maurice said he had a pretty good idea formed in his head of how the film might look. He explained,
“If I knew Bugs was going to be in a cool setup, I may go with a warm gray, or perhaps a cool gray if I
imagined a warmer setting. It all really depended on the story.”
The color of the background can affect even a fairly neutral gray, like that of Bugs Bunny. The same
gray will appear different on various colored backdrops, actually seeming to take on some of the
background color. The effect will be even more extreme with a color that isn’t neutral. Some
backgrounds will make a character look healthy and vigorous, while others will suck the life out of
them. Either choice could be the right one, if the character reads well and the color choices support
the needs of the story.
Pepé’s graphic black-and-white design will read well over almost any background. But the color of even this simple
design will be affected by the background he is on.
A Road Runner color call out, full color in black and white.
COLOR REFLECTING PERSONALITY
Maurice taught us, “Before getting too far with the character’s color, it’s important to understand
what you are designing for. It’s not enough to make the characters look ‘pretty.’ The colors and values
need to convey the personality of the character.” He then challenged us to think about any of the great
Warner’s characters and how their colors reflected their personalities. Several easy examples came to
mind.
Bugs Bunny’s coloring is fairly neutral—gray and white, with pink accents—and reflects his stable,
cool, calm demeanor. The subtle use of value emphasizes the delicate, multifaceted aspect of his
personality.
Daffy, on the other hand, is not a subtle character. He is colored with black and orange, with white
accents. As in dynamite, his high-contrast orange and black colors reflect the explosive nature of his
personality.
Though Elmer Fudd donned many different outfits over the years, one thing that remained
consistent was his baby-like skin tones, which in turn emphasized the baby-like naïveté of his
personality.
Maurice then threw in another little detail. “It’s important to keep in mind that not every character
can, or should be, the star of the film. If all your characters have equal presence on the screen, they
aren’t going to be nearly as strong, or interesting.”
The beauty of the Warner Bros. characters is that they were designed in a way that they could be
placed in a wide variety of settings and all read well. Many were also designed to work together in pairs
or groups.
Take the Coyote and Road Runner for example. Both characters are designed to look good on their
own, but the color design was really made with their relationship in mind. The colors of the Road
Runner are in essence reminiscent of a sports car. The cool blues and grays of the character “pop”
against a warm, complementary desert backdrop. The coyote more or less takes on the coloring of the
background; though his value is darker, his character color “recedes.” Though value helps balance
things out, it is clear by their colors who the dominant character is. This wasn’t an accident; this was
design.
To get a clearer view of Maurice’s character color process, let’s look at one of his last productions,
Chuck Jones’s Timber Wolf web series. Jorge Gutierrez co–art directed the series at Chuck Jones
Film Productions with Maurice. He reflects on setting the color for the main character, Thomas T.
Wolf:
When we were setting the color for Timber Wolf, the story was supposed to take
place in the forests of the Pacific Northwest. I did a number of forest sketches with a
warm green palette. Maurice looked at the work, and said, “You’re treating your
backgrounds as if this is about making pretty drawings. You haven’t really thought
about the characters that will live here.
“Let’s start from the beginning: What is the story all about? Who’s the main
character? What’s he like personality-wise? Where are we coming from with color?
Let’s look at the main character: he’s basically a ‘blowhard.’ He stands around and
talks a lot, and bad things happen to him. But he kind of deserves it.
“Before anything else, we need to figure out the main character’s color first. Then
the backgrounds.
“The backgrounds have to be designed around the character. That way we can
make sure that the character will always ‘pop’ against the background. The black and
white of the character’s eyes have to have the biggest point of contrast. The main
character doesn’t wear gloves or anything like that, so it’s more than likely his body
will only be one color. Let’s paint it gray mixed with a little bit of red. That will read
well against the greens of the forest. Make the snout a different color to bring the
audience’s eye into that area. For the nose, I want something really saturated. I think
the nose should be pink; I doubt that we will be using much pink in the backgrounds. So
with a pink nose, the audience will always see the character. The pink is also a little
flamboyant, which is how this character sees himself.”
I tried out a bunch of different pinks, and sure enough, Maurice chose a sort of
What’s Opera, Doc? pink, kind of an Indian/Mexican pink. We showed it to the
producers of the show, and they didn’t like the nose: too pink. As a compromise, we
made the nose more of a desaturated red, though Maurice never thought it worked as
well. After doing this work on the character, the backgrounds were much easier to
approach. We used a cool palette for the settings, cool browns, cool greens, and the
Timber Wolf character really popped.
A light test from What’s Opera, Doc? Even with all of Elmer’s fancy trappings, it’s clear that Bugs is the star of the
picture. With the exception of his eyes, all of Elmer’s “whites” are at least two values darker than those of Bugs.
Elmer recedes into the background, Bugs moves forward. Value, color, and staging all go to support this idea.
Thomas T. Wolf in and out of his environment.
ANALOGOUS AND SPLIT-COMPLEMENTARY CHARACTER
COLORS
Though Maurice didn’t originate many of the character color palettes that he worked with, he adapted
them to work in the cartoons he designed. He told me, “Generally, the more colors a character has,
the harder it is to design environments for.” Keep in mind that at Warner Bros.—except in rare cases
such as What’s Opera, Doc?—once a character color was set, it wouldn’t change over the course of a
film. Pepé Le Pew and Sylvester have strong black-and-white color schemes, which ensure they will
read on almost any midrange value background setup. Wile E. Coyote, on the other hand, uses values
and saturation of a single color. Most generally however, Maurice played cool/warm contrasts, even if
those contrasts were subtle, such as Bugs Bunny’s mouth and ears against the gray of his fur.
COMPLEMENTARY CHARACTER COLORS
When Maurice wanted a character to really stand out, he often took advantage of the way
complementary colors worked together by designing character colors that were complementary to the
background. Often he also used complementary color schemes within the colors of a character itself,
but usually keeping the most saturated elements near the character’s head. Again, Maurice made use
of both additive and subtractive color combinations in his character color design, sometimes mixing
and matching whatever looked best to him. Let’s look at a few examples:
Daffy’s red and green attire is ridiculous, but the warm, saturated color makes him stand out from
the background.
This early sketch by Ralph Phillips uses a yellow-orange/turquoise additive complementary
scheme. Most of these colors are desaturated, leaving the saturated vermillion of the hair to pull the
viewer’s eye in. Since red was a color that wasn’t as commonly used in backgrounds, Maurice often
used it on characters as a tool to make them read better.
Maurice experimented with incarnations of Witch Hazel in a red/green complementary scheme
before she donned her familiar blue dress. Opposite, Witch Hazel’s dress is so large that the area and
intensity of this red makes it difficult to focus on her face—or anything else in the scene for that
matter.
Robin Hood Daffy.
Ralph Phillips.
Witch Hazel.
Warm/cool exploration for the Abominable Snowman.
Maurice did a good deal of color exploration on the Abominable Snow Rabbit (1961) and
experimented with the idea of both warm and cool backgrounds. The final color model ended up
being a cool white, with blue for the nose and mouth interior, which read great on the cool snow,
warm skies, and the final desert scene.
Noble’s color markups were usually drawn or loosely painted on animation paper. These were then
given to the head of the ink-and-paint department and transferred to cels. When a cel setup was
ready, he would try it on various background colors, perhaps even on a color sketch that he was
developing at the same time. Adjustments were made as needed and would be passed back and forth
with ink-and-paint until Maurice was happy with how the character read.
Backgrounds were designed with this interplay of contrasts in mind.
TINTS
adding white
SHADES
adding black
TONES
adding gray or color complement
DESIGNING CHARACTER COLOR IN MODERN TIMES
In the modern animation studios, a designer often won’t get the last word on character colors and
values; the marketing team will. This can be a very frustrating thing, and something that upset
Maurice. When I was setting character color at Chuck Jones Film Productions, the marketing
department at Warner Bros. handed down color markups of the characters that we were working with.
These colors perhaps looked great as stuffed toys or T-shirts, but few of the colors followed any of the
principles discussed in this chapter. Obviously the marketing team won’t know anything about the
story in production. And they won’t know much more about the backgrounds that the characters will
need to play against. To be fair, I tried the colors from Warner Bros.’ marketing, and as expected, they
didn’t work. Maurice suggested we throw them out and start fresh, which we did. I only mention this
because if you spend any time as a colorist in the industry, there is a good chance you will come up
against this situation. It will be up to you, your director, and your producer to decide which way to go.
Like it or not, the marketing department is part of the machine we call modern animation. With more
education and communication, perhaps there can be more back-and-forth between artists in
different departments, which will result in better design overall.
SATURATION
One of Maurice’s biggest pet peeves was the super-saturated, overblown color palettes in use in the
1990s. In a 2000 interview Maurice told Nancy Beiman, “Right now they think bright color is raw
color. You see it in all the computerized stuff, very garish! They have no real comprehension of what
the color is for the audience.” This statement applied not only to the new releases at the time, but also
included many of Maurice’s own films that had been tampered with by the studios.
In the late 1990s Warner Bros. was mastering new versions of the Looney Tunes shorts for a DVD set
they were putting out. They asked Maurice to consult on color. However, Maurice felt that the studio
was more interested in using his name than his opinion. In the color timing sessions, in spite of
Maurice’s suggestions, the operator would push the saturation up, as Maurice put it, “to be as loud
and obnoxious as possible.” He called me in tears lamenting, “They are ruining the cartoons!” If you
ever get a chance to view an original Technicolor print, you will see exactly what Maurice was talking
about. Certainly saturation plays a major role in the design, but saturation, much like value, is used in
various amounts throughout each composition, not as an overall design treatment. Maurice asked the
color technicians if they had seen the original prints: they hadn’t.
DULL COLORS AGAINST BRIGHT
Maurice controlled saturation by placing dull color against purer color. He taught that “generally, the
larger the area of color, the less its purity.” He explained that two colors of similar value and purity
butted up against one another tend to compete and often cancel each other out. However, if the purity
of one of the colors is dulled, then the other color will actually look brighter and more saturated. The
example he gave me was “a red flower should probably be more saturated than the grass it is on. A sky
will usually sit behind the characters and other elements in the composition.” However, this can also
be reversed, depending on the needs of the story. Maurice advised art director Susan Goldberg on her
sequences in Fantasia 2000 to use “dull characters on purer backgrounds,” a technique that Maurice
also used in many of his own films. Whichever way you go as a designer, the most important thing is
that like value, color should be stacked at varying degrees of purity and brightness. Maurice wrote in
his notes:
A scale of intensity would run from pure color to gray. Five steps are enough for
ordinary use:
• full intensity
• ¾ intensity
• ½ intensity
• ¼ intensity
• neutrality or gray
Intensity (or chroma) refers to a color’s strength, to the purity or brilliance as
compared to a color less gray. Mixing a color with its complement or a neutral gray
(white or black) will change its intensity by graying or dulling it.
The best way to learn to control color and saturation is to put brush to paper, and actually paint. To
Maurice it was important for an artist to learn how to previsualize a color composition. This is
difficult skill to acquire when sliding a control in a program gives quick results. Yes, it may take longer
to get good results by hand at first. But any animation film designer who is serious about the craft will
work on their traditional technique first and later apply what they learn to the computer.
PAINTING WITH SPIT
While oversaturation is a common problem of computer color, the opposite is often true of traditional
media. With no undo button on the brush, making bold, interesting color choices can be a stressful
venture in the beginning. The end result is often weak, timid compositions with no real color focus.
Maurice called this “painting with spit,” and most all of us training with him were guilty of it. He
taught that when we paint, we should be bold in our approach. Noble Boy Don Hall recounts this
lesson with Maurice:
One Sunday afternoon, Maurice and I went watercolor painting at Descanso
Gardens. By this point in his life, Maurice was nearly blind and struggled to make
pictures, but I think the idea of spending a warm spring day outdoors in a beautiful
place was far more important than whether the outing produced a good painting or
not.
Maurice set up next to an area that was blooming with flowers, and I set up about
fifteen yards behind him. I decided that I would impress the master with a painting of
him doing a painting. Why, I could just see it, matted and framed and on his wall. “My,
what an exquisite painting,” guests would say, admiringly. “Yes, it is,” Maurice would
say proudly, “taught him everything he knows.” So, I got to it.
I blocked in a quick pencil sketch, and then started layering on delicate washes. I
spent a great deal of time putting in the blue stripes on the back of Maurice’s chair
with a tiny little brush. After about a half an hour or so, Maurice got up and walked
toward me. “What’ve you got there?” he asked. I handed him my painting and waited
for the inevitable praise that was going to be heaped upon me. “What are you doing,”
he thundered, “painting with spit?” My face dropped. “Why, this won’t work at all. Let
me sit down!”
I watched as he grabbed a thick brush and swashed it around in the water, quickly
mixed some colors, and threw down big, bold blocks of rich hues on my dainty, anemic,
little sissy painting. In a few minutes, he was done. It now looked like a painting,
instead of a tinted drawing. He didn’t need to say much more. He had made his point.
He had a way of doing that. Be bold in your approach, have fun, but work hard, and
never let “the Man” crush your spirit, i.e., don’t paint with spit—have sweaty fun—
and every now and then, give ’em the One-Fingered Salute! I can’t imagine better
words of wisdom to guide you through your life. Thanks, Coach.
Exploratory color sketches for I Was a Teenage Thumb (1963).
COLOR SKETCHES AND COLOR KEYS
There were usually two steps in Maurice’s color design process for backgrounds and environments:
color sketches and color keys. Originally Maurice had wanted to put these steps in two separate
chapters, with a chapter on background layout between. However, for comparison and clarity sake
and since there is a lot of crossover, I found it easier to combine this information into one chapter.
• A color sketch, or inspirational sketch, is an exploratory painting usually made before the background
layout process, which attempts to capture the mood and spirit of a story, without necessarily staging
anything. These might often be a simple exploration of a painting approach for a rock or some other
element. Often color sketches are based on thumbnails and working drawings made earlier in the
process. Of course each film developed differently; sometimes Maurice would make color sketch
roughs based on Chuck’s character layouts. Many times a color sketch would be good enough that
Maurice would be able to use it as a key and put it back into the film with little or no adaptation.
• A color key is a small painting that is usually created after layout and is typically specific to a scene,
although as mentioned earlier, a good color sketch can often be blown up and used as the basis for a
drawn background layout. Color keys will be used by the background painter as reference for the final
background painting.
Maurice explained his color sketch process:
Once the director agrees on a direction to take the picture, you can begin fleshing out
some of your rough thumbnails designs in color. Start your color thumbnails the same way
you started your pencil roughs: rough and small. This will allow you to go through a lot of
color ideas quickly. Don’t worry about detail yet. The most important thing is to get the
overall feeling. I would make rough design sketches with washes of cel-paint on pieces
of animation paper. Then go over that with Prismacolor pencils. Once I found an
approach, or a design I liked, then I would develop it into a larger color key.
It’s important that you sketch in your medium. That is, to use the same materials that
your final background art will be in. When I designed for Disney, I would sketch in
watercolor because that was the medium that the final backgrounds would be in. At
Warner Bros. I used cel-paint for the same reason. Sometimes I would make quick notes
in color pencil or something else once I had set the color and style, but the final sketch
was always in the medium of the final art.
Many of Maurice’s early color sketches weren’t staging anything in particular; they were often
exploratory ideas that took form gradually. Something as simple as a small color rendering for a girder
or a rock arch could lead to other ideas. Many of his early color keys were nearly identical to the final
frame. But the longer he and painter Phil DeGuard worked together, the less exacting Maurice had to
be. A few shorthand notes would often be enough to put over an idea. Frequently Maurice would refer
to a particular color sketch for an entire sequence of final drawn layouts without having to paint a full
color key. This method was used on many of the later Road Runner films, as Maurice explained to
Milton Gray in a 1977 interview:
Phil and I worked together on so many Road Runners. He was a very thorough guy and
liked to know exactly where he was going at all times. So, we’d know the color
scheme . . . one or two little color notes would cover the Road Runners. Then on some
of these zany shapes in the layout . . . I’d use a colored pencil to indicate strata, to
give him an idea of how this thing was broken down.
Often Maurice would try a variety of color combinations until he found something that felt right.
Sometimes he would hit on something right away, and other times it took longer. He admitted that
there were a few times when an idea hadn’t gelled completely and he “wanted to crawl under his seat”
when a cartoon screened. In a 1971 interview with Joe Adamson, Maurice discussed this process:
Contrary to what he told us about always using the same materials that he used in his background art, in the 1960s
Maurice often designed his color sketches in marker, working directly over the rough storyboard panels. The sketches
were fairly tight, so they were easy to translate to the final backgrounds.
If there aren’t many changes in environment, a few color keys would often be enough to guide the background artist
through an entire film.
A final background.
Rough pencils and a color sketch from Chariots of Fur (1994). To copy his rough thumbnails, Maurice would often
cover the back of his rough drawing with pencil graphite, then retrace the front of the image, making a light transfer to
another piece of paper. Usually this new image would be cleaned up or painted in rough color.
When I hear a story and I know I’m going to design on the thing, I mentally visualize
certain approaches on it, which eventually become a reality on paper. With many
designs, one can work with it and work with it, and nothing seems right. I might do four
or five ideas, and I’m torn between all of them; I don’t know which is exactly right and
I’m wasting time by trying to make up my mind, and so I just put them all away. I go over
and do what I call a bookkeeping job: I know that there are a certain number of closeups and so forth; they’re routine things that I’ve got to get done. I’ll get those out of
the way so I’ll have time enough to concentrate on the knotty problem. And in the
meantime, I keep thinking about it, adding drawings and sketches to the pile of ideas
for this knotty problem. And then one morning I’ll come in and take all the stuff out,
and I’ll say, “Well, that isn’t it, and that isn’t it—Oh! Here it is.” You see? It’s been
there all the time. I’ve already worked through it, but I didn’t recognize it.
Then when he felt he had something that worked, Maurice would present his color ideas to Chuck
Jones. He explained this process to Milton Gray in 1977:
After so many years, we had a kind of rapport. Three or four key sketches and he’d
know what my intentions were. They were usually 4’ × 5’ (102 × 127 mm), always in
color . . . and then I would work with the background man.
Stephen Fossatti, who was a producer/director at Chuck Jones Film Productions in the 1990s,
shares his unique insight about Maurice and Chuck’s relationship and working method, while they
were working on Chariots of Fur:
One day Chuck was sitting at his animation desk doing his character layouts for the
lightning sequence; I could hear him crumpling up paper and over time growing more
vocal in his work. There was a definite frustration building and I was uncertain about
checking in on him to see what was wrong. After a while it became silent again and
suddenly there was a little burst of laughter and after a few more chuckles and about
ten more minutes Chuck walked out of the room, handed me a stack of drawings and
asked me to have Maurice come in the next day so he could go over the sequence with
him. Chuck left and I went in to his office and found about a dozen beautiful coyote
drawings crumpled up in the trash can. I compared the discarded drawings to the ones
he had given me and was astonished to realize that Chuck, even with his own
characters, had been struggling to find exactly the right pose and exactly the right
expressions.
The next day Maurice came in to the office and Chuck went over the sequence with
him quickly and summarily. They seemed to know each other so well that Chuck’s few
and somewhat gruff comments and Maurice’s fewer and somewhat prickly questions
seemed to be completely understood by both of them. Chuck left; Maurice started
working.
Maurice came in to the studio for a few days straight and sketched and painted his
thumbnail tests. To my surprise he seemed unsettled with his work until about the third
or fourth day, when he finally lit up again and concluded that he was ready to show
the tests to Chuck. To my astonishment, Maurice had done maybe a half a dozen or
more color sketches of the same three layouts to get the color design exactly as he
wanted it for the lightning sequence. Again I was amazed: here was one of the
greatest designers ever and he, like Chuck, had struggled with something that to
anyone else would have seemed as if it would be automatic for them. Obviously it
could have been if either of them didn’t care about their art and/or wasn’t somehow
trying to impress the other and perhaps even compete with one another. I understood
then that great art, even for great artists, is never easy and that great collaborations
were even harder.
Wild over You (1953) color sketches: if Maurice had a clear vision of a film, he would sometimes riff in color to kick
things off before getting specific. This also gave him material to talk over with Chuck Jones. If an exploratory sketch
looked promising, he would explore with pencil roughs.
Here are some notes on the color development for a few of Maurice’s films:
Wild Over You (1953)
This was Maurice’s first Pepé Le Pew cartoon. As always, he would start with pencil thumbnails, then
color thumbnails, then tighter color roughs to be used as background reference. Keys for many of
Maurice’s films were matted in black. This gave a cleaner look and allowed more focus on the color.
Maurice would say, “You are always trying to sell your design approach to someone; present your
ideas well.”
After color sketch exploration, more exacting color keys are used as reference for specific backgrounds.
From A to Z-Z-Z-Z (1953) and Boyhood Daze (1957)
The Ralph Phillips series of films have grown in popularity over the years and remained two of
Maurice’s favorites. Yet, as loved as they are now, they weren’t as well received when they first
premiered. To many they simply didn’t look like Looney Tunes. Artists in the industry accused
Maurice of aping the influential UPA studio. In response, Maurice asked, “How else does the world
look through a child’s eyes?” Maurice created dozens of color sketches for both films, working back
and forth with Chuck Jones on the layouts. Then Maurice gave very precise color keys to Phil
DeGuard for each background. Elements of the “real” world that Ralph Phillips lived in found their
way into his daydreams. For example, in Boyhood Daze Maurice uses a stuffed tiger, stylized household
plants, and uncut grass for the jungle. In From A to Z-Z-Z-Z a fishbowl becomes an undersea world.
Maurice worked very hard to keep the designs childlike using really simple shapes and color themes.
Color sketches for A to Z-Z-Z-Z.
Though this specific shot of the schoolhouse was never used in A to Z-Z-Z-Z, the sketch was good enough for the
background painter to use on other related shots.
Color keys for Boyhood Daze with rough pencil background layouts. Boyhood Daze and A to Z-Z-Z-Z were two of
Maurice‘s favorite shorts from his time at Warner Bros.
Color keys for Boyhood Daze.
Rough thumbnails from the same sequence exploring shape and mood.
Ralph Phillips jungle exploration.
Duck! Rabbit, Duck! (1953)
In contrast, in films with a simple background setup such as the Road Runner series or Duck! Rabbit,
Duck! Maurice would only need to create one or two finished color keys to indicate what he wanted to
see in the background paintings.
A final Phil DeGuard background (top left) guided by Maurice’s color keys.
Desert color keys and sketches.
The Road Runner Series (Jones/Noble 1953–1994)
Art director Mike Giaimo shares his thoughts:
As director John Ford found his visual muse in Monument Valley, Maurice found his
particular brand of cinema language through the Road Runner series, where his sense
of staging and camera perspective came into full play. One senses in this series that
not only is Maurice a master with camera direction and design, he’s having a heck of a
good time as well.
It is interesting to follow the evolution of Maurice’s style through the Road Runner
cartoons, the first of which was released in 1949. In the earlier entries the desert
landscapes are caricatured, but they pale by comparison to the more surreal and
whimsical heights he would achieve with these environments by the mid-1950s. The
visuals would evolve to reflect more and more the precarious relationship between
the Coyote and Road Runner, with huge boulders that rest unsettlingly upon the top of
pinpoint buttes, desert plant life that looks more like spiky specimens from another
planet, and strange cloud formations that anticipate and punctuate the Coyote’s
eventual demise.
Duck Dodgers in the 24½th Century (1953)
In a 1971 interview with Joe Adamson, Maurice said: “the idea of space became more and more
developed. I’d do a sketch and pretty soon we had floating cities, and jet-propelled taxicabs, and all
this. Space evolved. Far more than we ever anticipated originally.”
A final Phil DeGuard background.
A Maurice color key, compared to the pencil layout.
Hare-Way to the Stars (1958)
Animator/director Eric Goldberg writes:
Maurice always contended that Chuck created a positive atmosphere in which he
could create freely—not a small thing for an animation director who knew his own
talents were formidable—and that he trusted Maurice implicitly. When they
embarked on Duck Dodgers in the 24½ Century, Maurice took it upon himself to
create props and settings—notably the Orwellian eyeball that scrutinizes Daffy as he
enters Dr. Hi I.Q.’s chambers—that were his unique perspective on outer space.
Chuck saw the stuff and let Maurice go to town; Maurice thus created his own
“antigravity-platforms-that-hung-in-midair” space environment, which he later
expanded upon in Hare-Way to the Stars and has since been imitated countless times,
notably in The Jetsons. The further props he created then became elements of the
story—the rising disc elevator, the “evaporators” that could transport you to a new
location—at least a good decade before Star Trek, I might add.
Light tests to see how the designs would look under camera.
A final Phil DeGuard background.
Bewitched Bunny (1954)
In this satirical take on children’s fairy tales and children’s book illustration, Maurice’s style choice
was ultimately inspired by the character of Witch Hazel herself. Maurice told Harry McCracken in a
1991 interview, “The zany quality of Witch Hazel immediately suggested a zany approach: cupboards
painted on the floor and up the wall, and so forth. She was a marvelous character and certainly
wouldn’t be in a normal setup.”
A final Phil DeGuard background.
Maurice color keys.
Claws for Alarm (1954)
Maurice liked the challenge of a staging a black cat (Sylvester) in a dark, scary house. Drawn from his
youth in Redlands, California, Victorian themes were a favorite of Maurice’s, and they often popped
up in his work.
Maurice would usually try out several color combinations before deciding which worked best for the film.
Deduce, You Say (1956)
Noble worked hard to capture the unique world of the “Shropshire Slasher” with concentrated pools
of light and shadow. Maurice often painted his color keys too light in order to compensate for five
levels of cels that would darken the background art in the final film frame.
Color keys and color sketches inspired by the Tam O’Shanter restaurant near Los Angeles.
Color sketches for What’s Opera, Doc?
What’s Opera, Doc? (1957)
Maurice made dozens of color sketches for What’s Opera, Doc? Now considered a tour de force in
animation design, it wasn’t widely accepted at first by his peers. I asked him about the film and the
creative design chances he took. He told me:
I thought it would work, in my head it worked, but you never really know until you get
it up on the screen. . . . Sometimes when you experiment you will fail. Some way-out
ideas may not work the way you thought they would. But that’s okay! That’s the nature
of being on the edge of exciting design. You will never do anything interesting if you
don’t take chances.
Maurice told Harry McCracken in 1991:
As it went along, I was aware that something was kind of happening. I put in a lot of
innovative ideas, and I would get calls from the ink-and-painting department saying,
“Now, you don’t mean to say you’re going to paint this character all red?” or
something like that. I’d say, “Yes, that’s the way we want it.” And Chuck was backing
me up on it. As we sketched and designed and put this thing together, when we finally
got it, it was just one of those things that came off. It could have been a pudding. This
is one of those strange things about doing something creative: you take a big chance,
and I suppose I could have been put out the front door if it had fallen on its face. But
Chuck backed me up on it, and we have What’s Opera, Doc? today. I still get a boot
out of just watching it.
Mike Giaimo added:
Maurice’s ethos at Warner Bros. hit a high-water mark in 1957 with What’s Opera,
Doc? Here his skills in layout, design, and color came to its fullest fruition. Visual
invention seems to burst from every frame. With grand, cinematic scale,
expressionistic fauvist-like color, and decorative detailing, this is truly Maurice’s
magnum opus. What’s truly surprising in What’s Opera, Doc? is how we are
transported to a realm far beyond the common Looney Tunes world. Visually What’s
Opera, Doc? seems to bridge the gap between fine and commercial art. It is a
masterful piece of work with Maurice firing on all cylinders. Indeed, looking at
Maurice’s output during his Warner Bros. years, one could say that if it weren’t for his
sly graphic wit, there would never have been a distinctive standout style at Warner
Bros. Without his touch, the Looney Tunes are polished and serviceable but visually
unremarkable.
Maurice’s color key (left) and Phil DeGuard’s final background. Shadows and effects would be added later in camera.
A progression of early color sketches, a more polished piece, and the final background setup.
More color exploration from What’s Opera, Doc?
A test slate for Drafty, Isn‘t it?
Light tests. Maurice would mark through a film strip if he wasn’t happy with it. He would then readjust camera, and/or
the art and reshoot.
LIGHTING TESTS
Before completely handing everything over to the background painter, Maurice would shoot a series
of lighting tests (also called wedge tests) just to make sure that everything would look the way it was
supposed to on film. These lighting tests would include a simple cel setup with a few select
backgrounds or color keys. Cartoons like What’s Opera, Doc? have extensive light tests made for nearly
every shot, while a Road Runner picture may have only had a few key tests because the colors and
values wouldn’t change remarkably throughout a film. Typically backgrounds were shot with up to five
levels of cels on top of them. Even scenes with no characters could carry five cel layers to keep color
and contrast consistent. Each cel layer would darken a background a certain percentage. Thus,
Maurice would intentionally design his keys and backgrounds more brightly and with slightly less
contrast than he knew would appear on film.
Testing underwater effects using a ripple glass.
At the same time, he made adjustments for color and saturation, because they too shift on film. How
the Grinch Stole Christmas! is a good example of a planned color shift. The cel color of The Grinch was
designed in a very bright, lime-green hue, anticipating that it would turn an unappealing “baby puke”
yellow-green on-screen. Some of the newer DVDs and Blu-ray discs try to “correct” this “problem”
by referencing the lime-green of the actual cel colors. This would seem like the logical thing to do.
The real problem is that the DVD colorists are working without the understanding that Maurice
anticipated—and wanted—the color shift. He did extensive testing under camera to get the films to
look just the way he wanted. Though color and value shifts aren’t as much of a problem now as they
were in Maurice’s day, he thought it was important to include in this text, in order to help better
preserve his and others’ classic work.
Tests were also important when looking at different lighting and physical effects, such as rippleglass “underwater” scenes or the soft vignettes of High Note (1960). If Maurice didn’t like what he saw
in a test, he would mark a line through it with a grease pencil, make adjustments in the artwork or
camera settings, then reshoot until he got it right.
STEP 07:
Layout
A finished background from Boyhood Daze.
A Chuck Jones character layout for High Note (1960) on left with the background layout in the center. On the right,
the two are combined to form a guide for the animation and background departments.
In traditional drawn animation there are two types of layout,
character and background:
• Character layout: the rough key poses and expressions of the characters, which help
guide the animation
• Background layout: the pencil drawings of the background that will be used to guide
the background painter.
At Warner Bros., Chuck Jones would draw his character layouts based roughly on the storyboards.
He often indicated rough ground-planes and background elements as reference. Then Chuck would
time out the poses on an exposure sheet. Often these character layouts would also be shot under
camera, to test and refine the timing. In addition to guiding the animators, this timing information
would be used by the composer to help in scoring the film. It would also be used by Maurice when
planning his layouts. Of course timing is an important part of planning pans and other camera moves.
But Maurice also prioritized shots of the film according to their screen time. For example, he
wouldn’t spend as much time designing a short shot as he perhaps would an establishing shot. Often
shorter scenes were designed with slightly more exaggerated shapes, so they would read quickly.
Once Maurice and Chuck had reviewed the character layouts together, Maurice would make his
own copy of the character layouts in red pencil. Using copies of Chuck’s layout sketches, he would
design the background layouts around these poses. Maurice explained to me:
Using my rough design ideas and color sketches, I would take Chuck’s rough character
poses and build a world around them. If I had ideas for better staging, or a visual
gag . . . we would talk it over, and sometimes the ideas would make it in, sometimes
they wouldn’t. But it was always part of the process.
Chuck Jones would often provide rough background information in the character layout folder. Here is a Jones
background indication sketch on the left from Duck, Rabbit, Duck, which Maurice used as the basis for the rough
background layout.
More often than not, Chuck would simply provide a ground plane that Maurice would then expand on, as shown in this
shot that was cut from Boyhood Daze.
Maurice felt having a clear idea of the staging always helped the animators, and he tried to include
at least a rough background layout in their scene folders. Of course, the final background layout might
differ slightly from the rough layout. But the staging and path of action would remain the same.
Typically Maurice would first design the still shots of a film, getting the stills out to the animators
quickly before moving on to pans and more technical types of scenes. In 1977 he explained to Milton
Gray how he worked with Chuck and the animators:
I would work from Chuck’s roughs. He would do the character layouts, I would take
the exposure sheet; I knew how much footage we had, and I knew the continuity.
Usually, I would figure all the speeds of all the pans, so that by the time the animator
got it, he got a rough layout with all the stops and starts and everything. . . . The
animators would be given sections; I’d give Abe [Levitow] or Benny [Washam] or Ken
Harris the number of scenes I could let them have right then, then I’d have to plot the
pans and so forth, and give them a rough distance they were going to travel. And if
they had to register to something, try to give them a registry, either in a stop or in a
start position. It became kind of ticklish if they had three of four registrations on a
pan, and I’m working blind. So I would quickly make up a shape, and then I had to make
that thing work. That meant I had to have a pretty good idea of where I was going to
go with something.
Maurice’s rough layout; Chuck requests that the top of the tower be shortened; the final artwork with a shorter tower.
A rough character layout of Ralph Phillips placed over a final background based on Maurice’s background layout.
Everything in the background supports the character.
In 1971 Maurice explained to historian Joe Adamson how the films in the Jones unit differed from
other units at Warner Bros., and how it affected his layout design:
One thing about Chuck’s cartoons is the tremendous number of cuts and backgrounds.
In the business, a same-as is a scene that is used over again. And his pictures would
never have same-as backgrounds, because there was always a new facet or
something, so it meant a new layout. [Often layout designers economize by using a
single background over and over in different scenes.] Many times I would design
maybe a hundred backgrounds for one cartoon. And this gave them a sense of motion
and variety, while the other departments would be painting twenty-five and thirty
backgrounds. And the same telephone pole would be coming through constantly.
Well, my sense of design wouldn’t permit me to do that. We couldn’t go back and
reuse backgrounds. And many times when we tried to, it was a loss of time, because
we would have to make readjustments and repaint and repeg, and by the time we had
gone through all that, we might as well have started from scratch.
GRIDS AND COMPOSITION
The most important job of a background layout is to support the story and to stage the characters.
Maurice used to say, “Clarity is one of the most important elements of any composition.” The
audience must always know where to look, and the position and acting of the character must be
supported.
Though many of Maurice’s compositions may seem simple at first, you can be sure he worked very
hard to get them to feel that way. One method he employed in achieving this was using grids, and a
variety of compositional theories, to help him organize elements in a harmonious way. Some artists
call these grids armatures. In sculpture, an armature is the structure upon which a sculptor builds up
their clay model. In drawing, the idea is similar, in that an artist builds up a composition over a line
grid.
Maurice used different grid structures during his career, depending on the needs of the story and
composition he was using them on. Here are a few grid examples that Maurice frequently used.
A rectangle in the theme of three (above left), that is, three horizontal and three vertical divisions
for a total of nine subdivisions; a rectangle in the theme of four (above center); and a rectangle in the
theme of six (above right). The specifics of these grids will be explained later in the chapter.
I asked Maurice about design structures when we were planning our film The Pumpkin of Nyefar. He
told me, “Compositional theories are only a tool, not a crutch to limit the designer. When you are
pleased with a composition, and when you feel it conveys the message you are after, go for it! You are
probably right.” Then he added, “Never begin designing with a grid in mind. Work your thumbnails
into something you like first. Then you can begin thinking about how a grid might help organize
elements in your composition.”
Maurice felt that the best art was a balance of instinctual and more analytical approaches. In
agreement with this Jay Hambidge, in his breakthrough text The Elements of Dynamic Symmetry (1926),
writes, “Instinctive art without mental control is bound to fail, to end in incoherence. In art the
control of reason means the rule of design. Without reason art becomes chaotic. Instinct and feeling
must be directed by knowledge and judgment.” Grids are most useful when they help tighten
something that is working fairly well in the first place.
One of the best explanations I’ve ever read about the use of grids and compositional structure is
Michael Barrier’s 1995 interview with John McGrew, Chuck Jones’s layout designer from the early
1940s. McGrew said:
As I tell my students, the structure of a composition is like a pretty girl: she has a
skeleton, and the structure is the skeleton—if she didn’t have a skeleton, she’d be a
horrible mess—[but] you don’t want to see the skeleton when you see a pretty girl.
The only places you can see the skeleton are her elbows and her ankles and a few
places where the bones touch. So the construction, the composition, is hidden—but
it’s there, and it feels satisfying.
Grids work best as a rough guide.
Strong horizontal compositions relate a feeling of stability and calm as in this background layout from the The
Adventures of the Road-Runner (1962).
Evenly spaced parallel lines in the columns of the capitol building give the idea of stability and power.
GRID ELEMENTS
There are many, many ways to divide a composition: the main compositional guide lines that Maurice
used in his grids were horizontal, vertical, and diagonal.
HORIZONTAL AND VERTICAL LINES
In his classic text The Practice and Science of Drawing (1913), Harold Speed wrote:
The horizontal and the vertical are two very important lines, the horizontal being
associated with calm and contemplation and the vertical with a feeling of
elevation. . . . Their relation to the sides of the composition to which they are parallel
in rectangular pictures is of great importance in uniting the subject to its bounding
lines and giving it a well-knit look, conveying a feeling of great stability to a picture.
Pictorially, vertical lines are more important than any other. We relate strongly to the vertical
because of our relationships with people, trees, buildings, etc. Vertical lines often communicate a
sense of height and grandeur. Skyscrapers and religious architecture all over the world focus on the
vertical to inspire the human race to loftier things. Maurice used strong horizontal lines less
frequently than verticals. And when he did, they were usually combined with strong vertical elements.
This often gave Maurice’s compositions a vertical feeling of optimism.
However, arranging elements strictly on horizontal and vertical lines can often make a composition
look stiff. This isn’t always a bad thing. Often when Maurice needed to reinforce a feeling of stability
or elegance in a story, he would use horizontal and vertical lines that had a strong parallel relationship
to the screen edge. For example, he might use strong vertical parallel lines in the columns of the
capitol building to give the idea of stability and power. He may reinforce these ideas by using a strong
horizontal base for the capitol building to sit on. Maurice frequently used symmetry to support this
feeling. More often, he would avoid strong horizontal lines, and many times would break up these
lines with other elements to soften their impact.
DIAGONALS
More often though, a story point requires pizazz more than straight horizontal and vertical lines can
provide. Diagonals are simply more dynamic and can convey a greater sense of movement and energy.
Often Maurice would tilt his virtual camera up or down slightly to pinch horizontal or vertical lines
at one end. Skewing compositional lines, even slightly, can create interest and depth and make a
composition much more dynamic. Even these skewed lines were based roughly on horizontal and
vertical grid structures.
Though the placements of vertical and horizontal elements are important, Maurice would
frequently use a diagonal line to be the primary spine on which he would base the rest of his
composition. Two major diagonals can be found going from corner to corner through the center of the
screen space. When using diagonals he would usually choose one dominant direction for his
composition.
Here are a few examples to show how Maurice would use these lines.
Using diagonal lines will make a composition more dynamic, giving it more depth. As shown in this variation from The
Bear That Wasn’t (1967).
Maurice often used diagonals based on a diamond shape. A grid often used in classical painting.
Notice how Maurice uses the diamond shape as a rough guide for placing elements in these layouts from Hare-Way to
the Stars, Boyhood Daze, and What’s Opera, Doc?
Here are a few more of many ways to divide a composition diagonally based on thirds.
RHYTHM AND SPACING
Before analyzing specific grid structures, let’s look at a few examples of how Maurice spaced
compositional lines, specifically vertical lines.
Maurice wouldn’t use all the lines available to him at once: he would repeat and echo certain lines
throughout a composition in order to create rhythms. Line rhythm and spacing can be used to control
depth and help guide the eye. He thought of these rhythms as music, contrasting open areas to more
tightly controlled space. The amount of contrast would depend on the scene.
COUNTER-RHYTHMS
In his book Composing Pictures, Don Graham wrote:
The relative positions of elements, whether in nature or pictures, are seldom
mechanically aligned. An element may contribute to a straight line, curve, or spiral
movement. At times such counters may be of great value in emphasizing a dominant
movement.
To keep his compositions from getting too stiff and regular, Maurice would often use counterrhythms, that is, a few more minor elements that would go against the overall rhythm of the grid.
Interestingly, these irregularities seem to strengthen the overall pictorial rhythm.
Young artists often misinterpret counter-rhythms in the modern “wonky” style, where lines go
every which way and follow no structure. Not only does this way of working not guide the eye, it also
drove Maurice bananas. Knowing this, we would sometimes build wonky compositions just to get a
rise out of the old guru.
COMPOSITIONAL THEORIES
Now that we have discussed the main elements of a grid, let’s talk more specifically about how
Maurice arranged all these elements in a rectangular space.
In his youth, Maurice spent a lot of time studying various compositional theories. His heroes,
classical artists such as Leonardo da Vinci and Tintoretto, are thought to have divided up their
canvases mathematically to make them more pleasing. Maurice filled sketchbook after sketchbook
with studies and compositional experiments based on theories such as the golden section, root 2
harmonic divisions, and the rule of thirds. But by the time I began working with Maurice, he had
greatly simplified his approach.
THE RULE OF THIRDS AND RABATMENT
Compositional theory is a fascinating subject that is far too deep and complex to explore at much
length here. There are great resources such as Jay Hambidge’s classic text The Elements of Dynamic
Symmetry (1926) and Kim Elam’s intriguing book Geometry of Design: Studies in Proportion and
Composition, second edition (Princeton Architectural Press, 2011) for those wanting to dive deeper
into the subject.
In the very loosest terms, most compositional theories tell us that symmetry is dull and dividing a
subject in the center is boring. These theories also say that dividing a composition too far one way or
the other can be too severe. But dividing a subject somewhere between these two extremes seems to
be just about right. Compositional theories just help an artist be a little more precise about where
these division points are.
So, just to get our feet wet, let’s look at two simple but useful methods that Maurice used to
compose many of his pictures: the rule of thirds and rabatment.
In regard to these theories, author and artists Kim Elam wrote:
Both thirds grid and rabatment inspire asymmetry and are a more informal method of
organization. Rabatment has been called “the lazy man’s golden section,” and yields
compositions with pleasing proportional arrangements. The two systems, rabatment
and thirds, are highly interchangeable and yield closely compatible compositional
arrangements.
ABOUT THE RULE OF THIRDS
The rule of thirds is as pretty much as it sounds. The rectangle on which our composition will play out
is divided into thirds both vertically and horizontally. Many of the main compositional elements will
play on or near these third lines, especially where these lines intersect.
In her book Geometry of Design, Kim Elam wrote:
In art and design odd numbers are magic numbers because when used as an
organizational device they inspire asymmetry, which often makes a composition more
visually interesting. . . .
An awareness of the law of thirds enables the artist or designer to focus attention
where it will most naturally occur and to control the compositional space. Elements do
not need to land directly on the intersecting point, as close proximity will draw
attention to them.
I asked Kim to analyze a few of Maurice’s compositions that used the rule of thirds. You may notice
that center and diagonal line divisions form other important compositional lines that elements can
play out on.
Thirds (center panel) and rabatment compared. Though the vertical lines are important, this is essentially a diagonal
composition.
Many important compositional elements fall where the third lines intersect.
Left rabatment
Right rabatment
Notice the importance of the diagonals in these compositions.
ABOUT RABATMENT
No one is quite sure why, but the human mind tends to divide simple objects, such as squares and
rectangles, into smaller parts. The simplest divisions of these objects are usually halves: vertically,
horizontally, and diagonally. In design we can make use of these divisions in the placement of
compositional elements.
Our minds also make other divisions. In the case of a rectangle, like the one used as a template in
film, our brains try to make a relationship between the short and long sides of the rectangle, and
create an imaginary square. We can’t see it, but subconsciously it’s there. This is called rabatment,
and a horizontal rectangle will have both left and right rabatment divisions. Maurice made use of
these division lines in many of his compositions.
Using an overlay, it is easy to see how Maurice used rabatment in his compositions.
Kim Elam writes:
Rabatment is a compositional method that consists of placing a square, with a side
equal to the edge of the rectangle, over the left and right sides of the composition.
The resulting verticals and diagonals create a compositional structure. All horizontal
rectangles have both a left and right rabatment and all vertical rectangles have both a
top and bottom rabatment. The rabatment structure suggests asymmetry, assists the
artist in positioning elements in the composition in a visually interesting way, and
creates a proportional relationship between the elements, placement, and the
rectangle. The area of overlap by the two squares in a left and right rabatment can be
used for a secondary rabatment and the same method of construction applies as the
top and bottom squares overlap and create horizontals.
As described earlier in this chapter, Chuck Jones would create the character layouts first, with
Maurice designing the environments around them afterward. In order to create harmonious
compositions that felt as if they were created by one artist, it was essential that both Chuck and
Maurice were on the same page in the way they broke down their compositions. Often Maurice would
move the character layout slightly to create a better composition, and sometimes Chuck would ask
Maurice to adjust certain elements to better fit the action and cutting.
There are many, many ways to divide and plan a composition, and these examples are but a few.
Look to artists such as Leonardo, Vermeer, Tintoretto, and Raphael for ideas and inspiration;
Maurice did!
More examples of rabatment.
Vertical pans from Roadrunner, Robin Hood Daffy, Nelly’s Folly, and Much Ado About Nutting. To give the eye
an easy path to follow, many pans will have one primary curving line of flow focusing on one main compositional
element. A change of perspective will make the composition more dynamic.
A pan from Drafty, Isn’t It? (1957). Another important way that Maurice minimized strobing and created flow in a pan
was by planning elements parallel to a camera’s path.
PANS
A pan is not only something you cook with, it also describes a long piece of background art that moves
in front of an animation camera, giving a panoramic effect. When planning a pan Maurice considered
not only the length of the art and speed of the shot, but also its rhythmic nature. At Warner Bros. the
films were set to musical beats. Chuck Jones would notate the beats of each shot on the exposure
sheets. By the time a shot would reach layout, the shot length and rhythm were set. Chuck often used
16-frame (92 beats per minute) or 12-frame (120 bpm) beats, which would be used by both the
animators and the composer. From this, Maurice would figure the pan speed and pan length. Then he
would know how many elements would be needed in the pan, and how far apart he would need to
space them. He planned certain compositional elements to cross the camera field on certain frames.
Don Graham, one of Maurice’s Chouinard instructors, also noted:
Rhythm is an emotional response. Color, texture, and pattern all play a part in
creating rhythmic movement. To some degree all pictures involve movement. But when
movement is not understood and controlled or when it is generated accidentally,
results are usually chaotic, lacking vitality and energy.
Maurice planned the rhythm of his pans to support and enhance the story, as he expressed in a
1971 interview with Joe Adamson:
I don’t know whether any other designer thinks in the same terms that I do, but I design
in motion. If you have a panoramic shot, it’s a series of areas that are exposed to the
eye as they pass through. You have a big area and a small area and a staccato area
and so forth: put on a flash of red, let it extend for a long time, and then two flashes of
blue, and green, and it’s a rhythmic thing. From the artistic standpoint, when you’re on
a still composition, your eye has a chance to wander and see a big area and a small
area, and the balance of the composition. When you’re on a panoramic shot also,
your overall total has to balance out to be an interesting eye experience: your large
areas and small areas are exhibited to the eye as the pan goes along, and the spaces
and rhythms of this whole thing. This total, overall, is a visual composition in motion.
And this is purely done by the use of color and space relationships, and accents in
patterns of forms, and so forth.
On my first few pans, I was actually trying to create a good overall composition. Maurice
emphasized that it wasn’t important what a pan looked like as a whole physically. What matters is what
it looks like through the lens. He taught me, “The eye isn’t going to see much detail in the middle of a
fast pan. It will see color and pattern in an abstract way. Focus on making the start and finish of the
pan work well, the parts that the audience will actually see, then concentrate on the length and feel of
the pan.”
On slow pans, such as the opening of Touché and Go (1957), Maurice would lean elements slightly to avoid strobing.
He would also reduce contrast in areas with a lot of detail, as shown in the color sketch to the right for the same pan.
On faster pans, such as this from It’s Everybody’s Business (1954), Maurice would give elements a more severe lean,
so they would “slice” through the camera frame more smoothly. This pan is also a good example of using diagonal lines
to bring the viewer’s eye to and from the camera plane.
Jill Petrilak, who worked as Maurice’s background painter in the 1990s, remembers how
Maurice’s tested his pans:
Maurice used to make his hand into a loose fist, and put it up to his eye so he could see
through. Then he would scan along a rough pan layout at the speed it was going to be
in the film, to see what it would look like. On a longer pan he would have to get up
and walk along it. He wanted to see what the camera would see, to make sure
everything flowed the way he wanted.
Maurice was one of those rare art directors who [were] only concerned with what
the camera saw. He was not interested in the pretty objects that were out of field.
Nobody gets to study these backgrounds; they just get the essence of them. Really, the
audience is supposed to be looking at the characters. Maurice didn’t get caught up in
a lot of stupid stuff. He was interested in making sure everything read properly and
that the viewer was not confused with what the viewer was looking at.
One of the biggest problems with flow in pans is strobing (a frame rate that is too slow for a viewer’s
eyes to deal with, resulting in a stuttered motion). There are several ways to minimize this annoying
effect. The most common solution in modern studios is to throw motion-blur onto the image. This
technique wasn’t an option to Maurice in the 1950s and ’60s, though zip pans of random brush strokes
were used for extremely fast pans. Motion-blur is simple, and can work well. But for something more
stylized, motion-blur isn’t necessarily the most graphic or interesting solution. Here are a few
approaches Maurice took in combating strobing in his pans:
• Leaning elements that cut across the picture plane
• Making the spacing of elements uneven
• Using diagonals and S-curves
• Lowering contrast
Vertical elements on a horizontal won’t cut through the picture plane smoothly, and tend to strobe,
or stutter. The same is true of horizontal elements on a vertical pan. Leaning elements slightly will help
the “slice” through the picture plane. The faster the speed of a pan, the more Maurice would lean his
elements to avoid strobing. Though he preferred the bottom edge of a pan to lead, the direction of
lean on elements doesn’t really matter, particularly in a slow-to-medium speed pan. The main
concern is keeping elements from being parallel with each other and the edge of the picture frame.
Think of using big, small, and medium elements to create interest. Also, try not to space elements too
evenly. Breaking up patterns with uneven spacing makes for a much more natural and less mechanical
feel, lessening the chance of strobing.
Another important way that Maurice minimized strobing and created flow in a pan was by planning
elements parallel to a camera’s path. To give the eye an easy path to follow, many pans will have one
primary curving line of flow focusing on one main compositional element. Maurice also used a path of
elements to create this flow. A mixture of major and minor curves can add interest to a pan; it all
depends on the style, complexity, speed, and story point of the scene being designed. Keep in mind
that most compositions aren’t flat. Designing elements to lead the eye to and away from the camera
will make a pan much more dynamic. Even a slight change in perspective will create interest.
PARALLAX
I once asked Maurice why he didn’t use more parallax in the films he designed. Parallax is when
objects in the distance appear to move more slowly than objects in the foreground, which is achieved
by breaking the background, middle ground, and foreground into separate planes, and panning them
at different speeds. This helps give a real sense of depth to the composition. Maurice agreed that it
was a nice effect, but said:
Look, you have to balance out what’s important in the picture. You only have so much
time to layout the picture. The background man only has so long to paint everything.
And the camera man only has so much time to shoot it. When you put in a scene of
parallax, you double the amount of work for everyone. I would rather spend that
extra bit of time on bringing up the level of the whole picture. Also, when you’re
working with a series of scenes of “flat” graphics, and you throw in a scene with deep
parallax, it just seems a little odd.
FRAMING WITH ELEMENTS
Maurice emphasized that designers need to give characters a clear, open acting space, especially
around their heads. A simple, but important compositional tool that Maurice used was to frame
characters with elements such as trees, buildings, and other objects in a scene. Framing in effect
leaves an uncluttered area for the action and acting of a scene. Negative space and value play a big
part in making this work.
Robin Hood Daffy was one of Maurice’s more satirical and lighthearted films. He overexaggerated
nearly every detail, down to the rubber-stamped leaves and grass. Another aspect of exaggeration in
this film was the clear acting spaces for the characters, especially around the heads. Though
exaggerated, it highlights an important aspect of Maurice’s use of negative space in design, clearing
the composition for the acting.
In Boyhood Daze (1957), Maurice frames the characters with various elements, leaving the acting space clear.
Maurice would often drop the horizon line in order to give more room for acting and action. As indicated in the layout
from Lumber Jack-Rabbit.
These examples from Robin Hood Daffy highlight an important aspect of Maurice’s use of negative space in design.
This clears the composition for acting, especially around the head of the characters and particularly in front of the
character’s face.
Sketches for Tiny Toons. When creating dynamic perspective, it’s okay to think outside the box.
DEPTH
Maurice was always trying to give the illusion of depth in his 2-D compositions. Adding depth gives
interest and makes a setting more dynamic. Director Dave Thomas kidnapped Maurice for a weekend
and wouldn’t let him go until he got Maurice to share a few of his thoughts on creating depth. Here is
the list that Dave brought back with him:
• Create depth by changing value as it recedes into space.
• Overlap forms—even flat, highly graphic elements will recede if they overlap.
• Always push and force your perspective.
• Use foreground, midground, background elements to create depth.
• Use gradating values to create depth, i.e., dark to light, light to dark, etc.
• Always try to show many sides (top, bottom, etc.) of an object to create depth.
• Add depth through shadows that suggest objects in the environment that the
audience can’t see. Let audiences know where they are at all times. Shadows are
especially useful for this.
• Casting shadows over several planes and/or objects lends to graphic believability.
• Floor tiles or wooden floor boards are good for pattern and perspective.
• Repeat and resize objects in space: trees, phone poles, etc.
• Use streets and roads receding into distance.
• Tilt the camera up or down slightly.
• Saturation of color: close objects are brightest and sharpest. Objects in the
distance appear pale and washed out.
• Use more texture in the foreground, less in the background.
• Warm colors advance, cool colors recede.
• Atmospheric perspective: objects in the distance may appear bluish.
PERSPECTIVE
Linear perspective was one of Maurice’s greatest tools in achieving depth, but it is also one of the
least understood aspects of his design approach. There is an entire school of “wonky” background
design that attempts to mimic Maurice’s style by using lines and objects that go every which way,
trying to get a “fun” cartoony look but with virtually no thought to storytelling or staging. Maurice put
it down to a lack of young artists really looking at—and understanding—the world around them.
Though he used perspective in a stylized way, he always started with the basics. Of his approach
Maurice said, “It is always important to keep the audience grounded, even when you are designing a
highly stylized film. I usually design with classic perspective elements in mind, starting with natural
perspective, then skew things from there.”
There have been many great books published on perspective, so we won’t discuss the subject in
much depth here. But here is a simple introduction to some concepts that Maurice used when starting
a composition:
Zero Point: No distinct vanishing point.
One Point: All vanishing lines come from one point.
Two Point: All vanishing lines come from two points.
Three Point: All vanishing lines come from three points.
Four Point: All vanishing lines come from four points.
Perspective was used by Maurice to give the illusion of depth to a flat, 2-D world. Depth makes a
composition more dynamic. Perspective lines can be used to draw the viewer’s eye to a character and
specific section of a composition. Maurice said, “Classical perspective is important to understand,
and is useful when composing layouts but can become a little dull. Especially when composing a more
satirical, fun type of film. Look for the fun in your composition.”
MULTIPOINT PERSPECTIVE
One of the easiest ways Maurice created depth and volume was by using multistation vanishing
points, frequently off of the same horizon line. One of his Chouinard instructors, Don Graham,
taught that classical Italian perspective was the world as seen through one eye. But of course most
people see dimension because they have two eyes. Therefore, in any composition you essentially need
at least two points of convergence. Graham wrote in his book Composing Pictures:
Once the artist is liberated from a single fixed station point, his whole concept of
picture making changes. No longer is he bound by a Ptolemaic point of view as
reflected in a fixed viewpoint with the world revolving around it. Now the artist is
free to choose as many station points as he feels necessary. He sees his subject from a
Copernican point of view: he can show aspects of form not visible from any one
station point.
Millard Sheets, another of Maurice’s instructors, explains his philosophy on perspective:
If you teach structural drawing, it doesn’t take the student very long to grasp how
important it is to learn certain things about perspective, just as a means. But if you
attack it the other way, and say, “Now, your perspective is wrong, therefore, you’ve
got to put this line this way and this line this way,” as they did in the old academic way,
what you’re doing is just making a very sad victim of the eye. You’re not in any sense
teaching the mind to comprehend what’s back, behind, which is more important than
what you see.
Maurice elaborated on his use of pushing perspective at a guest lecture at CalArts in 1977:
I studied a lot of perspective years ago. But then, you soon find out that that isn’t
extreme enough. A given two-point or three-point perspective doesn’t force the eye
enough. So if you want something to converge forcefully, then you pull it. Enlarge
things in the foreground, diminish them in the background. I’ve discovered, and it’s my
own individual feeling, that pulling stuff around and dropping off the left and right
gets a dimensional quality to your layout that you couldn’t get by retaining a true
perspective on things. If you had a line over here, you dropped it a little bit to the
right or to the left, and let the eye give it a volume to a given area. This is what I was
speaking about—enhancing the restrictions of the medium. It’s the eye that kind of
pulls things over. It is an instinctive thing. Whether you instinctively design or want to
design through experience, you see that it works well on the screen.
Many times Maurice drew perspective from more than one vanishing point for the simple reason that most people see
dimension because they see the world through two eyes.
Wide angle examples from Deadwood, South Dakota, and Times Square, New York City.
Wide angle examples from Claws for Alarm (1954) and Punch Trunk (1953).
DISTORTED PERSPECTIVE
Art director Mike Giaimo said of Maurice’s use of perspective:
In regard to Maurice going beyond the academic one-point perspective, I have
always felt that this was something he loved to play around with, to shape and mold to
his own imaginings. His use of multi-point often had a kind of surreal, Dalí-esque
quality, another great Maurice signature. His use of perspective was always more
“artful” and far-reaching than any other layout artist at Warner Bros.
Maurice tended to use distorted perspective more than his contemporaries. But he didn’t use
distortions only for stylistic reasons. Rather he was trying to solve a simple design problem.
Chuck Jones loved to use medium and close-up shots in his films. But because of this, Maurice
considered the films to feel claustrophobic and closed in. Therefore, he used a simple trick that he
learned while training as a photographer in WWII: if you have a close-up subject and want to have
depth, use a wide-angle lens.
Wide-angle lenses are great for exaggerating depth by magnifying distances between background
and foreground objects. This in turn creates more dramatic images. But wide-angle lenses also have
their own peculiarities that Maurice took advantage of, including barrel distortions, an effect wherein
edges of the picture frame can become distorted and curved.
STEP 08:
Final Film
Color sketch from Chariots of Fur (1994).
Ted C. Bemiller worked for Wally Bulloch Camera Service and shot a number of films for Chuck Jones during the
1960s. His son, Ted T. Bemiller, worked with Maurice at Chuck Jones Film Productions in the 1990s.
Originally, Maurice had planned separate chapters discussing
backgrounds and camera. However, most of the practical aspects of
these steps have already been examined in earlier chapters, so won’t
be revisited in detail here.
After the backgrounds and cels were painted, the artwork would then be combined into a scene
folder with an exposure sheet. The exposure sheet (also called an X-sheet or dope sheet) is the blueprint
for a scene and would contain all the information the camera operator would need to shoot the film.
These scene folders would then be rechecked to make sure all the elements were in the right order,
and in the proper scene number. Then everything would be shipped off to the camera department.
Once all the artwork had been shot, silent footage of a film would be reviewed. Then it would be
reviewed again with voice, music, and sound FX added. Once any needed changes, cuts, or
corrections had been made, a film would be then be screened for all the animation units of the studio.
In his 1989 interview with Michael Barrier, Maurice said that during these screenings there was “a
certain reserve. You didn’t applaud their pictures, and they didn’t applaud ours.”
The films would have then been released into the theaters as a lead-in to a feature film . . . and then
Chuck, Maurice, and company would move on to the next picture. At the time, the life expectancy of a
Warner Bros. cartoon might be just a few years. I asked Maurice if he knew he was working on films
that would be as revered as they are. He answered, “It was a job; we worked hard and did the best we
could, trying to make the next picture better than the last. I still feel that way. If I’m no longer excited
by the work, and doing something fresh and new, I don’t want to be around anymore, I really don’t.”
A Phil DeGuard background, and Maurice layout from Boyhood Daze.
Dearly missed.
IN CONCLUSION
This book is in no way a complete statement; it is but a small glimpse into the life and thoughts of an
amazing man and one of animation’s great pioneers. It was Maurice’s hope that some of the
knowledge gained through his sixty-odd years in the business would help inform and inspire
generations of designers after him. Even if one of the ideas nestled among these pages helps you
become a better artist, then Maurice will have been successful. In his twilight years, he honestly
believed that the best films ever to be made were still yet to be made.
A few final thoughts that Maurice wanted to share:
These past few years in the animation field have been amazing and also disappointing.
A strange dichotomy has developed: live-action using animation gags and cutting
and, alas, animation destroying itself by imitating live-action. Where is the graphic
innovation, satire, fun, and freshness? Are we afraid to laugh and poke fun these days?
This ability of animation to satirize and make us laugh at ourselves is almost unique.
We can pull out and stretch practically any facet of life and bring our audience into
this magic circle.
There is a tendency in both live-action and animation to throw handfuls of rapid
“snippets” together so we think we have seen something. When all else fails, an
almost routine violent ending explodes. Instead, let’s find those human interest themes
that can touch the audience—happy or sad—but touch them. Animation can do this.
We are in danger of entering an age of impersonal coexistence: a wired, pushbutton, and almost faceless society. This is reflected in our attitudes and sensibilities
to the world around us. To really laugh, we need to know how to cry.
“When working in animation you can’t take any credit. You can only
say you participated.”
Maurice Noble (1910–2001)
Acknowledgments
During the course of this project I’ve discovered that it is far easier to
practice film design, than to write about it. This book would still be a
box of loose notes if it weren’t for the loving support of so many.
Thank you for your thoughts and reflections:
Amid Amidi, Michael Giaimo, Michael Barrier, Harry McCracken, Jerry Beck, Kim
Elam, Karl Coen, Pete Docter, Willie Ito, Martha Sigall, John KrisFalusci, Darryl Van
Citters, Robert Stanton, Ric Sluiter, Mary Burton, Ed Bell, Jim Hull, Eddie Fitzgerald, Eric
Goldberg, Susan Goldberg, Craig Kellman, Max Howard, Nancy Beiman, Tomm Moore,
Ralph Eggleston, Paul Felix, Andrew Farago, Alex Williams, John Canemaker, Stephen
Fossatti, Tom Sito, Peter Merryman and the Nordli family, Thad Komorowski, Heidi Leigh,
Hans Bacher, Miles Thompson, Norman M. Klein, Don Shank, Steven Grossfeld, Martha
Baxton, Shanna Galloway, Ralph Bakshi, Jeff Pidgeon, Glen Mullaly, Jeff Goldner, Ted
Bemiller and Mark Burstein.
. . . and for the great support through the years:
Lawrence Marvit, Mark Oftedal, Jorge Gutteriez, Dave Thomas, Don Hall, Scott
Morse, Ricardo Barahona, Bill Benson, Mike Cachuela, Lou Romano, Mary Claire
Scanlon, Jeff Ranjo, Cynthia Ignacio, Mike Polvani, Greg Duffel, Jill Petrilac, Dave
Marshall, Kurt Nielsen, Robert McKinnon, and Rose Long.
Juck and Nitpat Somsaman and the Monk Studios, Thailand.
Morten Thorning, Michelle Nardone and the Animation Workshop.
A huge thanks to my parents Nita and Ken Duncan, for all the scanning, and packages
received and delivered.
. . . and my wife Bang-On Phothi-In who has been such a great help and support to me.
Emily and Sanjay . . . thank you for helping make Maurice’s dream come true.
. . . and the Great Father . . . without whom none of this would have been possible.
Artwork:
Those that so generously shared their collections:
Warner Archives, special thanks to Leith Adams and Mark Greenhalgh.
Steve Ison, who has been so generous with his thoughts and time.
Mike Glad, Steve Schnieder, Greg Ford, Darryl Van Citters, Paul Bussolini, Eric
Calande, Linda Jones Clough, Craig Kausen, Ron Baraff at Rivers of Steel National
Heritage area, Anna Cannizzo at the Denison Museum, James Buran, Rick Schneider
Calabash, Robert McKinnon, Lars Emanuelsson, Bengt Jareteg, Animation
Sensations/Peter Bortz, Robert Cowan, Paul Harmon, Ted Bemiller, Chuck Jones Center
For Creativity.
Additional illustrations provided by Esben Sloth, and Lawrence Marvit. WPA Poster by
M. Weitzman (1939), Library of Congress.
Photos:
Kimberly Crest Mansion and Gardens by Bang-On Phothi-In and Susie Hibdon,
Monument Valley Carol M. Highsmith/Library of Congress, Robinson’s Christmas by Dick
Whittington.
Interviews:
Maurice Noble Interview, December 29, 1971. Courtesy of Joe Adamson Copyright
©1975 by The Film Society of Lincoln Center, renewed 2003 by Joseph Adamson, III.
Transcribed by Lindsay Doran.
Interview with Maurice Noble, January 24, 1977. Courtesy of Michael Barrier and
Milton Gray.
Discussion with Maurice Noble, March 30, 1977. Courtesy of Darryl Van Citters.
Transcribed by Nancy Beiman.
Interview with Maurice Noble, May 31, 1989. Courtesy of Michael Barrier.
Animations Old Rebel- Maurice Noble, March 1, 1998. Courtesy of Karl Cohen.
“Stepping Into the Picture,” January 20, 1991. Interview for Animato Magazine.
Courtesy of Harry McCracken.
Interview with Maurice Noble. Courtesy of Heidi Leigh 1992.
Maurice Noble, December 19, 2000. Courtesy of Nancy Beiman.
Index
The index entries below are as they appeared in the print version of the book and are included here for
your reference. Please use the search function on your eReader to search for terms of interest.
A
Abominable Snow Rabbit (1961)
Adamson, Joe
The Adventures of the Road-Runner (1962)
Al Tudi Tuhak (1999)
Animation Workshop of Denmark
Another Froggy Evening (1995)
Arioli, Don
The Aristo-Cat (1943)
armatures. See grids
Armitage, Frank
Ashmead, Hal
aspect ratio
B
background layout
background painter, relationship with
Baker, Ryan
Bakshi, Ralph
Bambi (1942)
Barahona, Ricardo
Barbary Coast Bunny (1956)
barrel distortions
Barrier, Michael
The Bear That Wasn’t (1967)
Beep Prepared (1961)
Beiman, Nancy
Bell, Ed
Bell Telephone Science Series
Bemiller, Ted C.
Bemiller, Ted T.
Benson, Billy “Keys”
Bewitched Bunny
Bird, Brad
black, personality of
Blair, Lee
Blair, Mary
blue, personality of
Boyhood Daze (1957)
Broomstick Bunny (1956)
brown, personality of
budget, working with
Bugs Bonnets (1956)
The Bugs Bunny Show (TV show)
Bully for Bugs (1953)
Burton, Johnny
Butterworth, Kent
C
Cachuela, Mike
California Institute of the Arts
Capitol Records
Capra, Frank
Cartoon Colour Company
Castle Rock
The Cat in the Hat (1971)
Chang, Chen-Yi
character layout
characters
color for
eyes of
hands of
personality of
supporting
visual hierarchy and
Chariots of Fur (1994)
Chouinard Art Institute
Chuck Jones Film Productions
Church-Craft
Clampett, Bob
Claws for Alarm (1954)
Clough, Linda Jones
Cohen, Karl
Cole, Corny
color. See also color schemes/themes
basics
for characters
chords
chroma
cool vs. warm
dimension
dull, against bright
importance of
intensity
isolation
keys
palette
personality
for quick cuts
saturation
sketches
value vs.
wheels
color schemes/themes
analogous
complementary
rectangle
split-complementary
square
triadic
using
color theory, prismatic vs. pigment
Columbia Pictures
composition
depth
framing
grids
pans
parallax
perspective
rabatment
rhythms and counter-rhythms
rule of thirds
theories of
Confusions of a Nutzy Spy (1943)
contrast
counter-rhythms
The Country Cousin (1936)
Crawford
curiosity, importance of
D
The Daffy Duckaroo (1942)
Daffy Duck’s Thanks-for-Giving (1980)
Decker, Tom
Deduce, You Say (1956)
DeGuard, Phil
DePatie, Dave
DePatie-Freleng
depth, adding
Descanso Gardens
Despretz, Sylvain
Dias, Ron
director, relationship with
Disney, Walt. See also Walt Disney Studios
distortions
Docter, Pete
Dr. Seuss on the Loose (1973)
Dr. Seuss’s Butter Battle Book (1989)
Don’t Give Up the Sheep (1953)
dope sheet
Doré, Gustave
The Dot and the Line (1965)
The Dover Boys of Pimento University (1942)
Drafty, Isn’t It? (1957)
Duck Amuck (1953)
Duck Dodgers and the Return of the 24½ Century (1980)
Duck Dodgers in the 24½ Century (1953)
Duck! Rabbit, Duck! (1953)
Dufau, Oscar
Duffell, Greg
Dumbo (1941)
Dunn, John
DuPont
E
Earle, Eyvind
Elam, Kim
elements list
Elmer Elephant (1936)
Engel, Jules
Escape of the Gingerbread Man!!! (2011)
exposure sheet
eyes
F
Fantasia (1940)
Fantasia 2000 (1999)
Feed the Kitty (1952)
Feline Frame-Up (1954)
A Few Quick Facts About Fear (1945)
field chart
film, shooting
filters, using
Fitzgerald, Eddie
Fitzgerald, Owen
Fleury, Gene
The Flintstones (TV show)
flowers, simplifying
focus
Fossatti, Steve
Foster, Warren
framing
with elements
with light
Freberg, Stan
Freleng, Fritz
From A to Z-Z-Z-Z (1953)
fun, sense of
G
gags
Galloway, Shanna
Gateways to the Mind (1958)
Gay Purr-ee (1962)
Geisel, Theodor “Dr. Seuss”
Giaimo, Mike
Givens, Robert
gold, personality of
Goldberg, Eric
Goldberg, Susan
Graham, Don
graticule
Gray, Milton
gray, personality of
green, personality of
Gremlin Galleries
Gribbroek, Robert
grids
Grossfeld, Steven
Gutierrez, Jorge R.
H
Haboush, Victor
Hall, Don
Hambidge, Jay
hands
Hanna-Barbera Studio
Hare-Way to the Stars (1958)
Harris, Ken
High Note (1960)
Hilberman, Dave
Hirschfeld, Al
Horton Hears a Who! (1970)
How the Grinch Stole Christmas! (1966)
Hubley, John
Hull, Jim
humor, role of
I
Ignacio, Cynthia
The Incredible Mr. Limpet (1964)
Inman, Bob
inspiration, sources of
It’s Everybody’s Business (1954)
Ivanov-Vano, Ivan
I Was a Teenage Thumb (1963)
J
James, William
The Jetsons (TV show)
Jeup, Dan
John Sutherland Productions
Jones, Ben
Jones, Chuck
Julian, Paul
Juster, Norton
K
Karsh, Yousuf
Kazaleh, Mike
Kent, Rockwell
Kimball, Ward
Kimberly Crest mansion
Kiss Me Cat (1953)
Klein, Earl
Koenig, Eric “Panama”
Komorowski, Thad
Korellis, John
Kricfalusi, John
L
Landacre, Paul
Lasseter, John
layout. See also composition
background
character
Leigh, Heidi
Leon Schlesinger Productions
Lerew, Jenny
Levitow, Abe
light, framing with
Lighthouse Story
lighting tests
limitations, working within
location, determining
Looney Tunes
The Lorax (1972)
Lost Horizon (1937)
Lumber Jack-Rabbit (1954)
M
Maltese, Mike
The Maltese Bippy (1969)
Marshall, David
Martian through Georgia (1962)
Marvin Martian cartoons
Marvit, Lawrence
Maurice Noble Productions
McCabe, Norm
McCrackern, Harry
McGrew, John
McKean, James
McKimson, Robert
McKinnon, Robert J.
Merrie Melodies
MGM Studios
Monk Studio
monochrome filters
Monsters, Inc. (2001)
mood, as story element
Moore, Rich
Morgan, Don
Morse, Scott
Moshier, Joe
motion-blur
Mouse-Warming (1952)
Much Ado About Nutting (1953)
Mulan (1998)
Murphy, Lawrence
music, importance of
Musker, John
My Little Duckaroo (1954)
N
N by E (1930)
Nelly’s Folly (1961)
Nierva, Ricky
90 Days Wondering (1956)
No Barking (1954)
Noble, Maurice
birth of
childhood of
education of
at Robinson’s department store
at Disney
during World War II
in the postwar period
at Warner Bros.
at John Sutherland Productions
at MGM
at DePatie-Freleng
in retirement
in television animation
final years of
death of
appearance of
artwork of
design philosophy of
drawings of
legacy of
personality of
photographs of
student compositions of
style of
Noble Tales
Nordli, Ernie
Now Hear This (1962)
O
O’Brien, Kevin
Off to See the Wizard (1967–1968)
Oftedal, Mark
The Old Mill (1937)
O’Neill, Warren
Operation Snafu (1945)
orange, personality of
P
pans
parallax
peach, personality of
perspective
Petrilak, Jill
The Phantom Tollbooth (1970)
Phillips, Marjorie
Pidgeon, Jeff
Pierce, Ted
pink, personality of
Pinocchio (1940)
Pixar
Polifka, Bernyce
Polvani, Mike
Private Snafu series
props
The Pumpkin of Nyefar (2004)
Punch Trunk (1953)
purple, personality of
R
rabatment
Rabbit Seasoning (1952)
red, personality of
reference, using
Rhapsody of Steel (1959)
rhythms and counter-rhythms
Rivera, Tony
Road Runner cartoons
Robin Hood Daffy (1958)
Robinson, Mary Browne. See Blair, Mary
Robinson’s department store
Romano, Lou
Rose, Dave
rule of thirds
S
same-as scenes
saturation
scene folder
Schlesinger, Leon
Schneider, Rick
Schwartz, Zack
scripts
Selzer, Eddie
sequences
shades
Shank, Don
Sharaf, Herman
Sheets, Millard
Sheridan College
Sib Tower 12 Productions
Silly Symphonies shorts
silver, personality of
simplification
Sito, Tom
Sleeping Beauty (1959)
Snoke, Craig
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937)
Speed, Harold
spit, painting with
Stern, Mike
Stop! Look! And Hasten! (1954)
story beats
story elements
story moments
storytelling, visual
strobing
Sutherland, John
sweaty fun
T
The Tale of the Czar Durandai (1934)
Tarzan (1999)
Tashlin, Frank
teamwork
thirds, rule of
Thomas, Dave
thumbnails
Timber Wolf! (2001)
time
management
as story element
Tintoretto
tints
Tiny Toon Adventures (TV show)
titles
To Beep or Not to Beep (1963)
To Hare Is Human (1956)
Tom and Jerry cartoons
Touché and Go (1957)
trees, simplifying
Turner Feature Animation
Twilight of Man (1926)
U
The Unbearable Bear (1943)
United Productions of America (UPA)
V
value
importance of
scale
stacking
testing
Van Citters, Darrell
Vilppu, Glenn
voice, finding your
W
Wackiki Wabbit (1943)
Walt Disney Studios
Wang, James
Wang Films
Ward, Lynd
Warner, Jack
Warner Bros.
Washam, Benny
Water Babies (1935)
wedge tests. See lighting tests
What’s Opera, Doc? (1957)
white, personality of
Whittaker, Greg
wide-angle lenses
Wild Over You (1953)
The Wizard of Oz (1939)
Woodland Cafe (1937)
working relationships
World War II
Wright, Frank Lloyd
X
X-sheet
Y
Yasuda, Kelvin
yellow, personality of
Z
zip pans
Image & Art Credits
Page 2: Artwork courtesy of The Glad Family Trust. © Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. (s12)
Page 5: Artwork courtesy of Eric Calande. TM & © Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. (s12)
Page 6: Artwork courtesy of The Glad Family Trust. TM & © Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. (s12)
Page 8: Artwork courtesy of the Warner Bros. Archive. TM & © Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. (s12)
Page 11: Photo by Yousuf Karsh, courtesy of the Warner Bros. Archive. TM & © Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc.
(s12)
Page 12: All images collection of the author. © Tod Polson.
Page 15: All images provided by the Warner Bros. Archive, TM & © Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. (s12) except
(upper left) collection of author. © Tod Polson.
Page 16: All images courtesy of the Warner Bros. Archive. TM & © Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. (s12)
Page 17: All images courtesy of the Warner Bros. Archive. TM & © Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. (s12)
Page 18: All images copyright Disney.
Page 19: Artwork courtesy of (upper left) Stephen Ison, (upper right) The Glad Family Trust, and (bottom row) the
Warner Bros. Archive, copyright Disney.
Page 20: All images copyright Disney, courtesy of Stephen Ison.
Page 21: All images from the public domain.
Page 22: Images courtesy of (top row) the public domain, (center row) The Glad Family Trust, and (bottom row)
Stephen Ison.
Page 23: Images courtesy of (left) Bill Benson, (three images to right) the Warner Bros. Archive. TM & © Warner
Bros. Entertainment Inc. (s12)
Page 24: All images are in the public domain. See America Welcome To Montana by M. Weitzman is made available
by the Library of Congress.
Page 25: All images property of Warner Bros. Entertainment. Retouched by Esben Sloth. TM & © Warner Bros.
Entertainment Inc. (s12)
Page 26: All images are in the public domain. Bugs Bunny is TM & © Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. (s12)
Page 27: Image courtesy of Stephen Ison. TM & © Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. (s12)
Page 28: DuPont images are in the collection of the author. Lumber Jack Rabbit background appears courtesy of
Steve Schneider. It’s Everybody’s Business color key courtesy of the Warner Bros. Archive. TM & © Warner Bros.
Entertainment Inc. (s12)
Page 29: Image courtesy of the Warner Bros. Archive. TM & © Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. (s12)
Page 30: All images appear courtesy of the Warner Bros. Archive. TM & © Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. (s12)
Page 31: Rhapsody of Steel images appear courtesy of the Rivers of Steel Heritage Museum.
Page 32: All images appear courtesy of Stephen Ison. TM & © Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. (s12)
Page 33: All images appear courtesy of Stephen Ison. TM & © Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. (s12)
Page 34: Images appear courtesy of (left) the Warner Bros. Archive, and (right) The Glad Family Trust. TM & ©
Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. (s12)
Page 35: All images provided by Robert J. McKinnon. TM & © Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. (s12)
Page 36: Images from Off to See the Wizard (top row) and The Incredible Mr. Limpet (lower left) courtesy of the
Warner Bros. Archive. Images from The Phantom Tollbooth (lower right) appear courtesy of The Glad Family Trust.
TM & © Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. (s12)
Page 37: Images courtesy of (left) the Warner Bros. Archive, and (right) the author. TM & © Warner Bros.
Entertainment Inc. (s12)
Page 38: All images from authors collection. © Tod Polson.
Page 39: Images (top row, and bottom center) courtesy of the Warner Bros. Archive TM & © Warner Bros.
Entertainment Inc. (s12), and (bottom left and right) the author. © Tod Polson and Don Hall.
Pages 40 and 41: Images courtesy of author. TM & © Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. (s12)
Page 42: All images appear courtesy of the Warner Bros. Archive. TM & © Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. (s12)
Page 43: Images provided by (top) the Warner Bros. Archive, and (bottom row) Stephen Ison. TM & © Warner
Bros. Entertainment Inc. (s12)
Page 44: Images courtesy of (left side) Heidi Leigh and Animazing Galleries, (right) the author.
Page 45: All images courtesy of Darrell Van Citters. TM & © Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. (s12)
Page 46: Images courtesy of (left) the author, © Tod Polson/NobleTales and (right) the Warner Bros. Archive. TM &
© Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. (s12)
Page 48: Image copyright Disney, courtesy of The Glad Family Trust.
Page 50: Image from the author’s collection. TM & © Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. (s12)
Page 52: Courtesy of the Warner Bros. Archive. Illustration by Warren O’Neil and author. TM & © Warner Bros.
Entertainment Inc. (s12)
Page 54: Courtesy of Animazing Galleries. TM & © Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. (s12)
Page 55: Courtesy of Chuck Jones Center for Creativity. TM & © Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. (s12)
Page 56: Images provided by (left) Michael Barrier, and (right) Darrell Van Citters. TM & © Warner Bros.
Entertainment Inc. (s12)
Page 57: Images provided by (left column) the Warner Bros. Archive, (top right) Stephen Ison, and (lower left) from
the collection of the author. TM & © Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. (s12)
Page 58: Images (left column) courtesy of Stephen Ison and (right column) TM & © Warner Bros. Entertainment
Inc. (s12)
Page 59: All images courtesy of Stephen Ison. TM & © Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. (s12)
Pages 60 and 61: Image courtesy of the Warner Bros. Archive. TM & © Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. (s12)
Page 62: All images courtesy of Stephen Ison. TM & © Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. (s12)
Page 63: All images courtesy of the Warner Bros. Archive. TM & © Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. (s12)
Page 64: Light test images (top row and bottom left) from the collection of the author. Pencil layouts (center row)
courtesy of the Warner Bros. Archive. Color keys (bottom center and right) provided by the Warner Bros. Archive.
TM & © Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. (s12)
Page 65: Photo courtesy of the Warner Bros. Archive. TM & © Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. (s12)
Page 66: Image courtesy of The Glad Family Trust. © Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. (s12)
Page 67: Image provided by the Warner Bros. Archive. TM & © Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. (s12)
Page 68: All photos by Maurice Noble. Collection of author. © Tod Polson.
Page 69: Image courtesy of the Warner Bros. Archive. TM & © Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. (s12)
Page 70: Maurice Noble Photo (top left) collection of author © Tod Polson. Images (center and right) Courtesy of the
Warner Bros. Archive. © Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. (s12)
Page 71: Images (top left) Courtesy of the Warner Bros. Archive (lower right) courtesy of The Glad Family Trust. ©
Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. (s12) Photographs (top right and lower left) by Maurice Noble, collection of the
author. © Tod Polson.
Page 72: Images (top) from the public domain (lower left) courtesy of the Warner Bros. Archive and (lower right)
light test from the author’s collection. TM & © Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. (s12)
Page 73: Images courtesy of (top left) Stephen Ison, (top right and center left) the Warner Bros. Archive TM & ©
Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. (s12), (lower left) photo © Bang-On Phothi-In, and (lower right) from the authors
collection. TM & © Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. (s12)
Page 74: Images (right column) copyright Warner Bros. Entertainment TM & © Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc.
(s12), (left column) photos by author. © Tod Polson.
Page 75: Images (top row) courtesy of Stephen Ison TM & © Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. (s12), (lower left)
photos by author © Tod Polson and (lower right) Image copyright Warner Bros. Entertainment. TM & © Warner
Bros. Entertainment Inc. (s12)
Page 76: Images courtesy of (top left) Carol M. Highsmith, from her collection at the Library of Congress, (top right)
courtesy of the Warner Bros. Archive TM & © Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. (s12), and (bottom row) photos by
Maurice Noble, collection of the author © Tod Polson.
Page 77: Photo (top) © Bang-On Phothi-In. Images courtesy (bottom row left) the Warner Bros. Archive, and (right)
Film still TM & © Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. (s12)
Page 78: Images (left) from the public domain, (top right) courtesy of the Warner Bros. Archive TM & © Warner
Bros. Entertainment Inc. (s12), (lower right) from the author’s collection.
Page 79: Image courtesy of Paul Bussolini. TM & © Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. (s12)
Page 80: Ali Baba Bunny background image kindly provided by Robert J. McKinnon. TM & © Warner Bros.
Entertainment Inc. (s12)
Page 81: Thumbnail images provided by Michael Polvani, and Kurt Neilsen. TM & © Warner Bros. Entertainment
Inc. (s12)
Pages 82 and 83: All images copyright Disney.
Page 84: All images courtesy of the Warner Bros. Archive. TM & © Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. (s12)
Page 85: Light tests, collection of author. TM & © Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. (s12)
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Page 88: Illustrations provided by author. © Tod Polson.
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Page 90: Light tests from collection of author. TM & © Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. (s12)
Page 91: Rockwell Kent image provided by the Denison Museum at Denison University.
Page 92: Top row images (top left) copyright Warner Bros. Entertainment, (top center and top left) courtesy of
Animation Sensations Gallery. Center row, (left) courtesy of Stephen Ison, (center and left) collection of the author,
and (bottom row) provided courtesy of the Warner Bros. Archive. TM & © Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. (s12)
Page 93: All images from the collection of the author. TM & © Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. (s12)
Page 94: Images courtesy of Stephen Ison. TM & © Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. (s12)
Page 95: Images kindly provided by Lawrence Marvit.
Page 96: Images courtesy of (left) the Warner Bros. Archive, TM & © Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. (s12), (top
right) by Esben Sloth, © Tod Polson and (bottom right) © Bang-On Phothi-In.
Page 97: Tree artwork by Esben Sloth. © Tod Polson.
Page 98: Background art from the collection of Steve Schneider. TM & © Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. (s12)
Page 99: Illustration by the author.
Page 100: Images courtesy of (left) Darrell Van Citters and (right) the author.
Page 101: Art courtesy of Eric Calande, and is in the public domain.
Page 102: Public domain, retouched by Esben Sloth.
Page 104: All art from the collection of Steve Schneider. TM & © Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. (s12)
Page 105: Images from 90 Days Wondering are in the public domain.
Pages 106 and 107: Images courtesy of the Warner Bros. Archive. TM & © Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. (s12)
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Entertainment Inc. (s12)
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Page 110: Images provided by Stephen Ison. TM & © Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. (s12)
Page 111: Image courtesy of Darrell Van Citters. TM & © Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. (s12)
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Entertainment Inc. (s12)
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Entertainment Inc. (s12)
Page 114: Image courtesy of Stephen Ison. TM & © Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. (s12)
Page 116: Illustration by the author, Bugs Bunny image provided by Stephen Ison. TM & © Warner Bros.
Entertainment Inc. (s12)
Page 117: All images provided by Stephen Ison. TM & © Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. (s12)
Page 118: Image courtesy of Stephen Ison. TM & © Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. (s12)
Page 119: Images (left) from the collection of the author, (right) courtesy of the Chuck Jones Center For Creativity.
TM & © Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. (s12)
Pages 120 and 121: All images courtesy of Stephen Ison. TM & © Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. (s12)
Page 122: All images kindly provided by Stephen Ison. TM & © Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. (s12)
Page 123: Images courtesy of (top row) Stephen Ison, and (bottom) the Warner Bros. Archive. TM & © Warner
Bros. Entertainment Inc. (s12)
Page 124: Illustration by Esben Sloth.
Pages 126 and 127: All images courtesy of the Warner Bros. Archive. TM & © Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc.
(s12)
Page 128: Images courtesy of (top left) Eric Calande, (top right) Stephen Ison, and (bottom) Steve Schneider. TM &
© Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. (s12)
Page 129: Images from the author’s collection. TM & © Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. (s12)
Page 130: Images courtesy of (top and bottom left) Stephen Ison, and (bottom right) Eric Calande. TM & © Warner
Bros. Entertainment Inc. (s12)
Page 131: Image courtesy of Stephen Ison. TM & © Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. (s12)
Page 132: All images kindly provided by Stephen Ison.
Page 133: Images courtesy of (top and bottom right) Stephen Ison, (top center and right) James Buran, (center right)
Animation Sensations Gallery, (bottom right) Mike Giaimo. TM & © Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. (s12)
Page 134: Images courtesy of (top left) Steve Schneider, (top right) James Buran, and (bottom) thumbnail sketches
courtesy of Mike Polvani, and Kurt Neilsen. TM & © Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. (s12)
Page 135: Images kindly provided by (top left and top center) Steve Schneider, (top right, center, and bottom center)
the Warner Bros. Archive, (center left and bottom left) The Glad Family Trust, (center right) Eric Calande, and
(bottom right) Stephen Ison. TM & © Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. (s12)
Page 136: Images courtesy of (top left) Steve Schneider (top right) Paul Bussolini, and (bottom row) Stephen Ison.
TM & © Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. (s12)
Page 137: Images courtesy of (top left) Eric Calande, (top right) Steve Schneider, and (bottom) Robert Cowan. TM
& © Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. (s12)
Page 138: Images provided by (top) Steve Schneider, (bottom row) The Glad Family Trust. TM & © Warner Bros.
Entertainment Inc. (s12)
Page 139: Images (top row) from the collection of the author, and (bottom) Steve Schneider. TM & © Warner Bros.
Entertainment Inc. (s12)
Page 140: Images kindly provided by (top) Steve Schneider, (bottom left) Paul Bussolini, and (bottom right) Stephen
Ison. TM & © Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. (s12)
Page 141: All images courtesy of Stephen Ison. TM & © Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. (s12)
Page 142: Images courtesy of (top two rows) Stephen Ison, and (bottom left and center) the Warner Bros. Archive,
and (bottom right) Eric Calande. TM & © Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. (s12)
Page 143: Images courtesy of (left and bottom right) Stephen Ison, and (top right) the Warner Bros. Archive. TM &
© Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. (s12)
Page 144: Images provided by (top row) Stephen Ison, and (bottom row) Steve Schneider. TM & © Warner Bros.
Entertainment Inc. (s12)
Page 145: Images courtesy of (top left and top center) the Warner Bros. Archive, (top right) The Glad Family Trust,
(bottom right) Paul Bussolini, and (left center, and bottom left) Stephen Ison. TM & © Warner Bros. Entertainment
Inc. (s12)
Pages 146 and 147: All light test images from the collection of the author. TM & © Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc.
(s12)
Pages 148 and 149: All images courtesy of The Chuck Jones Center for Creativity. TM & © Warner Bros.
Entertainment Inc. (s12)
Page 150: Images provided by (top row) the Warner Bros. Archive, and (bottom row) the Chuck Jones Center For
Creativity. TM & © Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. (s12)
Page 151: Images courtesy of (top left) the Warner Bros. Archive, (top right) collection of the author, and (bottom)
The Chuck Jones Center For Creativity. TM & © Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. (s12)
Page 152: Top row of illustrations by the author, (lower left) the Warner Bros. Archive © Disney, (bottom center) the
collection of the author, and (bottom right) Stephen Ison. TM & © Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. (s12)
Page 153: Images courtesy of (top) the Warner Bros. Archive, and (bottom row) from the collection of the author.
TM & © Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. (s12)
Page 154: Images provided by (top left and top right) the collection of the author, (top center) Stephen Ison, (center
row and bottom right) and the Warner Bros. Archive. TM & © Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. (s12) Illustrations
provided by the author.
Page 155: Images from It’s Everybody’s Business are public domain, Courtesy of Glen Mullaly. Digital image
retouched by Esben Sloth. Illustrations (right) provided by the author.
Page 156: Light tests from the collection of the author. TM & © Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. (s12)
Page 157: Left and center columns from the collection of the author, TM & © Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. (s12)
The Bambi sketch (right) is courtesy of The Glad Family Trust, © Disney.
Page 158: All video images property of Warner Bros. Entertainment. Retouched by Esben Sloth. TM & © Warner
Bros. Entertainment Inc. (s12)
Page 159: Images courtesy of the Warner Bros. Archive. TM & © Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. (s12)
Page 160: Images from Touché and Go are courtesy of the Warner Bros. Archive.
Page 161: Images courtesy of (top left) Animation Sensations gallery, (top and bottom right) Stephen Ison, and
(bottom left and bottom center) from the collection of the author. TM & © Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. (s12)
Page 162: All film stills TM & © Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. (s12).
Page 163: Image provided by the Warner Bros. Archive. TM & © Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. (s12)
Page 164: Light tests and illustrations from the collection of the author. TM & © Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc.
(s12)
Page 165: Photos ©Bang-On Phothi-In. TM & © Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. (s12)
Page 166: Image courtesy of the author. TM & © Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. (s12)
Page 167: Image courtesy of and © Ted C. Bemiller.
Page 168: Images courtesy of (left) The Chuck Jones Center for Creativity, and (right) Stephen Ison. TM & ©
Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. (s12)
Page 169: Light test from the collection of the author. TM & © Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. (s12)
Page 176: Photo of Maurice’s disc and tools courtesy of and © Bang-On Phothi-In.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Cartoon Modern: Style and Design in Fifties Animation (2006) By Amid Amidi, Chronicle Books.
Composing Pictures: Still and Moving (1982) by Donald W. Graham, Van Nostrand Reinhold Company.
Dynamic Symmetry: The Greek Vase (1926) by Jay Hambidge Yale Univerity Press.
The Geometry of Design: Studies in Proportion and Composition, second edition (2001) Kimberly Elam, Princeton
Architectural Press.
Hollywood Cartoons (2003) Michael Barrier, Oxford University Press, USA.
Line and Form (1904) by Walter Crane, George Bell & Sons.
Los Angeles Art Community: Group Portrait, Millard Sheets (1977) Interviewed by George M. Goodwin, The
Regents of the University of California.
Noble Boy (2006) Scott Morse, Red Window, Inc.
The Practice and Science of Drawing (1913) by Harold Speed, J.B. Lippincott Co., Seeley, Service & Co.
Stepping Into the Picture: Cartoon Designer Maurice Noble (2008) by Robert McKinnon, University Press of
Mississippi.
Tunes for ’Toons: Music and the Hollywood Cartoon (2007) Daniel Goldmark, University of California Press.
Photo: Thor Mangila
Tod Polson first studied design at Otis/Parsons, and animation at CalArts
before apprenticing under pioneering animation designer Maurice Noble, winning
the student Oscar, and an Annie nomination for his short film Al Tudi Tuhak. Since
then, he has worked extensively as a filmmaker, designer, and teacher, and has
contributed his talents to such projects as the Emmy Award–winning series El
Tigre: The Adventures of Manny Rivera and the Oscar nominated feature, The
Secret of Kells. He lives in Wyoming.
Maurice Noble (1911–2001) is widely recognized as the premier animation
designer in the history of animation. During his career he worked on over one
hundred animated short and feature-length animated films, through which he
helped created a new look and approach to animation that continues to influence
designers today.
Chuck Jones (1912–2002) made more than three hundred animated films in his
sixty-year career, winning three Academy Awards® as a director and in 1996 an
honorary Academy Award® for Lifetime Achievement. During the Golden Age of
animation, Jones created some of animation’s most famous characters, including
Road Runner, Wile E. Coyote, Marvin the Martian, Pepe le Pew, Michigan J. Frog
and many others.