animation smear technique

[Thalia-is-Crazy]

I've been googling it for the past half hour.
I want to know where it comes from, who developed it....
I know I've heard a name attached to it before, AND I think it was here...
Soooo someone point me off in the right direction pleeeeaaaze?

[starlac]

I suppose the most predominate force for smear animation would be Rob Scribner, who would become one of Bob Clampett’s leading animators not long after the later became a director at Warner’s. Scribner introduced what he called a “Lichty style” based on the work of newspaper cartoonist George Lichty. The style was loose and pretty carefree, with plenty of distorting.

If you watch most Clampett cartoons in slow motion, you’ll see images that seemingly have nothing to do with each other, yet work when run at normal speed. The earliest cartoons with Scribner’s influence and his Lichty technique can be seen in 1942 shorts “A Tale of Two Kitties” and “Coal Black and the Sebben Dwarfs:” although the technique was used in earlier Clampett shorts occasionally. For viewing the practise, it is possibly best to look at something like “Kitty Kornered.”

Ironically Chuck Jones’ “The Dover Boys” came out two months prior to Clampett’s “Tale” cartoon is a variable tour de force of pure smear animation. Unfortunately the studio didn’t like this style of animation and threatened to fire Jones over it (the reason given as to why they didn’t was the difficultly in finding somebody to replace him).

Of Course the most important and earliest form of any kind of speed blur animation was done on the Disney Silly Symphony "The Tortoise and the Hare."