Your Top 10 Favorite/Least Favorite Cartoon Design

Both Classic and Modern, number 1 indicates your all time favorite ever that is the winner in your book, make sense to any of you, or to be even more polite and sophisticated, do you see what i mean? i hope, well anyway.....

Here's My Say:

Favorite (Great):

10. Ed Benedict stuff (The Flinstones, certain Tex Avery cartoons, etc): Gosh, Ed Benedict was extremely fantastic and had a really strong sincere approach to his cartoon designs, cartoons like Field and Scream, Deputy Droopy and Cellbound are just plain great looking cartoons.

*Shrug* It aboslutley drives me insane to see Ed Benedict's wonderful designs taken and brutally loused up in the H-B TV cartoons in which to create it's look, the true art direction in those cartoons is a (to quote the master Ed Benedict himself) poor beat up verson of his wonderful work (not to mention hideous as well) and reading what both him and fellow assocate Art Lozzi from Disney said, i think i'm a bit close to seeing the real truth to how the H-B cartoons were truly made, but i'd best not mention it, because what i'd say about that (in my personal own view, that is) would most defiently be extremely censored.

Even though by defiantly no means the character design was by Ed truly, i'd also include Symphony in Slang (by the just as great Tom Oreb) and Farm of Tommorow (by Gene Hazelton) as two great other shorts.

9. Donald Duck from the Wise Little Hen: very sincere and extremely accurate, a very specfic cartoon character that lives up to it's name and truely i'd take Donald Duck over Gandy Goose anyday.

8. Popeye (original E.C Segar all white sailor uniform and Early Fleishcer and WWII Navy Famous): also extremely sincere and peferectly captures the character they are attempting to approach, the softening and cutening up by Willard Bowsky may have paved way for higher comedy possibillites, it ALL eventually led to extreme lousiness and blanderiziation as a result, even looking at the construction of the models should tell you a little someting (the 1940 Charlie Thorson Popeye sheet), check out the 1939-1941 Miami Popeyes and the Popeye cartoons all entirely from the late 1940s-1950s and you'll see what i mean.

7. Lambert the Sheepish Lion: Looks just like ME, a litle bit.

7 cont'd (only if nesscary): Mickey Mouse (early 1940s): this is by far the best version of the character, and the prespective ears help rocket him to the sincerity of being a true mouse rather than just being a bland lousy abstraction, plus he still had the trademark shorts (see the Little Whilwind).

6. Tom and Jerry (mid-1940s): I like Tom a lot, but i'd like Jerry even better, Tom looked great in the early 1940s, though.

5. Mister Magoo (late 1940s - 1951) as in Sincere and therefore very realistic, it's like if you took Grumpy from Snow White, Jim Backus and W.C Fields and morphed them togheter, you have someone as talented and as grumbly as Mister Magoo, the massively talented and Goofy creator from Disney that is Art Babbit does the aboslute best animation of him that outshines the rest, Pat Matthews comes in second, while Cecil Surry (too bad he died in 1956, pretty early enough if you ask me) comes only moderately close to that of Pat Mattews.

4. Bugs Bunny ( Tex Avery period - early 1940s Jones - Chubby McKimson - early 1950s Freleng): there has never have been such as a really more realistically accurate version than the proper intro in A Wild Hare and Chuck Jones' use in the early-mid 1940s, the further Tex Avery and early 1950s I. Freleng versions are also well drawn and are pretty close and appealing, and i abosultuely cherish the Chubby McKimson Bugs Bunny, Arthur Davis had also used it in his lone Bugs Bunny cartoon as director, that too, should've been how Bugs generally appeared in the 1990s and even today, even on something like the Looney Tunes Show (the true cartoon designs on that show, see my worst list), and Arthur Davis should have done more Bugs Bunny cartoons FOR the 1947 release list (rather than Freleng hog up the space and McKimson is left with only one measly short), imagine the cartoons we would be getting.

3. Daffy Duck ( late 1930s Tex Avery color version, Frank Tashlin/ McCabe and late 1940s - early 1950s McKimson designs): Daffy not only looked realistic (close to a mallard or a generic black duck) with Tex Avery (the best being in the one in Hollywood were Daffy looked very much like a mallard) but he TOTALLY lived up to his name, he was extremely DAFFY, and i cherished him that way, he also looked his best when he was handled by Frank Tashlin and Norm McCabe (in around 1942) and Daffy also resemeled that of a Mallard when Bob McKimson handled him in the late 1940s - early 1950s, again Tex Avery's version should have been used in The Looney Tunes Show, imagine what we'd get instead, just imagine.

2. Screwball Squirrel: I think i'm the only one who likes him inside out, and i find his infectious voice to be rather quite charming, plus he looked expertly cool and fun to look at.

1. Woody Woodpecker (Art Henniman and Ken O'Brien designs): Never, NEVER, to me, has there been a most truely accurate, realistic, wacky, pyschopathic, fun, beautiful, colorful and extremely lively lunatic of a cartoon character there ever was, Emery Hawkins entire drawing and footage of the bird just makes me appreacite him, the woodpecker and Walter Lantz (for training me and leading me to drawing how i draw right now) a million times more, James Culhane directed the absolute ones i vehemently cherish, and i strongly cherish the ones done by the Donald Duck creator and speciality Mickey Mouse animator for Walt Disney (in my opinion, he was truely the one who added those sceleras to Mickey's pupils in Freddie Moore's revision, therefore giving us truely the Mickey of Today), Dick Lundy, the animation by Pat Mattews, Ed Love, Fred Moore (he's the one who truely redesigned Mickey's original design by streamlining and simplying it to the construction we are truely familiar with today) and regular LaVerne Harding are always worth looking at indeed and who here doesn't like Mel Blanc's wonderful laugh line, i mean, WHO doesnt!!!???

Least Favorite (Hideous/Not So Good)

10. Tom and Jerry (Dick Bickenbach - Late 1950s CinemaScope era): to be honest, i've always found Dick Bickenbach's character layouts to be extremely nasty and very clunky and lifeless, not to mention crude and crummy as well, and well for a while i had found Proffesor Tom to be quite the potboiler, but i feel that it was taken to an extremely all time high when it reached CinemaScope (all combined with the evil "communist" UPA plague, Television, the end of block booking, and in peril of being knocked out in favor of double features), the animation had already turned extremely sour then, with Lew Marshall's wobbly, stilted, crude and amateur-rate looking animation and drawing dominating over Irv Spence (who still did awesome stuff, like Spike's take in Barbecue Brawl), Ed Barge (who was awesome with fast motion scenes and scenes with fluid acting and general dialouge) and Kenneth Muse (who seemed to have been giving very little to animate, considering in the same period he had also split time to do commercial work such as the Pepsodent toothpaste ad) and later on both Ed Barge and Irv Spence had left and were replaced by Carlo Vinci (who was rather moderate compared to Spence but still did remarkable and powerful stuff) and James Esclante (i haven't covered him yet), the animation, WOW, it got to the point as in Robin Hoodwink and Timid Tabby, both the animation in those things clearly (with the stubletiets being entirely cleaned off and showing the true inside) resmembled late 1960s - 1970s Hanna Barbera (and also including the 1980s as well), heck the two face experssion Tom and Geroge make would defiently not be out of place redrawn as a monster in Scooby Doo, think about it.

9. Porky Pig: Call me very crazy here, but i don't really find Porky Pig to be very appealing as a cartoon character design, he doesn't look very fun to draw (UGH, that snout is distracting), let alone his personality, he is way too naive, stubborn and passive to sustain himself in a solo cartoon short subject, and only sustained Looney Tunes from the even worse Buddy all just because of the fact that he mostly stuttered all the way through (but that was because the actor that played him had a speech problem who was Joe Doughtery, Mel Blanc only replaced him later), Please do not get me started on his debut appearance in I Havent Got A Hat, which is the aboslute wost of the Sleshinger/Termite Terrace art direction taken to an extremely high potboiler, YUCK!

8. Droopy (entire cast- late 1950s CinemaScope version): Ewww, Butch looks extremely nasty and so much in these things that it shows yet another danger ahead at MGM, the template of construction was the exact springboard of Chopper from Yakky Doodle and even characters such as Fred Flintstone and Cosmo Sprocket from the Jetsons, and Droopy's construction in these things was the springboard for Barney Rubble, Mr Slate, Mr Spacely, Huckleberry Hound and the Southern Wolf's construction was a springboard for Geroge Jetson, Shaggy (from Scooby Doo) and the voice by Daws Butler also was used immediately for Huck Hound, is this making a lot of sense to you, consdering Ed Benedict is doing the layout designs, while Mike Lah is doing the animation poses (the exact same way and manner he does it in the Yogi Bear cartoon Pie Pirates, the true credit of direction is given to producers Bill and Joe), so maybe it was truley Mike Lah who started the whole true H-B look in the first place and Ed only followed suit, who knows?, anyway just as in Tom and Jerry to 1970-1980s Hanna Barbera, the animation was an entire springboard for late 1950s- mid 1960s Hanna Babrera, in fact it makes sense the Mike Lah animators here (not all though) later followed Bill and Joe in establishing their own studio to TV.

7. Animal Stories (entire art direction): Yuck!, Talk about Junk, SHEESH!!!!

6. CatDog (entire art direction): all i'm going to say is this: literally take The Simpsons, Ren and Stimpy and Bob Clampett all in their entirely and inbredly smash them toghether and you perfectly get such a really big louse child as this, even the concept is terrible, a Cat and Dog jointed togheter, last time i got in very big trouble and was told not to watch or go near this show anymore, NOW THAT makes perfect sense.

5. Angry Beavers (entire art direction): Oh Dear, all i can say is that this is perfectly what you would get if you had the compentory Garfield artist Jim Davis (to avoid confusion with the Fox and Crow artist, that artist i'm calling to as James Davis) and someone point a gun to his head and litteraly and agressively brutally demand and force him into copying the art direction and everything of Ren and Stimpy, Spmuco (litteraly the likes of Jim Smith, Lynne Naylor and Nick Cross) and John K in general, and like i said, this is what you would defiently get, pretty harsh and obnoxious isn't it.

4. The Looney Tunes Show (entire art direction): Oh my goodness, talk about a louse of a failure, the designs are HORRIBLE!!, everything is extremely stiff, crooked, obnoxious, jagged and really overly garish, the animation is junk and stilted, and everything else is really stangant, dull and extremely cheap, and in about 50 years from now, it will become tremoundsly dated.

3. Calliou (entire art direction): Way too obvious, to quote Jay Sheman, IT STINKS!, Sloppy, Lifeless, Obnoxious (in the first season where Calliou had a grey shirt which was Jerkhead Calliou, exactly like the Jerkheaded Homer in the Mike Scully years), Lousy, Stagnant, Bland, Stiff and Adentional (nasal) voice acting and unimaginative and uninformative writing, NOTHING GOING FOR IT!!

2. Toopy and Binoo (entire art direction): Be sure every chance you get when this show comes on to avoid this show like the plague at all costs, unless you want to become severly retarded and braindead, like the Horse in Family Guy, UGH, words cannot describe how corrupt, vile, pretensious, mind-rotting, stupid and just plain insincere this lousy excuse of a cartoon is.

1. Arthur (entire art direction): Oh my goodness, Arthur is susposed to be an Aardvark, right, well then see for yourself, he looks nothing like one, and the exact same template (marginally changing it only very slightly) is used on all the other characters and animals, it's way TOO extremely obvious how insincere, lousy and obnoxious this cartoons truly is, the animation is awful as well, look at some episodes of the first season, the tongues are either colored too white or the pink color they use is way too brightly whiteish, and as such the coloring is terrible, the animation is junky, and the writing and voices are both dull, obnoxious, whiny, ridiculious, stupid, and really bland: there's nothing to hide or save, Arthur is Arthur just as the exact true crap it is, meanwhile however, the first Arthur book and the others up to at least The True Francine, Marc Brown's drawings have a more sincere look and a fun playful charm and Arthur was truely an Aardvark in those stories, when the show came and first started, it completly robbed what was left of the books, and there you have it.

Let's hear your top 10 list.

There are some character designs that I like, and some that I dislike. However, I don't know if I have a top 10 for either of them, so instead I'll just mention some that particularly stick out in mind...or craw, depending on the situation.

I've always liked the designs for Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck. In Daffy's case, especially the early Friz Freleng and early Chuck Jones ("Rabbit Fire" era) designs. Anyone who can make the combination of black and orange look attractive is a genius in my book. As for Bugs, I guess I would say that Robert McKimson best captured the "rascally" image of Bugs.

I kind of like the character designs of the main cast of Regular Show. They kind of remind me of the designs for Rocko's Modern Life, in a way. I don't generally agree with the practice of having the main characters being non-human anthros while everyone else in the world are normal humans, but on Regular Show, it makes as much sense as anything else on the series.

I like the designs for Watterson family on The Amazing World of Gumball. Very cute and toyetic, what with the bright blues, pinks, and orange, respectively. Gumball and his family all look like cuddly dolls or squeeze toys. Again, I don't think that the Wattersons needed to be talking animals, but I'm assuming that the characters are meant to be a throwback to the old days of the theatrical shorts where everything was animals, or perhaps they're supposed to look like characters from a children's storybook. The meshing of different art styles for every other character is something that I personally don't think that the show needs. It seems to more of an attention getting device than anything else.

Another design that I've always liked was that of Rocko, the title character from the aforementioned Rocko's Modern Life. I'm glad that Joe Murray changed Rocko's color from yellow to light tan, as the former would have made Rocko look like a banana. Also, the bright blue Hawaiian shirt with the lavender triangles makes him instantly distinguishable on the show.

Some character designs that I've never liked are the designs on Rugrats. Many of the characters just aren't pleasant to look at. Chuckie, for example, was just plain phugly during the shows' 1st season. Thankfully, his appearance was modified later on, although he still won't be winning any beauty contests anytime soon. Phil & Lil are also strange looking with those flat heads and the narrow eyes. They looked like the dead twins from The Shining. Seeing them on screen was quite the surreal experience until one gets used to looking at them. Tommy's mom Didi looked like an alien, his dad Stu always looked like he was drunk and Baby Dil looked like mutated mushroom with a face.

Regarding PBS's Arthur, let me just say this: The characters on Arthur are not animals; they're mutated humans with animal heads. Their anatomies are completely human, complete with human hands and feet. They don't even have tails. This is a practice in animation that I've never agreed with. If you're going to anthropomorphisize your characters that much, why not just make them human? When you have animal characters who have human hair, hands, feet, and navels and also go around fully clothed, shoes and all, it officially crosses the line from being cute to creepy, at least for me.