40 years of Looney Tunes shorts unfold in supercut that doubles as a peek at animation's evolution

By Kevin Cortez | August 30, 2019 | 2:05pm

Aux Features Looney Tunes

40 years of Looney Tunes shorts unfold in supercut that doubles as a peek at animation's evolution

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We tend to forget when we think of things like Space Jam or Brendan Fraser’s post-Mummy career that Looney Tunes is old as shit. The first animated batch of shorts the company produced with Warner Bros. were in the 1930s, or what we can now call the Cuphead-aethestic era. Of course, if you were a cool kid in the early ‘00's, you were watching Cartoon Network and a combination The Bob Clampett Show, ToonHeads, or The Tex Avery Show that at least shed some light on the classic show’s influence and domination in pop culture.

For a thorough, yet trim, history of the shorts, YouTuber KaiserBeamz has cobbled together a 17-minute supercut that highlights exactly one second from every Looney Tunes short produced between 1929 through 1969.

The video highlights the evolution of Looney Tunes animation and demonstrates how weird, experimental, and distinct the shorts really were. The latter half of the video sees Looney Tunes all-stars shining at their peak, like Porky Pig, Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Marvin Martian, and that big red fuzzy guy that used to chase Bugs around (its name was Gossamer, apparently). The experimental spirit seems to cease toward the end of the video, and, as is made evident by stuff like Catwoman/Tweety & Sylvester, it’s apparent that unbound creativity has more or less given way to synergy. As Cartoon Brew points out, the modern goal of animation’s visual evolution was to find a distinct style early on to make “merchandising and licensing programs easier to implement,” and this video serves as evidence of Looney Tunes’ shifting production priorities.

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