The Dover Boys is also important in animation history. It was the first cartoon to employ “smear animation” where instead of fully animating each individual movement some of the animation cells are abstract blurs or smears so as to convey sudden and abrupt movement. It was a pretty important invoation in the history of animation as people more and more went away from the idea that cartoons had to convey “realistic” movement
Thank you, I’ve been barking this at all of my friends since it became a meme and they just discovered it. Also important to note that Chuck Jones made the entire animation as a sort of “Fuck You” to Warner Brothers for bitching at him to make less cartoons about talking animals. He was like “okay bitch, you want the same slop that everyone else is making? Here.” And he proceeded to make the most bitterly self-aware animation ever made, wherein each character is a complete slur of their archetype. (See: Dan Backslide announcing everything he does out loud and hating a random group of college kids for no reason) Jones has been quoted multiple times as saying that the Dover Boys was “the first cartoon he made that he thought was actually funny”. Warner Brothers got so pissed off that they almost fired him over Dover Boys, but Jones knew they couldn’t afford to because he was such an asset to them, and of course, they didn’t. So yeah, the Dover Boys is not only a piece of animation history, but it’s also a self-aware, passive-aggressive love-letter to Warner Brothers.
I can’t believe the Dover Boys is Chuck Jones’ Sistine Chapel
