Chuck Jones: Quotes about animals

Chuck Jones was American animator, cartoon artist, screenwriter, producer, and director of animated films. Explore interesting quotes on animals.
Chuck Jones: 22 quotes2 likes

“The best way, of course, to understand the animator is to see that he parallels the actor. He has the same responsibility a fine actor has. […] Even the people who write about animation just don't seem to understand that when you have a drawing, you don't have a character. […] "This is the first Bugs Bunny" has no meaning. It's how Bugs came to stand and move and act, and what his feelings were, and his thoughts, and what kind of personality he was. That developed over a period of time. And you need fine animators to do that.”

Chuck Jones

Adamson, "Witty Birds and Well-Drawn Cats", 61.

“The two most important people in animation are Winsor McCay and Walt Disney, and I'm not sure which should go first.”

Chuck Jones

quoted in Canemaker, John (2005). Winsor McCay: His Life and Art (Revised ed.). pg. 257. Abrams Books.

“Everything on Saturday morning [cartoons] moves alike—that's one of the reasons it's not animation. The drawings are different, but everybody acts the same way, their feet move the same way, and everybody runs the same way. It doesn't matter whether it's an alligator or a man or a baby or anything, they all move the same.”

Chuck Jones

Adamson, "Witty Birds and Well-Drawn Cats", 64.

“As Norman McLaren said, animation is not a bunch of drawings that move — it's a bunch of drawings of movement.”

Chuck Jones

Lewell, "The Art of Chuck Jones", 137.

“Animation in itself is an art form, and that's the point I think always needs clarification. True animation exists without any background, or any color, or any sound, or anything else; it exists in your hand. And you can take it and flip it. […] What makes animation is the fact that you have a series of drawings that move. You don't even have to have a camera, you see; animation exists without it. If you want to broaden your audience, or make it more colorful or add music, then you put it under a camera one frame at a time, and then you run it at the same speed as you flip it, and then you have animation. If it depends basically upon soundtrack, or basically upon music, or color, graphic design, or anything else to sustain itself, then it is not unique to animation.”

Chuck Jones

Joe Adamson, "Witty Birds and Well-Drawn Cats: An Interview with Chuck Jones [1971]", in Chuck Jones: conversations, ed. Chuck Jones and Maureen Furniss (Univ. Press of Mississippi, 2005), 63.