Jurcic's Journey To Animation : Donald Duck in: „Timber“ (1941)

Today on this blog I'm gonna do animation breakdown on one of classic Donald Duck cartoons.

After I listen to the Thad Komorowski's podcast about this short I decided to do it myself version. If you want to hear that podcast click here.

At this short Jack King directed it, story was written by Carl Barks and Jack Hannah (Hannah did the ones that look a little more refined, while Barks did the looser, cartoonier drawings. Absolutely inspirational!) and voice actors are classic Clarence Nash and Billy Bletcher.

Mostly Ed Love animated at this short and it was pretty smooth and good. Some scenes Donald's eyes remind me of animator Bob Mckimson.

Pete was a better character when paired with Donald, especially as an authority figure. Ed Love and Emery Hawkins definitely show their comic potential in this short.

It's interesting to see how the animators were cast. In this case, most were given short sequences. Some got only one (e.g. Dick Lundy, Hal King), some got more than one (e.g. Paul Allen, Jim Armstrong), some got one plus a couple of extra shots (e.g. Judge Whitaker) - Ed Love beat them all with three sequences and two extra reaction shots, adding up to about 2 minutes of footage. Ted Bonnicksen just got three very short clips, one with no character animation, adding up to a few seconds of footage. I can detect Ed Love's signature style most clearly in the scene where Pete says "Not so fast, my leetle one" before making the new axe handle. The pose is very similar to scenes Ed Love animated of Donald in "The Whalers", Goofy in "Lonesome Ghosts" and "Mickey's Trailer", and others. Ray Patterson and Ray Patin sadly only got one scene at this short and that was couple of seconds. To me this short had me laugh and extreme animation (mostly Ed Love).The mine cart chase is wonderfully executed.