#a wild hare

[acmeoop]

Happy 83rd Anniversary Bugs!

[citizenscreen]

Warner Bros. legend BUGS BUNNY made his debut 83 years ago today with the release of Tex Avery’s A WILD HARE (July 27, 1940) #OnThisDay

[cartoon-network-pictures]

The first appearance of Bugs Bunny.

[randompanimation]

[best-animated-short-tourney]

Choose Your Favorite!

Vote in the other polls

Where to find the shorts:

[dailylooneys]

It was probably at least a year [release of A Wild Hare]. You'll notice in this thing [McKimson's autobiographical sketch from the 1940s], Tex didn't want to make another Bugs Bunny after the first one. Ray Katz told him that he'd like to have him make another one, and he said, "Okay, I’ll make this one for McKimp." He always called me "McKimp." He knew that I liked to animate on [Bugs], and liked to work with him, and so that was how come he made even the second one.

Robert McKimson, interviewed by animation historian Michael Barrier

[pkmatrix]

An Ambitious Idea

I’ve really not posted much of it here, but for the last few weeks I’ve had access to the DALL-E 2 Text to Image AI and have been playing around making various pictures.  One of the first ideas I had, although I didn’t start experimenting until more recently, was in uncropping films - taking movies that were originally filmed in Academy Ratio (4:3) and expanding them to 16:9 or Cinemascope (21:9).

Here’s some of my experimental results:

ORIGINAL ACADEMY RATIO FRAME FROM RODAN (1956):

AI GENERATED CINEMASCOPE FRAME:

ORIGINAL ACADEMY RATIO FRAME FROM RODAN (1956): 

AI GENERATED CINEMASCOPE FRAME: 

ORIGINAL ACADEMY RATIO FRAME FROM A WILD HARE (1940):

AI GENERATED CINEMASCOPE FRAME: 

ORIGINAL ACADEMY RATIO FRAME FROM A WILD HARE (1940): 

AI GENERATED CINEMASCOPE FRAME: 

As you can see, there’s some INCREDIBLE potential here for using DALL-E 2 and future Imagery AI to expand the frame of content originally produced in 4:3 Aspect Ratio.

Now, there’s a whole other conversation to be had about whether or not this SHOULD be done - Aspect Ratio is a major element of filmmaking, and films are produced with their specific aspect ratio in mind, but on the other hand this seems like it could serve as great alternative to pillarboxing older TV shows like Bonanza or The X-Files which were intended to fill the whole screen but today are pillarboxed because modern TVs have a wider aspect ratio.

So, my ambitious idea:  I want to take an old Bugs Bunny cartoon and, using DALL-E 2, expand the WHOLE CARTOON to Cinemascope as a demonstration of the concept.  I’m aiming at A Tale of Vienna Woods, a segment from A Corny Concerto (1943) - partly because it’s one of my all-time favorite ‘toons, but also because it’s SHORT.  It’s only the first half of the cartoon and runs less than three minutes which, IMO, makes it an ideal test case.  The hardest part I imagine dealing with is that the cartoon has some tracking shots and I’m not QUITE sure how to handle that.  But the stuff that’s still frames?  I think it can be done!

I’m going to take a closer look at the cartoon tonight and try to work out how many generations from the AI I’ll need to do it.  I’m pretty sure I’m good enough at Photoshop and Premiere to piece the results together.

[payasita]

coworker asks "hey how are u" and I give them the casual "I'm alright, how are you" and they decide to be cheeky and give me the "just alright? Not excellent? Hahaha" and in my head my response is "I am on day four of my full time week, do you know how big the world is? It is vast and beautiful and that's because Hell is small. If damnation comes for us both it will be a cage" but what I tell them is "it's friday, Carl"

[hrokkall]

I'm talking to a machine

[broncoburro]

They do a bit - the biggest difference is between the "wild type" hares still used by nomads, and the "standard" stockier varieties you'll find in cities and towns. Standards have over time gotten shorter and more compact to work better as cart animals.

They are entirely black with red eyes. But try to tell someone haretouched this, and they'll insist they range an infinite number of colors, and that their eyes run a gamut from sparkling ruby red to deep scarlet. It's true that different pelts will shine different greens and blues in the light, but... the color naming can get almost fanatical.

Hares also can have some general individual differences like ear length, tail shape, snout length. To the layman though, they're hard to tell apart.

They're not bred for color. In fact, they're rarely bred for... many reasons. Hares have a long lifespan (longer than humans, sometimes...) and a haretouched human will usually only bond to one hare in their lifetime. They are difficult to breed too-- they get aggressive.

Hares are not purposefully bred in nomadic society. (You just go find one on the tundra, or sometimes a doe comes back pregnant.) In the settled north, they're bred only when too many cart hares have died in mining accidents or the like.

Still, if they were capable of coming in colors other than black, it seems like it would have happened by now.

...There are some old nothern legends about a snow white hare who only appears to those the "most cursed", but they're half-forgotten oral traditions at this point.

[autumncottageattic]

dutch_nature_photography

[oodlesodoodles]

[stitchy-face]

"I'm like if an apex predator had the behavior of a hare."

[marysmirages]

Lady Knopa. Hare portrait (2023)

I wish you all a happy and sunny Easter!