Kitty Kornered question

[tristar]

I was studying Kitty Kornered (Clampett, 1946) (one of my favourite LT shorts ever) frame by frame yesterday and noticed that the door to Porky's house changes colour mid-scene!!

Was this an effect, or was it a mistake? Either way, it's really fun to watch.

[Daffysleftfoot]

John K went into detail about this on his blog a few years ago. It was definitely not a mistake. It was done to make a smooth colour transition from the yellow light in the kitchen to the blue light of the wintery night as the door closed. Played in real time, it works perfectly.

I even applied this technique in a show I recently animated on. When a character turned around I altered the colour of his shirt for just one frame. Noone found any problem with it.

[tristar]

John K went into detail about this on his blog a few years ago. It was definitely not a mistake. It was done to make a smooth colour transition from the yellow light in the kitchen to the blue light of the wintery night as the door closed. Played in real time, it works perfectly.

I even applied this technique in a show I recently animated on. When a character turned around I altered the colour of his shirt for just one frame. Noone found any problem with it.Ah, I see. It does work really well. Did anyone else in the golden age ever do this?

[Ray Pointer]

Ah, I see. It does work really well. Did anyone else in the golden age ever do this?

This was a common visual devise not unique to just this cartoon. Such transitions are sometimes referred to as "color gags" or transitions. Variations on this are the same background shifting from day to night, or spring to winter through a dissolve as other examples. This is accomlished by overlapping a Fade Out of one background over the Fade In of the second background. The background painting is painted meticulously to match for the transition.

No, such changes in things such as the color of the door you mention were definitely not "errors." We need to give these people far more credit for intelligence than this. They certainly had eyes, brains, and the understanding of what they were doing. Unfortunately, recent generations seem to have had their imaginations dulled by having been exposed to literal portrayals in cartoons. As a result, they have not had the true realization of the limitless applications of the medium, which can go beyond the recording of an image as it exists in reality. This is essentially what live action does. And these days, it seems live action is slavishly trying to accomplish what animators of the Golden Age were achieving.