Warner Bros. will produce three new 3D short animations of their Looney Tunes properties. More interestingly is that they’ll use the original voice recordings of Mel Blanc (the original voice behind Bugs Bunny) from the 1950s. The three shorts will include a Daffy Duck segment, a Sylvester the Cat and Tweety and anothe Road Runner and Wile E. Coyote.
“Everyone at Warner Bros. Animation grew up loving the Looney Tunes characters, and it has been both a great honor and an enormous challenge to continue the legacy of these animation icons and introduce them to a new generation of fans,” said Sam Register, Warner Bros. Animation’s Executive Vice President, Creative Affairs, “And to have the incomparable Mel Blanc voicing these characters once more is nothing short of a dream come true for all of us… This will probably be the last time that Looney Tunes fans will have an opportunity to see an original Mel Blanc short featuring these characters. We are honored to bring Mr. Blanc and his legacy to Looney Tunes fans once again.”
No mention of when the shorts will be released.
I have to wonder if these shorts will be better crafted then their new show. I don’t know, I miss the old Loony Tunes and the new, paper cut out character look of the new series makes me sad (if you haven’t seen the show, the characters are separated from the background by a strange bit of shadow, as if they’ve been laid on top of the backgrounds rather then being in them. It’s rather distracting).
3-D cartoons don’t impress me much. I remember back in the ’60s, when I had a ViewMaster 3-D viewer (a model D, the best of the lot), and they started putting out discs of 3-D comic strips, and they looed downright weird. Even as a kid, I didn’t think Charlie Brown looked right with a head that looked fully spherical.
I have also seen two of the new 3-D Coyote/RoadRunner shorts on Cartoon Network. The 3-D isn’t as distracting, but they’re too short and the writing is very weak.
Have you seen the Looney Tunes Show on Cartoon Network lately? Occassionally this show features CGI Road Runner/Coyote cartoons.
I love the old Looney Tunes shorts and the idea of having the original voice talent is exciting, but the 3D bit really turns me off. That’s not really what I want to see from Looney Tunes. I’d just like to see them animated in the traditional style. I certainly wasn’t around when the original shorts were made, but I didn’t need a new, updated version of those characters to make me a fan. I watched the old shorts to death and loved them just as much as people did when they were new. There’s nothing wrong with introducing a new generation of kids to these classic characters just as they’ve always been.