Animation &Animation Artifacts &walk cycle 01 Mar 2007 08:13 am
Max Hare
- Just to catch a breath of fresh air, I’ve decided to post this great run cycle of Max Hare from Disney’s 1935 Silly Symphony, The Tortoise and the Hare. I think it was Ham Luske who animated him; he did the bulk of the Hare in this film.
All drawings move from left to right. 
(All drawings enlarge by clicking.)
There’s a graceful beauty in this cycle. He saunters, more than runs. The tempo for it seems to be a basic 120, your average everyday walk cycle. I’d have to go back to the actual film to be sure.
It’s interesting that he’s off the ground for 5 out of every 12 drawings. It helps create a delicate buoyancy overall. This is feasibly impossible, but it makes the run richer.
The arm movements tell you a lot about the character. He’s full of himself and moves his entire upper torso with the arm movements. He’s definitely showing off.
Mike Barrier has a good piece in his book, Hollywood Cartoons: American Animation in Its Golden Age, on Ham Luske’s animation of Max Hare. It’s reprinted on line here.
A number of the drawings have been marked up for color inking, and others have been marked for color painting.
on 01 Mar 2007 at 7:08 pm 1.Thad Komorowski said …
Beautiful stuff. Thanks for sharing!
on 02 Mar 2007 at 9:38 am 2.R.Dress said …
Love the way his right shoulder whips the rest of his arm around his body. Note his right leg sort of crosses that 3/4 plane into a sort of profile view thus swaggering his pompous tail at us. (Last 6-7 drawings)
*R
on 05 Mar 2007 at 11:39 pm 3.David Nethery said …
Man, that’s some great animation. No wonder people like Chuck Jones would always reference this as a touchstone of what they thought of as great, influential animation. To that generation (Chuck Jones, etc.) this stuff is the same as those of us who wax rhapsodic over James Baxter or Glen Keane scenes.
Of course, I’m even more in awe of scenes like Ham’s hare or Fergy’s Pluto , etc. because they didn’t really have any previous generation to reference ; they created it themselves , and here we are 60 – 70 years later still in awe of it .
on 06 Mar 2007 at 8:08 am 4.Jholt said …
This awesome. The way he just flips his legs up, and almost floats, I can’t believe it works on screen, it seems like it would just fall apart.
on 01 Apr 2007 at 3:10 pm 5.Mike King said …
I have 5 pencil drawings by Ham Luske. Do you know of any collectors who might be interested ?
on 02 Jan 2011 at 9:37 am 6.Chris said …
Hello. I would be interested in the 5 Ham Luske drawings? if you still have them? Let me know. Thanks CHRIS 805 365 5101