The Dover Boys

I was studying the life of Chuck M. Jones, known as the legendary animator, who worked on many great Looney Tunes cartoons, Tom and Jerry and the Grinch who Stole Christmas, and came across something that brought me back to my childhood. The animated short was called "The Dover Boys of Pimento University" or just simply "The Dover Boys", which was made in 1942 and I remembered watching this short over and over again when I was 5 and played it on my Beta player!




I had the chance to watch it again on Youtube and it was still brilliant to watch. There were clever jokes I didn't get when I was a kid that finally came to my head. You're wondering what is this animation is about. Basically its just a parody of classic juvenile melodrama which involves a team of heroic boys, a helpless damsel and a deceitful villain. Just by looking at it, the design, colour and drawings are just beautiful, only to be topped by timeless and classic humor.



This work became the drawing influences to many inspiring animators that uses the methods and techniques used in this piece, including the blur animation. The characters just are fleshed out and nails the spot on satirizing its melodramatic personalities. One villain named "Dan Backslide" is probably the most developed and most funniest in the short. Just hearing him saying "A runabout... I'LL STEAL IT! NO ONE WILL EVER KNOW!" is a work of a genius.

Go and check it out.