February 26 – Happy Birthday, Tex Avery!

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nDaffy Duck!
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nPorky Pig!
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nHave you ever heard of these characters?
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nTex Avery is part of the Golden Age of American Animation – the time from the invention of the sound cartoon in 1928 to the 1960s, when animated “shorts” in movie theaters began to lose interest for people who had access to animated TV shows.
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nWhile Walt Disney and the Disney studios are most famous in early animation, Tex Avery, who worked for Warner Brothers and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios, was able to steer the industry toward less sweet, less cute cartoons. Adults tended to like Avery’s sarcasm, and kids liked his non-stop action. He even had a bit of an adult twist on fairy tale characters.
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nHere’s another thing that Avery brought to cartoons: breaking the artifice of the cartoon.
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nI love this! 
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nAvery would sometimes have a cartoon character burst through the end credits to pop off one last witty remark… 
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nOr he would have a character directly talk to us in the audience… 
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nOr he would have a character complain about the plot of the cartoon…within the cartoon!
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nThese clever bits almost always crack me up!
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nAvery was known for pushing boundaries of animation in many ways, and he was famous for saying, “In a cartoon, you can do anything.”
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nAvery was an animator, cartoonist, voice actor, and director. His small hometown of Taylor, Texas, is where Avery was born on this date in 1908. 
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nTell a Fairy Tale Day

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