I found some interesting vintage cartoon gifs over the weekend at a blog called “The Gypsy Astronaut”, taglined “coming to you from a place in space”. According to the tags, the clip here was animated by Chuck Jones in the 1950s. There’s so many things that suck you into this image. First, it’s so uniquely weird and surreal – we all think fleeting thoughts about a lot of strange things, but for some reason, walking glasses feel so out there that you wouldn’t even dream of it. Probably because in real life, glasses frames are very stiff and certainly don’t bend that way, but in toon world, things stretch and warp so expressively. That’s certainly part of Jones’s animation style, especially in Bugs Bunny.
In addition, the repetition is so pervasively hypnotic. It’s in the sidewalk, glasses, and the repeating frames of the gif. The pastel pink and turquoise against a soft, dark background are very relaxing to look at – the pink against navy blue and the rhythm of the gif’s movement actually caught my attention before I even realized they were glasses. And the questions leave you wondering – why should pairs of glasses march so purposefully? Where are they going? The highlights in the glass suggest they’re heading towards a light source. The curvature of the ground makes the glasses feel massive, like they’ve taken over the world. I just can’t look away.
