The talented Valerie Kausen is the special guest of honor at the Bradford Animation Festival at the National Media Museum in the United Kingdom. They screened "The Magical World of Chuck Jones" on the big screen for the first time in 20 years (Valerie was a producer) while Chuck Jones short cartoons played in other venues. The Festival ends on the 17th…so if you're in the Bradford, U.K. area (near Manchester) skootchy on over and see what's happening. (In case you were wondering, "Skootchy" is a technical term that means "come on down".)

Valerie, 20 years ago.

It's always wonderful to poke around in the Chuck Jones archives (what some people call 'curating' — but isn't everyone a curator? 'Poking around' sounds like more fun to me) to see what might be just right for an exhibition (big or small) like the works selected for Bradford Animation Festival's Chuck Jones Centenary Tribute.

In the photo above, Chuck demonstrates how three of the characters he developed and/or created are drawn in a similar way: Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Wile E. Coyote. These drawings are featured on pages 132, 133 of "Chuck Reducks: Drawing From the Fun Side of Life" by Chuck Jones.

The five drawings in the photograph above are from three of the many archive boxes filled with Chuck Jones sketches–animals, children, conveyances. BTW, if you want a baby to look like a baby, don't give it a cigar to smoke (see image lower left.)

These last drawings appeared in Chuck Jones's autobiography, "Chuck Amuck: the Life and Times of an Animated Cartoonist". Clockwise from upper left, Johnson the cat, Teddy, a dachshund in a wet suit (drawn during the pre-production for Jones's "The White Seal"), a 1941 caricature holiday card from his Unit A at Leon Schlesinger Productions and Johnson with his tongue depressor.