Easter Sunday Special: "Funny Little Bunnies" (1934) (Patreon)

Click here to watch the video. 

For Easter Sunday, here is an animator breakdown video of Funny Little Bunnies! This information is courtesy of JB Kaufman/Russell Merritt’s Silly Symphonies: A Companion to the Classic Cartoon Series.

Under its tentative working title “The Funny Bunnies,” the story outline for Funny Little Bunnies was approved in October 1933. The musical score for the cartoon utilized the talents of both Frank Churchill and Leigh Harline. Churchill wrote the main title music including its song “See the Funny Little Bunnies” (with lyrics by Larry Morey), while the remainder of the score was written by Harline.

In this cartoon, director Wilfred Jackson gives the main animators their own individual set of rabbits—e. g. Dick Huemer is assigned to the elderly rabbit and cross-eyed bunnies and Dick Lundy animates the bunnies sculpting a “nude” model out of chocolate, a direct takeoff on Don Graham’s life classes conducted in the studio. This cartoon also marks the earliest known animation by Wolfgang (Woolie) Reitherman, as part of a group of junior animators supervised by Ben Sharpsteen.

Released March 24, 1934, this cartoon received the Gold Medal for Best Animated Film at the Venice Film Festival. This version seen here is the theatrical re-issue, released April 21, 1950.

One slight note: there is one shot of the film that has been left unidentified in the animator breakdown video. JB had mentioned the animator draft did not give an assignment to this shot and exposure sheets could not be located in the Archives.

Happy Easter, everyone!