On Darla Dimple

I was watching Cats Don't Dance the other day, for the first time in ages. Aside from the obvious and tragic fact that this is an often overlooked gem in the canon of animated feature films, this picture is full of top-notch animation, and some really great performances. One moment in particular that stood out for me was one shot of the character Darla Dimple in the song Big and Loud. It's a relatively brief shot (about twelve seconds), where she sings the line "They like it big, they like it loud, maybe a little bit jazzy sometimes". There is a spectacular little performance within that one line, and the quality of the animation is so juicy you could open a profitable lemonade stand franchise with the talent dripping from that twelve-second piece. The poses are so clean you could eat off them-- and that's to say nothing of their dynamicism, instant readability of the silhouettes, and perfect communication of attitudes therein-- the arcs are perfect, the movement itself is so beautifully fluid it makes me salivate (even the quality of the overlap is impressive), and that is to say nothing of what I consider to be impressive and creative acting choices, given the minute length of the shot itself and relative superficiality of the dialogue (you gotta work with what they give you, right?). Not to mention that, despite the broad nature of the action and poses, there are some great little subtleties in her face that just plus the whole performance a million times over. Did I mention that I'm also in love with the character design itself?
Essentially, this is a grade A piece of air-tight character animation within a single twelve-second shot. Take a look for yourself (the shot I'm talking about starts at around the 0:47 mark. Just watch the whole thing, you'll know it when you see it):

Arguably the best shot in the entire sequence, though there are many really, really good ones (I'm also a fan of Darla's delivery of the line "Leaves you kinda speechless, don't it?", and the opening line "I've seen 'em come and I've seen 'em go, there's one thing that I know").

Chew on that for a while.

-Lucas