Time & Perspective Quote by Marc Davis

There is a knife-twist of insider candor in Marc Davis's jab: animation, now canonized as a pinnacle of draftsmanship, began as a refuge for the professionally stranded. By calling early animators "unsuccessful newspaper cartoonists", he isn't merely insulting individual talent; he's puncturing the prestige story the industry likes to tell about itself. The line sets up a hierarchy Davis cares about: cartooning as shorthand, animation as embodied performance. His punchline - "their ability to draw living things was practically nil" - frames animation not as clever drawings that happen to move, but as a demanding discipline of anatomy, weight, timing, and believable gesture. "Living things" is doing the heavy lifting: it implies empathy and observation, not just style.

The subtext is positional. Davis is speaking from within Disney's mid-century push toward "realism" and character animation, when the studio cultivated life drawing, reference footage, and a kind of actorly approach to movement. This is a professional boundary marker: the old guard came in through gags and editorial shorthand; the newer ideal is motion with psychological credibility. It's also a subtle defense of why Disney's craft culture mattered - why training, iteration, and studying life weren't elitist affectations but the difference between a bounce and a breath.

The barb lands because it rewrites the origin myth with a blunt sociological truth: new media often start as a dumping ground for people other fields won't reward, until standards harden and reputations follow. Davis's insult is also a backhanded compliment to animation's evolution: the medium outgrew its apprenticeship phase by demanding artists learn to make drawings feel alive, not merely look amusing.