Daily Inspiration Quote by Chuck Jones

Start with character and the drawing will take care of itself: that’s not a cozy platitude, it’s a production note smuggled in as philosophy. Chuck Jones spent decades in a medium that constantly tempts artists to show off draftsmanship, velocity, and “cool” design. His warning is that those pleasures are cheap if they don’t serve a personality. In animation, the audience doesn’t fall in love with lines; they fall in love with motives. A coyote’s doomed confidence, a duck’s bruised ego, a rabbit’s weaponized calm. When those inner engines are clear, the hand almost can’t help but make the right choices.

The subtext is a rebuke to technique-first thinking. “Good drawings” aren’t anatomically perfect drawings; they’re drawings that read. Character dictates silhouette, timing, and exaggeration. A smug character sits differently. A frantic one occupies the frame like a mess. Jones is really talking about decision-making under pressure: in a studio pipeline, you need a north star that keeps every pose, smear, and take consistent. Character provides continuity stronger than model sheets.

There’s also a democratic edge here. You don’t have to be the most virtuosic draftsman to make something alive; you have to be a good observer of behavior. Jones came up in the golden age of Warner Bros., where gags were king, but the enduring ones are inseparable from psychology. Comedy becomes consequence: the laugh lands because the action feels inevitable for that person. Start there, and the drawing isn’t decoration; it’s evidence.