Isegoria

When screenwriter Zack Stentz was a little kid, he was obsessed by the Chuck Jones adaptation of Kipling’s “Rikki-Tikki-Tavi“:

I think the idea that your family pet is a secret badass who will fight cobras to protect you at night spoke to me on a deep level.

I remember loving it too, so I was surprised when someone mentioned another Chuck Jones-animated adaptation of a Kipling story, “The White Seal.”

Chuck Jones is a fascinating character — as you might expect of the guy who created the Road Runner, Wile E. Coyote, Pepé Le Pew, and Marvin Martian — and I remember enjoying his memoir, Chuck Amuck. I distinctly remember one anecdote.

Chuck’s father kept starting businesses, and each time he started a new business, he bought lots of letterhead. When the business soon failed, his kids were encouraged to use up the paper as fast as possible — so young Chuck got lots and lots of practice drawing.

Chuck’s grandson seems to have inherited a bit of the animator’s spirit, judging from this look at how Chuck studied seals for “The White Seal”:

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