A Collaborative Post with introduction by Jacob Cook
Assistant Editor, BOOM BOX POST
Some things never stop being funny, no matter how much time has passed. This is also true for sound effects. Some classic sound effects and jokes we use have been around for more than half a century! Kate gave an excellent run down of animation sound's origin in her THE HISTORY OF ANIMATION SOUND post, and many sounds devised by Carl Stalling, Treg Brown and Jimmy MacDonald(and the derivatives of their sounds) are still being used by sound editors today! This week, I asked a few of our editors to tell me about their favorite cartoon sound effects.
Brad Meyer
Even though I don’t get to use them often, my favorite toony effect would be a fight ball. In old cartoons, when there is like 12 characters brawling in a cloud of dust, that’s a fight ball. I think they’re hilarious because you can fill them with ridiculous stuff, like a cat screeching.
Ian Howard
I kinda like the Jaw Harp boing. Those are kinda fun. I feel like its a sound effect that I heard growing up and it always stuck in my head, whenever someone was doing something goofy, I imagined it.
Tess Fournier
I’m not sure if this is a true toon sound effect, but I like the off-screen cat trope (i.e. when a character crashes into something off-screen and you hear that angry cat scream). We use an off-screen cow moo in the Loud House and every time I cut it in, I laugh out loud.
Jeff Shiffman
I really like the Bork, because it does a very succinct job of conveying disappointment. I honestly have no idea how it was created, but I went ahead and tried my best to recreate it for our series The Loud House. The important thing with this sound is that the pitch goes from high to low. and sounds a bit stretchy and silly.