Bob Clampett started his directing career with black-and-white animated shorts for the Looney Tunes series, this phase of his career lasting from 1937 to 1941. In 1941, fellow director Tex Avery departed the Warner Bros. Cartoons studio. Clampett replaced Avery as the head of a unit producing films for the Merrie Melodies series, while Norman McCabe took over Clampett's former unit. The chief animator of Clampett's new unit was Robert McKimson and his style dominated their early products. Clampett reportedly found this dominance to have stifling effects on creativity, and in time trusted two other animators of the unit with more autonomy: Virgil Ross and Rod Scribner. While Clampett certainly headed a unit with notably talented animators, the distinctive styles of said animators tended to