Bugs Bunny Bugs Bunny Bugs Bunny is an animated cartoon character, created in the late 1930s by Leon Schlesinger Productions (later Warner Bros. Cartoons) and voiced originally by Mel Blanc. Bugs is best known for his starring roles in the "Looney Tunes" and "Merrie Melodies" series of animated short films, produced by Warner Bros. Though a similar character debuted in the WB cartoon "Porky's Hare Hunt" (1938) and appeared in a few subsequent shorts, the definitive character of Bugs is widely credited to have made his debut in director Tex Avery's Oscar-nominated film "A Wild Hare" (1940). Bugs is an anthropomorphic gray
Bugs Bunny Scare-um" (1939), directed again by Dalton and Hardaway. This cartoon—the first in which he is depicted as a gray bunny instead of a white one—is also notable as the rabbit's first singing role. Charlie Thorson, lead animator on the film, gave the character a name. He had written "Bugs' Bunny" on the model sheet that he drew for Hardaway. In promotional material for the cartoon, including a surviving 1939 presskit, the name on the model sheet was altered to become the rabbit's own name: "Bugs" Bunny (quotation marks only used, on and off, until 1944). In his autobiography, Blanc claimed