TV Animation Art Is Mediocre

Although I'd seen those shows, along with many others, I wasn't aware at first they were from Japan, I just knew there were better than most of the animated series I saw on U. S. television. I wasn't aware of anime as a specific type of animation from Japan until I saw the movie Project A-ko (one of the funniest movies I've ever seen) and was immediately a fan of anime.

I think the main difference between animation in the U. S. and animation in Japan is that that in the U. S. it tends to be focused towards chidren, although that is slowly changing with shows like Family Guy and many of the shows on Adult Swim. In Japan, animation is used for all ages and all genres. As an example, the series Neon Genesis Evangelion is a great series, but it is not for children.

 

This may have something to do with how comics, in general, are viewed in the orient. Regardless of the fact that comic book fiction is a primary force in the America cinema and TV market. Comics, comic books, are still looked down upon as a primarily childish pursuit and medium. In the orient, they're totally accepted as 'adult-worthy' form of entertainment. For example, during rush hour train commutes, seeing heads buried in comics barely raises an eyebrow. Imagine the same scenario on the LIRR!

 

TV animation has to be done on a budget, and often very quickly so it's always going to look inferior to theatrical animation.

 

That is being generous at best. Most of the animated stuff on TV these days is just awful in my opinion.

 

Plus, in many manga they do stories that would be unlikely to be done in the U. S. Some examples that I have:

• X-Day: Three students and a teacher decide to destroy their school. They don't want to hurt anyone, they just want the school itself destroyed, each for their own reasons.
• Afterschool Charisma: Set in the near future, it is about a very unusual academy. What makes it unusual is that, with one exception (the son of the Headmaster), each member of the student body is a teenage clone of a famous historical figure. Among the students are: Florence Nightingale, Elizabeth I, Albert Einstein, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, and Marie Curie.

 

I think the crazy inside of her house was a stylistic choice. There's all kind of surreal stuff on her walls, like a mounted fish skeleton and things mounted in the wrong direction. That plus the two dimensional look make it fittingly unsettling.

 

A ripoff of Clone High, then?

 

I have learned, within this thread, the plain line drawing was a specific stylistic expression...I am not a fan of that particular style.
The other oddities, such as an upside down fish skeleton in a picture frame, are part of the charm of Hazels decor and do add to the overall feel.
I have always enjoyed the full background accents in many of the Warner cartoons. I especially like the very detailed backgrounds, for a TV cartoon anyway, used in almost every parody style episode.

 

Those were actually theatrical shorts (and thus had a higher budget). Warner didn't get into doing TV until the 1960's.

 

Every clip of current SpongeBob episodes I see is way too exaggerated, but the early seasons (especially seasons 1 and 2) had great animation for TV.

 

I think the first season or two were animated the old fashion way vs computer assisted.

 

Yeah, the first season was cel, the second season was a mix (I wanna say hand drawn, but colored by computers), then the third season went completely to computers.

 

I wrote the following as part of a post:

Which drew this response:

It is possible that Clone High (CH) was the inspiration for Afterschool Charisma (AC) since CH ended in 2003 and AC started in 2009. From what I picked up from the Wikipedia page about CH it seems to be the same basic premise as AC but while CH goes for humor, AC is much more serious (it opens with a clone of JFK being killed in the same way as his original).

I've noticed quite a few cases of series that seem similar to other series. Two examples of this:

• The TV series Once Upon A Time (which debuted in 2011 and features fairy tale characters transported into the real world), and the comic book series Fables (which debuted in 2002 and features fairy tale characters transported into the real world).
• The franchise Descendents (which debuted in 2015 and features the sons and daughters of fairy tale characters) and the web series Ever After High (which debuted in 2013 and features the sons and daughters of fairy tale characters).

 

Witches Night Out one worst tv animation specials I have ever seen..
Most had budget $200.00 dollars for 1978.. really bad.

 

Many current shows on the Cartoon Network support this thread’s main point, with many generically drawn characters rendered with slightly distinctive variations.
(What specifically comes to mind - the large circular “Charlie Brown”-like nose - but not as distinctive )

However, after watching dozens of episodes of “Teen Titans GO!” and “World Of Gumball”, (including multiple repeats), I’ve become much more “accepting”, due to the funny and entertaining scripts and dialogue.

 

I'm a big fan of Teen Titan GO! and only recently binged on WoG, that's a really fun show. I agree completely about the animation styles based on the entertaining stories that they produce.

 

Baby-sat my granddaughter last week for a few days and was fed a steady diet of Teen Titans Go! The show is on at all hours of the day! Couldnt help but reflect on when I bought the very 1st TT comicbook, a looong time ago!

 

This trend is largely due to the growing influence of CalArts and their instruction methods for young animators and artists.

 

The most obvious point I could make is, so, you're looking for steak, and you only have money for a hamburger? No problem, my friend...have a nice hamburger...

The expectations surrounding animated entertainment are always wildly skewed towards the one thing animation doesn't really pull off very well: real life. This is because you may not have compared animation with the art forms that brought it this far forward: mostly, line drawings created to illustrate something it would take too much time and craft to set up, light, and photograph, just to describe the artists' point. Yet of course you have access to a paper where somebody in the first few pages, does that duty five days a week. Maybe you've heard, Japanese cartoonists (that make illustrated static images, not actual "'toons") are schooled and studied to that a simple line from a pen can communicate half the idea with one stroke. This makes political cartoons, Asian artworks and even hieroglyphics co-owners of a basic truth: like as in Pictionary, it's not about the art...it's about getting the idea across.

And this is where the most basic criticisms fail with animation: your expectations. Miyazaki can make you forgive a choppy sequence of a child running down stairs "shot on threes"...because in the next scene, the very wind blowing through the grass is otherworldly. Betty Boop and Koko seem to have their own exclusive body structures...but you can't help bob your head along with them as the charm of the inventive imagery makes you shake your head, "yadda-de-yadda-de-yadda...". Then there's the awfully-pixilated Rocky & Bullwinkle...teaching you in-jokes about Cold War politics that stay with you years past those memories of debating Vietnam with your Nixon-era father.

Animation can be pretty, but at the cost of time, budget or reason. Animation can be smooth, but does that really do anything more than just make you hunger for even smoother, more-accurate images, above and beyond the intent of the artist? Animation can be expensively, lavishly rendered...but, don't be surprised if you'll be expected to pay someone to enjoy this, moreso than squinting at YouTube offerings.

But the good news, any ainimation can be clever, funny, moving (emotionally) and instructive, at any level of expertise, if you are willing to adjust your expectations to see what is there, not just what could be or should be.

 

The new Cartoon Network series “Apple and Onion” flounders along the predictable depths of what one would invision when imagining animated produce.
Toss in a British accent for added instant amusement.

 

You certainly can't beat the great animated shows from my youth. Bugs Bunny, Road Runner -- those were classics.

SpongeBob? What a laugh and I don't mean in a GOOD way.

 

The Disney stuff had that gorgeous fluid motion and color to die for. The stories were always a little bland for me though. Just not up my alley.

The B&W Popeye cartoons are amazing. The attention to all the little details that remain in motion from frame to frame is truly impressive.

Bugs Bunny is classic kid's Saturday morning heaven, but I wouldn't call the artwork itself particularly outstanding. The appeal there was more the combination of great humor, decent plot, and of course terrific voicing. Made for some of the most memorable characters of our time.

Rocky & Bullwinkle was classic minimalism with wicked wit. They could get away with the more simply drawn and animated characters because the shows were often beautifully biting. Like a genre unto itself, and maybe the progenitor of the Beavis & Butthead school of animation... which also worked just fine for me as an overall viewing experience.

The Flintstones was sort of a cartoon version of The Honeymooners... at least that's always kind of how I saw it. Not the greatest to look at in and of itself, but a pretty entertaining show when you factored the characters into it.

But you know... in its own right these are all a kind of art, and every artist has their own style. Is B&W Popeye better than Rocky & Bullwinkle? I'd say they were just different. As long as it's a good time it works. It's when other shows realized they could get away with less that poorer quality stuff started appearing. Stuff like Top Cat, etc... not particularly well drawn, and not very funny. Underdog is another one of those.

 

You do realize, when you talk about "the cartoons of my youth", you are really talking about decades and decades of craft that developed over a period of years in which Hollywood was learning to entertain theaters full of general audience, who were not there to see the cartoons, right? An entertainment "bonus", designed to compliment more mature filmmaking that went into the features?

And, you do realize that the cartoons created for television, was a production system with a much more critical budget disparity, mostly aimed at actual children's intellect, without the pressures to entertain general audiences of primarily adults? An entertainment "product", designed to satisfy uncaring sponsors, while not challenging the audience if Mom and Dad might be watching over their shoulders?

Do you even understand how your judgements of the differences of these two mediums, albeit the same delivery system when you're a kid not watching these in a movie house, has a vastly different way of making impressions about quality and purpose?

 

...(1) The Witch Hazel transformation sequence had, of interest:
When WH transforms, 1910s? pop song " Oh You Beautiful Doll " is played on the soundtrack. I've run into this song up-front featured in another room IIRC also Pist-War period from another studio...One of Famous (Paramount?)'s " bouncing ball " cartoons uses it as the featured song of the 'toon, I think with a parade of toys. I once read Gore Vidal's novel HOLLYWOOD, where the song is referred to as being used by Woodrow Wilson when he courted his second wife - Has anyone else here ever read Vidal's novel?
The assumed Marlin Brando caricature of the mirror-genie was notable - I don't know, I think MeToo might NOT APPROVE of that gag!
(2) It linked at YouTube to a new-to-me commercial Warner Brother's cartoon by Chuck Jones - " 90 Day Wondering ", a cartoon trying to sell U.S. Army enlistees on renlisting in the Army! It makes a couple of references that presumably relate to the specifics - Was 99 days the amount of time those-femobbed had to re-enlidt without any additional rigamarole?
The 'toon ends with the ex-soldier re-upping (OH NO! I spoiled!) , just before what I guess was the 90 day deadline passes, and there"s reference to I guess specific Claus/s that the time's original audience would have intimately known I suppose, and we get a title suggesting that possible renlistees avoid the trouble and re-enlist now - Obviously this would have been shown to those still in khaki - at the base theater, as a short before the feature? Perhaps in 16MM form as an " educational "/forced propaganda situation also? Speaking of Chuck Jones, that there emojoi......... .