Topic: Drawing and animation

[tendoboy1984]

I'm a huge animation buff.

So that huge wall of text I posted about the decline and rebirth of animation during the 1980's was wrong? Do you think Who Framed Roger Rabbit single-handedly saved the animation industry from becoming an obscure realm of kids shows and licensed cartoons?

[TJ Spyke]

Part of the quality of animation is the frames per second. Old Looney Tunes are about 24 frames, along with classic Disney movies. That number has decreased over time, and reference frames have increased. Scooby Doo, while awesome, has some of the highest of these frames where all that moves is the mouth. Having cartoons with 11 - 14 frames decreases the costs. Part of the issue is that until the early 90s, cartoons could basically be a commercial for toys and merchandising, subsidizing the toons. Factor in rising popularity of video games, general dislike of cartoons by the mainstream (forgetting about how popular Bugs Bunny, Fred Flintsone, Popeye, etc were with adults), and rising costs of material and labor, its little wonder cartoons have declined in the past 10 - 15 years. There used to be so many good cartoons, we took it for granted. Now it seems we wait for that one break out hit, only to see the network kill it in favor of infomercials.

Not to say all cartoons in the past were good. For every GI Joe there was at least 2 Turbo Teens or Giligan's Planets. Did you know there was a cartoon hawking Rubix Cube?? Mr T had his own show, as did Gary Coleman as an angel. Not only was Alf a live action sitcom, but he too had a cartoon. But I'd still watch those over Sonic and Yugioh.

The animation industry was in complete disarray during the 1970's and 1980's. Dinsye pretty much kept the animation industry alive during the 1980's with hits like The Little Mermaid and Beauty and the Beast.

In my opinion, Who Framed Roger Rabbit may have single-handedly revived interest in the old style of cartooning, hearkening back to an era where cartoons were edgy and wacky, and cartoonists like Tex Avery, Chuck Jones, and Friz Freleng were the biggest guys in the industry.

After the success of Roger Rabbit, even the once mighty Warner Bros. had decided to reignite their animation studio in the late 1980's, producing hits like Tiny Toons, Animaniacs, and Batman: The Animated Series.

Beauty and the Beast was 1991, an The Little Mermaid barely counts as the 1980s as it came out November 14, 1989. Even counting Mermaid, Disney released a total of 5 animated movies in the 1980s, the other 4 being The Fox and the Hound (1981), The Black Cauldron (1985), The Great Mouse Detective (1986), and Oliver & Company (1988). Disney didn't really have their animate Renaissance until the 90s. The success of Who Framed Roger Rabbit though did spur Warner Bros. to re-start their animation division the next year and led to the Disney Renaissance

John Kricfalusci is funny, but not sure he should be allowed total control over stuff. When MTV revived Ren & Stimpy for him (as Ren and Stimpy Adult Party Cartoon), he gave us stuff like making Ren and Stimpy gay lovers.

Animation on TV was kinda lazy in the 70s and 80s, partially because many of these shows were merely produced as 22 minute long infomercials to help sell toys (like Jem, Transformers, and especially He-Man).

[Oblivion]

Nah. The years are a bit off, considering The Little Mermaid and Roger Rabbit were both made in the late 80's and Beauty and the Beast was made in the early 90's, but that sounds agreeable. It was mostly your complaining of outsourcing. You want American animation to be made in America for the sake of being in America. Your reasoning? "Japan does it, so so should we." Despite the fact that they have a completely different economy and culture than we do.


Japan produces much more hand-drawn animation than American studios, but they don't complain about rising costs, nor do they have to rely on cheap overseas workers. What are the Japanese doing so right?

That is it right there. As a society as a whole, we still feel cartoon's are made for children. The Japanese do not. Their animation industry is like our Hollywood.


...except the fact that Iron Man will be outsourced to China to help with the costs. xD

EDIT: AAAANDDD...TJ Spyke beats me to it. :

[tendoboy1984]

Beauty and the Beast was 1991, an The Little Mermaid barely counts as the 1980s as it came out November 14, 1989. Even counting Mermaid, Disney released a total of 5 animated movies in the 1980s, the other 4 being The Fox and the Hound (1981), The Black Cauldron (1985), The Great Mouse Detective (1986), and Oliver & Company (1988). Disney didn't really have their animate Renaissance until the 90s. The success of Who Framed Roger Rabbit though did spur Warner Bros. to re-start their animation division the next year and led to the Disney Renaissance

John Kricfalusci is funny, but not sure he should be allowed total control over stuff. When MTV revived Ren & Stimpy for him (as Ren and Stimpy Adult Party Cartoon), he gave us stuff like making Ren and Stimpy gay lovers.

Animation on TV was kinda lazy in the 70s and 80s, partially because many of these shows were merely produced as 22 minute long infomercials to help sell toys (like Jem, Transformers, and especially He-Man).

Well yeah, but after the success of Who Framed Roger Rabbit, and the coming revolution that was Nickelodeon, the animation industry quickly moved away from producing licensed crap and focused more on "creator driven" cartoons. Nickelodeon pioneered the idea of giving creative freedom back to the cartoonists, which spawned cartoons like Rugrats, Doug, Ren and Stimpy, Roccos Modern Life, etc.

The only reason Adult Party Cartoon existed was because Spike TV approached John and told him to go all out on the new Ren and Stimpy cartoon. They let him make the show as risque as he wanted it. John claimed that many of his ideas  for Adult Part Cartoon came from fans of the old cartoon, and he essentially kept them to himself all these years, since Nickelodeon would have never allowed them to be made.

I detested the Adult Party Cartoon series, because it was so vulgar and full of pointless crap that made absolutely no sense. The episodes were often full of gags that had no substance, they were just there for a gross-out factor. The one episode that I actually enjoyed was "Ren Seeks Help". That one was actually quite touching, and it had some genuinely beautiful animation sequences, and it somewhat recaptured part of what made the original series so great.

[tendoboy1984]

Nah. The years are a bit off, considering The Little Mermaid and Roger Rabbit were both made in the late 80's and Beauty and the Beast was made in the early 90's, but that sounds agreeable. It was mostly your complaining of outsourcing. You want American animation to be made in America for the sake of being in America. Your reasoning? "Japan does it, so so should we." Despite the fact that they have a completely different economy and culture than we do.


Japan produces much more hand-drawn animation than American studios, but they don't complain about rising costs, nor do they have to rely on cheap overseas workers. What are the Japanese doing so right?

That is it right there. As a society as a whole, we still feel cartoon's are made for children. The Japanese do not. Their animation industry is like our Hollywood.


...except the fact that Iron Man will be outsourced to China to help with the costs. xD

EDIT: AAAANDDD...TJ Spyke beats me to it. : :

"We still feel cartoons are made for children."


It didn't used to be that way. Cartoons made during the 1940's and 1950's were made for the general public (adults going to the movies). The jokes and humor was way beyond what would be considered appropriate for a children's cartoon.


I blame William Hanna and Joseph Barbera for the decline of the cartoon industry. The crap they made during the 1970's and 1980's basically turned the entire animation industry into a cheap form of children's entertainment. Advertising agencies took notice of this and began to use cartoons as overblown marketing tools (a 30-minute toy commercial, so to speak). As an end result of all this, parents groups wanted these new types of cartoons to be appropriate for children, so no more cartoon violence, TNT, cross-dressing rabbits, slapstick, racist caricatures, etc.


How ironic, considering that William Hanna and Joseph Barbera created Tom and Jerry, considered by many to be quite controversial due to it's violence and somewhat mature subject matter.