Is it just me or do cartoons seem to be better when the animation isnt as polished? I overheard a conversation about how the simpsons earlier seasons had more charm because the animation took a backseat (characters are often off model)
The more I think about it, with a couple of exceptions, cartoons were simply better with all of these flaws.
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I think there's a correlation.
Whether it's a causation, I'm not sure.
>I overheard a conversation about how the simpsons earlier seasons had more charm because the animation took a backseat (characters are often off model)
>Is it just me or
think next time before you type
now that I think about it, those first seasons with the cheaper animations are the ones that got renewed
It made them more dynamic and hand-crafted, that's for sure. It's almost uncanny how sterile most modern animation is, even though shows like Clarence and Steven Universe are still drawn with pencil and paper (and then scanned in, cleaned up, and digitally inked & painted). Stuff made entirely in the analog domain generally just has an indescribable charm to it, heavily out of nostalgia sure but also a tangible difference in look, more dreamlike by way of being less accurate, if not hazy like videotape then speckled with fine grain like film. Ed, Edd n' Eddy stuck to old techniques for as long as they were able in order to preserve that look.
I think they do a lot more tracing these days in order to ensure an on-model look because it's cheaper. TV certainly doesn't get the ratings it used to, so there isn't as much money in it. With effort though dynamic animation is still doable, Clarence actually has a couple of episodes with some impressive bits.
don't most companies still send the keys off and outsource the inbetweens?
Shows like King of the Hill had extensive rules for the outsourced animators to follow.
>even though shows like Clarence and Steven Universe are still drawn with pencil and paper
wat really?
Last I saw they drew keys on paper and scanned them in and Wacom them, they don't draw all 12 fps themselves.
I've always disliked how Spongeboob looks now. He looks too simple and neat.
I keep looking at that picture and I finally figured out what annoys me about the 2014 picture. Its that the line of action has always been drilled in when I was in animation classes so I'm unconsciously always looking for it. Straight lines are boring, Old Spongebob is just standing still and has a line of action.
>simpsons earlier seasons
>animation took a backseat
It takes a backseat NOW. The older seasons had much more polished animation, just like how that picture of yours where the older art is much more solid and the right is "polished" by a standard of uniformity that no-one actually uses.
This. I don't even study animation but I noticed this. The old Spongebob has a more relaxed, natural stance. The new Spongebob, in that picture anyway, looks stiff. It's like he sat on a broom handle or something.
Hi John K.
The appeal of traditional animation has always been its imperfections. There will always be drawings that are off model or muddy, but that's proof that a human being had crafted those drawings with passion and heart. The problem with computers is that they take away those imperfections, and what you get is a very linear and stale style of animation.
You're right that most outsourced animation studios do a lot of tracing. What normally happens is that the American studios do all the storyboarding, but also add lots of panels to create the major keyframes of the animation. Then the studio that it gets outsourced to traces over the keyframes and do the rest of the inbetweens. So pretty much all the Korean animation studios do nowadays is in-between work, which is why TV animation looks so stale. It's possible that Clarence gif was entirely done at CN before being outsourced, or they requested that scene to be done by completely done by a top animator at the outsourced studio.
>You're right that most outsourced animation studios do a lot of tracing.
Only Korean ones though.
This never happens with Japanese studios.
They're also paid the equivalent of our minimum wage with no concept of overtime.
Koreans are just in-betweeners through and through. Japan has a lot of pride in animation, so of course they will take all outsourced work seriously and not trace.
However, Japan is crazy expensive to outsource to compared to Korea, and most Japanese studios are busy working on Japanese anime to do outsourced work.
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polished = refined in this case
Doesn't Japan also outsource to Korea?
That is just child's play when it comes to the sterilization of animation that is thanks to Koreans. Now what happened to the animation of adult shows (especially the ones made by Seth Macfarlane such as pic related) is the real tragedy. Unlike CN's and Nick's shows, Fox and the creators of their animated shows intentionally forced their animators to be as on mode as possible and the results are on display right here.
The old intro, while definately not bouncy or cartoony, still had a hand drawn aethstetic and somewhat fluid animation. It had enough off model moments and sketchiness in the frames that one couldn't mistake it for traditional hand drawn animation. The animation kind of looks like a slightly exaggerated version of real life human motion which works with what the show was trying to be. Meanwhile, the HD remake of the intro, while still technically mostly drawn with paper and pencil (then scanned in and digitally inked and painted) looks so stilted that one could easily mistaken it for flash puppet animation. This has the result of the characters looking extremely soulless which ironically fits into the slow flanderization of the characters of that show into hollow caricatures of their former selves.
only if the budget runs out
Yep. Like I said, Koreans are cheap in-betweeners for other counties.
Not trying to dis Koreans. They're starting to realize how much grunt work they're doing and are trying to push an industry of their own. There's lots of Korean cartoons right now, and they're pretty great. Very few shows are being subbed in English though. Pic related is one of my favorites.
don't you have other dissenting posts to reply with T. mr enter or some equally autistic rebuttals?
So what you are saying is;
>it's a "amerifats fall for the "HD" meme, except in this case it's a cartoon instead of video games" episode
With that I agree.
It's not about being polished, it's about the method of animation itself, to the right we see a model that is used in some cheap-to-use software that animates quickly but requires pre-made models that can't suffer too much change when moving in an animation. To the left we have a single drawing that was made specifically for that shot. Think of it as an expensive cloth puppet and a cheap wooden one, you have better control of the movements of the second but if a part wasn't made to bend you can't bend it no matter how much you need to bend it for your scene.
>Is it just me
It is never just you. Even your weirdest inner thoughts. Stop fucking asking.
>Is it just me
NO IS NOT JUST YOU
EXIST 7 FUCKING BILLION OF PEOPLE ON THIS PLANET
YOU' RE NOT A SPECIAL SNOW FLAKE.
I'm not an expert, but as an artist I'm 100% sure that those little imperfections in hand drawn animation make things more pleasing and warm. It's like your brain enjoys processing that little bit of wobbling in the lines. I can probably make parallels with music too, e.g. a drum-machine hardly sounds as nice as an actual competent drummer on a nice drum kit. You can achieve texture and roughness in digital art but at the moment it's still not at the same level as the human hand.
nice tumblr post
are you incapable of communicating without memes
autism
Also in your picture's case, things are definitely cheaper.
> No background texture in 2014
> Spongebob is not wider at the top (against directives given by the creator, it's explicitly stated that the top should be wider)
- Feet are copy/pasted
- Pupils same size in 2014
- Bad holes/texture on SB's side, look how it overlaps with the arm?
- Shitty perspective on the pants box
- Shitty hand pose
- Bad cancer colors
I think think it's safe to assume you didn't grow up with the original Ren & Stimpy cartoon? John Kricfalusi the creator has this great philosphy on how cartoon characters and their bodies should react to the world they live in.
True the pilot isnt always the cleanest looking animation, but a lot of the time, it's the most entertaining engaging because the creator put the time and the attention to detail to things like how SpongeBob's forehead should wobble a little out of sync with the rest of his body due to the weight balance. You also get more visual style because it's really as close to the creators vision as you can get. I'd take a pilot over a syndicated cartoon that ships out their animation to another country.
Nowadays computers have made much of the discussion moot, right?
>pitching a show
>really desperately want it to be done in house by fewer, more skilled animators and in a style that doesn't require enough inbetweens to warrant outsourcing
>know that's going to be a fucking near impossible sell with how people are dead set on following the frankly obsolete animation pipeline
>half of the shit that takes them a fucking year to make could be done in like a week by just making it mixed media and using like a handful of good looking shortcuts
>everyone is working with this obtuse paper puppet style of animation because it's "efficient" when really it just makes the pipeline more and more of a cluster fuck
>nobody willing to Frankenstein effects anymore
>the budget gets eaten up by all the wrong people and they keep finding worse and worse ways to spend it
It's like people don't realize we've fucking had two decades of incredible animation technology developments that let something thst took 7 years to make take 1 year instead, or even less than that, and they keep putting in too many cooks for something that really just needs a small team of people who know what the fuck they're doing delivering something that doesn't have to be disney perfect, but still has effort. There's s reason people like shit like ash vs evil dead despite the low budget, all the effects are still practical. They still try, but people are more open to limited things with vision than robotic in model shit or soulless perfect cgi dolls.
You can always keyframe an entire show by yourself, and have someone in house do the in betweens.
Tldr
Pretty much. I rewatched SU this week and I gotta say the art from the earlier seasons was much more visually interesting, even if it was more loose. It let the artists do what they wanted in meaningful ways. Like Raven and Paul's episodes from Season 1 are fucking great in terms of art, while their later ones aren't as good, and sometimes just bad. I think a lot of that has to do with the production change later on
Yeah but that isn't as efficient.
I think the only way to convince them is to make the pilot underbudget and ahead of schedule to show them how much of an edge you can have by just dropping this shitty system everyone thinks they have to go through to make cartoons., when really all you need is like, a really small team instead of one million interns. It makes the pipeline smaller, the artistic vision is kept, and frankly it makes things shorter and cheaper to have people who know what they're doing instead of a conga line of people playing telephone with instructions.
Sure.
It's a people from America has fallen for the "muh quality" opinion, but instead of video game graphics it's cartoon handmade animation being replaced with flashshit "animation".
I thought it would be better to use the shorthand version but apparently it wasn't clear enough for you.
It's hard to balance art with business. Animation companies are a business first and foremost and won't care about spending lots of time and money for the highest quality. Money is on the line.
If you really want artistic freedom, go indie or make a web series. There's no way the industry will let you do that. However with indie projects you lose mass marketing, so it's a tough call. One thing has to sacrifice.
If you can prove it and sell how you're able to consistently do it, I don't think anyone would turn you down, save if it were a bad show concept.
I understood what you said but even now you still failed to reply without using memes.
Depends on the cartoon. In the case of Spongebob, the animation in 1999 was better.
>using memes
Such as?
> the "muh quality" opinion
Doing them and inking them on paper is what korean studios usually do
>People having that opinion legitimately makes it a meme.
That's not a meme.
It's called nostalgia, it makes you remember the shitty animation more fondly.
There's plenty of reasons new spongebob is shit, but I don't think better animation is one of them.
It's not just cartoons doing this, video games have a bad habit of becoming 'sterile' and losing the original gritty imperfect qualities it had in favor for looking like shiny plastic.
It's not necessarily the main cause. You do have a point in things becoming too perfect, however. Nostalgia Critic tends to be shit, but he had a pretty nice vid where he talked about films being so "perfect" that it prevents enjoyment.
I guess it's something like the uncanny valley of animation: things looking so neat, so well done, that they start looking kinda bad.
The issue isn't the quality, it's losing the heart that was kept in traditional animation after it was upgraded to computers. Even though modern TV animation looks cleaner, it also looks too linear and robotic. It's not so much the imperfections that make traditional animation look better, it's the fact that you can tell a human being actually drew it without being tainted by computer rendering.
I'll admit Season 1 Spongebob was pretty muddy though. When it came to outsourcing animations back then, it was hit or miss depending on the studio. TMS was god tier back in the day, while Akom was considered terrible.
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I think some of the very few last movies which weren't done digitally (drawn on paper with pencil, cleaned up on cels and inked and painted on cels) were Princess Mononoke and Happiness is a Warm Blanket, Charlie Brown.
>Empty Hero
Your problem is defining "polish" as being on model with clean digital outlines
>Akom was considered terrible
Understatement if I ever heard one. Pic related
>Is it just me or do cartoons seem to be better when the animation isnt as polished?
Well, the concept of 'perfect' is very similar to generic, as perfect things tend to be similar in nature (because there can't be very many varieties of perfect).
But humans are imperfect, which means we tend to like things with flaws. It gives the work character, look to the blu ray remaster of The Sword in the Stone, it smoothed out the line work and took away the pencil lines that give vibrancy to the characters and backgrounds. These are technically flaws but they are just what cartoons need.
Otherwise, cartoons look more like they were made by designers rather than artists. They are engineers only to take in as much audience as they can and as such remove any soul it could have.
Do you think the same 'unpolished' charm can be achieved in programs such as flash?
Yes just look at everything submitted in newgrounds.
This is his current Season 10 design.
Of course. It just needs to all be done manually and not deal with automated tools or traced scans. Superjail has some great animations.
Ralph Bakshi did this in Toon Boom
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Looks like Spongebob's shoulder is cut off too
To be fair, the one in the left looks better, and that seems to be the DS version.
part of it's computer animation vs truly hand drawn stuff
the animation here is a bit stiff
Didn't Hillenburg come back? Has the show gotten any better?
>because the animation took a backseat (characters are often off model)
You meant the opposite of that.
And new spongebob isn't more or less polished than old Spongebob, it's more a change in style towards easier animation. More on model and less wild motion. It makes things look less... inspired. Old Spongebob was rarely off model the animation just used smears and things in those days. It really depends on whether or not you like the stiff and cleaner animation or the rougher more expressive animation. If you are an actual fan of animation you'll probably like the rougher stuff but normalfags can be put off by it.
>Clarence and Steven Universe are still drawn with pencil and paper (and then scanned in, cleaned up, and digitally inked & painted)
Where did you see that because I don't think it's true. It could be true but I've never seen that happening whenever they show their process. The storyboards are done on paper but I don't know about the keys. Japanese usually do the keys on paper and scan them but I don't know about American anymore.
Your'e just comparing hand drawn animation to digital. That has nothing to do with polish.
Looks like they're influenced by our current American styles and not anime. Bummer.
Family Guy was never animated well. I get what you're saying though. The only time they seem to give a fuck is when animating a fight scene and even then things are painfully on model.
Yeah and look at his shoes. Facing the same direction. It's the epitome of boring. Hands at nonexpressive positions. Both pupils the same size and looking dead. Everything about it is a downgrade in terms of expressiveness.
It's not because of computers. Computers don't do any of the animation, it's all people. It's just the techniques people use aren't as good. Look at any "webgen" animator from Japan and you'll see tons of expressive and imperfect stuff. That's pretty much what the webgen animation movement (if you want to call it that) in Japan is doing, making very expressive and off model animation. Due to the nature of how animation is made in Japan they can take these liberties while American studios can't.
There's no way to pitch such a show unless you're going to Netflix where you'll need your own studio for them to pick you up. The networks certainly don't want anything like that. What makes no sense is that it's easier than ever to do animation on your own and yet so few American studios have been made who are willing to do this kind of stuff. Online small studio stuff needs to get big. It's happening painfully slowly.
He's so fucking square. He truly is Spongebob Squarepants.
I'd like to know as well.
Mind telling me the source for the gif?
Space Dandy. Every episode has a different animation director.
First era > third era > second era
They've gone off-model a bit more and it's funny sometimes
Thank you
Nintendo's autistic-tier obsession with characters being spotlessly on-model in every appearance is a whole other beast.
How do you define the SpongeBob eras?
I don't know about eras but something was seriously wrong with Season 4.
Pardon me, but what show is that?
see
Am I the only one who understands rhetorical/hyperbolic questions?
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The brighter colours for most cartoons really bothers me and so does the sharper quality. My friend really likes the sharper cartoons but I definitely prefer cartoons looking softer.
>literally two frame fist shake
Still gets me
I find more unnerving the mechanical way Marge turns her head. Is as if her neck is broken or something.
And the fact that the hair is stiff as a board doesn't help.
Korea has been doing the Simpsons for the last 25 years
Its not just the design. Look at what colors they used to use.
Lots of darker. deluded color schemes. The modern designs aren't just ironed out but they have their colors ENHANCED
The right design burns my fucking eyes because he's so bright yellow
That's just because back then they used cell animation.
I don't have the link right now, but either Ian JQ or Rebecca Sugar showed some hand-drawn keyframes from the episode "Mr. Greg" on their Instagram. They named the Korean animator who drew them but I can't remember it at the moment. Steven Universe is animated by a Korean animation studio, and they still use pencil and paper a lot over there if I'm correct, so it's not really that surprising.
Got anything to read bout that? Seems interesting
I know about in Korea but I mean stateside.
>Do you think the same 'unpolished' charm can be achieved in programs such as flash?
I believe you can. Mediocre art programs have no affect your drawing and/or animation skills. It will slow you down, but you can achieve the same charm if you apply extra effort into your work.
pic related's movie was created with traditional and flash animation.