Why are Americans so bad at writing cartoons nowadays?

Why are Americans so bad at writing cartoons nowadays?

Low skill
Nepotism
Faggots who grew up with anime and video games and think references are actual jokes
>Lol Finalfantasy and Evangelion amirtie? xD

>nowadays

cartoon writing peaked with venture brothers

John K. said it best. (inb4 but John K. sux lmao) Most writers on current cartoons are suburban kids with very little life experience or perspective to make good writing. They compensate by making "lore" and "feels" to cover up the general line-to-line garbage writing by having fans wank over a background object that was in frame for about 5 seconds and then wonder why the show became so unsatifying once they figure out the basic bitch lore.

What do you mean? You don't like classic lines such as "Meep morps" and characters speaking like Tumblr girls?

Muh 90s anime references.

Australia is a better colony.

The angle of lapis’ nose bothers me for some reason

It makes it look like it's directly between her eyes

Good, it’s not just me

>nowadays

Because the audience of American Cartoons is actually cancerous and kids are perhaps the worst fucking audience to make quality entertainment for, for adults.

That being said, being raised with smart phones and other garbage allows kids now to just tune out of TV instead of watching it for the sake of there's nothing else better to watch/do at night. I still believe that's the reason why toonami did well in the 90's.

Low Budget.
Not given enough time.
Creators think that they are hot shit and can ignore glaring problems.
Creators lose control of their own creation and let others step all over them.

Because they quite literally don't write cartoons anymore.
>dude, looney tunes, a bunch of comedic, self contained, theatrical shorts, were story driven
>so let's make our episodic adventure show with an ongoing plot board driven cause then we'll be able to draw funny hehehehe

And so they hire a bunch of "indie cartoonists" who've only worked on their college assignment webcomics about slice of life lesbians because apparently making a static word heavy comic is the same as drawing an engaging storyboard meant for a screenplay, and so you get people who 1, don't know how to tell a story in the medium they're working in, and 2, don't know what a good story actually is or how to tell it because they don't have a library of reference for good writing (just dude nostalgic anime and pop culture lmao) and have never sat down and written anything themselves. They think they have, but they haven't. You absolutely need to write at least a few short stories in text before you even begin to understand basic story structure. You have to do it. If your first project is some unending epic, you don't know how to write and havent started to write properly yet.

What happens is that then the stories are paced like shit because by necessity of being on tv they have to do a lot of things at the same time as one another, but now they don't have a reliable script to keep everything on the same consistency. This, of course, means story driven cartoons get royally fucked, but it also means episodic cartoons become wildly inconsistent in general tone, and unless the point of your cartoon is a random grabbag of unrelated stuff like the twilight zone, ultimately you get a really bad pace of episodes that don't flow well with one another. So you have entire seasons of shitty "deep" stories with nothing there to add variety to the pacing, nothing engaging, just the same one note because of bad communication and circlejerking.

Storyboarders. Most current cartoons are written not by profesional writters but by the same people that make the storyboard.

Who's John K.?

>>dude, looney tunes, a bunch of comedic, self contained, theatrical shorts, were story driven
*board driven.

anyway, scripts are important because they give a general skeleton to the plot and make sure certain things aren't forgotten and are kept consistent. A lot of shitty cartoonists take this as "uuggghhh we have to make this on model and boring and they just talk to eachother uggghhh" but only because they're uncreative hacks who don't realize their job is to make a straight to the point script visually interesting. It doesn't help that animation students are only taught the most cursory knowledge on cinematography. Even AAA videogame cutscenes have more fancy movie techniques these days than even the most "adult" cartoon.

Fuck animation schools. Instead of teaching moebius, they teach pen ward. Instead of hitchcock, they teach the generic star wars hero's journey. Instead of anything that would actually help them do better jobs at storyboarding, they teach them the bare minimum.

It'd be fine if at least they were good visual storytellers like genndy tartakovsky. He made Samurai Jack, a show with virtually no writing, engaging as fuck. If you're neither a good writer or a good visual storyteller/cinematographer, then what the fuck are you doing storyboarding? Why are you pretending its worth sacrificing the plot to make shitty meme faces for the characters, as if that's a valuable thing? it's not, its a masturbatory thing.

If you don't like it, go watch another show.

Like?

go watch another show, there's a whole... slew... of other shows that... follow very strictly to model sheets.

And yes, I DO think it's appropriate.

The show isn't justice league, it'll never be justice league. Go watch that.

that only applies to cartoon network shows and a chunk of disney shows
another chunk of disney shows and most of nickelodeon's shows are script driven

most board driven cartoons still have professional writers doing the outlines the boarders work on, and a lot of board driven shows do tend to stay on model (like Star Vs and Regular Show)

I was thinking that about SJ as well. SJ is also storyboad driven because its mainly visuals with little talking.

the fact that its mainly visuals with little talking is also the reason why its pretty much the only 22-minute cartoon that's board driven

Oh shit, Ian just BTFO not only every cartoon reviewer besides pan, but online reviewers in general

The hero western animation needs

WTF?????? ARE YOU IMPLYING THAT

RICK AND MORTY ISNT THE BEST CARTOON EVER?

I MEAN HOW IS IT NOT GENIUS AND FUNNY

I MEAN
NIHILISM
POINTLESS GORE
PRETENTIOUS WRITING
LE ATHEISM
AND PICKLE RIIIIIIIIIICK!!!!

FUCK YOU LOW IQ SUBHUMAN

>most board driven cartoons still have professional writers doing the outlines the boarders work on
It doesn't matter if they're professional writers if they don't get to do nearly enough writing.

>nowadays

nostalgiafag pls

Americans were never good at writing cartoons

None of them, pretty much all modern cartoons are absolute garbage. Just about the only great one is Gravity Falls, and that ended a while ago.

If you want quality cartoons, you have to stick with 2000s stuff. Though there's plenty of trash amongst that as well, there are quite a few gems.

Humans suck at expressing themselves in any medium. We're barely above creative bankruptcy as a species

Cunt quotas.
Calarts.

a lot of shows have said professional writers as Story Editors, which means they also oversee the dialogue from the boarders and make notes for changes if deemed necessary

Nice bait user

dude, don't fool yourself. Gravity Falls wasn't any better. it was run of the mill shit

ITT: a few good points and a bunch of pompous cynics

>That qualifies as "nice bait"
Why are Sup Forums posters so bad at writing bait nowadays?

I'M PICKLE RIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIICK

>a lot of board driven shows do tend to stay on model (like Star Vs
Star Vs is animated using pre-rigged 2D puppets. That’s how the character designs stay consistent.

As for Regular Show, they clearly have boarders who know what they’re doing.

The west is just going through a lag in quality, the same way it's happened in the. I feel with the recent surge in interest involving older cartoons such as the 1930's Betty Boop animations and WW2 era cartoons, along with the influence of places such as, believe it or not, Sup Forums, the industry will garner new voices from talented individuals coming out with fresh ideas. We are already seeing it in the film industry, and it will trickle down to animation as well.

Just hang tight.

millennials took over

>Star Vs is animated using pre-rigged 2D puppets. That’s how the character designs stay consistent.
that was the case for season 1's episodes and Sugarcube's episodes in subsequent seasons, but not Rough Draft Korea's episodes

What has Sup Forums influenced?

No it wasn't. It wasn't as endearing as many 00s shows, but given modern "culture" it's unrealistic to expect that. In context it was fucking amazing.

Ren an Stimpy

Absolutely fantastic animation on a technical level but a horrendous artstyle.

"DUDE VIDEOGAMES SAILOR MOON REFERENCES QUIRKY MUSICAL DIDDIES, I'VE NO IDEA HOW TO PROPERLY IMPLEMENT ANY OF THIS, BUT I CAN BABBLE ABOUT IT ON TWITTER LATER SO IT'S ALL GOOD"

I'm not saying it has, I'm saying it will

Gravity Falls at least had some funny jokes. I don't know what the fuck people watch shit like SU for.

>I don't know what the fuck people watch shit like SU for.
Lapis a cute

>Script driven CN Studios shows
all of their non-Samurai Jack 22-minute shows
Johnny Bravo
Time Squad
Hi Hi Puffy AmiYumi
Squirrel Boy
Robotomy
Problem Solverz
earliest Clarence episodes (afterwards they switched to a hybrid kinda system where the outlines have a lot more dialogue in them than most board driven shows, also used with the PPG and Ben 10 reboots)

no, other current cartoons was better than it. current cartoons were fine, are fine, and will be fine.

gravity falls was hindered by cookie-cutter shit, and Disney shenanigans. The characters were nothing special, and it surprises me that people are still holding a torch for it, as it was just as bad as Rick and Morty when it came to "reddit" nad meme-ry shit

Social Marxism.

They focus more on sending a message than writing something entertaining-- all the width of an ocean, all the depth of a puddle, so to speak. Networks only enable this.
>John. K
That also.

>It's new and I don't like it!
>It was way better in the past/my childhood!

You are the cancer killing Sup Forums. Stop it.
you're not wrong, but goddamn is it annoying to see it fucking everywhere

Well we're all adult manchildren who still watch cartoons, so that probably skewers our view a bit.

This. Just nostalgiafags.

Bojack Horseman. If you can take a joke or two at the expense of the alt-right without REEEEE'ing like a monumental faggot, it's a show that hasn't been matched in quality for many, many years.

This sort of thing also explains why anyone working in animation seems to have not clue as to how minimum wage jobs actually work or how people interact at parties, they don't have experience with either.

Also this.
Nice digits, btw.

if you're a self pitying faggot.

I swear that show is for the mentally weak

I think they try to make fun of the left too (like the Buzzfeed parody that Diane works at) but they don't know how to so it ends up seeming like they aren't.

Being a little introspective for once wouldn't kill you, user.

>Board driven Nickelodeon shows
Ren & Stimpy
Rocko's Modern Life
various Oh Yeah Cartoons shorts
Spongebob (prior to the 2nd movie)
My Life as a Teenage Robot
Sanjay and Craig
Harvey Beaks

>Board driven Disney shows
Phineas and Ferb (though not Milo Murphy's Law past the pilot)
Fish Hooks
Mickey Mouse
Star Vs
Pickle and Peanut
Billy Dilley
(also wouldn't be surprised if Big City Greens is board driven given that it's mostly Harvey crew)

>Board driven
>Star Vs
Not really.

Yeah, I agree with that-- seems like they WANT to make fun of lefti-wing dumbshit, but they can never seem to go as hardcore as they do with their other jokes. It's almost kike their trying to tiptoe around someone specifically working on the show.

that's superficial falling-in-love-with-your-own-sadness introspection. that's nothing.

believe me, if you're doing it right, introspection should make you strong. not a self hating coward.

The extraordinarily toxic idea that if your plots can reach the widest audience by not offending anyone, they'll gain the largest audience.

People are left trying to create a nationally-acclaimed recipe from milk and toast.

Buzzfeed wasn't a parody of leftists. It was a parody of shitty clickbait sites

what makes you say that?
There's "story by" and "written and storyboarded by" credits instead of separate "written by" and "storyboarded by" credits

SVTFOE was confirmed as being storyboarded, if someone wants I can look for the source again.

t. NuToons faggots

honestly given the presence of a "written and storyboarded by" credit you don't NEED word of god confirmation

It seems more like you're projecting your own insecurities on the message of the show rather than criticize the show itself. It's a subjective conclusion of introspection: that acknowledging sadness is tantamount to weakness. In my experience with the show, this has not been the case. I believe it provides a deep, introspective look at the reality of life-- ugliness front and center, but not entirely devoid of a hopeful subtext. It posits that life sucks because you make it suck; quite the opposite of falling in love with your own sadness.
But again, this is subjective.

Which is strange, because Venture bros. was by the same people as SU

>unironically using the phrase 'nutoons'
Necking yourself would be a mercy.

THIS
H
I
S

I actually don't disagree, and would say despite John saying that as a crictism to modern artists but to himself as well - he spent post age 7 in the Canadian burbs watching Hanna Barbara cartoons. It reflects in his work. It feels less like "life experience" is the issue and more of the media that you absorbed. John K style was more about making the animation as fluid as possible, the humor far more subjective, and revving up the violence from the shows he grew up with to 11.

Modern artists grew up in the burbs, watching anime - they want to make things similar to anime. The audiences and demands are different between 2 different countries, the biggest difference being that a lot of the anime that these artists draw inspirations from have an actual story that is the focus. American cartoons are pushed to be more episodic so they can be aired out of order, and the consequence of that being the plots seem rushed and overly dramatic. The same way John K exaggerates violence, modern artists exaggerate the drama.

>by the same people as SU

No? I'm pretty sure IJQ was the only person who worked on both

while I like SU most of the people on Venture Bros that work on SU weren't writing for Venture Bros, they were just artists or directors

>Australia is a better colony.

Agreed

"being storyboarded" isn't the same as being "storyboard driven"

The former merely means that storyboards are utilized in the animation process, which the vast majority of animation projects do because of the nature of the medium. "Storyboard driven" is when the storyboards take precedent over the script writing process - if there's even a script to begin with.

t. Pathetic samefagging.

I was using it as shorthand, I meant storyboard driven yes. It was officially confirmed by someone working on the show.

All kids must have their throats slit!

t. mad NuToon faggot

did someone say kids?

The internet is killing TV as a whole. Why go to a studio and have networks riding your ass when you can just make what you want freely on the internet

>We're barely above creative bankruptcy as a species
blame the fact we live in a limited universe
>Can't go faster than light in most situations
>Universe has a finite lifespan despite being infinite
>Entropy
>3d instead of superior 4d
Only real bright side of this reality is the fact things become crazy the smaller you get.

bc it's really hard to be funny and not offend someone at the same time

Ian JQ, Nick DeMayo, Danny Hynes, Liz Artinian, and Kimson Albert (plus a few episodes that had Carly and Lauren Monardo do model sheets)
and yeah, none of these guys were writing on VB (though of these guys only Ian wrote on SU)

wew lad calm down sonny
might set this whole thread on fire

when will we see him> again?

>Gravity Falls
>good

get raped to death you sub-human SJW faggot cuck!

Animation industry unsurprisingly values animators/artist over writers.

So a lot of shows these days are wrote by artist who took a writing class or two back in college.

There are plenty of people who can write and draw well, sure, the majority of people who can do one usually can't do the other well. They're both skills that take years to develop (Unless you got lucky/talent) so it shouldn't be a surprise there are not a boat load of people who are good at both.

There's still a lot of script driven cartoons though: They're a minority at CN Studios and make up pnly roughly half of Disney's current tv output, but they still make up the majority of shows made at places like Nickelodeon (long-time board driven show Spongebob became script driven after the 2nd movie), Warner Bros, and Dreamworks TV

A baffling conflation between artistic talent and the ability to write a halfway-decent sentence.

which is what I meant by falling in love with your own sadness, you silly billy.

I think you're projecting your habits of projecting on to me. stop that, it's not healthy.

granted, I only watched the first two seasons, and didn't have the patience for any more of it. seemed like it was going to be more "I'm 18, sad, and I think this is deep" bullshit. so maybe my opinion is moot.