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No Saiyans are allowed in the [Western Animation] thread
Zonugal
(He/Him) The Holiday ArmadilloI'm Santa's representative for all the southern states. And Mexico!Registered User, Transition Team regular
(He/Him) The Holiday ArmadilloI'm Santa's representative for all the southern states. And Mexico!Registered User, Transition Team regular
Welcome to a thread about cartoons produced in the west!
What's a cartoon?!
A cartoon in the animation sense is an animated film, usually short, featuring an exaggerated visual style. The style takes inspiration from comic strips, often featuring anthropomorphic animals, superheroes, or the adventures of human protagonists. Especially with animals that form a natural predator/prey relationship (e.g. cats and mice, coyotes and birds), the action often centers on violent pratfalls such as falls, collisions, and explosions that would be lethal in real life.
Did you know that animation has ages?!
The Silent Age of Animation
-- The earliest age of mainstream animation known to man, lasting from the early 1900s to the late 1920s with the rise of sound technology. At the time, cartoons were presented and viewed as moving Comic Strips, sometimes even incorporating Speech Bubbles for their dialog. Fantasy was in full vogue during this period, but it tended to have a dull, heavy-handed and literal-minded feeling to it, not helped by the primitive, stiff animation, glacial pacing and floaty motion.
-- Naturally, the silent age came to a screeching halt with the rise of sound technology in the late 1920s. Disney and many other studios quickly worked to take advantage of the new technology, while former stars like Felix the Cat attempted to make the jump to sound film and failed miserably, quickly fading off into obscurity until many years later, with an ill-fated Golden Age revival during the 1930s and the iconic TV series which debuted in the late 1950s.
The Golden Age of Animation
-- The Golden Age of Animation is a period in the History of Animation that is generally agreed to have begun on November 18th, 1928, with the release of Steamboat Willie, and cemented with Disney's, MGM's, WB's, and Fleischer's rise to prominence in the years following. It gradually faded out between the early 1950s and late '60s, when theatrical animated shorts lost ground to the new (and far lower budget) medium of television animation.
-- Early sound cartoons were very musically oriented and simply drawn, for obvious reasons – animation was an expensive medium, and in order to remain profitable the cartoons had to be produced and distributed as quickly as possible, with little time for refinement. The use of public domain music (or in Harman and Ising's case, the entire Warner Bros. music library) solved the music problem, allowing song snippets to be quickly added and timed to the animation. Color, meanwhile, got off to a slow start; while cartoons were occasionally hand-colored in the past (e.g. in the works of Winsor McCay), it wasn't until 1930 when the first cartoons to make use of the (two-strip) Technicolor process appeared.
-- The postwar era radically changed things once again, as television, previously a luxury with an extremely limited range of programming, exploded into mainstream culture and began to displace cinema as America's entertainment medium of choice with astonishing rapidity.
The Dark Age of Animation
-- The unfortunate successor to The Golden Age of Animation, starting in the late 1950s and lasting until the mid 1980s. Its start coincided with the Fall of the Studio System in Hollywood. The theatrical short slowly died off, and cartoons moved to television. Naturally, this era would leave a lasting impression on American culture, for better or for worse, as the primary target audience for cartoons became children.
-- Originally, Limited Animation was primarily an artistic choice for filmmakers like Chuck Jones, Robert Cannon, and John Hubley who were tired of Disneyfication. With the closures of UPA and MGM's animation studios, it became primarily about saving time and money. Hanna-Barbera – founded by the eponymous duo in response to MGM abruptly shuttering its animation unit and firing them – was very prominent during this time (to the extent of holding a monopoly over the Saturday morning animation market by the '70s), thanks to how cheaply produced and rushed their television cartoons were. Given how these series used dialogue over visuals to move the stories forward, they rapidly became what Jones would describe with justified derision as "illustrated radio". Still, they created not only successful kids fare in the 60s like Yogi Bear, but prime time series like The Flintstones and The Jetsons and the influential Adventure Series Jonny Quest, which created a whole new television animation genre. Unfortunately, the studio soon fell into a crippling creative rut with the Saturday-Morning Cartoon timeslot, which led to them endlessly copying the concepts of their most successful shows, and filling in the rest of the time with reruns, with Scooby-Doo and the long-running, oft-retooled Super Friends the most prolific templates.
-- The end of this period is usually believed to be the mid/late1980's, though the exact year is debated. Some say the dark age ended in 1983, while others say in 1985 or 1988; the latest ending given for it is generally 1989.
The Renaissance Age of Animation
-- What the New Hollywood era did for movies, the Renaissance Age did for animation. Encompassing the late 1980s and the 1990s, the Renaissance Age of Animation had the medium see a significant increase in technical quality and finally returned to a point of artistic respect it had not seen since the Golden Age.
-- The Renaissance age is usually considered to begin in the 80s, but it must be noted that for much of that decade, Western animation was still strangled by a dismissive culture, plagued by a lack of artistic vision and pathetic budgets. Limited Animation was still the rule on television. Nonetheless, one distinct sea change at the turn of the decade distinguished this period from previous decades of the Dark Age. In 1981, Ronald Reagan deregulated U.S. television, thus lifting a long-standing ban on Merchandise-Driven programming; TV shows, animated or otherwise, could now be based on a toyline or established product if they included some form of moral or educational element (however arbitrarily or nominally). Within a few short years of this floodgate opening, a cavalcade of toyetic western cartoons arose to supersede the weakening Hanna-Barbera's output. Notable examples of this phenomenon, such as He-Man, Strawberry Shortcake, Care Bears, The Transformers, G.I. Joe, My Little Pony, Jem, and ThunderCats, ruled 80s television animation and had parents' groups up in arms about children watching glorified toy commercials. That said, these colorful and often action-packed shows were nevertheless a major change of pace from the increasingly dull offerings served up by Hanna-Barbera and Filmation in the 1970s, and were entertaining to their target demographics, which is demonstrated by the fact that several of them became major pop culture phenomena that are fondly remembered to this day.
-- Cable networks such as Nickelodeon and (much later) Cartoon Network began their existence with reruns and repackaging of cartoons from earlier eras as well as syndicated or foreign fare, but moved on to create their shows during the '90s.
-- On the silver screen, the industry gradually rose to new heights during the 1980s. After the box office failures of animated movies in the 1970s, Disney defector Don Bluth pushed for a return to the rich classical style of the Golden Age, beginning with 1982's The Secret of NIMH. It attracted the attention of no less than Steven Spielberg, which led to Bluth's directing the successful An American Tail and The Land Before Time for Amblin Entertainment.
-- Adult-aimed animation finally came back to television during this period. The Simpsons became a full-fledged series in 1989 and went on to become probably the most critically acclaimed television cartoon series of all time, and MTV caused a stir with Mike Judge's Beavis and Butt-head. MTV, of course, is cable – and from here came the last great progress that cemented the renaissance: the rise of cable television.
-- This era contains a significant shift in technology: the switch from traditional cel & ink & paint animation to computers. Animation studios rode the wave of the digital revolution that brought affordable PCs to the masses in the 1980s. Throughout the 90's, digital compositing and coloring slowly replaced ink & paint. Later, computer programs like Flash and Maya made inroads as animation tools. In 1994, the first completely CGI TV series, ReBoot, came out of Canadian studio Mainframe Entertainment and premiered on ABC in the USA. 1995 saw the release of the first all-CGI feature film, which launched Pixar into the spotlight and into a position to drive the future of the animation industry: Toy Story. By the end of the decade, CGI had firmly placed itself as a legitimate method of animation for both fully animated efforts and live action as the VFX industry fully embraced the wave of CGI effects.
-- This was also the era in which outsourcing truly took off. Doing the entire traditional animation process in America had long since become cost-prohibitive, especially for television, so most Renaissance-Era cartoons outsourced production to overseas studios. The switch to computers allowed cartoons to keep more of their production domestic, but hand-drawn series, in particular, continued to outsource most of the actual animation to South Korea.
-- In an ironic twist, the success of animation and children's programming on cable helped to mortally wound animation on broadcast TV, killing the weekday animation block outright (except on Public Television) and beginning the slow death of the Saturday-Morning Cartoon. The addition of three new cable channels (plus two new broadcast networks) for animated programming, and the increased competition inherent in such a thing, naturally led to audience fragmentation, which led to declining ratings, which led to declining ad revenue, which led to decreased profits.
-- There is no consensus on when this era ended, only that it did. Television cartoons in particular often bridged eras, with Renaissance-era shows airing alongside post-Renaissance ones for many years. Depending on who you ask, the deterioration of this era began somewhere around the end of the 1990s or the early 2000s. The seeds may have been sown in 1995 when Disney distributed Pixar's Toy Story. There are multiple points which could be reasonably considered the definitive end of the The Renaissance era. These include 1999, 2000, 2001, 2004 or 2008.
The Millennium Age of Animation
-- This is the Age of Animation which started in the early '00s with the end of the Renaissance Age and has continued to the present day. Traditional 2D animation methods that thrived in the previous eras are now seemingly used today but rendered 3D and Flash animation are the rule, at least when it comes to American works, not the exception, just as Limited Animation ruled the Dark Age during the '60s, '70s, and early '80s.
-- One notable feature of this era is its near-total lack of continuity with earlier eras, at least on the viewer side – during the Dark Age, Golden-era shorts regularly aired alongside contemporary fare; and during the Renaissance Age, cartoons from both previous eras had wide exposure (although Golden-era shorts often had edits for content).
-- Network Decay has had a devastating effect on television animation. Many basic cable channels have jettisoned their Saturday Morning Cartoons and after-school blocks due to cable competition and increasing restrictions on advertising.
-- There are exceptions to these hardships though. Avatar: The Last Airbender started a growing trend of high-budget animated action series for TV. Often, these series are anime-influenced, in which the influence of anime on American shows is largely the reason for the rise of shows with continuous, overarching story lines such as the aforementioned Avatar.
-- In contrast to the problems that animation for television has faced, the theatrical feature film market is thriving. Up through the Renaissance, it was a high-risk field with intimidating high stakes that has eventually crushed all comers outside of Disney, even greats like the Fleischer Brothers and Don Bluth. Now, it has become a highly competitive field with more animated features being produced by more major American companies as viable, sustained competitors than any time in history.
-- By the mid-2010's, the film medium of this era had been highlighted by increasing competition from the major film studios, hoping to take down Disney/Pixar as the king of the box office in terms of animated movies.
-- The 2000s have also been experiencing a minor stop-motion renaissance. European traditional animation, meanwhile, has made a comeback with the development of several new studios and directors who have produced critically acclaimed films, including The Secret of Kells and The Triplets of Belleville.
-- This era also saw "adult-aimed" cartoons, which started their comeback with The Simpsons in the 80s, reaching mainstream status with the ongoing success of shows like South Park, Futurama, Family Guy, as well as The Simpsons itself, along with many others. Fox's Animation Domination block brought adult animation to those without cable, while Cartoon Network's nighttime block, [adult swim], which turned out to be responsible for Family Guy and Futurama both getting Un-Cancelled, also brought innovation into the genre. After the fall of Toonami, Adult Swim continued airing adult-oriented anime as well, while 4Kids still aired watered-down dubs of anime on Saturday mornings for the kiddies up until the block ended in 2008. Adult cartoons of the era were notorious for their reliance on pop culture references and Black Comedy, though this started to change in the mid-2010's with new adult shows like Rick and Morty and BoJack Horseman that forsake cheap shock humor for strong storytelling and Character Development.
What are your favorite ages of animation? And what are your favorite western animated shows?
Zonugal on
No Saiyans are allowed in the [Western Animation] thread 34 votes
The Silent Age of Animation: animation history from the early 1900s to the late 1920s.
0%
The Golden Age of Animation: animation history from the late 1920s to the late 1950s.
17%
6 votes
The Dark Age of Animation: animation history from the late 1950s to the mid '80s.
0%
The Renaissance Age of Animation: animation history from the late '80s to the late '90s.
32%
11 votes
The Millennium Age of Animation: animation history from the early 2000s to onwards.
50%
17 votes
+2
Posts
They were just starting to get some gas and got weird with it. Like, it's a cartoon, buddy. Do whatever you want.
my current to-watch list goes something like:
Craig of the Creek
Amphibia
Owl House
Infinity Train
maybe a DC thing or two
any other recs?
This is where I am planting my flag as well.
I love the cartoons of the 1990s: the Simpsons, Batman: the Animated Series, Gargoyles, and more
And every single one of them is hot trash compared to Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies cartoons.
Give me the cartoons of Tex Avery and Chuck Jones every day.
There's just no comparison
Looney Tunes are so good, but the 80s and 90s stuff is so filled with nostalgia for me that I'm leaning toward it.
Roger Rabbit alone having the great animation and live action might give it the edge.
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I really want to hunt down hard copies of these, partially for my own enjoyment, and partially for preservation purposes. Road runner vs Wiley e coyote especially.
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Animation is a wonderful medium for story telling and can support a massive width and breadth of style.
But also it's main strength is that it's animation! 2D hand drawn animation can just do whatever. Break all the rules! Reality doesn't matter! Even after the advent of 3D computer animation it wasn't long before it was trying to emulate squash and stretch to create a more "cartoony" vibe.
Before it was widely known what an obnoxious piece of microwaved shit John K was he was one of those creators out there really advocating for cartoons for the sake of cartoons. While I'm loathe to give him any credit, and I don't rail against the existence of other types of animation, I do agree that we just need more fuckin cartoons. Steven Universe was a delight. Pixar makes good movies. But gotdamn do I miss the slapstick absurdity of a Merrie Melodie or the surrealist fever dreams of early Fleischer Studios stuff.
I'll STEAL it!
THEY'LL NEVER KNOW!
God Mel Blanc was delightfully unhinged.
This is what frustrates me with a lot of adaptions of novels esp when tehy're trying to go live action or whatever. Just.. just do some fucking adult arse cartoons with some good ol' 2d animation. Make it fucking work.
I'm still righteously pissed off that the thing that killed young justice originally? It was too popular with girls (and do note, by all reports, it was still popular with boys too). Yes, really. Because that meant *selling advertising for it was hard*. Instead of leaning into the fact you'd got an entirely unexpected and massive auidence you didnt expect.
*Grumple*.
And then Season 4 managed to kinda trip and fall on it's face and well, that was the end of the show. I liked that season well enough, but ugh. It needed an editor - super frustrating after S3 showed they could do a tight story, S4 mostly felt like they just kept expanding and expanding the universe and keeping the wheels spinning, rather than resolving things. Which was a really bummer after how good s3 was!
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Regular Show
Gravity Falls
Steven Universe
Close Enough
Adventure Time
Star vs the Forces of Evil
She-Ra
Samurai Jack
Bob’s Burgers
Teen Titans Go
Phineas and Ferb
Invader Zim
Avatar: The Last Airbender
Aqua Teen Hunger Force
Futurama (1999 but I’m counting it!)
Venture Brothers
New Ducktales
Harvey Birdman
Metalocalypse
Archer
Etc…..
That variety can’t be touched by any other era. Some of those are on my all time favorite shows list, animated or not.
Scooby Doo? and the Flintstones was ok, surely there was stuff other than Hannah Barbara's only decent 2 shows though? Surely? Did Warner brothers and disney and MGM stop making cartoons during this time?
Jetsons
Popeye
Yogi Bear
Umm…Mighty Mouse?
Ralph Bakshi has his stuff (Fire & Ice and Heavy Metal) but this period of animation is just god damn bleak...
Some of Disney's features films are still pretty solid during this era (Sleeping Beauty, The Sword in the Stone, Robin Hood, ect) but still...
For some reason I was only thinking about shows.
Nah, John K. deserves no praise - he was just as doctrineaire as others, he just leaned in a different direction. Remember, he's the goose who popularized the "CalArts style" slur.
Don’t actually watch it though. Just read up on it. It’s fucking awful.
X-Men '97 is quite good!
The problem is that the money just...dried up in the 60s and 70s for animation, along with the death of Termite Terrace and Disney wandering in the wilderness muttering "WWWD" as a mantra.
In my opinion, the three things that set the stage for the revival of American animation (and we need to make this separation, as Europe was doing its own thing) were:
* The Reagan Administration gutting E/I rules, which allowed cartoons to be tied to product. At worst, this gave us glorified toy ads...but in the better cases, this opened up revenue streams.
* Spielberg gets the animation bug from Bluth, and as a result works to ressurect Warner Animation, leading to Tiny Toon Adventures and Batman: The Animated Series.
* After a hostile takeover barely fails, Disney realizes they can't keep looking to the cryogenically preserved head of Walt for answers, and poach Eisner from Paramount to head the company. Among many of his moves to right the SS Mouse is to get into TV animation, starting with original properties like Wuzzles and Adventures of the Gummi Bears before the experiment in leveraging Disney IP that was the original DuckTales.
I don't see a Heavy Metal in his filmography though.
It won the Harvey for Best Adaptation of a Comic Work!
John K's mighty mouse was just too weird for me as a kid
Oh, yeah, my mistake, for some reason I was thinking Heavy Metal was one of his projects.
Frank Frazetta did a lot of the character design in Fire and Ice Thomas Kinkade did backgrounds! James Gurney the author/artist of Dinotopia
Peter Chung did layouts
Yeah, honestly, while the Looney Tunes were great, we could never have gotten shit with the level of quality writing in Gravity Falls when I was a kid. I'm all in on the modern animation train.
Swat cats is also the nexus for a lot of the people that made animations in the late 90's and on
I always liked swat kats
Yeah, there's something about the Spumco house style that's just...disquieting. Like it's 1920s animation put together wrong.
Swat Kats was one of my favorite cartoons when I was a kid
I think they only made 2 seasons right? And the second one ends on a cliffhanger?
Probably not huh