i hate cartoons

[RichChap]

Ive been noticing especially recently, but for a while I just can not get into any animated TV shows anymore. I tried watching adventure time a while ago and just hated it, same for rick and morty and all these other shows that people seem to love these days. I tried to think for a while about why this is, separating the kind of stuff I like from the kind of stuff I don't like and the stuff that is "technically good" that I still can't really get into.

I think what I realized is that on the spectrum of animation I really like super independent animation, or even animation that seems a little "shitty" or "attainable" by a single person. When it's just one person making something not only does that make it feel less difficult to achieve, but it also allows for that one person's vision to come out completely as their own. This is what got me really interested in starting animation to begin with, seeing the shitty flash animations from the newgrounds/sheezyart era and wanting to be a part of it. If you asked me today who my favorite animator is I would definitely go with David O'Reilly, but animators like Hotdiggedydemon, Alanthebox, Rtil, Psychicpebbles, etc (all very different styles ranging from more animation driven to more dialogue and writing driven), are all still creators who's work I can really enjoy.

I also like super high budget Pixar movies which are on the completely opposite end of that spectrum obviously.


It's what's in-between that I can't stand. Modern TV animation feels neither attainable, nor spectacular in any sense. It's made by a whole team of people and done as efficiently as possible time/labor/money wise. For some reason I just hate this and at that point would much rather watch a live action TV show.

There are a few exceptions to this, I think TV animation was far more aesthetically pleasing in the 90s and early 2000s before it was all perfected by computers. I recently rewatched a few spongebob episodes and not only was the writing incredibly amusing but it looks so much better because of the hand-drawn animation and style. Maybe this is just nostalgia though.


Some people I've seen talk about this a little bit are Max Gilardi and David O'Reilly.

http://hotdiggedydemon.newgrounds.com/news/post/216894

http://blog.davidoreilly.com/post/44808009355/this-is-a-simple-motion-diagram-thing-i-made-when


both of these blogs point to south park (not a huge fan of that show but i get their point/ agree with that)


anyway, just wondering what people think of this and if there's anyone that agrees with me or disagrees with me. I'm sure theres tons of people on here who love anime and rick and morty (i can't really hate on anime because I know the animation is "good" but most of the time it just doesn't appeal to me and I have no idea why, I wish it did)

[BluPhoenix]

one punch man's animation is pretty good

[soup]

of course theyre gonna churn episodes out using computers if they can hand drawing everything is a fucking nightmare

theres too much variety to compare everything at once. a lot of shows with "worse" animation are obviously relying on something else if theyre successful (story, good writing, nasty tumblr appeal, blah blah)

inversely something could have the worst story plot characters ect but we watch it because it looks radical.
[spoiler]anime[/spoiler]

im sure in like 30 years time we will have a new generation having the exact same conversation, harking back to the incredible animation quality of adventure time and the show about the crystals in comparison to whatever primetime fluff they now have to deal with

[d-floe]

yeah but have you considered that your opinion doesnt matter 

[Bamyasi]

HOLY SHIT RTIL LOCK THE FORUM.

KIZUNAMI JUST FIGURED OUT ONE OF THE FOUR NOBLE TRUTHS OF WEB BROWSING.

[crackers]

i completely agree with you, rick and morty is fucking ugly and the plot is garbage and shit if i showed it to anyone outside of the internet they'd think i was a massive faggot and just as well because it's utter shit

the gems are pandering special snowflake shit

adventure time is basically big bang theory ("what the goo!?! goozinga") without the laugh track fucking hate it

watch a real program like seinfield

[Gladius]

i completely agree with you, rick and morty is fucking ugly and the plot is garbage and shit if i showed it to anyone outside of the internet they'd think i was a massive faggot and just as well because it's utter shit

the gems are pandering special snowflake shit

adventure time is basically big bang theory ("what the goo!?! goozinga") without the laugh track fucking hate it

watch a real program like seinfield

literally comes down to this.

[soup]

crackers keeps it real

too real

[rtil]

i strongly disagree with the premise of hdd's blog (that it's easy to make great animation), although it was written 7 years ago he's arguably gotten dumber since then so he probably still believes that.

tv animation simply is what it is - tv production lines don't have the budgets that epic theatrical disney films did. it's unfair to expect tv animation to look that way. tv animation can still look brilliant if the right people are making the right decisions on it. in fact i'd argue it can often be harder for a tv production staff to produce something of quality than a film staff due to the insane time constraints and the logistics involved in limited animation. if you don't watch any anime it's hard to believe, but a few japanese studios have gotten really good at producing high quality animation in short timeframes, utilizing high budget scenes where they matter. the term for this is 'sakuga', which literally means 'drawing' but is generally used to describe moments in anime when the animation gets really good. of course, it's usually sandwiched between a lot of scenes that cut corners, but they do it because they have to.

times change, and so does the landscape of animation. i often find that people who are pining for the cartoons of their childhood because they were 'better' just don't remember the shitty cartoons that were also on TV at the time. because people don't remember shitty stuff and eventually it gets forgotten, leaving only the good stuff. and so when we think fondly of times past, our selective memories deceive us. yes, there are highs and lows in the very young history of animation, but there is always a pile of crap underneath the good stuff.

[soup]

everyones gotta take off their fucking rose tinted glasses

[SrsSam77]

have you considered that YOU NEED TO STOP FUCKING MAKING SO MANY THREADS
REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

[soup]

i hate cartoons

i hate mondays

coincidence?? you decide america

[ExBerian]

have you considered that YOU NEED TO STOP FUCKING MAKING SO MANY THREADS

[RichChap]

tv animation simply is what it is - tv production lines don't have the budgets that epic theatrical disney films did. it's unfair to expect tv animation to look that way. tv animation can still look brilliant if the right people are making the right decisions on it. in fact i'd argue it can often be harder for a tv production staff to produce something of quality than a film staff due to the insane time constraints and the logistics involved in limited animation. if you don't watch any anime it's hard to believe, but a few japanese studios have gotten really good at producing high quality animation in short timeframes, utilizing high budget scenes where they matter. the term for this is 'sakuga', which literally means 'drawing' but is generally used to describe moments in anime when the animation gets really good. of course, it's usually sandwiched between a lot of scenes that cut corners, but they do it because they have to.

totally, and I just really don't enjoy that. If it felt like tv shows weren't created by a hive mind and the animators all had their own styles etc it could be really cool, but having the same line width on every drawing and just completely uninteresting animation makes me hate it. "we dont have enough time/money" is an excuse but it makes me not want to watch their shit. why should i invest my time watching these shows, especially the anime stuff you're referencing, if i have to wade through tons of scenes with limited animation and (to me,) boring stories to get to the appealing bits? I know they could do way more interesting stuff with the same amount of resources and time.

times change, and so does the landscape of animation. i often find that people who are pining for the cartoons of their childhood because they were 'better' just don't remember the shitty cartoons that were also on TV at the time. because people don't remember shitty stuff and eventually it gets forgotten, leaving only the good stuff. and so when we think fondly of times past, our selective memories deceive us. yes, there are highs and lows in the very young history of animation, but there is always a pile of crap underneath the good stuff.

Yeah totally, the nostalgia thing only makes you look back at the old stuff in better light. when i try to play any new video games I can't stand making myself sit in front of the tv for more than an hour before never touching it again, but I go back and play donkey kong 64 and can 100% the game and thinks its amazing and i know exactly why.

but i'm just bothered by how obsessed everyone is with all these shows that are on today and how amazing cartoon network is. so many of my classmates want to go work for cartoon network and I would just so much rather work on a small team making projects for the internet that feel like the people who made them actually had souls.


ultimately i get why tv animation is shitty. i dont think it has to be, but i get why it is. what i don't get is why everyone loves it so much.

[Bamyasi]

Rare games I think are some of the few I liked well enough when I was in primary school but cannot for the life of me see their appeal now.

Also Rich did you watch Over the Garden Wall last year.

I still think this guy is the best one man studio right now:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1IUX0Qy-IDM
^I always recommend this film to people who say they liked Waking Life, or thought it wasn't shit, because imo it illustrates existentialist concepts far, far better than any Linklater wankfest.

Also RichChap hardly ever makes threads what the fuck are you guys talking about.

[ZennyPLUS]

I don't remember the last time I really enjoyed the animation of a cartoon, hard to say. Generally, the story is what kept me around.

[rtil]

tv animation simply is what it is - tv production lines don't have the budgets that epic theatrical disney films did. it's unfair to expect tv animation to look that way. tv animation can still look brilliant if the right people are making the right decisions on it. in fact i'd argue it can often be harder for a tv production staff to produce something of quality than a film staff due to the insane time constraints and the logistics involved in limited animation. if you don't watch any anime it's hard to believe, but a few japanese studios have gotten really good at producing high quality animation in short timeframes, utilizing high budget scenes where they matter. the term for this is 'sakuga', which literally means 'drawing' but is generally used to describe moments in anime when the animation gets really good. of course, it's usually sandwiched between a lot of scenes that cut corners, but they do it because they have to.

totally, and I just really don't enjoy that. If it felt like tv shows weren't created by a hive mind and the animators all had their own styles etc it could be really cool, but having the same line width on every drawing and just completely uninteresting animation makes me hate it. "we dont have enough time/money" is an excuse but it makes me not want to watch their shit. why should i invest my time watching these shows, especially the anime stuff you're referencing, if i have to wade through tons of scenes with limited animation and (to me,) boring stories to get to the appealing bits? I know they could do way more interesting stuff with the same amount of resources and time.

times change, and so does the landscape of animation. i often find that people who are pining for the cartoons of their childhood because they were 'better' just don't remember the shitty cartoons that were also on TV at the time. because people don't remember shitty stuff and eventually it gets forgotten, leaving only the good stuff. and so when we think fondly of times past, our selective memories deceive us. yes, there are highs and lows in the very young history of animation, but there is always a pile of crap underneath the good stuff.

Yeah totally, the nostalgia thing only makes you look back at the old stuff in better light. when i try to play any new video games I can't stand making myself sit in front of the tv for more than an hour before never touching it again, but I go back and play donkey kong 64 and can 100% the game and thinks its amazing and i know exactly why.

but i'm just bothered by how obsessed everyone is with all these shows that are on today and how amazing cartoon network is. so many of my classmates want to go work for cartoon network and I would just so much rather work on a small team making projects for the internet that feel like the people who made them actually had souls.


ultimately i get why tv animation is shitty. i dont think it has to be, but i get why it is. what i don't get is why everyone loves it so much.

i think you're making a mistake by associating 'limited animation' with 'shitty animation'. shitty animation is shitty because whoever made it is a bad animator and bad animators make bad shit. a bad animator could put everything on 1's and do the most fluid animation possible and it will still look like shit. it's just one of many symptoms of 'overanimating', or using an excessive amount of animation where it isn't needed. at best it looks weird and is tiring on the eyes. at worst it's a sloppy looking waste of time.

a good animator knows when heavy animation should and shouldn't be utilized. this is actually something i feel like some legendary animators are actually bad at, like richard williams. look at a film like The Thief and the Cobbler - brilliantly animated, but it took 29 years to produce and still wasn't finished by the time the studio took it from him. He was obsessed with his vision of perfection - every scene had to be immaculately crafted -  everything was moving on 1's, camera sometimes doing insane pans all over the place, not one shortcut taken. visually speaking it's pretty stunning, but he felt like he needed everything to be on 1's and it cost him a good chunk of his life trying to squeeze in 1 extra frame everywhere he could. not only was it unnecessary but it was untenable. the film was pretty much a disaster because of it.

yes there are films that rarely dial down like REDLINE and Akira but realistically speaking not every animated project has the right place/right time level of budget and talent that these films did, even then they still took longer than normal to produce.

you need to think of animation like you do a story. a story has a beginning, middle and end. it has peaks and valleys, climaxes and lulls. the climaxes are an effective audience-grabber because they happen at the right time. if a story was at its 'climax' for the entire film it becomes boring because it's always trying to out-do itself.

climactic story points are usually juxtaposed with more dramatic animation.



we appreciate them because they're used to emphasize important parts of the story with visuals.

often times characters are doing mundane things in mundane scenarios - walking, talking, eating, things we do every day. animation is a time-consuming medium - why waste so much extra effort attempting to make the mundane extraordinary, bringing attention where it isn't needed?

why does a scene like this

need to be animated like this?


one of the most important things an animator needs to learn about is art economy. economy of line, design, timing, spacing.. ways to take a character design and realistically interpret them into animation. a character from final fantasy with individually drawn strands of hair and 15 belts all over them is economically unfeasible in the animation world. are animators being lazy by simplifying designs and making them animatable yet maintaining stylistic traits? no, they're being smart and they're demonstrating the strength of their practice. in the same way, good animators know how to utilize limited animation in an intelligent way where it can look good and save them time so they can put their effort where it matters most.

[RichChap]

i think you're making a mistake by associating 'limited animation' with 'shitty animation'. shitty animation is shitty because whoever made it is a bad animator and bad animators make bad shit. a bad animator could put everything on 1's and do the most fluid animation possible and it will still look like shit. it's just one of many symptoms of 'overanimating', or using an excessive amount of animation where it isn't needed. at best it looks weird and is tiring on the eyes. at worst it's a sloppy looking waste of time.

a good animator knows when heavy animation should and shouldn't be utilized. this is actually something i feel like some legendary animators are actually bad at, like richard williams. look at a film like The Thief and the Cobbler - brilliantly animated, but it took 29 years to produce and still wasn't finished by the time the studio took it from him. He was obsessed with his vision of perfection - every scene had to be immaculately crafted -  everything was moving on 1's, camera sometimes doing insane pans all over the place, not one shortcut taken. visually speaking it's pretty stunning, but he felt like he needed everything to be on 1's and it cost him a good chunk of his life trying to squeeze in 1 extra frame everywhere he could. not only was it unnecessary but it was untenable. the film was pretty much a disaster because of it.

yes there are films that rarely dial down like REDLINE and Akira but realistically speaking not every animated project has the right place/right time level of budget and talent that these films did, even then they still took longer than normal to produce.

you need to think of animation like you do a story. a story has a beginning, middle and end. it has peaks and valleys, climaxes and lulls. the climaxes are an effective audience-grabber because they happen at the right time. if a story was at its 'climax' for the entire film it becomes boring because it's always trying to out-do itself.

climactic story points are usually juxtaposed with more dramatic animation.



we appreciate them because they're used to emphasize important parts of the story with visuals.

often times characters are doing mundane things in mundane scenarios - walking, talking, eating, things we do every day. animation is a time-consuming medium - why waste so much extra effort attempting to make the mundane extraordinary, bringing attention where it isn't needed?

why does a scene like this

need to be animated like this?


one of the most important things an animator needs to learn about is art economy. economy of line, design, timing, spacing.. ways to take a character design and realistically interpret them into animation. a character from final fantasy with individually drawn strands of hair and 15 belts all over them is economically unfeasible in the animation world. are animators being lazy by simplifying designs and making them animatable yet maintaining stylistic traits? no, they're being smart and they're demonstrating the strength of their practice. in the same way, good animators know how to utilize limited animation in an intelligent way where it can look good and save them time so they can put their effort where it matters most.

I think limited animation is great and it adds to the appeal of animation for me by making it seem more attainable. Definitely part of what inspired me to keep making stuff was watching your animations and how much you could pull off in a 15mb flash file on newgrounds by doing this intelligently. Definitely not something that I'm good but you and many others make it seem easy.

This still doesn't explain why so much TV animation is bad though, which is definitely the flaw, not the limited animation.

Zenny was saying that TV shows have to have good writing and the animation doesn't really matter as much. For me the animation has to be good enough for me to be able to enjoy the writing. The flaw in most anime for me I think is the story, while the flaw in the shitty cartoon network content is the animation.

If i'm purely watching something for the animation though I would still rather watch Rtil's one man productions than a team of incredibly talented japanese animators (although the gifs you posted are super nice). I don't really know why.

Is the animation on TV bad just because it's cheaper to hire bad animators?

[ZennyPLUS]

I sort of have a bias, since I prefer the printed media of story telling as opposed to animation, unlike many of our animating buffs here. I could read a story like Attack on Titan and ignore the mostly not-so-good art of the creator simply because the world/universe he created is so mysterious and leaves you wanting more when you're done with a chapter. I feel like the same thing could work for animation on television, even if the final product isn't the best animation-wise, if the story is really something, then that could pull the show along.

Ultimately, TV animation is sort of on the down slope for years, with networks like Nick and Disney opting for live action dramas with tween actors over selling compelling stories with colorful characters and personalities--like Gargoyles. Swat Kats or even DarkWing Duck (cause every American kid wants to grow to be a pop star amirite?).

[Gladius]

Everything on TV is shitty garbage.