ShadowsOfParadox
Well-known member
Well yes, but when hunger gets high enough the line ceases to exist. So I always assume these sorts of things are "in general day to day"
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Simonbob
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The new faces look... familiar...
I would point out that this is more a matter of individual studios / art teams having a homogenous style, not industry wide. All four of the historical examples are from Hanna-Barbera Productions' animated TV shows of the 1960s (Top Cat, The Flintstones, The Jetsons, The Yogi Bear Show), and show the distinctive style of that particular art team.
The modern examples are a little more diversely sourced (Gravity Falls, Steven Universe, Star vs The Forces Of Evil, and I don't recognize the last one), but are all a specific style known as thin-line animation. While it's often called "CalArts style" after the highly influential California Institute of the Arts, it's not unique to that school. While there's quite a few popular shows using this style, there's also plenty that don't.
The modern examples are a little more diversely sourced (Gravity Falls, Steven Universe, Star vs The Forces Of Evil, and I don't recognize the last one), but are all a specific style known as thin-line animation. While it's often called "CalArts style" after the highly influential California Institute of the Arts, it's not unique to that school. While there's quite a few popular shows using this style, there's also plenty that don't.
Pelts. Rabbits can be raised for their very soft and warm pelts. So they donhave a secondary use besides meat... though it still involves killing them, so yeah, should be much farther down the line. Probably next to the chicken which they taste a lot like.
The last one is Gumball from the Amazing World of Gumball, which whilenit uses some of that style it also tends to also use much more crazy and creative animation too.
That said, those are all different art teams and different studies. Gumball and Steven Universe are Cartoon Network while Gravity Falls and Star Vs. were Disney. The style got really popular originally due to Adventure Time, but Disney especially did a lot of other styles. From the watercolor art style of Rapunzel, to the comic book style of the new DuckTales, they never really adopted the "CalArts" style as heavily as other studios.
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Yes?
Bear Ribs
Well-known member
I will note that both styles were dominant in their era because they were cheap. Thick-Line used in the Hanna-Barbera cartoons is the easiest and cheapest style to animate in traditional drawing. It uses numerous shortcuts (ever notice that every guy wears a tie or scarf, even the bears that are otherwise naked? And every woman has a necklace, scarf, or high collar in the same way? It's so the head can be on a separate cell from the body without having to fiddle with drawing the neck) to let them re-use the same images over and over (sometimes called limited animation) and it's fast to hand-draw with few lines.
Thin-Line is a style that does the exact same thing, except it's easier to animate using modern computer animation tools. The lack of internal lines and smooth, open shapes with no shading make it easier to use fills in and the smooth curves are easy to move around, and making all the heads have the same shape and size with parts like the eyes, nose, and mouth "unattached" to the face means you can swap and reuse those assets between models and not have to draw as many different mouths and eyes, which can be instantly recolored, scaled, or stretched in a computer animating tool.
Thin-Line is a style that does the exact same thing, except it's easier to animate using modern computer animation tools. The lack of internal lines and smooth, open shapes with no shading make it easier to use fills in and the smooth curves are easy to move around, and making all the heads have the same shape and size with parts like the eyes, nose, and mouth "unattached" to the face means you can swap and reuse those assets between models and not have to draw as many different mouths and eyes, which can be instantly recolored, scaled, or stretched in a computer animating tool.
VictortheMonarch
Victor the Crusader
I mean, mostly it's based off of who makes it. Like you don't go to the Cleveland Show expecting a different character design than Family Guy.
Sure looks like shit, though, doesn't it?
Bear Ribs
Well-known member
Cheap and low-effort usually does. It's possible to survive cheap animation by going for broke on the characters and story (Friendship is Magic had cheap Flash animation but became legendary for its character development).
Conversely, great animation can sometimes make up for weak storytelling (Trinity Blood is sometimes put forward as the epitome of this, it has a rfairly generic storyline about vampires and does a poor job of explaining anything but the visuals are absolutely gorgeous).
I find that I can tolerate poor art and good storytelling better than the reverse, but tastes vary. However, most of the time, if they're animating on the cheap they're also likely going to cut corners on the story and VAs as well. *Cough* High Guardian Spice *Cough* Actual JPGs of bread off Google Image Search used in shots *Cough*
Friendship Is Magic while using cheap animation also leveraged the fact it was a toy show to keep the designs simple and accurate to the toys. They didn't need to do any super fancy character designs, and as the show aged they utilized the fact they were using a computer generated system to expand their library of characters with newer and better designs while also cleaning up and improving the originals. Going from Season 1 to Season 9 of the show is night and day difference in the quality of animation and the breadth of unique character designs.
I would also argue that FiM also had a level of executive meddling that ensured at least a baseline quality of look to the show. Hasbro is a Toy Company first and foremost and wants their shows to look good to make their toys look appealing. The ugly designs that the CalArts style ends up creating can be cute for some, but a major turnoff for others, and any toys made are made AFTER the show takes off and are designed to look like the show. FiM and other Hasbro cartoons go the other direction, they have the toy designs first and they make the show look like the toys. Since Hasbro makes toys that tend to look either cute/pretty (for My Little Pony or their other girl-oriented lines) or fairly realistic (for GI Joe, Transformers, and their other boy-oriented lines) this ends up meaning the shows have to end up looking good.
And one thing you also have to give Hasbro is that they ALSO realize that good storytelling can move toys because good storytelling creates emotional attachments and emotional attachments sell toys. They've been making cartoons with epic stories, complex characters, and events that go right up to the edge of appropriate for children (in a good way) since the 1980s. Transformers for the longest time was perhaps their flagship for this with numerous very memorable and well told animated series from the 1980s to Present, but Friendship Is Magic showed it could happen with other properties of theirs.
Seriously, when a freaking TOY COMPANY reliably makes better cartoons than entire network TV stations supposedly dedicated to cartoons, something is seriously fucking wrong.
they make their money off the merch and learned the hard way that shitty stories move less merch.
Bear Ribs
Well-known member
It actually makes sense when you look at the incentives involved.
TV show studios and TV channels do not make money off of your enjoyment. They do not even (directly) make money off of viewers, they make money off of ads and funding opportunities. This causes them to behave in some surprisingly weird ways if you're going in thinking they want to make good shows people want to watch. TV studios have a surprising history of destroying or canceling their own highly successful cartoons, such as Animaniacs getting defunded because too many adults were watching it, or Megas XLR getting the ax because they had already used it as a tax write-off so it being successful would have cost the studio money and legal trouble. Garbage like Reality Television gets greenlit because those shows are amazingly cheap to make so even if the viewership is minimal, they still get some profit off of it.
There's also funding for shows that don't make a profit because Execs greenlight them over politics or causes. It's not always wokeness mind, it's a simple fact that Spin-Doctors know what they're doing, and it is much, much easier to spin a project for one person (the Exec writing the check) than try to spin something for millions of viewers. Figure out the Exec's pet ideals and hammer on them to get a show going, then embezzle the snot out of those funds, you don't need to make the show good, just hit those proper buttons on the Exec and money comes out. Captain Planet comes to mind.
Meanwhile, Hasbro gets money from only one thing, people enjoying the characters enough to want a doll of them. They give no figs about who's watching as long as those whos are willing to buy toys. Granted you can still hit buttons on the Hasbro Exec, and Hasbro doesn't have a 100% track record, but their fundamental incentive is to make people enjoy the story so much that said people also want to recreate that story/make your own later with dolls/action figures/playsets. It gives them a more solid incentive to make engaging stories than actual TV studios have.
PsihoKekec
Swashbuckling Accountant
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SchrodingersWehraboo
Well-known member
It did indeed get worse (see borderlands 2)
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King Krávoka
An infection of Your universe.
