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[Mabase]

That's rubbish. It varies hugely. During the golden age, they learnt almost everything we know about animation,but their production techniques - whilst space age at the time, with their enormous multiplane cameras and giant paintings of glass that they had to rub off to reuse - got in the way of the process hugely. They also used huge amounts of frame for frame rotoscoping. And they had no choice,because the films took 5 years each to make as it was. But grab a copy of the Tangled bluray and see of they have anything on there about Glen Keane's role on the production. He'd sit in the dailies and draw all over every frame of animation in the film until it was perfect, and any list of the worlds most adept animators has to have him near the top.

Obviously their Sunday morning cartoons don't get quite the same love, but the idea that its simply "shit in comparison" is way off base.

Took the words right off my mouth.

To add to that: Like everything that s made professionally, animation is a marriage of time, budget and manpower in a certain marketplace. Of yourse, if you have to churn out 20 x 25 minutes of tv animation within a year, your possibilities to explore the art and deliver highest quality in animation, design,, writing etc. are limited.
But look at the productions that have the opportunity to stress quality, and the level of craftmanship and ingenuity are not worse than in these Popeye examples.

 

[jett]

Not only does this golden age animation trump anything modern in terms of animation quality, the stories and funny stuff happening in them is so much better than the shit we get today as well. Popeye was absurd, weird and laugh out loud funny.

It's incredible to think that it's all done by hand. The lines are so accurate that they look like vectors sometimes.

It really does not. Disney's theatrical releases are better in every single aspect.

 

[knkng]

It really does not. Disney's theatrical releases are better in every single aspect.

The golden age includes many Disney theatrical releases, or did you just mean post 1988?

 

[Xun]

Some bold claims in this thread, and it certainly makes me wonder how the Animation OT I'm working on will go down.

 

[jett]

The golden age includes many Disney theatrical releases, or did you just mean post 1988?

Right, the post-Little Mermaid renaissance. As someone who watched a lot of Popeye, I can't understand that line of thinking.

 

[qindarka]

I actually find the animation in the Golden Age of Disney to be better than that of the Renaissance. Still think the latter films look great, they do suffer somewhat from characters being off-model in certain scenes and some shoddy implementation of CG.

Main difference I notice is that the films in the Renaissance look a lot cleaner and more pristine but I've gradually grown to favor the older look.

Modern Disney for example is flashier, but the animation principles themselves are shit in comparison.

Could you elaborate further on this? What is so wrong with their animation principles nowadays?

 

[Boss Doggie]

Wow, someone is smoking if they think gold era animation trumps renaissance era. Fun fact - renaissance era isn't the era that cut costs. Gold age copy-pasted a lot of stuff and essentially tried to be lazy in lots of aspects (see: white gloves, four fingers, etc.)

I don't know. When I look at these I basically see the same thing only that the original Scooby Doo was more restricted due to the technology of the time. Neither of these shows have an ounce of creativity or care put into them and really only exist to make money using the simplest means possible. Ok, computers allow the new animation to have shadow effects and not re-use the same run cycle 50 times per episode, but so what? The end product is still junk.

However, in general, I'm glad that we're beyond the days of Hanna-Barbera (the studio) and FILMation and we're starting to see great stuff created by animators again, and not just focus groups and toy companies. Scooby Doo (even the new stuff) is just a poor example of that.

Spoiler

And why is Velma skinny?

...

Did you just assume Mystery Incorporated is the same as the old Scooby shows?

 

[soepje]

he's saying "oh god, i'm so high right now".

His calculation skills are impressive for one under influence .

 

[Tobor]

Slightly off topic but how come this style of voice/video was used for so long, like up until the 60s. It's like all documentaries/commercials had this kind of propaganda voice narration, with quaint music in the background. Why did it stop though? Did people 'grow up' out of it in the late 60s/early 70s or something?

The "style of voice" you're talking about is the Transatlantic accent. It's dead now, unfortunately.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mid-Atlantic_English

 

[knkng]

Right, the post-Little Mermaid renaissance. As someone who watched a lot of Popeye, I can't understand that line of thinking.

I generally agree. I'm a huge fan of animation, and I have incredible respect for the process used during that era, but just because the animation was so good back then, it shouldn't take away from the good stuff produced today.

That being said, I do miss a lot of the thought process from those older cartoons. The way that objects would morph or twist or transform is still fascinating to me. Unfortunately we don't see that nearly as often these days.

Did you just assume Mystery Incorporated is the same as the old Scooby shows?

Of course not. I'm aware that the approach towards each show is very different, but it still just feels like the same thing to me. They are both just products of their time. To me animation is 50% artwork (as in the actual visuals) and 50% what you create with it. If the end product is a slicker version of Scooby Doo, then I'm just not interested. It's marketing drivel.

But that's just my personal belief, I'm not trying to condemn the people who do enjoy it.

 

[zoukka]

Could you elaborate further on this? What is so wrong with their animation principles nowadays?

Basic character movement in 3D space is not as accurate or fluid. There's nothing wrong with it and they did lead the pack in the new renaissance, but a lot of the principles based on cold hard labour was lost. I can understand why, because the new generations of animators build on top of the skill of their predecessors. Only a select few have the ambition and motivation to do the ground work for their craft today though. There are so many tools to help you skip all that and the design of modern animation characters often disregards all of the principles as well.

Wow, someone is smoking if they think gold era animation trumps renaissance era. Fun fact - renaissance era isn't the era that cut costs. Gold age copy-pasted a lot of stuff and essentially tried to be lazy in lots of aspects (see: white gloves, four fingers, etc.)

White gloves were there to make the hands more visible and clear. Four fingers is a design decision. You have no idea what you are saying.

It really does not. Disney's theatrical releases are better in every single aspect.

Except in construction and movement they aren't. There are amazing highlights of course like some parts of Lion King and funny stylized stuff in Herc, but most of the humans look wonky (and well... human) and the designs are focus group tested to hell and back.

 

[thomaser]

Fun seeing how that Popeye short was made, but did anyone else notice that when they finally show the short at the end, the sound is very misaligned? Popeye's voice is synced well to begin with, but then the voices suddenly come a second or two before the visuals (when Olive says "I'll marry you!" and Popeye kisses her arm). Wonder if that was just a quirk of this documentary, or if it really was like that in the short. As meticulously made as it was, this surely couldn't be the end result?

 

[efyu_lemonardo]

Ironically, it takes just as long to make a good looking (i.e., Pixar quality, not Cartoon Network-style-take-clipart-and-run-it-through-Flash) CG film. I think it took something like five years just to make Toy Story, if you ignore scriptwriting and storyboarding

There's nothing ironic about it. From a technical point of view, a Pixar movie is orders of magnitude more complex than a PopEye cartoon.

Examining a single aspect like coloring should make this immediately clear. After watching the short documentary do you honestly think it was remotely possible to have 16 million unique colors that are all completely consistent throughout the entire animation in the 1930s?

 

[eshwaaz]

Link

I'm sure a lot of you have scene this. Just felt like sharing here.

The video shows the process of making an episode of Popeye.

This is outstanding - thanks for posting!

I worked as an animator at a few different traditional animation houses in the late 90s; my friends from that era will really love seeing this video.

 

[Air]

There's nothing ironic about it. From a technical point of view, a Pixar movie is orders of magnitude more complex than a PopEye cartoon.

Examining a single aspect like coloring should make this immediately clear. After watching the short documentary do you honestly think it was remotely possible to have 16 million unique colors that are all completely consistent throughout the entire animation in the 1930s?

They're complex in different ways. While a traditional animator might have to worry about color, a 3d animator might have to worry about inputting a different number so they could get the physics of cloth done in the manner they want to. The traditional artist has to worry about drawing everything. Every little detail has to be drawn with a hand, but a lot of 3d processes can be automated. Each field has their own layers (pun intended) and intricacies.

Also whoever said anything about labor and merchandising is off the ball. Just like a show needs to be popular to make money off of it so that it can continue is true today, it is also true for the past animation industry, the only difference being there weren't as many avenues to market toys until later. As far as labor is concerned, the goal for animation at the time was to work less. These guys didn't enjoy the labor they were doing because its ridiculous. When they discovered you didn't have to draw every frame, but could use every other frame, they went with the second option immediately. Disney, by and large created machines to help ease the process of animation (green screens, xerography, etc)

Fun seeing how that Popeye short was made, but did anyone else notice that when they finally show the short at the end, the sound is very misaligned? Popeye's voice is synced well to begin with, but then the voices suddenly come a second or two before the visuals (when Olive says "I'll marry you!" and Popeye kisses her arm). Wonder if that was just a quirk of this documentary, or if it really was like that in the short. As meticulously made as it was, this surely couldn't be the end result?

I don't know if it happened in the short, but things like that did happen, but not that far into production (unless somebody was slacking off). The lip synch would have been caught during a pencil test and fixed appropriately. But there was a time before pencil testing machines came about when artists didn't know how their animation went unless they flipped the pages or saw it on the screen.

 

[Novid]

It's insane how labor intensive the animation process is/was.

Were Disney and Warner Brothers actually turning a profit on all their shorts? How can you even demonstrate profitability when all you're producing is a tiny 6-8 minute film that runs before a feature-length movie? It's crazy to think that for animated TV shows, studios are turning out 35,000 frames for a single episode, and still turning a profit.

Compared to live-action cinema, how much more expensive is animation (per minute)? I know that live-action movies require actors and lighting and sets and sound guys and all that, but it seems way less expensive than paying artists to draw and paint 24 frames for every single second of footage.

Until the late 1980's, the cost of animation (that ment everything) compared to its live action counterpart - was at least 2X more than live action. What changed live action to become more expencive was the union contracts and actors pay. Now live action productions are in the FIVE million range for action series, 1.5 for drama and nearly 700,000 for comedy. Animation don't go over 500,000 for anything outside of Theatrical.

 

[Octavian]

Did you think people looked like cavemen or monkeys a century ago?

No certainly not. And a caveman would look like you or me, considering he's a homo sapien. What I meant was that it's amazing to consider the years and how they're linked. When I said modern human, I meant the things that encompass modern civilization- electricity and so on. I was just mentally stretching back the timeline in my head to where the trappings of modernity start to fade away. That's where I arbitrarily arrived at 1880.

But as you consider the timeline and linkage, all of a sudden it's 200,000 bce and there's the emergence of homo sapiens... small world, short time.

Sorry that's just what was in my head. If any of that makes sense.

 

[Novid]

There's nothing ironic about it. From a technical point of view, a Pixar movie is orders of magnitude more complex than a PopEye cartoon.

Examining a single aspect like coloring should make this immediately clear. After watching the short documentary do you honestly think it was remotely possible to have 16 million unique colors that are all completely consistent throughout the entire animation in the 1930s?

Not possible. They had to be color theorists yes, but they could not pull of the 16 million were asking today. The best was 2,140 colors at the time and making that ink was expencive.

 

[Novid]

Wow, someone is smoking if they think gold era animation trumps renaissance era. Fun fact - renaissance era isn't the era that cut costs. Gold age copy-pasted a lot of stuff and essentially tried to be lazy in lots of aspects (see: white gloves, four fingers, etc.)

all true, but they cut cost for different reasons than being "lazy"

 

[Tricky I Shadow]

I find this kind of stuff so interesting. Thanks for sharing!

 

[efyu_lemonardo]

Not possible. They had to be color theorists yes, but they could not pull of the 16 million were asking today. The best was 2,140 colors at the time and making that ink was expencive.

That was my point ;-)

They're complex in different ways. While a traditional animator might have to worry about color, a 3d animator might have to worry about inputting a different number so they could get the physics of cloth done in the manner they want to. The traditional artist has to worry about drawing everything. Every little detail has to be drawn with a hand, but a lot of 3d processes can be automated. Each field has their own layers (pun intended) and intricacies.

This is also part of the point I'm trying to make. The amount of effort and time any individual human can put into something hasn't changed, but the tools enabling them to achieve a required final result have.

 

[ShinobiFist]

The "style of voice" you're talking about is the Transatlantic accent. It's dead now, unfortunately.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mid-Atlantic_English

Yup, they changed it to a deeper monotone voice now for this on TV journalist and radio personalities.

 

[The Main Event]

Impressive. Someone should produce a modern cartoon based on that process.

 

[Kinyou]

All those cells are unique, right? Would freak me out to work with those.

"oops, just used the wrong color for popeye's hat, guess you have to draw another one."

 

[Air]

All those cells are unique, right? Would freak me out to work with those.

"oops, just used the wrong color for popeye's hat, guess you have to draw another one."

They are also highly flammable.

 

[zoukka]

This is also part of the point I'm trying to make. The amount of effort and time any individual human can put into something hasn't changed, but the tools enabling them to achieve a required final result have.

Standards in skill and education have changed. The amount of effort expected from workers also. On some areas for the better, on some for the worse.

I remember a documentary about some animator legend and the narrator asking him a question in his apprentice years (the narrator would later on become a legend animator himself) about whether the guy listens to music while animating. He just screamed to him that the work he does couldn't be done with half the focus you get while multitasking.

A bit different from todays work ethics :b

 

[Boss Doggie]

White gloves were there to make the hands more visible and clear. Four fingers is a design decision. You have no idea what you are saying.

Which were born from quick, lazy animation. Compare Felix the Cat or any of the black and white cartoons to say, Snow White or hell, Betty Boop and Popeye.

 

[zoukka]

Which were born from quick, lazy animation. Compare Felix the Cat or any of the black and white cartoons to say, Snow White or hell, Betty Boop and Popeye.

The origin of animated cartoons is lazy now You are very uninformed.

And Popeye and Betty both started as black and white.

 

[efyu_lemonardo]

Standards in skill and education have changed. The amount of effort expected from workers also. On some areas for the better, on some for the worse.

I remember a documentary about some animator legend and the narrator asking him a question in his apprentice years (the narrator would later on become a legend animator himself) about whether the guy listens to music while animating. He just screamed to him that the work he does couldn't be done with half the focus you get while multitasking.

A bit different from todays work ethics :b

Work ethics are certainly different, but I don't know if there is a proven effect on the end result for your particular example, or other similar ones for that matter. You can also always try to argue that having a stable life is better in the long run for an artist's volume of work and therefor, statistically speaking, may be better for their volume of high quality work as well...

It's the age old question: "Must the artist suffer for their art?"

 

[Xun]

Standards in skill and education have changed. The amount of effort expected from workers also. On some areas for the better, on some for the worse.

I remember a documentary about some animator legend and the narrator asking him a question in his apprentice years (the narrator would later on become a legend animator himself) about whether the guy listens to music while animating. He just screamed to him that the work he does couldn't be done with half the focus you get while multitasking.

A bit different from todays work ethics :b

Sounds like Richard Williams dealing with Milt Kahl.

The Nine Old Men were all fantastic animators, truly the best.

 

[Sylver]

Really not many differences until late 80s.
Love Dragon Ball Cels <3.

 

[MilesWebber]

When I was a kid the Disney channel used to run old newsreels like this and I ALWAYS dreamed of being an animator. Alas, I can't draw worth a damn.

 

[Konka]

They would probably advertise the show as 100% native work if it wasn't.

Wrong.

 

[Vinegar Joe]

The Fleischer Brothers really deserve a lot more credit than they get. Trying to compete with Disney in feature length films killed them, but shorts like these really show what they were capable of. There's an imagination there that was just lacking in most of Disney's output.

Both the Sinbad and Aladdin Popeye cartoons were some of my favourites when I was a kid (along with Tex Avery stuff), and they still look fantastic today.

 

[Divvy]

are any of the American animated shows on TV not outsourced to Asia ?

There are a lot of shows that aren't outsourced to Asia. Most of them aren't.

Sounds like Richard Williams dealing with Milt Kahl.

The Nine Old Men were all fantastic animators, truly the best.

They were indeed.

 

[IceCold]

The Fleischer Brothers really deserve a lot more credit than they get. Trying to compete with Disney in feature length films killed them, but shorts like these really show what they were capable of. There's an imagination there that was just lacking in most of Disney's output.

Both the Sinbad and Aladdin Popeye cartoons were some of my favourites when I was a kid (along with Tex Avery stuff), and they still look fantastic today.

They were awesome: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aDATXtewPrg

 

[Boss Doggie]

The origin of animated cartoons is lazy now You are very uninformed.

And Popeye and Betty both started as black and white.

I guess lazy is an inappropriate word. More like cost-cutting.

And I know they are black and white (I prefer their b/w shorts). What I am saying is that their style is more distinct and detailed over the "cost-cutting" cartoons of MGM, Disney, and such who are all "all black save for the hands and face", thus having some racial insensitivity on some characters). And no the four fingers isn't a "stylistic choice", it's actually invoked because it saves time to animate them.

And I just realized my examples of non-cost-cutting animation are all Fleischer toons. Nice!

 

[Futureman]

Sounds like Richard Williams dealing with Milt Kahl.

Yup. I remember reading this in the Animator's Survival Kit.

I NEED music when I'm just drawing, but yea, full attention needed while animating. I'm no pro though, just an enthusiast.

 

[Vinegar Joe]

They were awesome: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aDATXtewPrg

Yeah that's exactly the kind of thing that makes The Fleischer Brothers a lot more interesting than Disney...in my eyes at least. There were obviously copious amounts of drugs involved.

 

[GK86]

I would have gone insane working in one of those places. Great video.

 

[zoukka]

I guess lazy is an inappropriate word. More like cost-cutting.

And I know they are black and white (I prefer their b/w shorts). What I am saying is that their style is more distinct and detailed over the "cost-cutting" cartoons of MGM, Disney, and such who are all "all black save for the hands and face", thus having some racial insensitivity on some characters). And no the four fingers isn't a "stylistic choice", it's actually invoked because it saves time to animate them.

So what the hell is your point exactly? Of course the early stuff had more cost-cutting. And there was no need for more than four fingers on those early characters. Sure it "saves" you to animate one additional finger, but all good character design aims to make the characters as easy to animate as possible while retaining enough complexity to keep them lively and expressive. It's not lazy by any means.

 

[Vano]

Pretty awesome and interesting, thanks for the video.

For reference and the curious, here is an example of how they do it now: https://vimeo.com/44181679

 

[Razgriz-Specter]

This is true but it's only really due to losing international ticket sales since WWII was happening in Europe. Having the studio essentially taken over by the US military shortly afterward didn't help either.



I don't know. When I look at these I basically see the same thing only that the original Scooby Doo was more restricted due to the technology of the time. Neither of these shows have an ounce of creativity or care put into them and really only exist to make money using the simplest means possible. Ok, computers allow the new animation to have shadow effects and not re-use the same run cycle 50 times per episode, but so what? The end product is still junk.

However, in general, I'm glad that we're beyond the days of Hanna-Barbera (the studio) and FILMation and we're starting to see great stuff created by animators again, and not just focus groups and toy companies. Scooby Doo (even the new stuff) is just a poor example of that.

Spoiler

And why is Velma skinny?

The new Scooby Doo(Mystery Incorporated) is actually amazing though. the love the creators have for the material is extremely noticeable.
the story/writing/character development is better than 95% of cartoons, the voice acting is the best its ever been.
they even have stuff like Don Knotts, Jabberjaw, Speed Buggy, Jonny Quest, Bam Bam & Pebbles cameos.

they even created a role just for Velma's live action actress.

The artstyle is my favorite of all time, the color work is just stunning.
I find the show amazing, im almost 23 but I enjoy it about as much as anything on TV.

she isn't really,

 

[Parallax Scroll]

Cool video, thanks for sharing.

 

[Xun]

Yup. I remember reading this in the Animator's Survival Kit.

I NEED music when I'm just drawing, but yea, full attention needed while animating. I'm no pro though, just an enthusiast.

Indeed.

Great little sketch Richard does of Milt as well!

Pretty awesome and interesting, thanks for the video.

For reference and the curious, here is an example of how they do it now: https://vimeo.com/44181679

I love seeing stuff like this, but I just wish more of the blocking was shown.

The first bit of blocking he shows is already pretty far along.

 

[Gr1mLock]

Death of traditional animation always made me sad.

 

[Xun]

Death of traditional animation always made me sad.

I don't think it's dead in all honesty.

But it certainly looks that way now though.

 

[Gr1mLock]

I don't think it's dead in all honesty.

But it certainly looks that way now though.

The landscape is just so different from what it was a decade and a half ago. I dont even remember the last decently budgeted full length feature that had commercial success.

 

[Divvy]

The landscape is just so different from what it was a decade and a half ago. I dont even remember the last decently budgeted full length feature that had commercial success.

Winnie the Pooh 2011?

 

[R1CHO]

I think what I meant by my post, is just that it seems like artists need expensive things to be taken seriously as individuals these days.

Hipsters need expensive shit to feel like artists.

Real artist don't need it. But with the tools we have today, real artists can make amazing stuff that back in the day was incredible much more time consuming.