Identified. These are from the Disney “Animated Storybook” line. The words flash up on the screen as they are being read. They weren’t sold as cheap animation, but as reading tutorials. See http://www.amazon.com/Winnie-Pooh-Honey-Tree-Animated-Storybook/dp/B000ZQ1KEY.
Thanks ftg and John.
They did something like this for Watchmen around the time the movie came out. It was very interesting to see the drawings from the comic get up and move around (to the limited extent they did) but the fact one guy did everyone’s voice was… distracting.
(Yes, that means a male voice for Laurie Juspeczyk. Not what I wanted during the sex scene between her and Daniel Dreiberg.)
South Park is done on computer now. Also, it’s a political commentary show, so a quick turnaround time is vital to the plots they want to do; having the lead-times associated with traditional animation would kill them.
And it has been since the second episode, if I remember correctly.
As a supplement to the Straight Dope answer, I can report (from fond memory) that they probably saved money an additional way with this bizzare technique.
The synchronization was frequently awful to non-existent. I remember because my brothers and I used to make fun of it by constantly moving our lips and then speaking the words of the line in-between movements. This pretty effectively simulated what you actually saw on the show. Lips often moved when there were pauses in the actual speech.
Ultimately, then, what they eventually seem to have resorted to was filming the lips moving exactly once and then simply reusing the same sequence over and over again, whether it had anything to do with what was being spoken or not.
I don’t know what they said, but perhaps it was simply that old stand-by (when you’re in a choir and forget the words) of “banana banana banana.” If it wasn’t, it should have been.
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Hi **ZeroZanzibar **. I went ahead and merged your response (fine response by the way) to the existing thread.
No problem, you’ll know for next time.
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No when I’m talking about awful direct-to-DVD animated Disney movies, I’m talking about awful direct-to-DVD Disney movies.
Like this one: The Little Mermaid II: Return to the Sea (Video 2000) - IMDb
Or this one: The Lion King II: Simba's Pride (Video 1998) - IMDb
Or this one: Mulan II (Video 2004) - IMDb
Or this one: The Jungle Book 2 (2003) - IMDb
Seriously, they’re all pretty awful. (Except, as I mentioned, the Aladdin sequels.)
For some reason, in the late 90s/early-00s, Disney had a huge problem just leaving their high-quality properties well enough alone. They decided to create direct-to-DVD sequels to all of them, which are almost universally awful. Of course, they have the Disney logo, so they sold far out of proportion of their quality.
And that’s not to mention their TV series, Timon and Puma, Emperor’s New School, Lilo and Stitch, the Hercules one, which are all… well, mediocre at best.
Anyway, if you think Disney = quality, you’ve obviously never seen any of their direct-to-DVD or TV animation. Or Treasure Planet, for that matter.
It is sad, and it’s one of the things that Lassiter was supposed to fix when he took over as head of animation for Disney. I don’t have access to that industry anymore due to a career change, so I don’t know how much good he did, but I haven’t noticed a terrible sequel since he was put in charge.
But not all of the TV animation from that period was terrible. I recall the Tarzan TV show was fairly good, and I know there was at least one other that surprised me with its quality.
Those are not the ones that were being talked about in the first place, and they are nowhere near as low quality as “Clutch Cargo” or the early Marvel animation. The Disney “Animated Storybook” DVDs are that bad, considered as pure animation, but they were not made or sold as regular cartoons to begin with.
I would love to see Jack Chick tracts animated in this style. It would be perfect.
I just noticed this last night! Cool.
Hah, that reminded what animators said about the nightmare scene from Dumbo:
When Kimball was asked: “were you guys on drugs when doing this?”, he answered “Sure we did, Alca-Seltzer and Pepto-Bismol. We were just trained to think this way.”
Now you’re just being mean. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with the animation on Treasure Planet. Did you even see how they used computer animation and hand-drawn animation simultaneously for a single character?
There may have been story issues, but knocking the animation quality of any of Disney’s feature releases is just bizarre.
The direct-to-video releases (which Lasseter did put a stop to) were certainly not up to the same quality as the theatrical releases, but any one of them is still leaps and bounds beyond the hand-drawn animation being done at the time by any American company, short perhaps of Don Bluth.
Seriously, aside from Studio Ghibli, and the Bluth offerings, is there any animation company that even comes close to the quality of Disney’s 1990s/2000s television and direct-to-DVD animation offerings?
Powers &8^]
Yeah, the “I got the watch from your daddy and hid it on(?) my person” scene. Classic, and set the atmosphere for 1960’s…
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Why knock Treasure Planet for animation quality? The story was formulaic and not well thought out, and as one critic said - “Who is this aimed at? Teen boys with angst issues don’t go watch cartoons; little kids don’t want to watch moody big brother as hero”. (Just like guys who like fantasy adventures don’t want to watch preteen girls as heros, in the movie “The Golden Compass” which also bombed) Know your audience and write for them. However the animation was very good.
The story came from Robert Louis Stevenson! It’s a classic!
Eh, I don’t buy that. Little kids soaked up The Lion King like sponges, and Simba was just as moody and angsty there. I was in my early twenties and enjoyed Treasure Planet quite a bit.
Powers &8^]
I was in first grade when Clutch debuted weekday afternoons on WCCO, Channel 4 in Minneapolis. John Gallos (aka, Officer Clancy) waxed rapturous over this new technique, which was going to revolutionize cartoon-making.
I always thought it was a really cool series, when I was a little kid. I remember seeing it for the first time in twenty years back in the early '80s and thinking “Holy crap! They just superimposed real mouths on the cartoon characters! That’s gross!”
I think we can all agree that the world is finally ready for a feature length Clutch Cargo movie. Ideally, in IMAX.
Nah. Tim Burton would just fuck it up.