The other night I was watching a few episodes of The New Adventures of Batman when the oddest sensation came over me: I was creeped out. Like genuinely uneasy, as if I was watching a horror movie where I knew the killer was about to spring out and attack someone. I’m not sure why this occurred, since I don’t recall being frightened when Scooby-Doo was on in the olden days (well, occasionally). Does anyone else get this feeling?
I watched a lot of that kind of animation and even as a kid I don’t ever being scared by anything. Rankin / Bass, on the other hand…The bumble always scared the crap out of me, even on repeated viewings of Rudolf
Filmation never frightened me, or even made me uneasy, although even as a very young kid I recognized that their animation sequences were very limited, and re-used over and over. They also used rotoscoping fairly frequently, which I suppose does look a bit different than other animation techniques, and could potentially be off-putting to some viewers.
Many people look down on Filmation for their limited animation style, but I have very fond memories of a lot of their stuff. They did the Star Trek animated series, for example. Their Flash Gordon series was very well-done, especially the first season. Although tainted today by its association with Bill Cosby, Fat Albert was also quite good. Even as late as my college years, my friends and I would gather in the TV room to watch one of Filmation’s final products, the space Western BraveStarr (certain recreational substances might have been involved).
By the way, Scooby-Doo was produced by Hanna-Barbera, not Filmation, and had its own distinct animation style.
Thanks for the correction. I guess it’s been awhile since I saw any apart from the movies.
It was easy to get them mixed up, since Scooby-Doo also reused animation sequences a lot, especially the gang walking or running. Although they didn’t reuse animation as much as Filmation did. Filmation really was the king of the repeated shot.
For awhile there, pretty much every cartoon on Saturday morning was either Hanna-Barbera or Filmation, with Ruby-Spears coming in a distant third.
As a kid, I liked their classic He Man and the Masters of the Universe. then came Bravestarr, which, together with “Transformers” - one of the Sunbow cartoons - was my favorite after-school cartoon when I was 8.
I must say I liked their animation style and still do. I realize they recycled cels a lot and that was visible even when I was a kid, but the aforementioned cartoons had very cool landscape backgrounds (both were set on other planets - He Man on “Eternia”, which combines Medieval / Fantasy with Sci-Fi elements, and Bravestarr on “New Texas”, which combines Old West and Sci-Fi elements). They also had great music.
Plus, even with all the recycled cels and stock footage, I think the character designs were better than the often badly proportioned and fuzzy, sometimes Animesque character designs of the Sunbow / DIC series. I should mention that, in general, I don’t like Anime.
When I was a kid, I thought any cartoon was better than no cartoon (although sometimes just barely, like The Mighty Hercules or Max the 2000-Year-Old Mouse).
I agree that Filmation was also good with their background landscapes. Interestingly enough, like their limited animation, that was a cost-saving measure.
Filmation developed the technique of preparing very detailed background paintings, especially for their fantasy-based shows. They would often open scenes by panning the camera across those paintings. This both filled up screen time, and created the illusion of movement without having to do any actual animation.
Hanna-Barbera made excellent use of background in the Tom&Jerry series. They started with a large unique backdrop for each cartoon, including all the elements used in the story. The stories were largely filled with chase scenes and an existing library of the characters in action, scaled to different sizes. That was a high point in their animation quality, over time they cut out as much original work in a cartoon episode as possible. Filmation’s return to quality backgrounds was a brief uptick in the steadily declining quality of animation intended for television. Their treatment of Star Trek was also better than their usual production quality all around.
Didn’t much care for Filmation or Hanna-Barbera. I’d watch them because I’d pretty much watch any cartoon on the air, but I knew they were no better than mediocre.
The thing is, when you’re cutting corners on animation, you compensate by putting more effort into the scripts. Rocky and Bullwinkle were cheaply animated (Crusader Rabbit even more so), but the stories and dialog carried it. H-B and Filmation figured they were for kids, so there was no need for good stories.
Star Trek was the exception for Filmation, because it had decent scripts. The writers included veterans of the series plus people like David Gerrold and Larry Niven, so the shows worked.