Those look more like web animation than japanimation to me. The sort of thing you’d used to get a ~5min flash animation of but now turned into a full blown show but retaining the same style.
Note, I’m just commenting on the looks from those images, I have not watched either of these shows.
Indeed. The “hilariously” was meant as a compliment (as in, it adds to the hilarity of the show).
But yeah, come on. I mean. Hailing Archer’s animation/art style as “fine” or an example of “good”? No way. It works for the show because of the premise of the show but it’s not a shining example of great animation! Haha.
Courage the Cowardly Dog is the last cartoon that had a unique/distinct art and animation style that really blew me out of the water (and admittedly it was just a more refined/better Ren and Stimpy if you ask me).
Thank you!! I was starting to wonder if I was the only person who had this opinion. Older Simpsons episodes had odd, scribbly animation at times, but that was a definite part of its charm!
Ok, that’s a fair assessment. I would say more of the stuff we are talking about is optimal limited than not though. And if it’s not it’s usually for a good reason. I think Archer is a good example of this, as is South Park. Neither one needs to be as limited as they are, they chose to be. I was watching Dora the Explorer with my daughter last night, and that is genuinly limited animation. Watch something like that and then compare it to something like Archer or South Park. I haven’t seen enough of Adventure Time to get a solid sense of the desired effect,I think it is to create something that recalls shows like Dora but I am not totally sure, but the intention of Archer becomes really obvious when put next to something that is just being done on the cheap like Dora.
I think you get into dangerous waters, critically speaking, when you start assuming that the creators are not in full control of their art and making decisions for artistic reasons when there is an valid artistic argument to be made for the results.
I thought I made it clear in the OP that I was talking about the art style rather than the animation. I’m not talking about the FPS or the fluidity of the characters, I’m saying that if you take a still of Archer and put it next to a still of Adventure Time, one will look purdy, the other will look derpy.
Which takes us back to the reason for the art styles being chosen. At is playing on the conventions of children’s cartoons and following a tradition of simple expresive line work going back to the 40s
Ignoring animation completely and JUST considering Archer based on stills, it is completely derivative, unimaginative and boring. I don’t think it looks “purdy” at all. It looks like… nothing really. Just “ok”.
Again, huge fan of Archer but really? You think the art style is fantastic? I disagree, strongly.
To my eye AT is creative and beautiful artwork. YMMV.
From my experience, he is right - I know I’ve made the same complaint about the art classes I’m currently taking. There’s been a lot of time devoted to the different mediums but except for a couple of half sessions on shadow and perspective there’s been nothing on how to represent things as they really are.
I graduated from an art school last December, and the curriculum was pretty rigorous, with a strong emphasis on life drawing skills and the importance of regular practice.
Early Ulman-era Simpsons looked atrocious and the first season was still pretty weak in the art department before they cleaned it up in subsequent seasons. Heck, even the show has poked fun at its terrible looking roots.
And yet in post 43 the sentiment was already expressed that its early rougher animation was part of “its charm” and how The Simpsons lost something as its animation quality putatively "improved ".
It’s important to have the right look for the right show. You do not want smooth post production sound mixing for a punk rock album. Or perhaps better yet as an analogy: Bing Crosby had a great voice, smooth, great range, but him singing Dylan or Springsteen would not have worked well, even though his voice was of much higher quality, or maybe even because of that.
I’d say there’s a recognisable Japanese influence. I’m not sure how to isolate, distil and describe graphic elements, but compare those Adventure Time characters to these. I think the style might be ‘Japanese Cute’.
Sure. One guy’s opinion and different strokes, etc.
The show’s creators felt it was worth it to clean up the animation between the original shorts and S1 and clean it up more between S1 and S2. I side with their thinking as the original animation, in my opinion, was more detriment than “charm”.
