Re: Home Movies: The Squigglevision was abandoned after Cartoon Network brought the show back to life. The show is now animated on computers in Flash.
By the late 1960s, Tom and Jerry were being done by Chuck Jones’ unit (he had moved to MGM at the time, and was also responsible for The Dot and the Line and How the Grinch Stole Christmas). You’re probably referring to the Tom and Jerries of the early 1960s, which were done after MGM had closed their animation studio and were outsourced to Czechoslovakia. Arr, Dickie Moe!
Puffy is also animated in Flash. Some Flash animation can be pretty well-done-Foster’s Home for Imaginary Friends, for example. The popular Homestar Runner website is another example, though it is almost the Bullwinkle Show of Flash cartoons- the writing, not the animation, pushes it. As for Hi Hi, I personally think the animation is good, unique. It’s the writing that stinks.
Not quite. The show was ditched mid-season by UPN. When Adult Swim picked it up, they completed the run of that season in SquiggleVision, but the subsequent three seasons (well, four, but the second to last season was just one episode) were animated normally. It was RetroScripting (that is to say, no scripting–it was made-up as they went) that was only used on the original UPN episodes. It isn’t animated with anything now, the show’s canceled/on permanent hiatus.
SquiggleVision made much more sense on Dr. Katz, which was largely a sequence of still drawings with no real animation to speak of. SquiggleVision gave it the illusion of movement. As Home Movies had actual animation, the effect was superfluous there.
12-oz. Mouse is the worst I’ve seen in a while. Tom Goes to the Mayor is pretty bad, but I probably wouldn’t mind the animation if the show were actually funny.
Regarding Home Movies and squiggliness, I remember seeing an ad for the DVD set that claimed that the squiggles were removed for the DVD release.
One of the cable channels used to fill the bits between movies with National Film Board of Canada short films. God, they were awful. Bad animation, and a certain smarmy attitude you only get when you’re a Government Approved Artiste.
For a traditional US style cartoon: (By traditional, not something like Tom Goes to the Mayor, or Clutch Cargo): I’d say maybe the 70’s (80’s?) Spiderman and his Amazing Friends.
For Anime style: Dragonball Z. How this utter piece of crap remains on the air is beyond me. In addition to horrbile animation, even by cheap anime standards, the stories are paper-thin and all identical (big eveil bad guy X comes to town, defeats everyone, one of them discovers a new, special power, and then defeats bad guy.)
And where they served as inspiration for Worker and Parasite.
Pokemon and Sailor Moon animation blows chunks. The corner-cutting is so obvious when an action like running isn’t really animated at all, but simply two frames rapidly alternated. I’ll take the relative brilliance of Afghanistanimation over that any day.
Oh, it’s not even close. I’ve seen plenty of horrible animation, but nothing was ever nearly as bad as the Merry Marvel Marching Society cartoons of the Sixties. They alternated Thor, Captain America, Iron Man, the Hulk and Sub-Mariner… and these cartoons barely merit the title “animation.”
Great theme songs, though (“stronger than a whale, he can swim anywhere…”).
There are also the Kennedy episodes of Tiny Toon Adventures. For the bucks Spielberg and Warner Bros were shelling out, the Kennedy team should not have been making the characters bounce like beach balls all the damn time. I always find these episodes unwatchable just for the lousy animation.
What, nobody’s nominated Filmation yet? During the '70s and '80s, Filmation was recycling entire animation cycles across different titles. Didn’t matter if you were watching Blackstar or He-Man or Tarzan or whatever, you could bet the mortgage on seeing the same three-quarters perspective hero-runs-and-vaults-over-a-low-hedge sequence somewhere in the show – probably between the countless scenes of character-stands-still-while-his-lips-flap dialogue.
And yeah, don Jaime, the Kennedy episodes of Tiny Toons blows. I guess that was the price we paid for the gorgeous Tokyo Movie Shinsha episodes…
•The early-mid 1990s X-Men series. Grungy look; badly directed; crappy art design; and since it was an American kids cartoon there were terrible limits on what the characters could and couldn’t do. (i.e. “Wolverine: Slayer of Blast Doors and Robots”)
Well, that last part isn’t really an “animation” issue, but Logan looked pretty damned ridiculous running around with his claws out and not slashing anyone.
•One episode of New Adventures of Winnie the Pooh, where the sense of perspective kept skewing wildly. (Rabbit’s riding a toy car at one point, then when Christopher Robin picks him up, Rabbits the size of a good-sized toddler. And when a faceless shopkeeper picks him up, he fits neatly into one human hand. Trippy.)
•And…anyone else remember Disney’s Rescue Rangers series? SOME of the animation seemed decent, but other episodes looked cheap. They must have switched animation subcontractors, or something.
I always wondered what the “deal” was with that set of T&J toons. They had an almost bizarre look and sound to them.
I don’t think its fair to call shows like Dr. Katz, Home Movies, or Tom Goes To The Mayor “bad” animation. It’s like calling South Park that. The animation is meant to be just enough to support the real creativity, namely the writing.
Years ago Chuck Jones was asked about shows like The Simpsons. He said that it wasn’t supposed to be ‘full’ animation. It was essentially a radio play with pictures. He compared it to Rocky & Bullwinkle, again where the script was the star not the animation.
[hijack]
I absolutely love Tom Goes To The Mayor. Its exactly what I watch Adult Swim for. I know they get good ratings but Adult Swim is not supposed to be about shows like Family Guy, American Dad, or Robot Chicken (which I think are just terribly written). They’re supposed to be like the progenitor of them all, Space Ghost. IOW, wierd, off-the-wall, loooong pregnant pauses, non-sequiters, and above all, smart, witty, intelligent writing.
TGTTM is much like ATHF or The Brak Show or Space Ghost. You kinda either get them or you don’t.
The Helm’s Deep battle and some of the other sequences in the Ralph Bashki version of Lord of the Rings, where live action is obviously and very badly traced over. This kind of rotoscoping technique can work in some animation, but it’s really awful here. I’ve been told that the whole battle sequence is from another movie, something like Zulu Dawn.
I’ve got to go with the present day cartoon “Delta State.” Aside from the fact that the show is transcedently atrocious, lame, and laughable, the rotoscope animation looks like absolute shit, and every character has a big, distracting triangle on their nose. Having seen a bit of a few episodes (it comes on after Futurama) it’s rapidly beginning to stake a claim as the Worst Television Show Ever.
