4 ms·

tl;dw but I'm gonna guess it comes down to "they sure did shit out a lot of cheap, terrible cartoons for a decade". I mean seriously Joe and Bill won an Oscar o

tl;dw but I'm gonna guess it comes down to "they sure did shit out a lot of cheap, terrible cartoons for a decade". I mean seriously Joe and Bill won an Oscar or two for their lovingly-animated Tom & Jerry shorts at MGM but once the theatrical shorts market dried up they started making stuff with the fewest drawings humanly possible, that rested largely on voice work. "Illustrated radio" is a term that animation nerds throw around for the vast majority of their output. Then Turner bought them I think, then WB bought Turner, and IIRC just kinda merged them into Cartoon Network because having two studios in the same city is kind of a waste or resources. Also the whole rise of sending work overseas to Asia where your dollar buys an order of more magnitude more pencil mileage; animation was at the forefront of hollowing out the American industry by substituting cheaper labor across the globe. Or at least that's what I recall from growing up in the seventies and being in the animation industry in the nineties/00s. People who were kids with no taste and a lot of time to fill during the time they dominated Saturday Morning have fond memories of their characters but that stuff really does not age well. It maybe ages slightly better than most Filmation work. Slightly.

dvtrn 8y ago
I have fond memories of those characters from my childhood and my adult hood when [adult swim] came along and gave us fresh and absurdist/adult-oriented versions of some of our favorite characters. Space Ghost: Coast to Coast, The Brak Show, Harvey Birdman: Attorney at Law, Sealab 2021, many others.
- zazen 8y ago
  I hope you've discovered Venture Bros? Best of them all!
  - dvtrn 8y ago
    Yes. It's covered in the "many others". There's a Brock Sampson shirt somewhere in my closet.
msla 8y ago
> "Illustrated radio" is a term that animation nerds throw around for the vast majority of their output. And they even cheaped out on the "radio" part, in that their jokes and plots were stale, unimaginative, and just as recycled as their backgrounds. Rocky & Bullwinkle did "Illustrated Radio" well because it had a good writing staff. The cardinal sin of making media is condescension. Don't talk down to your audience, and don't make media you yourself wouldn't consume. (There might even be a broader lesson there.)
- rectang 8y ago
  Hanna Barbera had good music (props to Hoyt Curtin, the Hanna Barbera musical director), sound design, and voice acting. But you are soooo right about the writing -- it is disheartening to go back and watch these cartoons now.
- rangibaby 8y ago
  Illustrated radio basically sums up most TV anime.
- Hoasi 8y ago
  > The cardinal sin of making media is condescension. Don't talk down to your audience, and don't make media you yourself wouldn't consume. (There might even be a broader lesson there.) Advertisers should pay attention to this more. Looking down at the "consumer" and downplaying the "audience"'s intelligence are still common practices. As you said, the broader lesson applies to all media. The same sin affects bad entertainment and bad journalism (or infotainment).
anyfoo 8y ago
> People who were kids with no taste and a lot of time to fill Very true. I grew up in Germany, but we got most of the cartoons that were popular in the US (plus some Japanese stuff) as well, dubbed. One particular situation from the late 80s or early 90s that I remember was when the channel that showed the Smurfs, which I liked, was somehow repeating the same episode over and over again. Maybe there was an error at the station (I wouldn't be too surprised if nobody paid that close attention to the children's programming), or maybe I just happened to catch all the reruns in strange coincidence. It's hard to remember the specifics. But what I do remember well is that I watched that episode, one that I actually did not like to begin with, over and over again, disliking it more and more each time. When the episode started playing and I realized that it was that episode again within the first few seconds, I got so disheartened and disappointed. And then I continued watching it. Nowadays, that's a pretty funny, if not somewhat bizarre, memory. As an adult, there is no way I would force myself through any show's episode that I don't like anyway repeatedly, why did I "have to" as a child? Similarly, I remember a few entire cartoons that I was not particularly fond off, or sometimes actively disliked, and I still watched those, too, "because that's what was on TV right now". Apparently, realizing that I had agency over how I spend my own entertainment time was something I had to learn better growing up.
- komali2 8y ago
  For me I dunno if it's more agency or just more difficult to stay entertained. I used to play world of Warcraft for ten hours marathons on summer break. Same for counter strike, half life deathmatch... Hell even single player games like ocarina of Time would take me months to get through because chopping down all the signs in the beginner area, leaving, coming back, and doing it all over again would be enough "game" for me. Now I barely touch games... Can do about an hour and a half of tv or movie max (barring good 2h+ films). Multiplayer games I can do maybe an hour or two a couple days a week, more if we're in the same room. I mean I watched Alladin every day for a good few months once. I'm typing this out because I got distracted from Netflix just now. Something's different about me, I wonder if it's true for others?
  - gurkendoktor 8y ago
rat87 8y ago
At around 7 minutes he goes into Hanna Barbera's "Limited animation" including a surprising reference from Dextor's laboratory to the cheap animation style and that animator Chuck Jones called it "Illustrated radio". The video puts the 80s era of licensed properties/toy cartoons (GI Joes, Transformers, etc.) as the first thing to really challenge HB due to the , and that during that time HB struggled to adapt and compete and that the Smurfs seemed like their only success during the era. He says they had a revival after being bought by Turner in the 90s and making decent cartoons for cartoon network but were ultimately absorbed by WB animation after the companies merged.
Tsubasachan 8y ago
Outsourcing in the animation industry isn't just something that hit the US. Japanese anime is now often made in Vietnam and South Korea.

dvtrn 8y ago

I have fond memories of those characters from my childhood and my adult hood when [adult swim] came along and gave us fresh and absurdist/adult-oriented versions of some of our favorite characters. Space Ghost: Coast to Coast, The Brak Show, Harvey Birdman: Attorney at Law, Sealab 2021, many others.

zazen 8y ago
I hope you've discovered Venture Bros? Best of them all!
- dvtrn 8y ago
  Yes. It's covered in the "many others". There's a Brock Sampson shirt somewhere in my closet.

msla 8y ago

> "Illustrated radio" is a term that animation nerds throw around for the vast majority of their output. And they even cheaped out on the "radio" part, in that their jokes and plots were stale, unimaginative, and just as recycled as their backgrounds. Rocky & Bullwinkle did "Illustrated Radio" well because it had a good writing staff. The cardinal sin of making media is condescension. Don't talk down to your audience, and don't make media you yourself wouldn't consume. (There might even be a broader lesson there.)

rectang 8y ago
Hanna Barbera had good music (props to Hoyt Curtin, the Hanna Barbera musical director), sound design, and voice acting. But you are soooo right about the writing -- it is disheartening to go back and watch these cartoons now.
rangibaby 8y ago
Illustrated radio basically sums up most TV anime.
Hoasi 8y ago
> The cardinal sin of making media is condescension. Don't talk down to your audience, and don't make media you yourself wouldn't consume. (There might even be a broader lesson there.) Advertisers should pay attention to this more. Looking down at the "consumer" and downplaying the "audience"'s intelligence are still common practices. As you said, the broader lesson applies to all media. The same sin affects bad entertainment and bad journalism (or infotainment).

anyfoo 8y ago

> People who were kids with no taste and a lot of time to fill Very true. I grew up in Germany, but we got most of the cartoons that were popular in the US (plus some Japanese stuff) as well, dubbed. One particular situation from the late 80s or early 90s that I remember was when the channel that showed the Smurfs, which I liked, was somehow repeating the same episode over and over again. Maybe there was an error at the station (I wouldn't be too surprised if nobody paid that close attention to the children's programming), or maybe I just happened to catch all the reruns in strange coincidence. It's hard to remember the specifics. But what I do remember well is that I watched that episode, one that I actually did not like to begin with, over and over again, disliking it more and more each time. When the episode started playing and I realized that it was that episode again within the first few seconds, I got so disheartened and disappointed. And then I continued watching it. Nowadays, that's a pretty funny, if not somewhat bizarre, memory. As an adult, there is no way I would force myself through any show's episode that I don't like anyway repeatedly, why did I "have to" as a child? Similarly, I remember a few entire cartoons that I was not particularly fond off, or sometimes actively disliked, and I still watched those, too, "because that's what was on TV right now". Apparently, realizing that I had agency over how I spend my own entertainment time was something I had to learn better growing up.

komali2 8y ago
For me I dunno if it's more agency or just more difficult to stay entertained. I used to play world of Warcraft for ten hours marathons on summer break. Same for counter strike, half life deathmatch... Hell even single player games like ocarina of Time would take me months to get through because chopping down all the signs in the beginner area, leaving, coming back, and doing it all over again would be enough "game" for me. Now I barely touch games... Can do about an hour and a half of tv or movie max (barring good 2h+ films). Multiplayer games I can do maybe an hour or two a couple days a week, more if we're in the same room. I mean I watched Alladin every day for a good few months once. I'm typing this out because I got distracted from Netflix just now. Something's different about me, I wonder if it's true for others?
- gurkendoktor 8y ago

rat87 8y ago

At around 7 minutes he goes into Hanna Barbera's "Limited animation" including a surprising reference from Dextor's laboratory to the cheap animation style and that animator Chuck Jones called it "Illustrated radio". The video puts the 80s era of licensed properties/toy cartoons (GI Joes, Transformers, etc.) as the first thing to really challenge HB due to the , and that during that time HB struggled to adapt and compete and that the Smurfs seemed like their only success during the era. He says they had a revival after being bought by Turner in the 90s and making decent cartoons for cartoon network but were ultimately absorbed by WB animation after the companies merged.

Tsubasachan 8y ago

Outsourcing in the animation industry isn't just something that hit the US. Japanese anime is now often made in Vietnam and South Korea.