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Pick posted:Early Simpsons is incredible, but I think it's less daring in terms of pacing and general structure, even really good ones. The thing about Adventure Time is that you can never tell where an episode is headed or how or at what rate, though it always makes sense in retrospect. While this is true, the way I look at it is that the Simpsons made a lot of what happens in cartoons nowadays possible. Simpsons made it okay for irreverence and open subversion to happen in cartoons that kids watched. Ren & Stimpy soon followed in its wake and showed that you could get away with innuendo in cartoons. Shows that came afterwards were able to build on that, which means that we're constantly building and improving on past pioneers. Would something like South Park have been possible without audiences being prepped by a decade of Simpsons breaking sacred cows? So what does Adventure Time bring to the table that's new and pioneering? To me, they've shown that you can put sophisticated subtext into kid's cartoons, the kind of stuff that gets analyzed and interpreted like art films. I'm sure this is not the main reason why it's successful in terms of viewership, but as an artistic work this is what I consider its crowning achievement. Will other upcoming shows see this success and take advantage of an adult audience that's been prepped and primed to appreciate heavy subtext in cartoons, or will they just copy Adventure Time's seeming randomness and enthusiasm, thinking that's the key to AT's success? 
Steve Yun fucked around with this message at 06:59 on Oct 21, 2013 |
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Oct 21, 2013 06:17
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Steve Yun posted:So what does Adventure Time bring to the table that's new and pioneering? To me, they've shown that you can put sophisticated subtext into kid's cartoons, the kind of stuff that gets analyzed and interpreted like art films. I'm sure this is not the main reason why it's successful in terms of viewership, but as an artistic work this is what I consider its crowning achievement. I think Adventure Time evidences this splendidly, but I also think you're discounting the virtues of earlier children's media, such as Animals of Farthing Wood. If we're talking about film as well as TV series, even more opens up, like Sampson & Sally.
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Oct 21, 2013 07:29
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Welp, not having seen those I guess I have some homework to do now edit: yeah, deliberate subtext and symbolism has been film forever, and has been in animated film for decades, I meant it was pioneering in terms of tv cartoons. Deliberate subtext/symbolism is still uncommon in live action tv AFAIK, so that kind of puts Adventure Time in the company of shows like Hannibal and Breaking Bad Steve Yun fucked around with this message at 07:43 on Oct 21, 2013 |
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Oct 21, 2013 07:35
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Steve Yun posted:edit: yeah, subtext and symbolism has been film forever, and has been in animated film for decades, I meant it was pioneering in terms of tv cartoons. Subtext/symbolism is still uncommon in live action tv AFAIK, so that kind of puts Adventure Time in the company of shows like Hannibal and Breaking Bad Well, Animals of Farthing Wood is, as noted, a TV series. Upon reflection, however, neither of those were American. I suppose Gargoyles might count for some parameters as well, though I'm always hesitant to mention that show because it seems the majority of people who remember it are huge weirds.
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Oct 21, 2013 07:40
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Reading over the synopsis for Farthing Wood, it's clear that they had an environmental subtext and I'm sure there might've been other shows that aren't coming to mind right now. So I suppose it would be more accurate to say that Adventure Time's contribution is taking subtext to new levels of sophistication and on a wider variety of subjects edit: That is one of the things I look forward to most on this show, the fact that you never know what hidden message or subtextual topic the show will have any given week. Autism, Alzheimer's, women dealing with patriarchy, differing views of an omnipotent God, the emotional turmoil of puberty, etc edit: VVV haha I just edited in a list of topics too Steve Yun fucked around with this message at 07:51 on Oct 21, 2013 |
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Oct 21, 2013 07:43
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^^^This is why it makes me disappointed when people get up in arms about the inclusion of contentious messages, branding them an appeal to fringe demographics, as if Adventure Time isn't made by humans who have their own vision and want to share it with others. ^^^^^ These two posts have become the internet incarnation of Dahala Khagrabari #51. Steve Yun posted:Reading over the synopsis for Farthing Wood, it's clear that they had an environmental subtext and I'm sure there might've been other shows that aren't coming to mind right now. So I suppose it would be more accurate to say that Adventure Time's contribution is taking subtext to new levels of sophistication and on a wider variety of subjects I think the "variety of subjects" aspect at least is definitely true. The show has amazing breadth, more than... most other TV shows at all. Fear of death, fear of abandonment, friendship with strange people, being kind, being tough, being grateful, being responsible, taking a break from being responsible, need for reconciliation, etc. (That said, one of the major subtexts in AoFW was racism/classism.) Pick fucked around with this message at 07:52 on Oct 21, 2013 |
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Oct 21, 2013 07:46
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Haha this sounds great. It's like if Watership Down was turned into a series http://www.cracked.com/article_19768_6-terrifying-childrens-cartoons-from-around-world.html
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Oct 21, 2013 08:05
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Steve Yun posted:Haha this sounds great. It's like if Watership Down was turned into a series The twist in the Samson and Sally walrus song is worth seeing too.
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Oct 21, 2013 08:11
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Jmoyns posted:Ah well, you know every episode is going to please or displease in different ways. This is a really important element of Adventure Time, to me. Like Pick says: Pick posted:I think the "variety of subjects" aspect at least is definitely true. The show has amazing breadth, more than... most other TV shows at all. Sure, on any given show, people will have different favorite episodes, but you see this issue magnified tenfold for Adventure Time. And it's a good thing. If Adventure Time ever turns into a show where every fan is happy with every episode, we'll know that something wonderful has been lost.
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Oct 21, 2013 08:28
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Nuts to the Simpsons. We need an in-depth discussion about the context of Finn's right arm. Transformed...  Armored up...    Missing...     Swapped for a laptop...  Comic...  Only alternate version with two arms...  Creepy zombie right arm sticking out of a tree...  I think that's all of that particular running gag.
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Oct 21, 2013 09:19
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A little off topic, but does anyone happen to know what program Adventure Time and other CN shows are created in? As someone who is studying animation and loves 2D but detests Flash it would be good to if my career options go outside that god awful program.
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Oct 21, 2013 11:42
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Steve Yun posted:Standard agreements with Korean studios include a certain number of redo's for animations, and the rule was originally intended for animation not looking right but in reality they end up having to redo stuff because of weird awkward poo poo making its way into the footage. There is also the first season episode of The Simpsons which was supposed to be the first episode aired but when they got it back from Korea the whole thing was unusable.
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Oct 21, 2013 12:58
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According to Bruce Timm, they had to send a bunch of Batman animation back because the animators assumed that his having a cape meant that the character could fly.
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Oct 21, 2013 14:23
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Pick posted:I think Adventure Time evidences this splendidly, but I also think you're discounting the virtues of earlier children's media, such as Animals of Farthing Wood. If we're talking about film as well as TV series, even more opens up, like Sampson & Sally. I don't really recall Animals Of Farthing Wood having that much subtext, other than some broader themes about the environment(and that aspect was hardly subtle) and race relations within communities. I think the main innovation about it was the fact that it told a long ongoing narrative that spanned several generations, with the survivors of the original cast being grandparents by the end. That's probably still fairly groundbreaking in the largely episodic world of kid's cartoons. Steve Yun posted:Haha this sounds great. It's like if Watership Down was turned into a series As far as I can remember, the episode with the baby mice and the shrike was pretty much a one-off, they never went that far again. They weren't afraid of killing off regulars, though. It was kind of like the Blake's 7 of cute animal cartoons, anyone was potentially expendable.
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Oct 21, 2013 14:47
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Pick posted:Like the infamous green elf skit in Simpsons? I have never heard of this, what is it?
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Oct 21, 2013 16:31
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The Slippery Nipple posted:A little off topic, but does anyone happen to know what program Adventure Time and other CN shows are created in? As someone who is studying animation and loves 2D but detests Flash it would be good to if my career options go outside that god awful program. They don't tell us (it's probably a combination of programs) but Toon Boom is something of a standard, and they might also use something called Toonz. devtesla fucked around with this message at 16:49 on Oct 21, 2013 |
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Oct 21, 2013 16:41
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The Devil Tesla posted:They don't tell us (it's probably a combination of programs) but Toon Boom is something of a standard, and they might also use something called Toonz. It's all animated on paper.
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Oct 21, 2013 18:54
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The Devil Tesla posted:(...)they might also use something called Toonz. Jmoyns posted:It's all animated on paper. I visited Rough Draft Korea last month and this is the answer. All characters, props, effects and BGs are hand-drawn and inked on paper and then assembled and rendered out in Toonz. Toonz is proprietary software that can be used to create Flash or Toon Boom-like animation (vector drawings and such) but it's mostly used in Korean studios to manage hand-drawn animation which is scanned. It's where they do all of the camera moves, matching multiple layers of animation to one scene, color correction etc. They can even render out characters one-by-one and then use that data in 3D space(like the zoom through the sand people in Red Starved). It's pretty sophisticated! Most studios use Toonz or similar programs, like Toon Boom. IIRC the version of Toonz they use at RDK was originally coded for Studio Ghibli. But software aside EVERYTHING is drawn by hand and inked by hand. It's not work that anybody could do. The tiny size they clean up these drawings at in such clean detail is astounding and the artists are mega-talented. tbqh I always resented jokes about Korean animation being "slave labor" and after visiting now I really do.
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Oct 21, 2013 19:21
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...Adventure Time is animated on paper. I didn't know it's possible, but I now love this show even more!
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Oct 21, 2013 19:48
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IanJ posted:tbqh I always resented jokes about Korean animation being "slave labor" and after visiting now I really do. Because it has some truth and people are okay with it or because it isn't true at all?
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Oct 21, 2013 19:55
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My understanding is that South Korea had more of a sweatshop economy back in the 80's and that's when a lot of American cartoons began outsourcing their animation there. All those hideous 80's animated shows like He-Man, Ninja Turtles, and Transformers were animated for super cheap in Korea, and the reputation for cheap, lovely animation has stuck, even though it's no longer appropriate.
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Oct 21, 2013 20:10
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Well, it probably didn't help that the American side didn't give a poo poo how crappy the animation was since those shows were just vehicles to advertise toys.
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Oct 21, 2013 20:21
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IanJ posted:I visited Rough Draft Korea last month and this is the answer. Woah I didn't know that's how they did it. Good to know.
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Oct 21, 2013 20:32
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super fart shooter posted:My understanding is that South Korea had more of a sweatshop economy back in the 80's and that's when a lot of American cartoons began outsourcing their animation there. All those hideous 80's animated shows like He-Man, Ninja Turtles, and Transformers were animated for super cheap in Korea, and the reputation for cheap, lovely animation has stuck, even though it's no longer appropriate. You mean this isn't a real Korean ending? 
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Oct 21, 2013 20:42
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Whoa, whoa, Filmation (He-Man, She-Ra, Bravestarr) kept all their animation in the US. They had to recycle a lot of animation in order to keep the costs down, but there you go...
Steve Yun fucked around with this message at 21:02 on Oct 21, 2013 |
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Oct 21, 2013 20:59
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IanJ posted:I visited Rough Draft Korea last month and this is the answer. Thanks for the info. So do the US animators simply do uncoloured key frames then ship the rest to Korea to get tweened and composited? Just trying to get an idea of what's it's like in the business at the moment.
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Oct 21, 2013 21:41
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A brief history of Korean animation for hire (in anime at least): (some of the details I might get wrong, just look at this in broad strokes) Back in the early 80's Artland studios was set to produce Macross, but was daunted by the amount of work so they brought in Tatsunoko as a partner. With the budget they got, Tatsunoko said there's no way we can do this show with Japanese animators. They founded a side studio and hired a bunch of Korean animators for cheap. I don't know if this is the first use of Korean animators in anime, but it's the earliest I know of. Anime Friend did some subpar animation and it was kind of obvious in the show when something was animated entirely by the Japanese and when it was animated by the Koreans. Not only was the animation quality worse, characters were drawn off model, and robots had random features added like extra missiles or laser cannons (for an audience that obsessively counts the number of missiles on a particular robot) Eventually they figured out that to get optimal results they had to have Japanese animators do the key frames, and then have the Koreans do the tweening. This gave a pretty good frame of reference to the Korean animators and made it clear how to draw on model. The one exception was action scenes, which notoriously perfectionist Japanese animator Ichiro Itano would do himself, including the tweening. Sometimes when directors would threaten to assign action scenes to someone else because Itano was behind schedule, he would steal assets and go work on them at home and show up on the day the scenes were due with all the animation completed. The Japanese took/take a lot of pride in animating things themselves, and they'd be damned if they'd let some animation trainees from Korea do their action scenes. Because of the budget savings, director Noboru Ishiguro would save away some of the extra money, and once in a while he would splurge on an important episode and go all out with movie quality animation. The variation in animation quality was something new then, and I like to think it started turning audiences into mice in a Skinner box, they would sit through a couple badly animated episodes in the hopes that the next one would have awesome animation. So there were a lot of growing pains with Macross, but the Korean animators improved really fast. Soon after Macross they worked on Southern Cross and MOSPEADA, and you couldn't tell which episodes were done by Koreans or Japanese teams (edit: or maybe it was Japanese keyframing everything and Koreans tweening everything for consistency, I dunno). Japanese execs were so impressed by the cost savings and the quality they got from using Koreans that they founded Artmic around the idea of using Koreans all the time. Japanese producers, designers and keyframe artists, and an army of Korean tweeners. Artmic was incredibly prolific compared to its contemporaries, pumping out hits like Megazone 23, Gall Force, Bubblegum Crisis, AD Police, etc, and other Japanese studios started copying the model as well. By the beginning of the 90's every animation studio in Japan was using Korean animators to varying degrees. edit: so by the beginning of the 90's, Koreans were already doing some amazing animation and became a vital part of the anime industry. You could hire them to do anything you wanted, as long as you were willing to pay for it. I suppose that would explain the discrepancy between Ducktales coming out in 1987 and having vastly superior animation to The Simpsons; they had Disney throwing money at them and laughing because it was still cheaper than animating it domestically edit: Korean animation talent has grown enough that they can serve as a one-stop-shop for anything animation related. I don't know what the situation is for Japanese anime these days, but at least in the past Japanese would continue doing keyframes themselves even when Koreans were perfectly capable of it, just as a point of pride. American studios don't care so much. You can have the Koreans just to tweening, you can have them animate everything, you can have them do previsualization, you can even have them do storyboards if you want Steve Yun fucked around with this message at 00:57 on Oct 22, 2013 |
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Oct 21, 2013 23:11
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Vira posted:Because it has some truth and people are okay with it or because it isn't true at all? Because it's not true. It's a skilled job and these people aren't slaves. They work in an office and are paid. Korea has its own unique animation industry and community and is very proud to have animation as an export. Jokes about "slave labor" are just kind of insulting and pretty short-sighted. It's like saying that any good not produced in the US is done by "slaves" but you know that's not true. It would be too expensive to do in the US, but the people working on these shows make a living wage as animators. The Slippery Nipple posted:Thanks for the info. So do the US animators simply do uncoloured key frames then ship the rest to Korea to get tweened and composited? Just trying to get an idea of what's it's like in the business at the moment. Preproduction is done in the US (storyboards, character, prop and effect designs & color styling for each) After a storyboard is complete, each panel is turned into a layout drawing(what you called "uncoloured key frames"). (like this Ren & Stimpy drawing) Rough Draft Korea led the way in doing the layout drawings themselves(for the Simpsons & etc), and nowadays it's pretty rare for layouts to be done in the US. Everything pretty much follows the storyboard. Which is why you can tell a Jmoyns episode from a Somvilay episode etc. IanJ fucked around with this message at 00:08 on Oct 22, 2013 |
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Oct 22, 2013 00:01
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Ice King, what the stuff are you doing here?
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Oct 22, 2013 00:01
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Oh my god Starchy is Art Bell...
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Oct 22, 2013 00:05
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B-MO is
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Oct 22, 2013 00:15
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The Slippery Nipple posted:A little off topic, but does anyone happen to know what program Adventure Time and other CN shows are created in? As someone who is studying animation and loves 2D but detests Flash it would be good to if my career options go outside that god awful program. IanJ posted:All characters, props, effects and BGs are hand-drawn and inked on paper and then assembled and rendered out in Toonz. Also, I'm kind of curious to learn more about the business end of Japanese and Korean animation studios, if anyone has any more knowledge about it. What is the typical salary like for a Japanese or Korean animator? I've heard that they're not paid as much as animators in the west, with the Japanese getting paid marginally more than their Korean counterparts. EDIT - Crap, it's a good idea to refresh before hitting post. :/
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Oct 22, 2013 00:17
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Brightman posted:B-MO is Hell, I am a lizard replicant and I think BMO is the best character.
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Oct 22, 2013 00:19
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axleblaze posted:Hell, I am a lizard replicant and I think BMO is the best character. Eat this bug.
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Oct 22, 2013 00:24
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Korean studios like making tweeners draw on paper because it's faster. If there's something imperfect about the frame, the animator says "ah gently caress it it's not worth doing over again." You give an animator a Wacom tablet they keep noodling on the artwork and making adjustments and end up taking a lot longer.MindTheGap posted:Just a quick aside, even though I'm a little late to this; I was fairly anti-Flash myself when I was studying animation, but it's really one of the more reliable programs that's being used in the western animation industry at the moment. Being an Adobe program, you're going to be expected to at least know your way around it. You have a lot of studios where the choice of 2D software essentially plays out like the stereotypical PC vs. Mac debate; both brands just have their rabid adherents. My understanding is that the programs do a lot of the same things (I am only well-versed in Flash) with their key similarity being working with the vector format. Make no mistake, though, Flash is buggy, and you basically have to do everything 100% digitally, but the stereotype of the program producing animation that looks like an early-2000's Newgrounds nightmare with lots of horrible tweening and lovely looking gradients is a little dated nowadays. You can do nice, frame-by-frame animation if you want a more polished, professional look. Vectoring can definitely do some amazing animation, I have a friend who did stuff for Disney direct-to-videos and you wouldn't even be able to tell it wasn't drawn on cels. She showed me a scene she animated where a character sat down in a chair and you got all the deformation of the butt and thighs as their weight settled into the chair, all done in vectors. This was like 6-7 years ago.
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Oct 22, 2013 00:28
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MindTheGap posted:Are the outputs from Toonz -- before being taken into Toon Boom or Flash -- rasterized, or do they automatically get converted to vectors once the images are scanned? Oh no- sorry if I was confusing, but on shows like AT or Regular Show or Gravity Falls nothing is vector at any point. They work with completely hand-drawn animation. Toonz is just the program that is used for scanning, coloring, composing and rendering scenes. (It is quite similar to RETAS!Pro.) They don't take the output into Toon Boom or Flash- They complete renders straight from Toonz and send them back to the US. No flash animation needed.
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Oct 22, 2013 00:34
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GLOSS posted:Oh my god Starchy is Art Bell... I can't watch until later but seriously or just in the character's style? If they managed to get Art involved (and I bet he would do it, since he did voicework for Prey) this episode has shot way up for me.
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Oct 22, 2013 00:44
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Mokinokaro posted:I can't watch until later but seriously or just in the character's style? If they managed to get Art involved (and I bet he would do it, since he did voicework for Prey) this episode has shot way up for me. BMO was listening to the radio late at night and Starchy had a show on that had "crazy" people calling in about weird stuff they've seen. It was not the real Art Bell unfortunately...
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Oct 22, 2013 00:57
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RIP Hot Daniel.
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Oct 22, 2013 00:58
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IanJ posted:Preproduction is done in the US (storyboards, character, prop and effect designs & color styling for each) Do they send the layouts back for review before tweening? Would seem like the logical point to check things before it gets really labor-intensive. It blows my mind that AT is actually hand-drawn on paper -- I was under the impression that the industry had moved to digital production for animation, even down to individual frame drawings.
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