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Elderbean posted:Can anyone who knows stuff about animation explain why the new episodes are so painful? It's ugly and awkward and the timing always feels off on the jokes. Less effort all around. If you listen to the commentaries you'll hear a lot about how in the early days they'd all work crazy long hours, do multiple re-writes, etc, and spend a lot of time crafting each script to near perfection. Plus, as was mentioned earlier, a lot of the early season writers and showrunners all came from comedy backgrounds. A lot of Ivy League grads, National Lampoon writers, etc, so I guess you had a lot of people who grew up with a different style of comedy, versus today's writers who grew up with Family Guy-esque humor. And then Al Jean took over as showrunner as well.
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Oct 31, 2018 05:20
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Oct 31, 2018 05:24
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Did anyone mention that godawful episode with Elon Musk yet? Because it was bad.
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Oct 31, 2018 05:27
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The genius who uploaded that on imgur wrote a description saying that computer animation doesn't necessarily preclude squash and stretch and that it's a style choice. No poo poo, the modern animation style choice is sterility and lifelessness.
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Oct 31, 2018 05:31
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Holy poo poo, the way Marge just turns her head in the new intro is making me lose my poo poo.
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Oct 31, 2018 05:36
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Detective No. 27 posted:The genius who uploaded that on imgur wrote a description saying that computer animation doesn't necessarily preclude squash and stretch and that it's a style choice. No poo poo, the modern animation style choice is sterility and lifelessness. Almost as good is the 2 frame hand shake that would make a budget 70s anime/80s Filmation series proud. Euuugh. Part of what I liked about the first few Seasons of the Simpsons was the Clasky-Ksupo weirdness where they were off model during scenes with movement. This post movie style is exceedingly poo poo. South Park S1 had more emotiveness.
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Oct 31, 2018 05:48
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that's the difference between spending a 400,000 an episode on hand drawn animation and spending 50k and letting a couple of guys in a random third world country to fake it with flash.
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Oct 31, 2018 05:50
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Lol the movement is so lifeless. Her head just snaps in place and she hardly looks worried. There's so much character and movement in the original. Elderbean fucked around with this message at 06:30 on Oct 31, 2018 |
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Oct 31, 2018 06:25
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Plan Z posted:The animation definitely has something to do with it, I feel. I definitely remember a point where sound didn't sync up right in episodes and it seemed like the fact that there were lots of extra mouth and teeth movements every time people talked had something to do with it. There are just tons of extra frames for basic mouth and body movements all animated in loving detail. It almost looks and sounds like the actors are all told to read in Lisa's reaaallly loooong styyylle of prooonounciaaatioons so that that the animators can have extra time to draw lip flaps, mouth movements, teeth, etc. Shows like Ren and Stimpy that have over-done animation tend to do that a lot too. It can be any kind of physical bit, too. If Homer drove a car into a room or something in the old episodes, it would be a few frames; he'd practically appear on-screen instantly and it probably looks really goofy frame-by-frame, but it worked for conveying impact and comedy timing. Now, it'll probably be a few seconds longer with lots of debris falling on top of the obvious 3d-modeled car before the scene would continue. It would lack the punch. I remember on one of the commentaries them saying they had a process for speeding up the dialogue and animation after it was recorded to give it more punch, which is something they probably stopped doing as well.
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Oct 31, 2018 06:42
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webcomic. Like the old joke about Homer eating the soap is ended by kind of a quiet four-word post-script "Wait, maybe it does" from Marge, and it's actually kind of mumbly, which you don't see now. In new Simpsons, it'd be like
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Their idea of giving LEGO-man head Marge more life when she rotates around her neck is to make her head model tilt slightly back when she blinks
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Oct 31, 2018 06:49
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It just struck me: Have they ever made an official novelty box of Simpsons chocolates based around the Who Shot Mr. Burns chocolate box scene?
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Oct 31, 2018 07:38
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FilthyImp posted:True. You see a little of that when Maggie pops up and sinks down, but nothing compared to the original. That's always my issue with a lot of modern animation. I like when you can see that human error. Off model stuff wrong colors all that. It's all basic human error, it lets you know there are people working and I think that's what makes the animation stand out. So much new stuff is just bland and lifeless. It's hard to say if a person is even doing anything or they're just running that poo poo through a program.
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Oct 31, 2018 07:53
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There's a lot of criticizing of the writers in later seasons but has any of them gone off to work on more beloved work? If I recall correctly, Simpsons is being used as a way to get writers early on on the cheap but at this point it's difficult to separate fact from fiction. Essentially what I am getting at is, is it the writers or is it the show runner / director who is saying "no, this is the style and tone we want you to do. This is what works. This is what I like. Make your work fit this". I'm genuinely curious now. Maybe there's a gold mine of great first drafts of terrible episodes locked away in an Indiana Jones style vault never to see the light of day.
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Oct 31, 2018 08:45
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I thought writing on the show was something you did to get your foot in the door so you can move on to something better nowadays.
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Oct 31, 2018 08:55
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Every time that comparison gif gets posted I think the same thing. Yes, the bottom one is abhorrent and there's no defending it, new Simpsons garbage etc. But classic Simpsons usually wasn't as vibrant as the top one either, because they sacked Klasky-Csupo early on over its animation being pushed too far for the tone of the show.
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Oct 31, 2018 13:39
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While that is true, you figure that they would have put some extra budget, time, and better quality animation to the intro when they redid it for the jump to HD.
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Oct 31, 2018 13:43
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Detective No. 27 posted:While that is true, you figure that they would have put some extra budget, time, and better quality animation to the intro when they redid it for the jump to HD. Probably but at this point its just about crapping out a bunch of episodes with no soul or heart in it as the show still makes stupid amounts of money despite basically being a husk of creativity at this point. But then when a shows basically stuck in time in terms of character ages and only tech moves on there's only so much you can do. Writers on the show are basically just cashing the cheques at this point and i kinda don't blame them its like an endless gravy train for a few of them.
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Oct 31, 2018 14:10
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womb with a view posted:Every time that comparison gif gets posted I think the same thing. Yes, the bottom one is abhorrent and there's no defending it, new Simpsons garbage etc. But classic Simpsons usually wasn't as vibrant as the top one either, because they sacked Klasky-Csupo early on over its animation being pushed too far for the tone of the show. While it's true that after Simpsons season 1 they restrained the animation an increasing amount, I've mentioned before about how for most of the golden age the Simpsons actually has some really, really good animation that mostly goes unrecognised, I'm not really sure why but some examples: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sx6Lz0rzGX8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KrxPpjBASPA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=keA-Gykh5-8&t=51s The amount of work that the animation is doing to sell these moments is enormous, just look at stuff like Homer bounding down the hall chasing the bee in the third video or the body language on Burns trying to come up with a story in the second video and imagine how that would be done in modern simpsons. It is more restrained than some earlier stuff like Marge's famous hair swirl but it's so great at adding visual verve to help communicate the jokes and characterization and keep the viewer engaged. In addition to that a lot of the framing and layout on some of the scenes is really clever and really helps sell the joke in ways that probably took a fair bit of thought, in Homer Goes to College again (god that episode is an animation powerhouse) the framing here when Homer laughs at the professor on his own after not laughing at his joke a second ago and the contrast with everyone else in the lecture hall is genius: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GDOkE66_Q4o
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Oct 31, 2018 14:29
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David Silverman is a very good animator. He'd personally do a lot of the more emotive Homer animations.
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Oct 31, 2018 14:41
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ScolopaxMinor posted:Holy poo poo, the way Marge just turns her head in the new intro is making me lose my poo poo. It's the worst part
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Oct 31, 2018 14:56
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Gutcruncher posted:The gag of homer correcting Lisa’s grammar seems like it could’ve been kinda funny then it ruined it by having Lisa explain to the audience that homer was in fact correct I could swear they've done that same exact joke in another episode also, right down to looking it up in the dictionary.
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Oct 31, 2018 15:00
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khwarezm posted:While it's true that after Simpsons season 1 they restrained the animation an increasing amount, I've mentioned before about how for most of the golden age the Simpsons actually has some really, really good animation that mostly goes unrecognised, I'm not really sure why but some examples: I agree with you, I think that comparisons being made between the new style and those scenes would be much more genuine.
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Oct 31, 2018 15:19
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khwarezm posted:While it's true that after Simpsons season 1 they restrained the animation an increasing amount, I've mentioned before about how for most of the golden age the Simpsons actually has some really, really good animation that mostly goes unrecognised, I'm not really sure why but some examples: And of course there's this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BceHGzsDVLY Of course it really didn't "go unrecognized" in any definition of that phrase, but in modern episodes this same scene would probably just be homer flying his car through a purple sky before accidentally hitting the space coyote with it or something.
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Oct 31, 2018 15:44
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Traditional animation is such an impressive feat when you think about it. It's sad that the industry keeps moving toward soulless and cheap poo poo. This new trend of 3D animation being cell shaded to pass of as 2D animation is vomit inducing.
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Oct 31, 2018 17:04
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Actually it wouldn't even be a space coyote. It would just be the straight up ghost of Johnny Cash voiced by an impersonator and upon meeting him Lisa appears in the hallucination just to exclaim "Wow! Famous outlaw country artist Johnny Cash!"
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Oct 31, 2018 17:11
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My now abandoned thread called Marge Quest had better animation than new simpsons  
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Oct 31, 2018 18:25
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Mak0rz posted:Of course it really didn't "go unrecognized" in any definition of that phrase, but in modern episodes this same scene would probably just be homer flying his car through a purple sky before accidentally hitting the space coyote with it or something. Well, the space coyote episode is almost cheating since it's so over the top, but I sometimes see people derisively call even old Simpsons 'Illustrated radio' as if to say you can remove the visuals like in an old Hanna-Barbera or modern Fox produced cartoon and you don't lose much, and as you might imagine I absolutely disagree with that.
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Oct 31, 2018 18:46
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pooch516 posted:I could swear they've done that same exact joke in another episode also, right down to looking it up in the dictionary. Futurama does it in The Devil's Hands are Idle Playthings. People keep saying something is ironic when it's simply cruel or unexpected to Bender's chagrin. In the final act the Robot Devil pulls the "her hand... in MARRIAGE!" trick and Bender is sitting in the audience with an open dictionary and confirms that using a word in a way outside its obvious intention is in fact, irony.
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Oct 31, 2018 18:47
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Well y'see, nowadays they have to save their animation budget for each week's six-minute couch gag extravaganza
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Oct 31, 2018 19:24
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Gotta pay the guest animators. Again, and again, and again.
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Oct 31, 2018 19:30
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Another thing is the color. While yeah recording back then as well as hand-animation gave the show kind of a "darker" look, the colors blended so much better. The Simpsons themselves weren't so yellow, and the house paint wasn't that vibrant of a pink color. This isn't the best example but: You get the idea. Besides having the type of shading they teach you in third grade art class, colors are competing for space, when normally it would be a character or object that you want to draw attention to. Simple objects like the purple nightstand or the couch are the same tone and vibrancy of all other colors enough everything is competing for attention. Backgrounds in the old episodes tended to be simplistic-looking with darker colors so that they weren't competing with characters for screen dominance.
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Oct 31, 2018 19:31
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The grotesqueness was part of the comedy early on. Like the fact that they had yellow skin and blue hair and giant overbites and sticky-out teeth and lived in a clown house was all supposed to be funny in and of itself. The Simpsons were ugly and lived in an ugly world that thought it was a lot more normal/pretty than it was. There's something really schizophrenic about everything post-Golden-Age where once it doesn't have the comedy to carry it, you're wrestling with these goofy character designs trying to exist in a totally realistic and natural-feeling universe.
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Oct 31, 2018 20:46
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i really like seeing people who know about art talk about how simpsons animation has changed, because i don't know a god damned thing about art -- i only know that what i'm seeing now isn't as good as what i used to be seeing also, the college professor bit made me literally lol at work. so much greatness once upon a time
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Oct 31, 2018 20:50
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Kind of a long read but I think it's some interesting points on what people have mentioned in this thread: https://antihumansite.wordpress.com/2018/02/09/i-watched-all-629-episodes-of-the-simpsons-in-a-month-heres-what-i-learned/
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Oct 31, 2018 21:18
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For me this was one of the peak Simpsons animation segments. The weird angles when Homer is sucked into the portal, when Devil Ned points his finger and says “Hey Bart”. The movement of the donut pushing arm and how they alternate the movement speed of the chewing and shoving to make it more believable. Insanely good shadow work and color palette for the kitchen at night. So good. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ydqkBG22Tk8 It also features some of the best jokes “This is always so much easier in Mexico” and “James Coco went mad in 15 minutes”. Again, no one probably knew who James Coco was when that aired except a few people and the writers room. Still, it made it in because it was funny to them. When I was a kid I had no idea who that was either but it didn’t matter because it would work with anyone at all basically, hell not knowing who James Coco was just made it funnier even. Who is James Coco? He must be someone similar to Homer. It works.
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Oct 31, 2018 21:32
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Data Graham posted:The grotesqueness was part of the comedy early on. Like the fact that they had yellow skin and blue hair and giant overbites and sticky-out teeth and lived in a clown house was all supposed to be funny in and of itself. The Simpsons were ugly and lived in an ugly world that thought it was a lot more normal/pretty than it was. Yeah, and this seems like such a weird thing to complain about, but there are too many "handsome" people around. In the older episodes, even "attractive" characters like Mindy or even celebrities were drawn a bit grotesquely within the style. Celebrities now are all drawn much more like their real selves, with tons of more details than the rest of Springfield. On the other hand, Alec Baldwin, David Duchovny, The McCartneys all looked like they could have been part of the regular show. It's a weird niggling thing that always bugged me. Some more bad stuff: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a1nmZq1KEHk Modern Simpson openings suck for a lot of reasons, but one of the worst kinds are the ones can usually be summed up as "Alright, what's a thing/person/place/idea that's popular? Okay, now what are all of the things we can do as a parody for that thing. Let's make a list of those things, write jokes about them, then show them sequentially. I know old Simpsons would do these bits, but like even the car show from Mr. Plow broke up car jokes with an Adam West bit that was so funny that Family Guy turned it into an entire character. Some bonus bad stuff: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b6jdS8zFPFE The show needs to retire. We've got people in their '60s and '70s voicing people half-to-a-tenth their age. Marge's voice actress sounds like she's in pain doing this.
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Oct 31, 2018 21:53
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The best gag in that scene is Satan-Flanders’ casual “oh hey Bart”.
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Oct 31, 2018 21:55
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Within the first minute Marge says "What a Noob." and I cringed so hard my rear end in a top hat turned inside out.
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Oct 31, 2018 22:01
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pooch516 posted:Kind of a long read but I think it's some interesting points on what people have mentioned in this thread: Only a fraction of the way through this and I already see several things I strongly disagree with. First, he states that the "golden age" is season 3 - 13, but anyone who was a fan during that time pretty much unanimously agrees that it's really only 3 through 8, 2 through 10 or 11 if you're being generous. Then he states that in the good seasons the show didn't want you to care about the characters and that they were just gag vehicles and now they try hard to get you to care about them, and that's just extremely wrong and pretty much the opposite of what is true. Skimmed the rest of it. I dunno, it's certainly a strange take. I think the "Fall of the Simpsons" video, though it has been mentioned numerous times in this thread, sums it up far better: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KqFNbCcyFkk
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Oct 31, 2018 22:06
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Plan Z posted:Yeah, and this seems like such a weird thing to complain about, but there are too many "handsome" people around. In the older episodes, even "attractive" characters like Mindy or even celebrities were drawn a bit grotesquely within the style. Celebrities now are all drawn much more like their real selves, with tons of more details than the rest of Springfield. On the other hand, Alec Baldwin, David Duchovny, The McCartneys all looked like they could have been part of the regular show. It's a weird niggling thing that always bugged me. 
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Oct 31, 2018 22:09
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