Animation Conversation

[mr3urious]

I have to check that out. I was on the fence about it, but it does look a lot better than Kid's Lucas Bros. Pickle and Peanut. I don't so much hate the show as just wonder why this is on Disney when it feels at least like a minor Nickelodeon series or Cartoon Network series from 2010 that didn't last a full season. Though I did dig the 90's Adventure Bear episode.

P&P is a show that's just there. It's stupid and random, but not in a fun or interesting way like some other shows.

 

[Drtooth]

It's there because someone at Disney likes Noah Jones for some reason.

In the right hands, this show could have been a fun little offbeat sort of thing. Unfortunately, that isn't the case. There's things I like about it, but the stuff on the show that actually works are already offered in better shows. I could certainly dig the post-post-post-post-post modern style if it wasn't trying desperately to find itself. It's more tedious and wacky, and the Tim and Eric "borrowed" stuff just seems tacked on, especially the screaming old woman at the end of the opening theme song.

Though, I can commend them on having Napoleon Dynamite voice Pickle. Somehow...it fits.

 

[snichols1973]

However, I don't discount silly cartoons. To quote Roger Rabbit, "We toons may act idiotic, but we're not stupid." I know you're not a Spongebob fan, and I'm guessing Chower isn't your thing. But sometimes letting cartoonists and writers run wild is just as good as a well thought out allusion or reference. Look at the Daffy cartoon, "Duck Amok" for example. That was an instance of an animator running wild and having fun with the subject matter... stuff like that may not look calculated, but I assure you, it is.



But my point is, there is ALWAYS something out there. Even if it's a preschool show, or not of this country (and I don't just mean Japan... Canada and France have rich animation histories). And don't just look to TV... internet... theatrical animations... good stuff is out there. Just grab your pith helmet and pick ax and search!

The "Duck Amuck" storyline would be reused in 1955's Rabbit Rampage, when Bugs would be on the receiving end of the artistic insanity, to eventually reveal Elmer Fudd as the one making all the random changes to Bugs....

 

[Drtooth]

Rabbit Rampage, I don't feel as successful as Duck Amuck. It's an interesting experiment to see how Bugs would react, but overall he just gets annoyed and angry, tries to keep a cooler head and work things out with the animator. Daffy's cartoon was funnier because of his narcissism and anger issues are in full exploit. We get to see Daffy going full blown nuts and freaking out over every little thing. Bugs is more like "can you believe this?" Plus, the reveal of Bugs with a short snippet at the end gave a nice little cutting ending. Elmer's is just too clunky and obvious. Kinda wish it was Cecil the Turtle, who knows exactly how to get under the Wabbit's skin. In fact, for cartoons where Bugs is overexerted and made to look the fool where he's in top form, the ones with Cecil work much better.

 

[Pig'sSaysAdios]

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you one of the worst cartoons of all time, "Paddy the Pelican":

Airing in 1954,this was one of the first animated series made specifically for TV.

The cheap animation I can totally forgive, every TV cartoon at that time was cheap. Plus, I kind of like the art style even if their are no backgrounds. But the voice acting is awful and half the time you can't even tell which character is talking because the lip-syncing is off and two of them literally have the exact same voice. Like seriously, the voice actor barely even tried to vary the voices even a little bit.

Further more, and this one of the biggest problems, the show never shuts up. Seriously, the characters never ever stop talking. They explain every single action that their doing out loud and they continue to repeat themselves over and over and over and over again.

And one last major thing. The writing in this very short cartoon just gradually gets lazier and lazier as the episode goes on. I don't know how you can accomplish that in only five minutes but, the writing gradually gets more generic and half a**ed.

 

[Drtooth]

I like how the early cartoons to premiere exclusively on television were supposedly all like this. Sometimes they weren't even animated drawings. And you can kind of forgive early television. It really didn't know where it was going, things had to be produced cheap. There was a lot of really bad clumsy shows that were thrown together.

This cartoon in particular, I can't fault the animation, but I can fault what seems to be going on here. It's as if they drew and animated the show with a bare bones script concept and left the "voice work" up to one person to do live, and had him improvise his lines. That's why the cartoon seems to cycle the most when characters are talking. Overall, a decently animated for the time cartoon with a mediocre concept is completely ruined by having a narrator mumble up dialogue the cartoon doesn't exactly need. Kinda like a certain two Dinosaur based animated movies.

 

[Pig'sSaysAdios]

a mediocre concept is completely ruined by having a narrator mumble up dialogue the cartoon doesn't exactly need. Kinda like a certain two Dinosaur based animated movies.

Which dinosaur movies do you mean?

 

[MuppetSpot]

Which dinosaur movies do you mean?

I think Drtooth is referring to Disney Dinosaurs & The Walking with Dinosaurs Film.

 

[mr3urious]

I like how the early cartoons to premiere exclusively on television were supposedly all like this. Sometimes they weren't even animated drawings. And you can kind of forgive early television. It really didn't know where it was going, things had to be produced cheap. There was a lot of really bad clumsy shows that were thrown together.

But then you look at Crusader Rabbit, the very first televised cartoon, and there's a great deal more effort to it compared to Sam Singer's stuff. There's actual backgrounds, for one, and a great deal of wit to it that would make its way to the co-creator's next show, Rocky & Bullwinkle.

 

[Pig'sSaysAdios]

I was lookin' through the wondrous television archive that is Youtube, and I happened upon several 60s cartoons that I had never heard of. One of them was "Beany and Cecil", created by Bob Clampett, who is best known for directing several Looney Tunes shorts from the 1930s and 40s.

It's a pretty good show with lots of charm and pretty much all the humor and pop cultural satire that you'd expect from someone who worked on Looney Tunes.

One thing that really struck me was how much inspiration John Kricfalusi seemed to take from the show when he created "Ren and Stimpy". From the music score to the art/animation style, the voices, the humor, clearly "Ren and Stimpy" owes a much of it's existence to "Beany and Cecil".

Interestingly enough, it looks like John Kricfalusi actually revived "Beany" in the late 80s for ABC. But somewhat unsurprisingly, this revival was cancelled after just eight episodes because the humor was too adult for a kids show.