The Cat In The Hat Knows A Lot About That!

[Drtooth]

Dora is far worse. At least Martin Short is so exuberant in his performance that it carries the show (I'm a fan, so I have a bias). Plus, it seems they managed to avert the dreaded "asking questions to no audience only to answer them" bit, with the exception of the fish's guessing game that appears in every so often inserts. But even that's been something they've played with.

The show's main problems are being overly repetitive, though. We do NOT need the Thingamajigger's theme song in every cartoon with the same exact animation with not even a slight variant. I really wish they changed that for the second season, but they didn't. Yet, there are worse shows kids can watch. And worse things with the Cat in the Hat. Well... that one thing.

 

[Bridget]

Yeah, you sorta made me think a little. Dora IS far worst. what was I thinking?! I can't stand:
"So where is the mountain? Where? I think you have to say it again!"
Lol, but yes, it would definitely be nice is they could change the Thingamajigger's theme.

 

[CensoredAlso]

Martin Short does a very good job. The animation distracts me though, it's such odd, lol.

 

[Drtooth]

It's horribly stiff, especially the facial expressions. That's why I really dislike flash animated TV shows. Half of them just opt for cheap shortcuts instead of using it to make animation more fluid. Especially facial libraries. Now, you can have a show with very expressive libraries with multiple looks for each emotion. Some have a fixed library and you don't even notice. Everyone just has 2 expressions... dead eued happy and dead eyed sad. Cat has a special disgusted look, and that's the biggest stretch they have.

Seriously... how come the first TV Flash cartoon, Mucha Lucha, looked so much better than half of these things? Then you have the other half where they bother to animated them like cartoons. Those look wonderful. We need more Fosters and less Cat in the Hat looking stuff.

 

[CensoredAlso]

It's horribly stiff, especially the facial expressions. That's why I really dislike flash animated TV shows. Half of them just opt for cheap shortcuts instead of using it to make animation more fluid.

On the other hand, limited facial expressions were a hallmark of many 70's and '80s cartoons and we still enjoy watching them, lol.

 

[Drtooth]

Yeah. Filmation? Maybe Hanna Barbera? Here's why it's weird.

Limited cel animation is stiff. But that sort of stiff animation has both an excuse and an organicness towards it. It does look a little poor when compared to something more of a full frame rate (like a Disney movie or something outsourced). Looking at most Flash cartoons, the frame rate is actually pretty high. That makes the stiffness of the expressions and motion tweens (basically rotating or moving something automatically, rather than redrawing and animated it) stick out all the more. And as I always say, you can hand draw animation in flash and make it look exactly like a regular hand drawn animation.

Of course, the real trick to make limited poses and facial expressions is to have a lot of facial expressions and poses. Mucha Lucha had a very set library of movement and facial expressions, but they manged to make a lot of them, and that little trick made the show look all the more animated and fluid. The only really stiff characters were in the background. Cat in the Hat, every character has 3 facial expressions, and they mostly use 2 of them (the kids are so Stepford they rarely frown), and it really sticks out. Their heads rarely move from 3/4ths view, making it worse.