What do you miss?

[Slackbot]

I miss the time when people put up their own little fan pages rather than uploading their stuff to sites DeviantArt and Fanfiction.net instead, or using Facebook and Wordpress and its clones, or congregating on message boards. Sure, these things are fine, I use them myself. But it was neat to see a bunch of little personal sites out there too.

My website is a holdover from that era, and maybe it looks terribly dated, but the heck with that, it's my site and I say content is king.

 

[Muppet Master]

I miss VHS tapes, and when you could rent them at the library or buy them at Walmart. I also miss the times when DVDs had decent special features. Now, all the big companies put them only on the Blu-Ray discs and make us cough up an extra $10+ for it, not to mention the $70+ on a Blu-Ray player.

 

[Rugratskid]

I miss seeing good cartoons on TV. No cartoons are original anymore. Either that, or it's all gross humor. Sometimes it's both. Ren & Stimpy could get away with gross humor, because they did other things along with it, and it was actually funny. It seems like no one even cares if cartoons are good anymore.

 

[fuzzygobo]

I miss the art of hand-drawn 2D animation. Yes, the process is ridiculously expensive, labor-intensive, time consuming, blah blah blah, but the results are still breathtaking.

Now that animation is computer-driven, you don't have pencil tests anymore.
Once upon a time, when Disney still drew animated features, they would have a special "The Making of..." "Roger Rabbit", "Aladdin", "Lion King", etc.
It's a little boring seeing the voice actors huddled around a microphone spitting out their lines, but the pencil tests, seeing rough drawings before adding the ink and paint, was precious stuff. For all the high-tech razzle dazzle there is today, I think there is more artistic merit in a few little sketches drawn by hand. Even if it's not perfect ( BECAUSE it's not perfect), it's still more attractive to me.

 

[Drtooth]

I miss seeing good cartoons on TV. No cartoons are original anymore. Either that, or it's all gross humor. Sometimes it's both. Ren & Stimpy could get away with gross humor, because they did other things along with it, and it was actually funny. It seems like no one even cares if cartoons are good anymore.

I'd say I miss when everyone wasn't whining about that, but every pathetic generation thinks their cartoons are the best thing ever (worst of all, those who grew up in the 70's where animation TOTALLY sucked). Remember, in the 90's, for every Animaniacs and Ren and Stimpy we totally got pieces of crap like Double Dragon, Street Sharks... well, mostly anything from DIC in this era that didn't feature Plumbers or Blue Hedgehogs... and Yo Yogi.

I miss the art of hand-drawn 2D animation. Yes, the process is ridiculously expensive, labor-intensive, time consuming, blah blah blah, but the results are still breathtaking.

Now that animation is computer-driven, you don't have pencil tests anymore.
Once upon a time, when Disney still drew animated features, they would have a special "The Making of..." "Roger Rabbit", "Aladdin", "Lion King", etc.
It's a little boring seeing the voice actors huddled around a microphone spitting out their lines, but the pencil tests, seeing rough drawings before adding the ink and paint, was precious stuff. For all the high-tech razzle dazzle there is today, I think there is more artistic merit in a few little sketches drawn by hand. Even if it's not perfect ( BECAUSE it's not perfect), it's still more attractive to me.

That I will agree to. However, if there's one thing better about digital animation, it's that lower budget productions that actually allows more fluid animation. And the funny thing is, quite a few digitally animated movies are actually cheaper to make than their CGI counterparts. I do miss that feel of the old stuff, though. I'm sure some studios still do pencil tests from time to time, and just ink and paint digitally.

But what I really miss is when we outsourced TV animation to Japan. Especially TMS studios. The Ducktales episodes done in Korea and Taiwan (and other places I forget) were very good looking for their movement, but the Japanese animated episodes looked beautiful. The characters almost look like a Carl Barks comic come to life. To say the least, they were one of my favorite studios behind Tiny Toons and Animaniacs. Even Toei to some extent, though TMS was more adapt. Akom's Transformers episodes, even the best ones, were ugly. Like they had no experience drawing Mechs.

 

[Rugratskid]

I'd say I miss when everyone wasn't whining about that, but every pathetic generation thinks their cartoons are the best thing ever (worst of all, those who grew up in the 70's where animation TOTALLY sucked). Remember, in the 90's, for every Animaniacs and Ren and Stimpy we totally got pieces of crap like Double Dragon, Street Sharks... well, mostly anything from DIC in this era that didn't feature Plumbers or Blue Hedgehogs... and Yo Yogi.

I'm not saying all cartoons from the 90's are the best. Some cartoons from every generation were terrible. I'm just saying cartoons in the past few years haven't been as good as in the past. I think The Fairly OddParents is still ok though.

 

[mr3urious]

That I will agree to. However, if there's one thing better about digital animation, it's that lower budget productions that actually allows more fluid animation. And the funny thing is, quite a few digitally animated movies are actually cheaper to make than their CGI counterparts.

I know the new Winnie the Pooh movie was made on a much lower budget compared to Disney's CGI outings, especially Tangled, but was extremely fluid in its animation regardless. And surely those 2D Smurfs DTV holiday specials were a lot cheaper to make, possibly even more so if the CGI framing scenes (that use the same quality as the movies) were removed.

But what I really miss is when we outsourced TV animation to Japan. Especially TMS studios. The Ducktales episodes done in Korea and Taiwan (and other places I forget) were very good looking for their movement, but the Japanese animated episodes looked beautiful. The characters almost look like a Carl Barks comic come to life. To say the least, they were one of my favorite studios behind Tiny Toons and Animaniacs. Even Toei to some extent, though TMS was more adapt. Akom's Transformers episodes, even the best ones, were ugly. Like they had no experience drawing Mechs.

I recall the most recent use of Japanese outsourcing being in Transformers Animated. Well, Prime and the upcoming Robots in Disguise if you count CGI.

 

[Drtooth]

I'm not saying all cartoons from the 90's are the best. Some cartoons from every generation were terrible. I'm just saying cartoons in the past few years haven't been as good as in the past.

An opinion I detest to be sure. Cartoons today are made by people who were inspired by the very same cartoons you've watched. They've just had the common sense to do their own thing instead of mindlessly copying everyone else. Sure, there's garbage out there like Wild Grinders and NFL Rush, but cartoons, if anything, have been getting more audaciously original. Especially since 2005, we almost saw the TV animation apocalypse. If anything is to blame for low quality, it's the non-stop torrential downpour of F-Grade live action shows. Do we really need a show called "I didn't Do it?"

That's another thing I miss... when those stupid live action shows were...well... less stupid, and kept to themselves without polluting a kid's network line up.

I know the new Winnie the Pooh movie was made on a much lower budget compared to Disney's CGI outings, especially Tangled, but was extremely fluid in its animation regardless. And surely those 2D Smurfs DTV holiday specials were a lot cheaper to make, possibly even more so if the CGI framing scenes (that use the same quality as the movies) were removed.

I wish the Smurfs movies were as good as the DTV projects. They're just beautiful. I wish the Hanna Barbera series looked that good. Too bad we'll never see a theatrical Smurfs 2-D animated movie with the live action film characters and actors.

I recall the most recent use of Japanese outsourcing being in Transformers Animated. Well, Prime and the upcoming Robots in Disguise if you count CGI.

The Thundercats series from 2011 also used outsourced Japanese animation. Same studio as TFA. But since they made it look like an anime instead of TFA's more Western, Genndy Tartakovsky/Craig McCracken, the show's animation was a little more fluid. Of course, TMS did a couple DTV's for Warner Bros (at least one Green Lantern one), as well as other companies. Then again, even Japan itself Outsources to Korea.

Still, I LOVED looking at weird random animesque flair ups in American cartoons. Like Baby Piggy doing the "Peace-u peace-u" sign.

 

[Rugratskid]

An opinion I detest to be sure. Cartoons today are made by people who were inspired by the very same cartoons you've watched. They've just had the common sense to do their own thing instead of mindlessly copying everyone else. Sure, there's garbage out there like Wild Grinders and NFL Rush, but cartoons, if anything, have been getting more audaciously original. Especially since 2005, we almost saw the TV animation apocalypse. If anything is to blame for low quality, it's the non-stop torrential downpour of F-Grade live action shows. Do we really need a show called "I didn't Do it?"

I have honestly never thought about it that way. That's a great way of putting it.

 

[Twisted Tails]

I miss floppy disks and CD burners. I used floppy disks as putting some free time stuff and my homework, but now they're OUTDATED. (sighs) The same goes with CD burners. I used to burn to burn a CD in a CD burner, but they did have problems. One of the CDs I once burned had 13 out of 22 tracks. That ticked me off!

I also miss dial-up, but wi-fi seems less frustrating. Dial-up was so boring that I restart or even disconnect and re-connect dial-up more than once.