Western Cartoons (and animation)

[anthony]

I don't see Western Cartoons and Animation as having a chance to recover. Even what the audience considers "the good old days" is far-removed from Disney at his peak. Much of this audience is also involved in training for the next generation. They sincerely believe that the 2000's style is an aesthetic triumph. On the animation side, many have odd judgements based on technical "goods". So they will say "The animation is good, even if the designs are bad." And so on. You will see the same type praising some ugly thing for some technical reason. Is it willful? I doubt it. They simply can't tell the difference between good art and bad art, beautiful and ugly. Such is an unfortunate consequence of Art schools accepting and credentialing non-artistic people. The most dangerous credential being the delusion given to the graduate or student.
Rigor in all artistic fields is also drained away by "For fun". It's a fun song, a fun movie, a fun cartoon, a fun game. Etc. Even if there is something to a piece of work which leads to someone using this term...That something is quickly confused as other like creations are made. The judging apparatus fails, as it compares like to like, and one was good and so the other must be good too.
It would not be a problem if this was contained only in the passive audience. But it is entrenched in the critical audience, as well as the productive audience.

I think you're right, recovery isn't possible. If there's a future it's something entirely new. I don't think another John K is possible. Or even desirable at this point. There's too much taint embedded in the industry and people.

I've been thinking lately about /co/ brain, which I think ties into both "fun" and thinking the 2000s was good. I think there's a certain kind of taste that's developed which has these weird, almost racist blinders on. Really ideological I believe, where people seek to please themselves, but within rather strict lines. I think western animation is pretty only watched by people who feel like they owe it something and ought to have something against anime. They (rightly) feel like it's something they ought to disagree with. And instead kind of loyally and patiently cheer on western animation, getting excited over every minute improvement in entertainment value. There's the issue of not knowing what's good, there's also I believe an element of aversion. "Fun" media I think is not enjoyed by pure hedonists. "Fun" is a kind of ethical restraint and self-denial/cope.

[NuclearAbsolutist]

I think there's a certain kind of taste that's developed which has these weird, almost racist blinders on. Really ideological I believe, where people seek to please themselves, but within rather strict lines.

This is a very important aspect of the issue, one commented on in other critical circles less aware than here even of this bizarre kind of 'racism' modern creators have especially prevalent in cartoons. One would think to brush it off as actually being just typical libtard values but no it is a patriotic provincialism that can be seen everywhere from the interviews to certain scenes. Every outside source, including past western creations are subject to such willies but Japan above all else is degraded not only as competition but there's this overwhelming desire of "Oh I love  anime but it could be so proper if they did it this way!" The results of this drive of course speak for themselves in the world of localization and works that take stabs at anime.

[JohnnyRomero]

[...] it is a patriotic provincialism that can be seen everywhere from the interviews to certain scenes. Every outside source, including past western creations are subject to such willies but Japan above all else is degraded not only as competition but there's this overwhelming desire of "Oh I love  anime but it could be so proper if they did it this way!" The results of this drive of course speak for themselves in the world of localization and works that take stabs at anime.

Any examples of this? I'm curious.

[NuclearAbsolutist]

Any examples of this? I'm curious.

The big examples off the top of my head are the outright lie interpretation's boosted to make these types pat themselves on the back for "knowing" such as the infamous Neon Genesis Evangelion is anti otaku Anno hates his fans interpretation which is totally false but has become canonized in the west as a way to show elitism and understanding anime. Flowing from that we have bastardized translations of anime because of course be it the clueless suits who chop up shows in the 80s/2000s or the the San Fran polycule working for streaming sites they  really know what is the best interpretation honest! From all these mistaken understandings you have supposed fans and people inspired by them creating  works inspired by and doing criticism that is less than respectful towards its subject to say the least, mountains of ugly fan art and shows canned after one season and thousands more posts on how x is a queer negro icon etc. I leave you with this episode which I feel illustrates the situation as it stands aptly. For context Bridget is a character in a popular fighting game series that is a boy forced to dress up as a girl. Here we see how the western fan base that latches on to that interacts with a Jap fan artist and how the artist feels about them:
 

[BillyONare]

based artist keeping degeneracy out

[Zed]

based artist keeping degeneracy out

Agreed. Keep Bridget pure.

[Guest]

These people stood in John's way during his prime moments and screwed things up abd now they want us to focus on all that obstructing they did (his failed endeavors, getting fired etc). As an artist, John changed the face of his field of work forever. There is no greater achievement possible for an artist. The guest post is less thought provoking than provocative, motivated by the resentment of great people and their tendency go their own way, much to the offense of the prudes and squares and faggots of the world.

A great achievement consisting of... uh... that one cartoon in the 90's with an adult version that got cancelled after one season?

---

These people stood in John's way during his prime moments and screwed things up abd now they want us to focus on all that obstructing they did (his failed endeavors, getting fired etc). As an artist, John changed the face of his field of work forever. There is no greater achievement possible for an artist. The guest post is less thought provoking than provocative, motivated by the resentment of great people and their tendency  go their own way, much to the offense of the prudes and squares and faggots of the world.

A great achievement consisting of... uh... that one cartoon in the 90's with an adult version that got cancelled after one season?

Nick Drake made only three albums ever. All of them were commercial failures and had mixed reviews by the critics. None of them ever sold above 5,000 copies in his lifetime. He killed himself at the age of 26, having made his first album at the age of 21. Nick Drake is now considered by many to be the greatest singer-songwriter of all time. 

I spit on your fag conceptions of 'popularity' and 'success' in determination of the quality of an achievement. A true accomplishment is a pillar, a great and indestructible one, that lays in the desert no matter who is there to see it. Your mind has been twisted by modern entertainment media, and you are a deeply disturbed man who ascribes meaning only to money. Get off my forum.

[Guest]

Get off my forum.

[a system is failing]

A great achievement consisting of... uh... that one cartoon in the 90's with an adult version that got cancelled after one season?

Well let's just compare to an icon of more conventional success, Stephen Hillenburg. I don't see the stark difference here: Hillenburg's show survived and he probably made much more money but his artistic legacy has been considerably more diluted, to the point where I don't think Spongebob is going to have some meaningful longterm place in cartooning history. And Spongebob couldn't have more blatantly been influenced by Ren & Stimpy, even down to using the same stock music for gags at various points, so it just proves how important John K was.

Antonucci, mentioned at the start of the thread, is unquestionably the gold standard for me, of course. He pitched his show with full creative control as a requirement to start with, made one of the most timeless cartoons ever exactly according to his preferences, and retains the rights to this day. I genuinely can't figure out what standard your trying to get across, but it's the western cartoonism thread so why not give us some examples of how its done the right way? What cartoonists do you think should be lionized here?

[Oldblood]

The 'Empty Spaces' scene from Pink Floyd's The Wall. Animated by Gerald Scarfe 'As Scarfe was severely asthmatic as a child, he spent many of his early years bed-ridden, so drawing became a means of entertainment as well as a creative outlet. Scarfe speculated that the dark and grotesque images that often characterise his work are a result of his loneliness and asthma. Scarfe has stated that the irreverence apparent in much of his work can be traced back to "dodgy treatments" and a reliance on what he feels were incompetent doctors.'

[a system is failing]

The 'Empty Spaces' scene from Pink Floyd's The Wall. 

Speaking of animated music videos...I had a lot of early exposure to these thanks to an MTV show called Amp. This animator, Run Wrake has done several music videos...portions of this video from 3:20-3:46 were used to make the video for Future Sound of London's "We Have Explosive"  

https://youtu.be/MwPys3JQZ74 "Jukebox"
https://youtu.be/Xc9l7pygQRo "We Have Explosive"

Bit of an ugly style, but the parts FSOL used were very cool and their video goes great with the clips. The fluidity of the animation is very satisfying though. The holy grail for me was this video for a remix of Pierre Henry's famous song "Psyche Rock". One of those rare things I've encountered with an incredibly skewed obscurity to quality ratio. No clue who did this or when, or what the original was called. I think I looked up the names mentioned in the credits of Amp for this video but found basically nothing. 

[kirukuni]

Zoomers seem to have some affinity for 1930/1940s style animation, but it seems to be more because of its symbolic nature than because of the actual animation itself. "What if [super innocuous or hyper-friendly thing] was FUCKED UP and INEXPLICABLE" is their favorite media trope.



A non-symbolic element that they seem to like is the undercurrent of violence and unpredictable menace a lot of older cartoons contain. The kind of thing that would be in a farmed-out youtube video about how MICKEY MOUSE IS ACTUALLY FUCKED UP AND ABUSIVE. When I talk to zoomers about media they like, especially western cartoons, things like infinity train, a show about traveling through a series of inexplicable and menacing spaces, come up a lot. As ever, there's a real hunger for this stuff among young people.

Why is it, then, that whenever I happen on a millennial or gen X mentioning that they've made media for younger audiences, it's the most kitsch thing in the world?

[JohnnyRomero]

Zoomers seem to have some affinity for 1930/1940s style animation, but it seems to be more because of its symbolic nature than because of the actual animation itself. "What if [super innocuous or hyper-friendly thing] was FUCKED UP and INEXPLICABLE" is their favorite media trope.

[. . .]

Why is it, then, that whenever I happen on a millennial or gen X mentioning that they've made media for younger audiences, it's the most kitsch thing in the world?

The impact of 9/11 on the public consciousness is key(ed) to understanding the Millennial/Zoomer divide. Millennials were the retarded faggot spoiled golden children of the Baby Boomers in their yuppie phase, raised up on the trite shit which Anthony mentioned above (Captain Planet, Transformers, He-Man, etc.). They were constantly told that they were the hope for the future, and were archetypally a very collectivist generation by default (cf. Strauss & Howe). Thus Millennial output is a regurgitation of that stale "we're all in this together!" mindset; Adventure Time and Steven Universe as Captain Planet 2.0. Even Millennial attempts at nihilism and pessimism are shallow and meaningless; Rick and Morty is ultimately as moralistic and stale as any other Millennial cartoon, it's nihilism as a collective moral creed of atheism. The inherent thrust of Rick and Morty-style Millennial nihilism is that of the Last Man and not of Nietzsche; nothing matters, so therefore no one is allowed to be mean to anyone else, because religion, race, nation, etc. are meaningless and stupid. It's an acquired nihilism, one gained from having been raised up on 80s & 90s optimism only to have your stupid dreams crushed by 9/11 and the Recession.

Zoomers, meanwhile, were brought up in the shadow 9/11 and the Recession from the beginning. They had no bright and stupid hopes and dreams to be crushed. To quote the plane scene movie, the average Zoomer says to the tryhard Millennial nihilist "You merely adopted the darkness. I was raised by it, molded by it. The shadows betray you because they are not your own." I think that Zoomers were also primed for this by the wacky, chaotic, and wild cartoons of the 90s. There is a back-and-forth, leadfrogging generational pattern here. Baby Boomers created cartoons in the 80s which were stale, conformist, and optimistic; Gen X rebelled against this, and created cartoons in the 90s and 2000s which were inventive, rebellious, and often pessimistic; and then the Millennials brought up on Boomer cartoons create their own wave of stale, conformist, and optimistic animated drivel; and now we await the Zoomer counter-reaction, the beginnings of which are now emerging.

To get more to the point of your questions:
1. The fascination with innocuous or cute things becoming evil and fucked up runs deep, and its first expression in Zoomer culture was through creepypasta. It may have something to do with being raised up in the subconscious shadow of 9/11 and the Recession; you're being presented with cute and friendly things as a child, but there's this dark and evil undercurrent which you can't consciously detect or understand.
2. Millennial retards make what they think the kids want (or need), not what the kids actually want.

[JF_]

Making perverted and dark versions of classical cartoons actually goes back to underground comics (which is inextricably tied up in the birth of furry culture, and by association, fringe internet culture). There's a bit in Liquid Television where Tom and Jerry are old fogeys at a senior citizen home. Tom is suffering from crippling nerve pain in his back as a result of the constant beating Jerry has put him through. They are filthy rich, have a table piled with awards, and get in another classic fight rolling around in their wheelchairs. This is July 27, 1994. Also: think of Cool World, or Who Framed Roger Rabbit, and of course Fritz the Cat.




It's hard to fathom how much of what we're doing here goes back to independent cartoons. Manga, underground comics, especially fetishistic cartoons. 4chan was not the place where all the "disturbed" people went from SA so much as the people who were into cartoon pornography, because certain moderators were extremely reactionary about cunny.

[Guest]

I've always thought that most 3D animated films were either boring trash made for the idea of children the creator had in mind, or entertaining, but not great in any way. It feels like all of these films don't try to be much, instead following a predictable and boring formula for almost everything from the visuals to the plot to the characters. It's a great downgrade from old 2D films, which while they were formulaic to an extent, they always tried to be beautiful visually and never settled for mediocrity in that regard. The only real exception to 3D mediocrity to me was Rango, which was brilliant. It's so consistent to a certain vision, it's insane. The characters are detailed, irregular and rough, the plot is slightly abstract and thoughtful, and while it does follow many tropes, it feels so natural that you almost don't realize it. Rango is what the animation industry COULD produce if it wanted to, but refuses to because the people working in it don't believe in their audiences intelligence. The industry can be saved, but it would require intervention to shoot down any retarded pandering films and to approve Rangos, even when they may not be profitable.

[anthony]

I've always thought that most 3D animated films were either boring trash made for the idea of children the creator had in mind, or entertaining, but not great in any way. It feels like all of these films don't try to be much, instead following a predictable and boring formula for almost everything from the visuals to the plot to the characters. It's a great downgrade from old 2D films, which while they were formulaic to an extent, they always tried to be beautiful visually and never settled for mediocrity in that regard. The only real exception to 3D mediocrity to me was Rango, which was brilliant. It's so consistent to a certain vision, it's insane. The characters are detailed, irregular and rough, the plot is slightly abstract and thoughtful, and while it does follow many tropes, it feels so natural that you almost don't realize it. Rango is what the animation industry COULD produce if it wanted to, but refuses to because the people working in it don't believe in their audiences intelligence. The industry can be saved, but it would require intervention to shoot down any retarded pandering films and to approve Rangos, even when they may not be profitable.

I feel like 3D films have been cursed by a solidification of standards happening way too early. The early 3D films were taking advantage of the fact 3D was novel, and experimenting with what could be done. Toy Story (awful film) was an experiment in bringing the inanimate to life, Shrek is full of weird shapes, faces, and textures, and generally all about novelty. Nobody really worked out what exactly this stuff is for from a creative perspective. But these movies succeeded. So that became what 3D is for. Movies that make a shitload of money and aspire to be marketed to everybody. Key ideas are cheap, suffocating kitsch and moralism on one hand, and grotesque novelty on the other.




Projects like this I believe were taking 3D animation in far more interesting directions. This strange work leans entirely into the nature of its tools. The whole thing is uncanny, liminal, and grotesque. This is a gimmick film, but it's still kind of awesome. What it was trying to do is distinct enough for it to now still look weird rather than merely old or outdated. And of course the Resident Evil animated efforts themselves lost this, like everyone else. They still make CG Resident Evil movies, but they're some of the most bafflingly visionless, pointless things I've ever seen. I have to figure the Japanese government funds them to keep people employed and busy.




I guess it has more reason to exist than any western action film made since 2008. It's trying to look nice and be exciting and cool. But the CG produces no notable effect here. I just feel like I'm watching a cutscene compilation from a Resident Evil game. CG at this level I guess is technically impressive, lots of fine detail, but it just feels like an alternative to shooting with real actors now.

Kind of related to some stuff I've been saying about video game graphics, I think there needs to be some serious thought put into what 3D computer generated visuals are for. Scaling fidelity up as an end in itself just doesn't seem worth it. It's no longer exciting or new. It's just a very weird, often dull, and expensive way to make a movie. Or a game.

[a system is failing]

Rango

I've consistently heard about this flick as the one redeeming piece of CGI cinema so I suppose I should watch it at some point. I have discussed this with my brother a lot, how these movies are a distinct "phenomenon" and in spite of there being so many, none seem to be worthwhile as movies or even have a demand to be. The closest Pixar ever came to actually saying anything with their movies was the state of humanity seen in Wall-E, which was mostly just background scenery for the typical Pixar plot anyways. None of their work really seems to hold up. I think Shrek is the closest thing we have otherwise to a 'real movie' in that medium, but this only rises to the level of disposable comedy movie like American Pie. Still, I can at least see showing some kid in the future this movie as an artifact of our times as being justified, probably because of the fantasy style which makes it seem a bit more lasting. With age Pixar movies really show their nature as glorified tech demos.

When the Warcraft movie was announced I also remember discussing with my friends how it should really just be full CGI in the style of the intro cinematics. Obviously this would have been too expensive, but I think CGI is only included as a secondary thing in these movies because directors know that this stuff has all been slotted into "disposable children's entertainment" and will affect the turnout and ticket sales of their movie. I feel this way about the Sonic movie as well, this was a missed opportunity to make something in full CGI that could have properly expressed the anime-cartoon fusion that drives most of the appeal for Sonic. CGI is unfortunately a GENRE in the public mind, not a medium or tool. 



I don't know how you would stretch the story or events out to a full movie, but I would be very interested in seeing this done once. The closest thing we have to it are the Beowulf and Polar Express movies but those were both absolutely terrible in my opinion and didn't have the stylistic bombast of Warcraft cinematics, which actually do look and feel amazing in themselves. In general, pre-rendered cutscenes from videogames seem to be the highest peaks of CGI film.

[Albicacore]

Tintin is one of the only 3d animation films that truly understands the medium. I had a book on the production of the movie and in it I read that they were considering making the characters as photo-real as possible, akin to Polar Express but since the movie is based on a comic they decided to adopt some of Hergé's caricature style to the movie. It seemed like this choice would make the characters more uncanny (a word ruined by youtube Dalits) but it had an inverse effect. The characters seem more believable. I have never seen a cartoon and reality melded into one as well as in Tintin.

The use of transitions in Tintin is incredible. They used cgi to create beautiful transitions between scenes that cameras couldn't do. This scene is a good example of that:

(Skip to 0:18)


This scene is also great (as the title suggests).
T

[a system is failing]

Tintin

Torn on the clips presented, similar feeling to Beowulf and Polar Express like I mentioned, there's a bit of that ugliness and jarring match between lighting, character models and motion. The immediate effect of this stuff is more engaging than childmovie contentslop but at the same time it feels like it's confused about how to really get to something worthy. Claymation is a very good medium to compare to CGI for several reasons. Take this chase scene from The Wrong Trousers...



The virtue of animation is capturing a certain nature and fluidity of the logic of motion. I had to word this vaguely because there are different cartoonists and styles of movement and so the logic that follows can vary quite a bit (say due to FPS or the ampunt of tweens). But there is a limited number of things your characters and figures and objects can do while still looking FLUID or NATURAL in their style. There is also an additional layer to this with "exaggeration", there are times when characters will do things that look unnatural and that is exploited for comedic effect (cartoon logic). For the most part, Wallace and Gromit is a very hefty, realistic style, the sound effects have a lot of punch, things look very sturdy and heavy and there's lots of velocity to the movements. The times this logic is subverted, like with Gromit placing the new track or when the penguin falls into the milk bottle, are done specifically as gags, the point here being that so much is drawn just from the way the "illusion of movement" presents itself.

These modern CGI movies have plenty of shortcomings in other areas too, but this "logic of motion" has to be the foundation of animated works for them to truly be justifird and great. From the start technology was always the focus of these movies, but earlier examples do have some regard to motion and its implications. As Anthony mentions, Toy Story brought toys to life and this was partially thinking along these lines (though tech limitations where likely a much bigger factor).

The Tintin clips strike me an an attempt to right the wrongs, but with too much corruption seeping through from the established identity of CGI movies. Claymation and stop motion are interest comparisons is becsuse they are similarly a 3d medium, yet thankfully came from a time where they weren't slotted strictly into being a genre of animation rather than a different medium, so they capture that natural feeling much better.

[KV55]

I think animation diverged into two forms...

Animation as vehicle (storytelling, vision, accessibility)

Animation as demonstration (skill, aesthetic, show)

From what I gather, the first form is almost extinct among individuals and small teams. One need only to look at the decline in the amount of animation being produced today and our exposure to it. I've spoken often about the memory of 2000s flash animation, how  absolutely nothing replaced it in the creative landscape and the overall steep and sudden degeneracy of the creative impulse at large on the heavensite.

Formerly, animation was a cheap and accessible visual medium to manifest ones vision, dedicated autists laboriously created animations of varying quality and style, especially in lieu of the required materials and capital required for traditional lens/human based filmmaking.

But now individualist animation is only restrained to a kind of showy demonstration of ability (both of animator and technology itself), often trite sovless fast moving psychedelia (I hope you all know exactly what I'm talking about, I will add examples if asked).

Animation now only really exists in the aforementioned eye candy babble form as well as pornographic loops and as a jacket for pozzed ideological dissemination. Extrinsic derivation from pre-existing memes, symbols and cultural artifacts... (Thinking of examples to give is truly nauseating... maybe in Asia, things may be different but all I can picture in my mind's eye is the most disgusting (in so many ways) reddublr slop... just truly pitiful trash)

I think things like stable diffusion and ai frame interpolation inject a lot of liquidity into a hypothetical western animation renaissance, but the rekindlement of the impetus to create and the visions in our hearts is a prerequisite...