Western Cartoons (and animation)

[Albicacore]

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...

I mentioned this in the stable diffusion thread.

Corridor Digital's use of diffusion in this video is incredibly innovative. They are creating a new form of animation that can give consistent results and can be completed quickly. I look forward to seeing how this will be used in the future.

We are going to see a lot more of this soon. It works surprisingly well in the video. They released a behind the scenes as well.

[anthony]

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...

I feel like this difference is essential, and where the Japanese really kicked everyone else's asses. And everything that can be said for their use of animation also goes for comics/manga, which in this practical sense is a sister-medium. And, to add insult to injury, the Japanese have historically produced about as much enduring "demonstration" animation as the west.

The Japanese have exploited animation to realise a massive variety of imaginative and idiosyncratic visions at a good enough level of flash and fidelity for mass consumption, and they've put a massive amount of work into the thing as craft, or an art in itself. They have Mobile Suit Gundam and Belladonna of Sadness. They have Evangelion and Akira. etc, ect.

You're really right that we got the worst of both worlds in the west. If it's a cheap utilitarian production it's fodder "for children", retarded Alvin and the Chipmunks cartoons, which children don't even want. And if it's an animator's work it's some absurdly expensive weirdly styled shit full of zogged out spiritual warfare. Not even an individual's idiosyncratic weirdness is allowed in. It's all true communist all brother's for the cause faggotry. The last place individuals were leaving their marks was probably Flash. If we get something new, it'll be these new animation tools making something like 2000s newgrounds possible again. But unfortunately that was also another cultural time and place. I think the cultural health still exists for something to happen, but barely, and it's under constant siege.

Sorry this got a bit off track. We all still agree that western animation is mostly shit.

[Guest]

Off topic but thanks @anthony for mentioning Belladonna of Sadness. I just watched. I enjoyed it.

[a system is failing]

Extension of a ramble I was on in discord. A good look into THE PROBLEM that is currently hanging over the great tradition of cartoonism. 



This is Blockhead, made by flash animator Michael Swain. "TheSwain" as his screen name goes, made about 11 episodes worth of Blockhead and another series in addition to two games. He has done some work recently on the latest Madness game. He's probably made SOME money off of his work, but not an actual career. After finishing a game for one his other projects, Mastermind, he stopped doing animation. I don't want to speak for his sense of satisfaction with his own work, but from an outside perspective, this was clearly someone who went unrewarded for both having exceptional talent as well as the will power to create for nothing. Of course, he did all of the voice acting and sound for his cartoons as well. Not uncommon media polymath skillset for these dudes. 



This is a gif from China, IL by Brad Neely. Brad Neely has had multiple shows on adult swim, including such gems as Harg Nallin' Sclopio Peepio (yep), as well as major credits on crap like South Park. He is currently worth 1.5 million. 

"
"
This is a very common story. For upcoming ""talent"" in the 2000s it seems the entire thing was this nasty millennial nepotistic takeover, where a few people got rewarded immensely for making pointless shite. And no doubt the defenders of Brad Neely would try to pull ironic detachment, saying I'm being a sperg for comparing these two. Okay, Neely technically isn't an animator, but so fuckin' what? If he is going to be billed as the creator of a show he bears responsibility for how that show looks visually. 

Blockhead is a literal SMILEY FACE character and yet he goes through more expressions in a 1 second gif than Neely's characters are physically capable of at all. In the China IL clip you can see what appear to be a number of cardboard cut outs of humans...I can only imagine they are cardbpard cut outs, since they are in fact a static, single frame. The hobo character in the Blockhead clip does not affect anything at all, he doesn't talk or even seem to exist to Blockhead, and yet he still moves around and looks at things off camera. 

Doing this won't automatically make some great animation, but it is a matter of RESOLUTION. There is no need for Neely's characters or style to be expressive or beautiful or energetic or pleasing because his show is a dreary post ironic mess of thinly veiled lolsorandom humor, and he is himself probably an obnoxious soy libcuck, and his life and the point of view it is filtered through is just like the show and its art style. 

Unfortunately, somehow people like thst have their way now. Though some people are out there to appreciate the likes of Swain, the simple fact he has an expansive mind and it naturally reaches towards thing he unironically finds enjoyable is what determines him as not being deserving of the rewards some loser like Neely gets to reap. There is such an immensely dismissive attitude towards what Swain is from critics and institutions and now audiences simply because his work is appealing in an honest and immediate way, and faux depth is the current modus operandi of the west. Something that NEEDS to be solved if we are ever to have anything good again.

[anthony]

...

Very real problem. America is capable of producing exceptional people still even now. But it just does nothing for them. Even with nothing a guy like Swain can just ride his own excellence to prominence and finished works. But that came from a very particular cultural scene that willed itself into existence out of desire and necessity, and then was destroyed (I mean the closing of flash and the tv-fication of the internet through various post-Obama disasters).

Where does the energy go? Newgrounds was a great thing, but what came of it? The fact these people weren't uplifted goes to show how actively and aggressively unpopular American popular media/culture is. America spends more money on pop-culture than any other country on Earth, and all it does is build a multitude of wasteful pathways through which one can only fail upwards or be nepotistically selected. No formal pathways through which to succeed upwards. Not only that, the system actively destroys them wherever they start emerging naturally.

One of the disasters I was referring to above was the youtube pay-model switching to engagement. This just DESTROYED cartoonists. And really anybody whose work was short and sharp (as better work tends to be). It killed good creative work and shifted incentives solely towards content. Let the Indian 10 year olds decide who gets payed.





Neil Druckmann gets to lead 9 figure projects because he was able to get into a retarded cartoon game company as a "writer" (those games were horrifically written and still are). Meanwhile the guys who created Thing-Thing, Mastermind, Interactive Buddy, Pico, what did they get? They delivered with no establishment infrastructure and marketing supporting them, and they just get passed over. It's a damn tragedy. The animators who are still prominent names online have mostly had to survive by rebranding as talking heads and content-guys. They survive on morons watching them play video games, because it's all ultimately time spent watching. Krinkels is still with us, but has to work his ass off from the looks of it. Still an outsider. Has he succeeded upwards, or is his life just a constant static struggle in place against a world that refuses to give him a break?

I haven't thought of Newgrounds in a while. This is upsetting.

[a system is failing]

The animators who are still prominent names online have mostly had to survive by rebranding as talking heads and content-guys.

Oney and his friends are one that particularly springs to mind here. He managed to be one of the better outcomes, of course his content was always parodies of stuff anyways so it's one of the less compelling people to succeed. Smiling Friends is just more of the same ultimately, it gets only a minor edge over its competition because it's made by people with a bit more experience and thoughtfulness than the usual, but it's the same ugly ad libbed dialogue crap. Just with a few actual animation gags thrown in. Even so, being buried under these shit tropes they manage to easily succeed where others like Neely who are ultimately more successful cannot. Even throwing tiny little scraps of something of value will result in a smash hit show, but if its too good and makes too much of a joke of its competition it will get the MDE treatment, and Oney and co seem to comfortably inhabit that mediocre drone content level. The bar really is that low though, and I worry about the exacerbating effects of raising audiences to accept this.

[PIGSAW]

I've been intending to reply to this thread since it was launched, hopefully this post will be so TL;DR it justifies continued procrastination again for a similar length of time.

And leave off with some Ed, Edd, and Eddie. One of the few western cartoons I really liked as a kid.

Ed, Edd n Eddy was one of my favorite cartoons from that era— I always preferred Cartoon Network to Nickelodeon, because Cartoon Network is rockabilly (and Nickelodeon is horrible ZOG shit, which is why there is such awful nostalgia for it):





Even as a child I appreciated what I would later learn is "mid-century modern" though it didn't take me very long, since I grew up in Burbank.

Plank also remains one of the funniest cartoon characters:



Johnny is an unbelievably accurate depiction of an autistic black child.

The need for certain action oriented western cartoons to ape anime gave me an impression of sadness, even if they were well made. I saw it like a father trying to adopt to his distant son's interests.

Excellent point, and something I would've brought up myself had you not already. Western animation never had a serious interest in "action" because the competition against Hollywood was inescapable and impossible to touch. This isn't to say western animation cannot have action— many good efforts have been made, HBO's Spawn and MTV's Liquid Television come to mind..



..but even those were still more in the vein of general surrealism (or atmospheric noir, Gargoyles was also like this) than distinct "action" (though I prefer this, it's worth noting).

I also have to enter the '90s for examples and the reason for this is because this is when anime entered everyone's minds— McFarlane who was particularly impressed by Akira, Liquid Television's Aeon Flux by Peter Chung (one of Korea's best), as such I cannot bring up The Animatrix because obviously it is both literally anime and westerners imitating it..



Beloved Millennial show Samurai Jack was (the first of, Sym-Bionic Titan was quite nice before it was cancelled) Genndy Tartakovsky's attempt to create something like the action anime that had so recently captured Gen X (especially the Gen X in Burbank, Adult Swim becomes extremely relevant)— to the point of designing the entire show around "robots" because this was the only way Cartoon Network would let them display blood, if it was "not blood" because they were "not human". (The Powerpuff Girls (highly rockabilly) was also McCracken's attempt at creating a "cute action" show like anime, this is why they have such big eyes— it's meant to be somewhere between homage and parody. Strangely, they were able to get away with a surprising amount of blood and gore. Maybe the "feminism" bought them extra leeway)

These types of television constraints are also what limited the ability (and desire to make) any sort of "action" cartoons.
Because things like HBO's Spawn were exceedingly rare and was only considered because Spawn was the #1 selling comic in America at the time. McFarlane had even commented in an interview that he had been approached many times for a Spawn "cartoon" and each time he would ask them "Have you read the comic?" because they were intending to make a "Saturday Morning" Spawn, each time they would never call back. It wasn't until HBO called and told him they did in fact understand what Spawn was, and wanted to do an animation that was accurate, that a Spawn "cartoon" was able to be made.

Before Spawn, the closest would be Bruce Timm's Batman the Animated Series:



Which again, like Spawn, was not pure action, but like Spawn was somewhat of an anomaly— only allowed, again due to popularity, because Batman is a cultural icon which functionally cannot fail.

Back to the main subject— I consider the '00s era of faux-anime "action" cartoons to be the Mexican era and Mexification of American animation, because the only children I knew who were particularly impressed by these things were the poor kids (all of which are Mexican in my mind, regardless of race).
It isn't even to say these things were all uniformly terrible (I watched Avatar when it was originally airing, because it was more genuinely orientalist— as a history tidbit the first time I ever heard the term "shipping" was IIRC one of the showrunners at a con in the '00s addressing some fujoshi's question about character relationships, let's keep this in mind that this did not come out of anime but faux-anime, unless anyone knows an earlier origin point), but that they had no reason to exist. I could watch high octane sex and violence from anime, the value I got out of western animation was primarily humor (discounting some of my examples, all of which are abnormal in the field) and surrealism...

The earliest of Walt Disney films are some of the most fantastical stories ever put into production. I don't believe that animated films have to have "lessons", or some overarching narrative or theme in order for them to hold merit: I think that being able to encapsulate so effectively the imagination of a child - or, rather, to effectively convey that which is enticing to the imagination of a child - is an exceptional quality, and what a movie like, for example, Alice in Wonderland excels at doing. It's a mystical, dream-like film - weird, uncomfortable-feeling, but vibrationally low in tone; the cartoons of the 90's, on the other hand, were disturbing perversions of this sort of quality, and ultimately failed at maintaining subtlety, and toeing the line. Something like Ren & Stimpy or Courage the Cowardly Dog were a little too on the nose.

Another excellent point. Yes, the American desire to render surrealism is exactly the OTHER thing I did take from American and western animation. One of my favorites:



"An angel..."

The American (primarily) difficulty in creating "kawaii" (something which can come as easily to many Europeans as it does to the Japanese) can be "backwards engineered" in a way to create nightmares, Americans excelled at claymation because it acts as an outlet for much of their disgusting impulses but allowing them a medium where it can be something other than just "ugly". It's certainly not the "people" in this video that I like, but the depiction of Satan in a way which makes extreme use of claymation.

This same point I'm making I would leverage as a defense of Courage, which I liked because of how many different animation techniques it utilized simeltanously:



Though I'll make no argument for a lack of subtlety or general degradation in American animation standards leading up to the '90s. I find it bizarre it's heralded as the "golden age" when that couldn't be further from the truth. The only thing about '90s American cartoons I would hold in high regard is how weird they were allowed to be, but generally this was only used for entirely kikish means (body humor, shitting, cum, slime, etc.)— Courage has this issue as well, but I consider it to be the most arthouse use of that freedom (within the constraints of being "comedic" i.e., having tons of Jewish shitting in it) as it was able to be "the scary show" on Cartoon Network at the time. The notion that cartoons by standard must be immature is completely Jewish, as you mentioned this was not an issue in Disney under Walt.

On this subject I will say that I hated Ren & Stimpy even as a child, because of it's grotesque sexual energy, however I love John K. and his blog (which is his crowning achievement, no I don't mean this as an insult).

These shows were made by weird uprooted and imported continental-whites who grew up in a mangled post-cultural America. I don't fault them for not drawing princesses and unicorns. On one hand they were reacting to boring sterility, and on the other their vitality had no substantial cultural forms to flow into, so the results are naturally a bit chaotic and disturbed. This is still far healthier than a completely depersonalised media. That of the 80s saturday morning cartoon. If it weren't for these guys I believe cartoon animation would have just quietly died. Imagine the industry without them. You just get Canadian cartoons forever.

Well put.

On a closing note I'll leave with a Fleischer Superman cartoon "The Arctic Giant" which I watched recently. The Fleischer style looks slightly less appealing when doing more realistic figures, but it's quite enioyable nonetheless, and very oddly remniscent of Godzilla, over a decade before it came out. Fleischer proving to be innovative as always.

...

Yet another excellent contribution, I remember seeing some of these rerun on Toonami as a child and I was particularly captivated by the animation and rendering of the machines— big machines doing things, America. I enjoyed seeing this style "come back" in BTAS, though I saw it for the first time in that.

Incidentally, I have a lot of posts I want to make in here about this particular early period internet animation (mostly focused on the programs pivot, flash and occasionally eztoon). There is a lot of interesting content there and a lot to discuss about it, and I consider it an important part of animation history, but without laying any of the groundwork for that or going into too much detail I wanted to make a short post about one of the biggest milestones in that era, a series called "Brackenwood".

Most notable about this at the time was the mind-blowing animation quality. Flash animators don't mess around, this is all stuff he did by himself using his own skills and although he did have former professional work under his belt, Brackenwood was just a personal project of his. Many people like me, kids and teenagers getting into internet animation saw this guy as a demigod of sorts.

There is something about the direct nature of this era in animation that is very special. No pretense or funding or ulterior motives, just people making stuff to sort of one up each other and themselves in a non-egotistical manner, the only goal in mind being entertaining people by flexing their skills to their fullest extent. And the results speak for themselves. Without resources the process may be prohibitive but these are much better stories and toons than you could actually get in animated TV of that time, let alone now.

I couldn't have said it better myself.

Let's make something clear, MACROMEDIA Flash Player was bought, cannibalized, and slaughtered by Adobe, Microsoft, and Google (who might as well be one company) deliberately to erase the recent-past and lock down the internet. Let no one speak lies about "security" as the reason they took out Flash, they did it because it was the most integral tool of the internet as the new medium of technology— the internet and games are one medium, Flash was as well. Killing Flash, "GamerGate"... it's all the same shit, it's abduction and dissolution of anything new by the gerontocracy to destroy the youth. They know what they're doing.

Back on topic, to echo everyone else— Brackenwood is indeed beautiful, a wonderful relic of an era of extreme effort. I will post my favorite Flash, from my favorite Flash animator, who unfortunately took his own life:

https://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/313223

EDIT: I am very annoyed that it seems like the sound on this doesn't always work, which is a huge issue because the use of Frou Frou's Must Be Dreaming is extremely important. So, I have to link to two different things which both have issues:

https://dagobah.net/flash/penndragon.swf

This where the frame is too wide, and this:



OG YouTube upload which I was deliberately trying to avoid posting, because the interactive start and replay menus are part of the aesthetic and Flash experience, and because of how compressed it is— something which made Flash feel so new at the time was because nothing else was lossless, any video you'd be watching was at least this compressed if not dramatically moreso. Being able to see new animations, in clarity not available in any other medium was astounding.

---

Joshua's death is the direct result of something which Anthony has brought up in this thread and many others:

John K's problems are the problems of every excellent person. He's one of the best around, and he's not working. There is still an industry. An industry that holds a lot of attention, and fueled by a lot of money. And it's complete garbage. John K is there. He would work. He would love to. But he's not. Because the space is owned and monopolised by garbage people who would sooner have the thing than have someone else put it to good use.

Even times as confused as ours can't help but gravitate towards and correct into what's good, so western animation got eaten alive by anime. And do you care? Or are you just happy that your team has the ball?

"What happens to high value people with nowhere to go?" In his case, he simply chose to opt-out. I know this because I knew him, but how many more have suffered this fate? How many people of immense talent have chosen to die when put against a wall? Most likely far more than any of us could imagine. Of course choosing your own fate is far from the worst thing someone like this could suffer, but I consider any loss such as this to be the direct result of the system working as intended. The weak occupiers are cowards, so you will hear about attempts but not successes. They do not want to leave, because they have a place. It is exclusively the most valuable among us who are the most punished. Something they of course torment anyone for believing.

Still, I don't want this normgroid rhetoric of failure to prevail. 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.

Well, on the subject of revenge:



I remember vividly watching this either the day it came out or soon after on an iMac G5 at school (it was a kind of private school, obviously). As much as I still love Krinkels (and I recommend Project Nexus 2) I must say he is nowhere near as dark now (he is ardently pro-vax.. and he ceased his alcoholism). As crude and simplistic as Madness' animation style is, Depredation is savage. 

I would say, of everything from the '00s, this is what I want back the most. The ability to be "slow and fast" simultaneously, Madness draws its aesthetic strength from noir, horror, brooding creeping filth.. characters that have died dozens of times, built out of stitches and bandaging, but it takes it and runs away screaming, completely hyperactive— corpses and shell casings piling up in mounds as fast as they enter the frame.

Yes, it is this kind of unrelentance that must come back— and it will.



The world made grey again.

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.

Another excellent post. This is an overarching issue in all art and entertainment fields (though the fact it is conflated this way is largely the issue, "entertainment" is the problem)— rogue craftsmen talking down to their betters. Animators by and large are just another form of illustrator, that is, an artistic laborer— not an artist. This is a completely illegal opinion, but luckily because of advancements in AI technology these people now live in hell— even if they are not yet homeless and destitute as most of them should be.

As long as great things are preserved and made apprehendable by those that enjoy them, revival and regeneration is possible. That said, everything in your post is definitely completely true: the way I would describe cartoons after the 90s-2000s era is they have cut themselves off from the tradition of cartooning. Stuff like Adventure Time and SU defines cartooning now and it is missing almost all of the classical elements of animation. I not sure what exactpy it draws influence from, stuff like Doraemon and whatever type of 'anime' thwt is are at least part of it for SU but its only a very minor component. I think a lot of this style is determined by changes in animayion technology, generally not for the better. Adevnture Time and SU look like commercials. We're kind of in a dark age similar to the 80s.

To answer this question, Adventure Time's style (which I would say is actually very if not entirely disconnected from Steven Universe, though I will get to this) comes from a combination of things. It's a kind of "shorthand" drawing method for those who cannot draw (webcomics) mixed with specific styles of animation from music videos, as an example:



I blame France and California for this, although I like this video and consider this to be the truer form of what Adventure Time was trying to accomplish.



If we look at the pilot for Adventure Time, compared to the show (which changed it's style fairly dramatically, and moreso over time) I would compare it to Paper Rad:



Comparatively it's much more gentrified as Paper Rad is pure '00s hipster— whereas Adventure Time is somewhat of an effort to make this highly abrasive style more palatable to someone who, basically wouldn't like it in the first place (this made extremely evident by the fact that Problem Solvers was a total failure on air, because it was made only marginally less abrasive than their original '00s work). It was a success, which is bad.



If we look at the pilot for Steven Universe, firstly we can see that it's drawn and animated far better, and in a fairly different style (Rebecca Sugar's real style, which comes from '00s webcomics and yaoi— for anyone who is not aware, Ms. Sugar made Ed Edd n' Eddy yaoi, for her LiveJournal a place where women like this used to share things like this pre-Tumblr, before being hired at Cartoon Network) but also that this is much more like Adventure Time— built out of Gen X/Xennial nostalgia for the '80s, tempered into this pastel "hopepunk".. it's not actually faux anime, it's something else that I could best describe as "fanart" but not of anything in particular (which is and always was the intention of "fanart", it became the defacto drawing style of the '10s as a kind of "post-manga" from the '00s as women wormed their way into control, fanart is inherently women's art because they are secondary characters in life). Still, I find this much more attractive than what they ended up going with.

Sugar's old animations are even better:



I think Singles might've been her graduate thesis for animation at SVA (I'm going off of vague memories) and in this we see the highest concentration of SpumCo influence, this is animation trained moreso by John K's blog as that and the orbiters of it were part of the older animation clique.



These are almost as '00s hipster as Paper Rad, but nowhere near as disagreeable (as it wasn't made by a man, though she probably claims to be one now), Johnny Noodleneck looks like it came from Seattle (more similar to Flapjack than Adventure Time). We also see again the John K. blog influence, while those lines may look like Dr. Seuss (and interest in him from that time is relevant too), she adopted this trend as a reader of his blog. Though this specific style (again, like Flapjack) came from a few places, and can be seen in a couple different forms:



Illustrators who orbited Juxtapoz and Hi-Fructose were fond of this style, I'm not sure who "invented" it or if it was just part of the zeitgeist at the time— not an animator, but Al Columbia comes to mind as what I think was the best use of this style:

[a system is failing]

...

Excellent excellent post across many topics. Madness is one of the crown jewels of that era, and having limited experience of my own with flash I find its animation actually quite fascinating. It's deceptively complex. I'm definitely hoping to contribute more lengthy posts on EEnE, shows like this and Courage and a few others you mentioned deserve to be defended unreluctantly...most of these nostalgic shows, especially Nickelodean ones as you correctly observed, were shit but some of these people were also really cool, thoughtful and interesting. EEnE in particular is a huge success stylistically on multiple levels. I can think of few THINGS, let alone shows, which have all of their personality totally present in every single aspect: the sound design, music, art, writing, characters, backgrounds, and setting and probably more. So it makes for a very good example of a lot of the positive things that can be done with cartooning.

[PIGSAW]

Excellent excellent post across many topics.

My post was actually meant to be a reply to the entire thread, as I intended to respond to almost everyone— but it was fucking breaking while I was writing it (I imagine because of all the media links) so I'm going to go by page.

Madness is one of the crown jewels of that era, and having limited experience of my own with flash I find its animation actually quite fascinating. It's deceptively complex.

I agree, on this subject I'm reminded of something I was going to bring up wrt Madness and forgot:



Since I was shitting on Mexicans earlier, let me just immediately contradict that for the lulz.

Xionic Madness is based, it's 100% Mexican and cool because of it— horror vacui across the board, absurd detail (watch the next episode and look at the gun designs, he clearly sat down and drew these things out for awhile before getting to the animation), soundspam, it never shuts the fuck up— But why should it? It's doing everything right as "base cool". Just like Madness, just.. not white.
In this, we can see the extreme (although only to these types) influence of Nomura (Kingdom Hearts) and Nightow (Gungrave) on Newgrounds (this would be actual "PS2 retro")— there is a type of person who draws like this, someone obsessed with drawing guns from the profile, who will naturally become fascinated with leather patterns— I know this because I am one of them. They all coalesced on Newgrounds, happily sitting in the shade of Madness.

Fuck it, since we're on the subject of Flash and it's importance let's keep going with another 'based Mexican' (probably the most based)— Vinnie Veritas:





El día se va a desintegrar
 Feedback baby c'mon c'mon
  El día se va a desintegrar
   Feedback baby c'mon c'mon

(Penndragon that I linked to earlier was influenced by Vinnie's drawing style, the monochrome people with very pointy faces— reminiscent of early Nihei, but incidental, (at least in Vinnie's case) I'm sure.)

I'll link to YouTube for the lazy (as it is Vinnie hosting it at least), but please do yourself a favor and watch it in Flash on Newgrounds.

Let me (preemptively) repeat myself for the 9,001th time— I do not link to these "old things" because I like old things, these are relics of an era of high vitality. The internet is meant to be never-ending CHAOS... to anyone younger than me know that this was STOLEN FROM YOU— you are a VICTIM but you shouldn't be, you were ROBBED. You were meant to inherit EVERYTHING I had.. and make it BETTER.

But don't worry, the solution is already in motion. To any enemy combatants reading this (as I know you genetic failures have to stalk places like this for real insight)— I will personally ruin your life.

You will know me as the devil.

I'm definitely hoping to contribute more lengthy posts on EEnE, shows like this and Courage and a few others you mentioned deserve to be defended unreluctantly...most of these nostalgic shows, especially Nickelodean ones as you correctly observed, were shit but some of these people were also really cool, thoughtful and interesting.

I agree, let me make a defense against myself for Nickelodeon— SpongeBob is based, and it's spiritually a Cartoon Network show:

According to his death certificate, his body was cremated and his ashes were scattered in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of California the next day.

SpongeBob is so rockabilly it's a fucking tiki bar turned into a cartoon, and that's what's good about it.



(Something I particularly liked about the backgrounds in SpongeBob is the "sky" patterned to look like a Hawaiian shirt.)

It also matters because it makes it white, rather than Jewish.

Disregarding the aesthetics for a moment, it is actually one of the best written children's cartoons (in terms of humor) from that era.



As an aside, the reason blacks are so obsessed with it is because to them SpongeBob is a perfect cartoon of a white person, a white sambo if you will— someone who is easily excited by the mundane, who loves going to work, and owns a cat. The reason South Americans and mulattos are so obsessed with it is because they're downstream from blacks.

[a system is failing]

I agree, let me make a defense against myself for Nickelodeon— SpongeBob is based, and it's spiritually a Cartoon Network show.

Hillenburg is definitely an admirable character and the earlier run of Spongebob prior to its deacent into a cash cow is one of the few redeeming things to grace Nick, the other being Invader Zim. There is a lot of interesting backstory to Spongebob's creation and his choice to have a marine-themed cartoon which really drove home to me that "thoughtful" aspect. The key ingredient all things of worth.

[PIGSAW]

Hillenburg is definitely an admirable character and the earlier run of Spongebob prior to its deacent into a cash cow is one of the few redeeming things to grace Nick,

There is a lot of interesting backstory to Spongebob's creation and his choice to have a marine-themed cartoon which really drove home to me that "thoughtful" aspect. The key ingredient all things of worth.

Who more qualified to make cartoons for Los Angeles than a former marine biologist? Yes, I found his background very interesting, and distinctly California.

the other being Invader Zim.

How could I forget about Invader Zim? (Really easily actually, since I'm trying to remember every other fucking thing I saw on late night TV 20 years ago.)



The single highest influence on Newgrounds of anything.



Jhonen in 2007 (approximately, I remember the OP from deviantART).



2018.

Pain.

Dr. T: Congratulations on a new season of Invader Zim.

JV: Thank you very much. A few more nightmares for the kids!

Dr. T: You're a former film student and a movie buff that enjoys horror films. I was reviewing the first season of Zim and saw things like organs, weird alien skin diseases, mechanical parts springing out of organic bodies and I was wondering if you were a big fan of David Cronenberg.

JV: Oh my God! That man is one of the people I truly thank for existing. His attitude toward organic existence is so disturbing. It's brilliant. The transmogrification of the human body and all those themes, I've always been into that, always been fascinated by it. When I look back at myself growing up as a little kid I see early signs of me being amazed with certain concepts like those, and he just hits them right on the head every time.

Dr. T: Did you watch cartoons as a kid? What kind of animation did you watch?

JV: The usual garbage you just can't help but like when you're little, like He-Man. I remember when watching He-Man I thought, "Wow, this is garbage!" because they had, you know, five drawings that they used every episode. Stuff that I really, really loved, I didn't find myself being amazed by. It was more just enjoying it in a sort of cartoon haze, a "sitting there, eating your cereal, watching cartoons" kind of level. There wasn't really any appreciation for how amazing the stuff was until I saw stuff like Akira. I always hated Scooby Doo. I couldn't stand how brown everything was! It was like staring at feces for half an hour. Euuh! I think there's a good thing about the fact that I didn't take a lot of this with me, love for these cartoons I saw while growing up, because I don't put a lot of that into what I do now. I don't derive a lot of inspiration from growing up with this stuff. There's a lot of stuff out there that looks like new episodes of a really old show to me. One or two shows, that's OK, but there are a lot of shows on the American side of things that are so retro, so tired-looking to me. It would be cool to see something done on this side that breaks away from that. There's been a cool response to (Invader Zim) just on that level alone, in that people dig the different look of it.

[Sauce]

I'm trying (and failing) to find an online live interview he did for AOL during the production of Invader Zim, but I can only find fossilized remnants of archaic fujoshi commenting on what I wanted to bring up, which at least proves I'm remembering correctly. I believe "AOL Hometown" might be what I'm trying to find, but it seems to be lost.
In any case, I remember it well enough.

He was asked either if he liked anime, what other shows he liked, or some kind of general question on influences of the show. He said that he wanted Invader Zim to have lower frame animation with higher detail per frame (something he stated that he specifically wanted to copy from anime) to make it as different from any other American cartoon as possible. The anime he brought up (not necessarily as an influence on the show) that he was enjoying currently, was Trigun— which if he wasn't watching it pirated, was airing (in 2003) on Adult Swim during the run of Invader Zim. Most interestingly (to me) was he said his favorite character was Monev the Gale:



(Figure by Kaiyodo.)

I would've guessed Legato:



Seems like the most obvious '90s goth choice, but Jhonen was always a little weirder than his contemporaries— JTHM through him was something which heavily impacted (if not partially directed) that subculture (though I think it had the highest effect on (mall) 'emos' since Millennials were very young at the time), so he was above most.

I got into Vasquez more after I saw spacejelly had listed him as an influence on deviantART.

To continue on the subject of influence:







S01E14 "Halloween Spectacular of Spooky Doom" (it was Jhonen who started this way of talking) and it's "Nightmare Realm" was also specifically influential on young and developing edgelords.





Diseased Productions Weasel was also clearly inspired by Vasquez, Nomura, and Nightow (or the amalgamation of all of their presence + others on Newgrounds) as I listed above. Sean was the only real competition to Krinkels (despite being a derivative, though him like Xionic Madness easily qualifies as "transformative"), as well as the only person who could've possibly overtaken him— as he was always much better at drawing:




Kouta Hirano (Hellsing) was also popular on Newgrounds, and the influence is most visible in these:







"The good ol' days."



From here I would like to talk about the subject of "2005": 



Since this is a 2009 upload, again, do yourself a favor and watch it on Newgrounds:

https://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/269159

Sock 3 was always my favorite by David Firth (my other favorite was all of the Spoilsbury Toast Boy series for being similarly dark) because I found it to be the scariest thing he'd made (I used to draw things that looked like Sock 3 mixed with Madness and Thing-Thing obsessively in sketchbooks, unfortunately now all lost to time) and because the Sock series was based on his dreams— the fact this was supposedly inspired by his dreams made it particularly attractive to me.
I bring this up because this was also the same year as Madness Depredation, so it seems like there was something sinister in the air then.

[Guest]

This picture juxtaposed with this scene from Freddy Got Fingered is the best summation of John K:

---

My post was unfinished and it looks like the image got eaten (I can't tell on my browser). What I mean to say is, even though John K complains a lot about the state of the animation industry, he lacks creativity or depth in most of his own ideas. None of these characters are particularly interesting. Many of them look like half-baked marketing mascots, or some kind of parody of cartoons you'd see a character watching within another show. Few of them display any personality traits, and there was probably no thought about who they are or what they do beyond their names, most being gibberish, word salad, or a euphemism. Knowing John K's style of humor, they would be interchangeable because they would all do the same things: Scream, flail their limbs, dismember each other, or excrete something from their bodies.

Like the sketches from Freddy Got Fingered, there's no elevation. He's not going to tell an interesting story with any of these. John K's work is, using KV55's terms, Animation as Demonstration. John K is saying "Look what I can do!" but who actually cares? What is there for anyone to care about once we've seen your animals beat each other and scream?

[anthony]

My post was unfinished and it looks like the image got eaten (I can't tell on my browser). What I mean to say is, even though John K complains a lot about the state of the animation industry, he lacks creativity or depth in most of his own ideas. None of these characters are particularly interesting. Many of them look like half-baked marketing mascots, or some kind of parody of cartoons you'd see a character watching within another show. Few of them display any personality traits, and there was probably no thought about who they are or what they do beyond their names, most being gibberish, word salad, or a euphemism. Knowing John K's style of humor, they would be interchangeable because they would all do the same things: Scream, flail their limbs, dismember each other, or excrete something from their bodies.

Like the sketches from Freddy Got Fingered, there's no elevation. He's not going to tell an interesting story with any of these. John K's work is, using KV55's terms, Animation as Demonstration. John K is saying "Look what I can do!" but who actually cares? What is there for anyone to care about once we've seen your animals beat each other and scream?

Kind of goes back to (what I see as) the essential problem of American pop-media. That it's all driven by these technicians and craftsmen. I enjoy Ren & Stimpy as clips, but don't really feel like watching it seriously at length. John K was probably born to direct two minute shorts that play before movies, but found himself in the age of tv. Elevation is more than a John K problem. It's more like an American pop media problem. And when something does dare to reach for the genuinely human it generally gets received very poorly. That action movie The Way of the Gun I've been telling everyone to watch lately is a good example. In Japan they do this right of course, but now I'm just repeating myself.

[GraphWalkWithMe]

This may or may not be worth its own thread, but are there not pornographic fixations among an outsized amount of great cartoonists? Upon his firing, John K. took it upon himself to produce trashy Internet videos featuring Hanna-Barbera characters pissing out of their boners and to animate a bunch of "sexy cartoon babes". R. Crumb needs no explication (my favorite comic of his is when Mr. Natural fucks a giant baby). Crumb's younger brother, a talented artist in his own right, breached straight up subway-fondler status (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ildp0VWFLrc). I'm sure the more versed in Anime/Manga can point me to similar things among that sphere.

I'm arrogant enough to take the psychologist's chair and ask if a portion of great 20th century cartoonists honed their skills through drawing jerk-off material. It's obvious contemporary animators are fixated on hentai, etc. anyway.

I'd imagine the 'toonist perv tendency has always overlapped with that of artists crafting "high visual works", but the former seems in particular to have developed into something especially pronounced during the mass visual media age of the 20th century.

[PIGSAW]

This may or may not be worth its own thread, but are there not pornographic fixations among an outsized amount of great cartoonists? [...] R. Crumb needs no explication [...] Crumb's younger brother, a talented artist in his own right, breached straight up subway-fondler status (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ildp0VWFLrc). I'm sure the more versed in Anime/Manga can point me to similar things among that sphere.

I'm arrogant enough to take the psychologist's chair and ask if a portion of great 20th century cartoonists honed their skills through drawing jerk-off material. It's obvious contemporary animators are fixated on hentai, etc. anyway.

Worth its own thread, as it's not specific to animation (but anything which is rote, such as graphomania, coding (this is why furries/trannies are overrepresented as coders) which is basically another form of graphomania anyways, or bodybuilding).

Also, "Crumb" (as mentioned wrt his brother, equally fascinating) "presented" by David Lynch is mandatory watching for anyone who wants to understand furries— I forgot about this in my TL;DR on furfags.

[...] I'd imagine the 'toonist perv tendency has always overlapped with that of artists crafting "high visual works", but the former seems in particular to have developed into something especially pronounced during the mass visual media age of the 20th century.

Although you're entirely correct to frame "cartoonists" as perverts— the root is deeper:

[...] "That masturbation was no sin or crime." [...] "Masturbation does not injure or make insane. Your parents were in error. Everyone masturbates." [...] "You do not masturbate." [...]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affirmatio...n_Hubbard)

Every retard I've ever know that was obsessed with fighting games was also a masturbation addict (I mean to the point of shooting blood), why is this? Why do we think of coders as trannies (and why do furries always hold STEM jobs)?

If I changed the question to "What does animation, coding, and weightlifting all have in common?" we'd begin to close in on the truth of this matter.

But it should be a separate thread.

[Guest]

late 1990s to mid 2000s was the last good era of western animation.

[ꦈꦒꦲꦸꦫꦲꦺꦴꦗ꦳ꦲ]

🆆🅴🆂🆃🅴🆁🅽 🅲🅰🆁🆃🅾🅾🅽🆂 🅸🅽🅵🅻🆄🅴🅽🅲🅴🅳 🅼🅴 🅶🆁🅴🅰🆃🅻🆈. 🅸 🅰🅼 🅳🅴🅴🅿🅻🆈 🆂🅰🅳🅳🅴🅽🅴🅳 🆃🅷🅰🆃 🆃🅷🅴 🆀🆄🅰🅻🅸🆃🆈 🅾🅵 🅲🅰🆁🆃🅾🅾🅽🆂 🅷🅰🆅🅴 🆂🅸🅼🅿🅻🆈 🅿🅻🆄🅼🅼🅴🆃🅴🅳 🆃🅾 🅰 🅻🅴🆅🅴🅻 🆃🅷🅰🆃 🆃🅷🅴🆈 🅼🅰🆈 🅰🆂 🆆🅴🅻🅻 🅽🅾 🅻🅾🅽🅶🅴🆁 🅴🆇🅸🆂🆃.

🆃🅷🅸🅽🅶🆂 🅸 🅷🅰🆃🅴 🅰🅱🅾🆄🆃 🆃🅾🅳🅰🆈 🅸🆂 🆃🅷🅰🆃 🅸🅵 🆆🅴 🅴🅽🆃🆁🆄🆂🆃 🅼🅾🅳🅴🆁🅽 🅰🆁🆃🅸🆂🆃🆂 🆃🅾 🅲🅾🅽🆂🆃🆁🆄🅲🆃 🅴🅽🆃🅴🆁🆃🅰🅸🅽🅼🅴🅽🆃, 🅸🆃 🆆🅸🅻🅻 🅱🅴 🅿🅻🅰🅶🆄🅴🅳 🆆🅸🆃🅷 🅰🅻🅻 🆃🅷🅴🅸🆁 🅷🅾🆁🆁🅸🅱🅻🅴 🆃🅰🆂🆃🅴🆂 🅰🅽🅳 🅾🅿🅸🅽🅸🅾🅽🆂.

🅸 🆃🅷🅸🅽🅺 🅰🅱🅾🆄🆃 🅷🅾🆆 🅼🆄🅲🅷 🅸 🅱🅻🅰🅼🅴 🆆🅾🅼🅴🅽 🅵🅾🆁 🆃🅷🅴🆂🅴 🅸🆂🆂🆄🅴🆂, 🅱🆄🆃 🅸🅽 🆃🆁🆄🆃🅷 🅸🆃 🅷🅰🆂 🅱🅴🅴🅽 🅰🅽🅳 🆆🅸🅻🅻 🅰🅻🆆🅰🆈🆂 🅱🅴 🆉🅾🅾🅼🅴🆁🆂 🅵🅾🆁 🅻🅴🆃🆃🅸🅽🅶 🅸🆃 🅶🅴🆃 🆃🅷🅸🆂 🅱🅰🅳.

[ꦈꦒꦲꦸꦫꦲꦺꦴꦗ꦳ꦲ]

🅸🆃 🅸🆂 🅰🅼🅰🆉🅸🅽🅶 🅷🅾🆆 🅵🅰🆁 🆃🅷🅸🅽🅶🆂 🅷🅰🆅🅴 🅶🅾🆃🆃🅴🅽 🆃🅾🅳🅰🆈.

🆃🅷🅴🆁🅴 🅰🆁🅴🅽'🆃 🅴🆅🅴🅽 🅲🅰🆁🆃🅾🅾🅽🆂 🅽🅾🆆.

[GraalChud]

🅸🆃 🅸🆂 🅰🅼🅰🆉🅸🅽🅶 🅷🅾🆆 🅵🅰🆁 🆃🅷🅸🅽🅶🆂 🅷🅰🆅🅴 🅶🅾🆃🆃🅴🅽 🆃🅾🅳🅰🆈.

🆃🅷🅴🆁🅴 🅰🆁🅴🅽'🆃 🅴🆅🅴🅽 🅲🅰🆁🆃🅾🅾🅽🆂 🅽🅾🆆.

So true, Unicodebro! Imo, Steven Universe is the prototypical modern Western "cartoon". It`s preachy and moralistic, "queer coded", uses an obnoxious animation style that is reminiscent of those shitty infographs that you can find on womens` instagram stories, and seems like its target audience is small children when you first watch it, though it quickly becomes clear that it`s actually for norwooding, soy imbibing man-children who are drawn to this sort of thing and who feel comforted by its wholesome chungus "vibes". Watch Cartoon Network and this becomes immediately obvious - nearly every show in their repertoire that isn`t a re-run of some older show is like this.

The cartoons that preceded Steven Universe and set the stage for its meteoric rise in popularity amongst the normgroids were what we might call "weird cartoons", a category that includes shows like Adventure Time and Regular Show. The former played a huge role in all this imo, as it had the sorts of wholesome chungus moments that would come to define in Steven Universe and its successors sprinkled throughout the series and was big amongst early 2010s Tumblrinas. In turn, the two aforementioned shows can be traced back to older "weird cartoons" like The Marvelous Misadventures of Flapjack and Chowder (which did not have as many, if any, of these wholesome chungus moments and thus weren`t the basis for weird Tumblr fanfictions and things). None of this is to say that the creators of these shows were in privity with one another and coordinated this change in cartoons or even were even conscious of the fact that they had taken inspiration from one another (though maybe some of them were, I don`t know enough about the relationship between these shows` writers and whether or not there was any overlap between their "teams").

[anthony]

Youtube sends me some animated stuff now and then. Batman Beyond seemed striking in a few moments.




How do you fix Batman, an inherently gay and retarded idea? Turn it into Akira. Genius.