Breaking the Animation Age Ghetto

Agree. Most boy characters before Bart, while having their moments of mischievous, were pretty much generic goody two shoes. Some cute, others...ugh

edited 26th Oct '14 10:06:23 AM by teddy

And Bart, being a cartoon, pretty much helped ensure Bud Bundy would sail right past the radars... for a while.

Yeah, that episode where his parents were killed and he discovered he was a firebender was weird.

My goodness, is the ghetto a problem in modern animation, particularly when we're talking about DC/marvel comics animation. We went from shows ranging from good to great like Batman the animated series, Superman, Justice League, Spectacular Spider Man, Wolverine and the X-men, Avengers: earth's mightiest heroes, and Teen Titans; to kid-only trash like the often unfunny and uninteresting Ultimate Spider Man, the HORRIDLY generic Avengers Assemble, Hulk and the agents of smash, and teen titans go.

Lately, the only animated shows that appeal to older audiences (aside from MLP) at all are the comedy leaning ones, and even those are generally unfunny. I can't think of a single animated show which is supposed to be taken seriously that is actually good.

Wha...?

Even, say, Adventure Time, which has a pretty sizable older fanbase?

I'll be honest here and say Ren And Stimpy probably did more to help break the ghetto than Batman The Animated Series and its ilk. (Mainly by virtue of coming first, yes, but still...)

edited 27th Oct '14 3:17:13 PM by Aldo930

Granted on the adventure time thing. However, stuff like Ren and Stimpy did set the foundation for a different sort of barrier when considering animation. It turned it into either an adult comedy thing (stuff a good amount of people don't like anyways) or something for kids. The ideal goal would be to have an animation industry that had productions for all ages (sort of like they had in Japan).

Look into David Faustino's recent roles and you'll understand.

Also, I'm not totally sure with Adventure Time since its target audience still seems to be children and stoners. For non-comedy adult animation, you'd have to look toward indie animation. I bring up (as I always do) Don Hertzfeldt as an example to check out there (particularly his film Its Such A Beautiful Day, which I would consider a masterpiece of film, not even just of animation). Lev Yilmaz (creator of Tales Of Mere Existence) is another one to check out, though I'm not quite sure if you'd consider his work animation.

edited 27th Oct '14 3:23:12 PM by Odd1

Stuff for adults does count in all ages.

What Ren And Stimpy basically did was it got adults to watch cartoons for kids, something that hadn't really happened since the 60s. The Simpsons had just hopped on the scene and got adults to watch cartoons. Now, they were watching toons on a kids' network! (A lot of them were probably catching it on MTV, but it was made for Nick.)

And with Batman: TAS coming in a year later, adults could watch kids' cartoons again. Only three years after the premiere of R&S, you had stuff like the magazine article I wrote about earlier, recommending kids' shows to an adult audience.

Oh, now I get it.

I kind of think Adventure Time is actually more popular than MLP with the general public. And target audiences don't mean a thing since the Periphery Demographic was introduced...

Serious adult animation had been attempted back in the 50s with UPA, in the 70s with Ralph Bakshi, and since about the 80s it's been steadily going since. Of course, most people won't watch indie stuff, so there you go. It's rather a shame.

edited 27th Oct '14 3:27:09 PM by Aldo930

I was thinking more of stuff specifically targeted at adults, as that's what it seemed like Clannadisawesome was referring to in that last paragraph there. For things targeted at "all ages", there's always the tacit understanding that the execs mean "children" when they market it that way. EDIT: Whoops, I'm responding to something not even targeted to me. And yeah, serious adult animation has occurred in the past, but it doesn't seem as prevalent or mainstream anymore. The last mainstream adult animated movie I can think of was A Scanner Darkly. I agree, it is rather a shame that most people won't look toward indie, but whaddaya gonna do.

edited 27th Oct '14 3:28:11 PM by Odd1

I suppose they'd rather not go towards things that seem unfamiliar to them.

Admittedly, they might go for some of the older independent stuff, like the works of John Dilworth and Sally Cruikshank... But newer stuff, heck no.

edited 27th Oct '14 3:31:54 PM by Aldo930

"What is this strange thing? A movie I haven't heard of? It must suck if that's the case!"

That's actually a reaction I get a lot, even to more mainstream stuff.

Case in pernt: I try to show some people I know Shinbone Alley, which is an underrated animated musical with a story by Mel Brooks and some terrific songs, plus an animated sequence in the style of the great George Herriman, and they hate it just because the protagonist is a cockroach.

I've even gotten that reaction to Rockos Modern Life.

What are you gonna do?

edited 27th Oct '14 3:41:16 PM by Aldo930

going off of appearance alone, the film looks like the Aristocats with roaches. Not a bad thing though.

edited 27th Oct '14 4:22:44 PM by teddy

It's one of those films that's hard to describe. I haven't been able to find a film that I can compare to its storyline.

Incidentally, it seems to have been an independent animated film, marketed with the tagline "Sophisticated enough for kids, simple enough for adults."

edited 27th Oct '14 4:10:28 PM by Aldo930

A thought has occurred...

When we say that we need more animation that is adult and serious, do we mean what we say or is it a euphemism for "Why aren't there more cartoons like my favorites?" (and other such sentiments)...

I would assume that people would say that if that did adequately describe their favorite shows (or at least shows that they enjoy). Otherwise they likely wouldn't say that.

I wouldn't say it is quite the same as people saying they want something new when they really want the stuff they liked before but better, but I can see how it comes across that way.

At least in my case, I feel like I would just want more of a selection, more stuff that could appeal to older audiences without stooping to immature nastiness (or, at least, without overly relying on that). I'll forever champion the works of Don Hertzfeldt...but, then again, his works are also hardly accessible for most people who don't have an affinity for the arthouse. I'd say stuff like Ralph Bakshi, but I have my issues with him (though I don't think it'd necessarily be a bad thing for stuff like that to be more high profile; not totally my taste, but it is mature animated storytelling).

While I personally am satisfied with the current state of animation and don't think it needs to become more serious or adult, if I had to choose, I'd want an anthology show - like The Twilight Zone or Alfred Hitchcock Presents meets What A Cartoon. Or an adaptation of the works of Kim Deitch, but the one I can see best working for a film would have to be done in a Roger Rabbit-type style...

Personally, I'd be fine with any new anthology show these days, animated or not. That kind of show seems to be a dead art these days—or, if not dead, at least dormant.

The anthology show is a lost art.

Maybe a new anthology of independent animation would do?

I mean, they tried with Random! Cartoons a few years ago, but literally the only thing I ever heard of or saw from it was the Adventure Time pilot.

I kind of like how Nicktoons used to show off a lot of independent animated shorts between programming in the morning a long time ago. Stuff that they'd package together from the Nicktoons Animation Film Festivals. They were always really creative and interesting, and sadly the only animator I can think of that's done anything since then is JG Quintel (his short "The Naive Man from Loliland" partially seemed to lay the groundwork for his later series Regular Show...I can't think of anything else that was featured in all those shorts that featured animators that are doing any high profile work today, but maybe I just wasn't paying attention enough then to get any names).

edited 14th Nov '14 12:35:11 PM by Odd1

Which itself was a takeoff on Oh Yeah Cartoons, which was a takeoff of What A Cartoon...

I think they dumped it on Nicktoons Network, and the only shows that came out of it were Adventure Time and Fanboy And Chum Chum.

Shame. It had a diverse group of talent - diverse in race as well as people. John Dilworth, Doug Ten Napel, Bill Plympton, even Greg Eagles...

Nicktoons had a thing called "Shorts in a Bunch," which had independent toons as well as Prometheus and Bob and Life with Loopy.

Of course, none of this would be helpful to those who want to break the Animation Age Ghetto; most of the people who are crying for it to be broken don't want stuff like that.

edited 14th Nov '14 12:40:32 PM by Aldo930

As much as I would enjoy to see something like Cartoon Cartoons again, is it really needed?

I mean, we have, the Internet! There's a lot of talent there. Nick has been doing this. Instead of making reboots of 80s cartoons or having another Adventure Time 2.0, why not just look at the Internet more often networks? There's a hell of a lot more creativity here..

Well, networks generally like shows made by people who've had experience. The only creator I can think of who never had any experience before making his show was Van Partible, and he got kicked off and replaced with people who'd worked on Pinky And The Brain. (And he'd made a student film besides.)

True, but some of the more popular ones have some experience. Like schooling and such. And most know how to animate, ranging from mediocre to great.