Breaking the Animation Age Ghetto

I suppose I do not find serious animation as fun to watch as cartoony animation. Maybe it's just me, but if that's the case, I would feel worse.

Well there is no reason that both can't have a place. More variety does not hurt anybody.

I would also agree that breaking cultural attitudes about animation is fundamentally the issue, but I'm at a loss as to how exactly this would be done.

edited 17th Aug '14 8:51:36 PM by wehrmacht

>nerdy
>gave Epic Movie a positive review

...

>logic bomb

Rocky and Bullwinkle might have been popular in some countries, but it's hardly the kind of critical acclaimed show which would make the right people pay attention. What is really needed is a show (or movie) which is financial and critical successful...and to convince the critics, you need something all around good.

That was sarcasm. I'm not sure you got the joke.

The idea is it's an example of "you don't need good visuals to make a good cartoon."

Most of my fav cartoons don't even have "great visuals"

What exactly are considered good visuals anyway? Looking as real as possible I suppose.

edited 18th Aug '14 7:06:56 AM by Teddy

Yeah, didn't really come off as such to me. Ah well. [/internet]

What exactly are considered good visuals anyway? Looking as real as possible I suppose.

I'd imagine it's more about detail and attractive stylization than realism per se. Sleeping Beauty, for instance, is a gorgeous animated movie because it looks like a medieval painting, not because it's super-realistic.

Now, I think you see my point.

There is a ton of brilliant stylized work out there, from the work of UPA to Gene Deitch to The Thief And The Cobbler to, well, a ton of Eastern European animation. I could go on.

But what people seem to want here is not striking, brilliant stylized animation... But animesque type stuff, or realistic animation. Not stylized in any other shape or form, just those two.

edited 18th Aug '14 9:19:32 AM by Aldo930

I'd rather stylized stuff, thank you. Personally, I wouldn't mind more stuff like this:

But what people seem to want here is not striking, brilliant stylized animation... But animesque type stuff, or realistic animation. Not stylized in any other shape or form, just those two.

To be fair, certain types of stylization are better suited to telling certain kinds of stories and provoking certain kinds of emotions. You need a certain level of verisimilitude to make drama work, I think.

But what people seem to want here is not striking, brilliant stylized animation... But animesque type stuff, or realistic animation. Not stylized in any other shape or form, just those two.

I get the impression that people are talking more about themes, ideas, story, and presentation rather than artistic styles per se. Or at least that's what I care about. For example, Pixar is super stylized generally but their films have amazing artistry and storytelling and I love them. Something can be stylized and look amazing, and look technically realistic but look absolutely terrible. It's all about the expertise of the artist in question.

edited 18th Aug '14 11:01:13 AM by wehrmacht

Yet people have used very cartoony characters to tell serious stories. Hey, maybe it'll work.

Pixar is super-stylized?

Yes, Pixar has a house style that makes them entertaining to watch.

But I wouldn't say they were super-stylized.

There is a joke about John K. in there, somewhere.

Many of those stories are fairly niche I believe, but certainly possible. That being said, certain art-styles have always been more popular then others, given time I think those art-styles popularity will diminish. Hell, I think Adventure Time's kind of cartoony surrealist art-style will be the next big thing (if it hasn't already happened).

edited 18th Aug '14 1:52:35 PM by Mio

Cartoony surrealistic art has always been a thing and it does not seem likely to go away.

I think People want more from animation...For example the animated Batman show made a splash not just because the storytelling was unusual, but also because the style was so unusual. South Park is cheaply made, but the style is very distinctive. You see it and you immediately connect it with this one show. And there is certainly a reason why a lot of TV shows spend more money on the intro than on the actual episodes.

But what people seem to want here is not striking, brilliant stylized animation... But animesque type stuff, or realistic animation. Not stylized in any other shape or form, just those two.

Those styles lend themselves well to verisimilitude and play up the characters' physical appeal.

Besides, there's more to stylization than just character design. Backgrounds play a huge role in creating attractive visuals, and they can be stylized more without risking audience identification with the characters — Legend of Korra, for instance, used wood-block paintings as an inspiration for its flashback episodes, to gorgeous results. Special effects fall into a similar category — look at those Korra episodes again, or at a Disney movie like Mulan.

Lighting, choreography, use of color, and visual spectacle can all be pushed without stylizing the characters (actually, the first two are probably a lot harder to do with unrealistic characters), and I think that's what people are talking about when they say "good visuals."

I get the impression that people are talking more about themes, ideas, story, and presentation rather than artistic styles per se. Or at least that's what I care about. For example, Pixar is super stylized generally but their films have amazing artistry and storytelling and I love them. Something can be stylized and look amazing, and look technically realistic but look absolutely terrible. It's all about the expertise of the artist in question.

This is true. But I do feel some styles simply aren't made for some kinds of stories, no matter how amazing they look.

Well of course, but I meant other works specifically emulating Adventure Times art-style.

edited 18th Aug '14 2:59:10 PM by Mio

I still kinda think that most people don't know what the heck they're talking about when they talk about visuals. They just think of the look of a show, not all the subtleties.

The Adventure Time style of wackadoo surrealism hasn't really been seen in animation since Sally Cruikshank's work, though her cartoons haven't got a serious side like AT does.

Ive never seen adventure time but ive been told its art style looks like the bastard child of rubber-hose and UPA :/

I'm with Cartoon Brew contributor Neil Emmett on this topic (his thoughts below). If attention isn't given to more indies and foreign filmmakers (not just made for tv anime and big names like Miyazaki) it's going to stay locked in its own inbred circle of cliches.

http://www.cartoonbrew.com/ideas-commentary/how-can-we-make-adult-animation-truly-adult-86385.html

"The site prides itself on covering as broad a range of fiction as possible, emerging as a sometimes fascinating form of populist, open-access media scholarship. In theory, this would make it the perfect place to cover lost gems of animation, but in practice it has many blind spots. There is little discussion about (Jan) Svankmajer or Yuri Norstein, while juvenile mediocrities such as Disney’s Gargoyles are treated as masterpieces on a par with the television dramas of Dennis Potter and David Simon. TV Tropes has a page devoted to what it calls the Animation Age Ghetto, which gives a reasonable if scattershot overview of the subject. The page’s “examples” section, however, consists in large part of people filibustering about how their favorite superhero cartoons never caught on. The main reason that most of these cartoons never attracted adult audiences, of course, is that they are simply not for adults. That’s not to say that there’s anything wrong with having guilty pleasures. The humorist Stephen Fry summed things up well: a fan of Doctor Who, he commented that “every now and again we all like a chicken nugget.” As he continued, however, "If you are an adult you want something surprising, savory, sharp, unusual, cosmopolitan, alien, challenging, complex, ambiguous, possibly even slightly disturbing and wrong. You want to try those things, because that’s what being adult means." The ever-enthusiastic geek demographic certainly does not see animation as being merely for children. But it suffers from an inverted snobbery, with more inventive or experimental animation dismissed as “pretentious” or “arthouse”, and from a view of the medium that is built largely on nostalgia for beloved childhood cartoons. Even dedicated animation enthusiasts can overlook much of the best work which is out there: perhaps it is in human nature for audiences to stick to the films which they think they might enjoy rather than try anything new."

edited 22nd Aug '14 12:02:31 PM by TheBeanerItWas

I agree with the author on most things. There are some parts that I disagree with. Gargoyles was most certainly a great show. Also, yeah, some superhero shows are solely remembered for nostalgia; however, there are others that actually ARE masterpieces (the most prominent examples being Bruce Timm's DCAU shows, The Spectacular Spider-Man, Phantom 2040, and the aforementioned Gargoyles).

That was already posted much earlier in this topic, so I'll just quote myself on why I don't necessarily agree with the article's assessment.

edited 22nd Aug '14 6:58:55 PM by Mio

I've never seen Gargoyles yet from what I know about it, it doesn't even seem like a juvenile mediocrity. (There are other series far more deserving of that epithet.)

Now, my problem with the article is in saying that liking supposedly "juvenile mediocrities" is a "guilty pleasure." If we want to break down the Animation Age Ghetto we have to get rid of the idea of the Guilty Pleasure itself. We ought to be able to enjoy kids' shows on their own levels and not feel ashamed about it.

And let's be honest here, there's a ton of adult animated stuff like this guy is trying to argue for that's pretentious.

Though I do agree that we should not be treating stuff that was, in the end, meant to entertain kids as artistic masterpieces. (I've seen some cartoons that can be charitably described as "lowbrow" that were more clever, insightful and artistic than some cartoons that were trying to be serious.)

edited 22nd Aug '14 7:39:38 PM by Aldo930

It's, if anything, WAY more pretentious than anything Svankmeyer's ever done.

What are you referring to? Gargoyles?