Animation Bump / Western Animation

Examples of Animation Bump in Western Animation.

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• Thanks to the Fleischer brothers, Walt Disney, and others, animation as a whole gradually went through this during the early days of The Golden Age of Animation, as new techniques and The Twelve Principles of Animation developed.
• The Renaissance Age of Animation as a whole compared to The Dark Age of Animation thanks to Don Bluth, Disney (once again) and overseas studios such as TMS Entertainment and Rough Draft Studios.

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• The three Harman-Ising Cubby Bear shorts ("Gay Gaucho", "Cubby's World Flight" and "Mischievous Mice") have much more polished animation than their shorts prior to "Sinister Stuff", where they started improving their animation on their own.
  • Several of their shorts, such as "Makin' Em Move", "The Fatal Note" and "Fiddlin' Fun", have shots where the backgrounds are animated in three dimensional perspective.
• The first episode of Batman: The Animated Series produced, "On Leather Wings", has some of the best animation and art in the whole series, and, arguably, in the entire DC Animated Universe. This wasn't a simple case of the pilot being better than the rest of the series, however; the quality of the animation continued to vary from episode to episode, as a result of the episodes being shared out between several offshore studios which ranged from excellent but expensive (TMS) to cheaper for good reason (AKOM). (An informative exercise is to compare "Feat of Clay: Part I", animated by AKOM, and "Feat of Clay: Part II", animated by TMS.) Other episodes with good animation include "Heart of Ice" and "Robin's Reckoning: Part I" (both animated by Spectrum, as was "On Leather Wings"). Episodes noted for their bad animation include... well, pretty much everything by AKOM, most of Sunrise's episodes and Blue Pencil's "Day of The Samurai" (the latter going bankrupt during the production of their episode, resulting in Jade Animation having to step in to finish it); and as a result of their poor work, many (of not all) of AKOM and Sunrise's episodes required extensive reanimating and reshooting, and eventually Bruce Timm refused to work with them anymore. Most of the episodes done later on for Batman Beyond and Justice League were by Dong Yang Animation, which was decent quality at a better price. With that said, both AKOM and Sunrise did have their moments; "Mad as a Hatter", "What Is Reality?" (both AKOM) and "The Cat and the Claw: Part 1" (animated by Sunrise) provide their best work.
  • Batman Beyond: Return of the Joker has such amazing animation that it probably could have gone to theaters and no one would think otherwise. The flashback and the final fight sequences in particular have some of the best animation out of the entire film. A fun fact is that many of the same animators worked on AKIRA with a similar Kill Sat sequence. The other DCAU films, Mask of the Phantasm, SubZero and Mystery of the Batwoman, are more of the "slightly better than the series" variety, as opposed to feature quality.
• Disney animated shows in the '90s often had crisper and more fluid animation/art/shading for their first few episodes. Usually, the opening theme would prominently show clips from these episodes. The first episodes for many of these were also made for TV movies (see Five-Episode Pilot).
  • Aladdin: The Series ^note the opening also features some footage from Aladdin: The Return of Jafar, which was planned as a pilot for the series before being reworked into a Direct to Video sequel
  • DuckTales (1987)
  • Darkwing Duck
  • TaleSpin^note A glaring case since animation duties switched hands throughout the four-part pilot
  • Buzz Lightyear of Star Command
  • Chip 'n Dale: Rescue Rangers
  • The New Adventures of Winnie the Pooh
• The beautiful opening of 1987's G.I. Joe: The Movie where the Joes fight Cobra on the Statue of Liberty puts the rest of the film (and the whole franchise) to shame.
  • The film itself has some nice touches; Pythona running and sliding down the stairs, and Cobra Commander backing away in fear from Serpentor getting honorable mentions.
• The opening credits of Xiaolin Showdown were more fluid than the the rest of the show.
• Animated musicals often up the action and the animation during musical numbers, to create the show stop potential of the scene. This is evident in the Disney Animated Canon, but also shows up in movies by other producers (such as Don Bluth; movies like Cats Don't Dance exude this).
• Noticeable in Tiny Toon Adventures, Animaniacs, and Histeria!, depending on the studio that animated it.
  • An often criticized animation studio was Kennedy Cartoons, which was largely responsible for much of the first season of Tiny Toon Adventures. It used a bouncy, stretchy, style of animation filled with much fluidity, but is considered too much by certain fans, yet still has its fans.
  • Played straight with TMS, StarToons, and Wang Film Productions (at times).
• Computerized animation suffers from this as well on occasion. Particularly noticeable in the surface rendering differences between the regular series and any special feature length versions of those series. The Adventures of Jimmy Neutron, Boy Genius and Rolie Polie Olie both did this, (these two even overlapped once). Jimmy Neutron noticeably did this in reverse: the movie came first, and the television show's animation was a step up from that. However, made for TV specials of Jimmy Neutron usually had special animation (such as the Jimmy Timmy series).
• Planet Sketch: The second season had a much more organic look to it in the 3D segments that the first did.
• Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog:
  • The opening, "Quest for the Chaos Emeralds" four parter and the episode "Super Robotnik" had this because they were animated by the same studio that did Animaniacs. In general, the show tended to be quite Off-Model, so it was pretty nice to see.
  • The Pilot episode counts, and "Sno Problem" has some nice touches too. Some of the earlier episodes^note particularly "Lovesick Sonic" and "Sonic Breakout and "Robotnikland" have a few decent scenes too.
• The sister show to Adventures Of Sonic The Hedgehog, Sonic the Hedgehog (SatAM), was more consistent, though some episodes such as "No Brainer" have a slightly wackier, more expressive method of animating the characters.
• Spider-Man: The Animated Series was animated by TMS Entertainment, and its first several episodes, particularly the pilot, are on a par with TMS's usual superb work. As the series went on, however, budget cuts and having most of the show's animation done in Korea resulted in a progressive deterioration of animation quality, so that the series overall is remembered as a very badly animated show.
• Transformers: Animated:
  • The first couple episodes following the Pilot Movie have a noticeably greater range of movement than the rest, as well as darker colors. This is most apparent in the fourth episode, "Home Is Where the Spark Is", which features more detailed drawings, a bumped-up frame-rate and overall more dynamic animation. No other episode of the show looks quite like it.
  • The Stock Footage of the transformation scenes was animated by a separate team from the actual episodes, and the difference in quality is striking, especially compared to later episodes, where the general animation quality sunk noticeably. The transformation scenes are nearly movie-worthy.
  • For the Japanese dub, they animated an entirely new intro. Again, it looks better than the bulk of the show.
• The American Mega Man (Ruby-Spears) animated series featured a kickass anime intro sequence. Then the show itself switches to more conventional and "realistic" western animation, because focus groups apparently preferred it to the anime style. A couple of episodes had a bump in quality, though. Most notably, Mega X, which was supposed to be the Poorly Disguised Pilot for the planned Mega Man X cartoon. The other most notable example was Crime of the Century, which was the final episode in the series, so Ruby-Spears just up and threw the rest of the budget into it.
• Nearly the entire first season of Gargoyles was far better animated than the later seasons. An episode like "Enter Macbeth" stands out as a rare clunker, but the Five-Episode Pilot in particular had very rich and fluid animation. It should also be noted that Season 1 had 13 episodes and Season 2 had 52 episodes but there are still plenty of beautifully animated episodes in the second season.
  • Proof of Disney's attention to quality with this series comes in the form of the long string of repeats the show had in the middle of the first season. The reason for this? Disney rejected a couple of episodes because the animation quality was not up to par, sending the episodes back to be redone at their expense, and refused to air episodes out of order due to the episodic nature of the show. It's rare to see a studio step up to bat for a series like that, and unfortunately, Disney would take their pound of flesh for it in season 3.
  • Any multi-part episodes tend to look outstanding, with the "Hunter's Moon" trilogy standing out (as it was intended as a direct-to-video film).
• "Call of the Primitives", one of the last episodes of the G1 Transformers animated series, has noticeably superior animation to the rest of the season. AKOM, notorious for the generally Off-Model look of every episode they produced, had no hand in CotP; instead, the animators^*Which were widely believed to be either TMS or Ashi Productions until 2020, when it came out through episode director Eiji Suginuma that Toei did the episode themselves with assistance from subcontract team Studio Look used more detailed versions of Floro Dery's simplified designs.
  • Some other episodes like "Atlantis Arise", "Dweller in The Depths" and "The Return of Optimus Prime" have comparatively better looking animation than the rest of the series.
  • Certain season 1 episodes, such as "Roll for It" and "Heavy Metal War", give off a stark "anime feel", with the animation becoming more dynamic and the characters frequently going Off-Model in order to produce better results, though more technical errors, like sloppy coloring and photography mislayering would occur. These provide a definite contrast with the otherwise blocky, "geometric" character designs and stiff and clunky movements of the cartoon.
  • The infamous AKOM was typically Off-Model to a ludicrous degree, but even they had their good days — "Starscream's Ghost" and "Only Human" are head and shoulders above their usual output.
  • The toy commercials had much better animation than the show, and further improved in quality as the years went on. The ones made for the 1987 run of figures are perhaps the most high quality of them with a stark anime feel to them.
  • The Transformers: The Movie is noticeably better animated than any other episode of G1, with a much higher framerate, a clearer picture and more detailed scenery and characters — a given due to the higher budget. The most obvious sign of this is that while most Cybertronians transform the same way every time, Hot Rod/Rodimus and Galvatron, the hero and villain of this movie respectively, transform in different ways depending on the scene — in Hot Rod's case, he never transforms the same way twice.
• Less of an Animation Bump than a character model bump, but while Avatar: The Last Airbender is generally well-animated, episodes three and seven of the first season had people drawn with amazingly solid design and strong anatomy due to the animation director for those episodes. The work of another animator — one Lauren MacMullan, to be exact — was actually so good that the creators in Burbank actually redesigned some of their animation models based on her drawings.
  • The Legend of Korra is this compared to the previous series, with characters now having more realistic, more human proportions.
    • Inverted during the second season. Most of the show's animation was done by Studio Mir, but due to scheduling issues, the first half of Book Two was infamously animated by Studio Pierrot, whose work paled in comparison.
• ThunderCats (1985) has an opening credits sequence markedly better than the show as a whole.
• Another example from the same era was Adventures of the Galaxy Rangers, but it was an Exploited Trope on that series. One of the producers admits in the DVD Commentary he had access to three teams of animators from TMS Entertainment, the "A" (expensive, high-quality) team (which spent most of their time on the Disney shows and Little Nemo: Adventures in Slumberland at this time), the "B" team (pretty good, but not as good as A), and the "C" team (fast, cheap, but the quality suffered). So, he would ship out the really high-end and Mytharc-critical episodes to the A team, the moderately important ones to the B-team, and the cheesier stuff to the "C" team. You can tell how good a GR episode will be based on whether or not the animation team remembered Niko is a redhead, for example.
• Several episodes of Hercules: The Animated Series were animated in a vastly different style that was more fluid and detailed with character movement (almost to a creepy level), but had ridiculously simple backgrounds that were mostly just several objects (pillars, torches, etc.) in front of huge blurry backdrops.
• X-Men: Evolution:
  • The series sports some noticeable changes in animation, especially during the middle of the third season, where characters start making some, um, interesting expressions during action sequences.
  • There is a pretty well animated scene in the 8th episode that has Rogue and Kitty dancing together, which appears to have been modeled after live-action footage of Buffy and Faith.
• Halloween Is Grinch Night was a pretty good cartoon overall, but suffered from some very cheap looking animation. The follow-up, The Grinch Grinches the Cat in the Hat was made by the same studio on roughly the same budget, but had a better director and so is arguably the best-looking of all the three Grinch specials.
  • How the Grinch Stole Christmas! was produced by Chuck Jones, while The Grinch Grinches The Cat In The Hat was produced by Friz Freleng. In both cases their influence is very noticeable, with the character designs, animation and acting being very reminiscent of their previous work at Warner Bros.
• The mummies' transformation sequence in Mummies Alive! are notably better animated than the rest of the series, probably because the creators knew you'd be seeing it at least Once an Episode.
• The Ren & Stimpy Show:
  • The opening sequence (and at the same time pilot episode "Big House Blues") for was so fluidly and beautifully animated, it was used as the intro even for the Adult Party Cartoon episodes, which had BRILLIANT animation (for the most part). However, the first season of the original series was animated by a handful of studios, some of which didn't quite "get" Ren and Stimpy's style right, and sometimes even relied on Limited Animation. This improved greatly in the second season, when the best studio (Rough Draft Studios and Carbunkle Cartoons sometimes) did most of the work, resulting in mindblowing animation, like "Son of Stimpy" or "The Royal Canadian Kilted Yaksmen".
  • Three episodes in particular of The Ren & Stimpy Show are extremely noticeable for this: "Stimpy's Invention", "Sven Hoek" and "Son of Stimpy" (a.k.a "Stimpy's First Fart"). Animation quality in various episodes are certainly a mixed bag of variety, with at the worst, episodes like "Stimpy's Big Day/The Big Shot" (Constant animation goofs) "Nurse Stimpy" (bad timing, a plethora of coloring and animation mistakes) and the entire series of what is known as the "Games" episodes, animated by "Games Productions" rather than the original studio "Spumco" after the creator was fired. But the three episodes ("Invention", "Sven" and "Son"), were treated as "A-stories": Episodes where added production emphasis was added to overall dramatic "animation acting", smoothness, quality of drawing, extremely detailed backgrounds, and extensive special effects. It shows as well, in that all three episodes are widely regarded to be overwhelming fan favorites for various reasons, but most of all, for the animation quality in them. In the commentary for the DVD Collection on "Son of Stimpy" in particular, John Kricfalusi notes "this is feature quality animation, amazing on a tv budget."
  • The Games Animation era episodes were initially tune ups of Spumco made ones, with the designs and style mostly the same, if slightly cruder. Come Season Three, the show uses a more UPA-ish animation style and the characters are designed slightly different. A lot of the initial episodes at least matched up to the standard Spumco ones, though by the end of the show's run, the style becomes a lot flatter and cruder, sometimes even scribble-like.
  • In the Adult Party Cartoon revival, the team went back to using Carbunkle Cartoons, meaning far crisper animation. However the style is a lot more grotesque and deformed.
• For its final season, Rocko's Modern Life switched to Rough Draft Studios from Sunwoo Entertainment, resulting in some slightly different, more refined animation.
• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1987) had an unusual case of this. While the first season had much sharper and more fluid animation, along with more detailed backgrounds, the character designs were just plain strange for the most part, and quite often Off-Model. April suffered a particularly bad case of this, as she could look like a foxy lady in one shot, and then an escaped mental patient in the next one. The differences evened out in the second season, with cheaper looking backgrounds and animation, but also much better and more consistent character designs.
• Inverted (sort of) with South Park, which is animated with computer software to look like paper cutout animation; the software was improved over the first few episodes to make it look more like paper cutouts.
  • The first episode really was made using paper cut-outs, but it took such a ridiculously long time to animate the show switched to Industrial Light and Magic's animation system. Using such powerful computers to do extremely crude drawings cut animation time down to just five days, allowing South Park to be the first topical cartoon. The full capabilities of the setup can be seen in the Hell sequences of The Movie.
  • Occasionally played straight as well (but usually as a gag) like in the episodes "Good Times with Weapons" and "Major Boobage".
    • The show's later seasons, while maintaining the same designs and style for the most part, is also far more detailed. The characters have a far larger variation of poses and angles which allow for more fluid animation. Scenery is also much more lush and detailed, near nothing like the original layouts that were very much made to look like the original pilot's cutout style.
• Arthur has had a few of these, being a long runner. The early first season episodes are hard to watch, as they feature darker colors, horrible character designs and many animation errors (in one episode, Sue Ellen's red hair was colored black). The episode "Buster Makes the Grade" is one of the first episodes of that season to use the better animation that would be used for many of the later seasons.
  
  As the show progressed, the quality got better, with the digitally animated episodes looking better than ones from the earlier seasons. Then along came season 16, which is very obviously done in Flash, to mixed reactions. The Flash animation itself gradually improved from the extremely Limited Animation of Season 16, and by the 25th and final season, it looked quite decent.
• The Real Ghostbusters had pretty, but limited, animation in Season One. Seasons Two and Three are quite a step up in quality, with more cels used and almost everything shaded with shadows. Season 4 and 5 is a step downward (except for "The Halloween Door", done by TMS), but Seasons 6 and 7 look atrociously bad. This can be attributed to the Executive Meddling the show went through later in the run.
• Hey Arnold! went through quite an extensive animation bump around the time of season 3 and only got better from there. The animation studios still varied, but compared to the first and second season of the show the change was dramatic. The movie also looks amazing in comparison.
• The animation for the second season onwards of The Dreamstone is slightly crisper and more consistently on model, albeit with some of the character designs also altered slightly, due to the show's animator duties being traded from Fil-Cartoons to Moving Images Animation. The opening pilot is also noticeably more fluid than the rest of the first season, which is much cruder and limited. The difference is easy to compare, since the opening by Fil-Cartoons is used unaltered throughout the series.
  • For an example throughout Moving Images' work, Season Two was rather consistently lush (episodes such as "Bottle Harvest" and "Wildit's Whistle" in particular have very vivid, high budget animation). As the show progressed, the budget seemed to take a hit, using stiffer, cruder animation (if still pretty good for an early nineties cartoon). It still had odd very nice looking episodes however, eg. "Urpgor's Great Adventure".
• In an opposite manner, The Legends of Treasure Island switched from Moving Images Animation for the first season, to Fil-Cartoons for the second. While the latter does at least match up better to the former than it did with The Dreamstone, the quality downgrade is still noticeable, with stiffer animation, less stylistic character designs and more basic cartoony backgrounds compared to the almost movie-like efforts of Moving Images' work. The title sequence used in both seasons, like many examples here, surpasses anything in the show itself however.
• The Planet Express ship and building exterior from Futurama, necessarily animated via 3D. Certain other sequences are bumped, especially if wrap-around views of characters are needed.
• Most of Aqua Teen Hunger Force is animated at about the level of a Flash cartoon. But when something is animated, it tends to be surprisingly detailed. Carl's walking animation is one example.
  • On a sidenote for another [adult swim] show, Squidbillies tends to do this at times in later seasons, most notably, the last 5 or so minutes of the episode "Squash B'Gosh" had more dynamic camera angles, more fluid than usual character animations, topped with a nicely done action sequence.
• While Matt Groening was insistent on keeping some limitation on the cartoon physics of The Simpsons, earlier episodes tended to utilize rather wacky, more fluid animation in some scenes, particularly in those animated by Klasky-Csupo. The intended first episode "Some Enchanted Evening" was pushed to the end of the season so as to tone down such examples in the episode, though some are still very prominent. In fact, the earlier seasons have more fluid and expressive animation compared to most of the later ones.
  • For the first ten seasons, animation duties were traded between three studios, who all had a subtle but noticeable animation style. AKOM, which did all of the first and second season, was initially fairly crude and cartoony, though they put out some very crisp and on-model work by the time others came in. Anivision, which started work during Season Three and saw its way out during Season Ten, used a more fluid style, though it had noticeable Off-Model quirks like large pupils. Rough Draft came in Season Four; it had a more bouncy, angular style than the other two, and was the most liable to drift into cartoony, frenetic, exaggerated moments of animation. As seasons passed, the animation was homogenized more and the styles between studios became harder to define.
  • When the show's legendary intro was re-animated for its 20th season, a couple of scenes, which attempted to mimic the flourishes of the original, were rejected for being too fluid.
  • The show's animation noticeably became a lot more fluid and bouncy around the premiere of Season 31, compared to the stiffer Limited Animation of many of the HD-era episodes.
  • Some other notable examples include:
    • "Some Enchanted Evening", in spite of its infamy for being Off-Model, has one of the most jarring cases of fluidity in the show, in a brief scene where Ms. Botz passive-aggressively threatens Bart (Bart's animation in the same scene is understated but for humor value purposes).
    • The animation of Lisa throwing her Malibu Stacy doll through her window◊ in "Lisa vs. Malibu Stacy", which was animated on ones (probably because the dynamic zoom-out would have caused a strobing effect had it been animated on twos like usual).
    • Homer's heart attack in "Homer's Triple Bypass" is also considered a highpoint in the series.
    • The Ren & Stimpy sequence in "Brother from the Same Planet" is done in the same manic, highly expressive style as the show itself.
    • As is the entire opening scene in "Homer Goes to College", specifically the bits with Homer and the bee.
    • The WWII-era Itchy & Scratchy short from "Itchy & Scratchy The Movie" is a parody of wartime cartoons, and has 1940s-esque designs and animation to match.
    • The Scratchtasia segment in "Itchy & Scratchy Land", due to it being a parody of The Sorcerer's Apprentice.
    • Some Treehouse of Horror episodes has exceptional animation, such as the shot of Homer stepping through a wall to become three-dimensional in "Homer³" (which producers call a "money shot") and Bart's dream at the beginning of "Nightmare on Evergreen Terrace" (which parodies classic cartoons and even has its backgrounds painted like such).
    • The Itchy & Scratchy short from "Funeral for a Fiend" is unusually more fluid than the others.
    • "Mother Simpson" does this as part of a gag: When Homer fakes his death, Springfield citizens go to Marge to offer their condolences. Marge protests that Homer isn't dead, and says he's right out back in the hammock. He isn't, and the shot of the empty hammock◊ has considerably more detailed art than the rest of the episode. This plays on the expectation of dramatic moments in cartoons having more detailed art, given that it would be a highly dramatic moment if Homer was actually dead.
    • From the same scene, the animation of Flanders' line "Passing...away...into death" gives him more detailed enunciation◊ than is usual for the show.
    • Sideshow Bob is a strange case of a Animation Bump centered on an entire character, since he is often given far more rubbery and frenetic animation and acting than the rest of the show in his earlier appearances.
    • Of course, the animation in The Simpsons Movie is a step above that of the series, but, again, especially the Itchy & Scratchy short at the beginning.
    • Any episode that Lauren MacMullan (probably best known for her work on Avatar: The Last Airbender) directed tend to be the better looking episodes of the later seasons.
    • Similarly, the episodes that have Matt Selman as showrunner instead of Al Jean tend to have noticeably higher-quality animation than the other episodes do.
    • In later seasons, the producers hire guest animators to do the Couch Gag for some episodes, who do the Simpsons characters in their own styles. Special mention goes to the ones done by John Kricfalusi ("Bart Stops to Smell the Roosevelts", "Treehouse of Horror XXVI"), Sylvain Chomet ("Diggs") and Eric Goldberg ("Fland Canyon").
    • In "Little Girl in the Big Ten", scenes involving Lisa's gymnastics are quite well-animated, particularly the scene where she jumps up a tree to reach Bart. Another standout is the scene where she realises that her school project is due the next morning.
    • Azzlan the lion from "The Serfsons" is very fluidly and expressively animated, especially in the scene where he speaks with Marge after she kicks out Homer.
    • Season 32's "Diary Queen", the show's belated tribute to Marcia Wallace and her character, Edna Krabappel, ends with a montage of Edna moments, which includes a still from season 3's "Bart The Lover" redrawn to match the higher quality of more modern episodes.
    • The "Treehouse Of Horror XXXIV" segment "Ei8ht" is set in an Alternate Continuity in which Sideshow Bob successfully murdered Bart in "Cape Feare" before being arrested by the police. The segment starts with the scene where Bob is singing "He Remains An Englishman" from H.M.S. Pinafore in the 4:3 ratio and the same animation style and darker color scheme of the original episode before showing the alternate continuity by switching to the 16:9 ratio and the brighter color scheme and animation style of modern episodes.
• The theme song for the Super Mario World cartoon had shading and very detailed animation, unlike the episodes themselves. Take a look for yourself.
• My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic:
  • The show took a bump in quality towards the end of the first series as Top Draw Animation took over from in house, but it wasn't too noticeable at first. "Lesson Zero" really showed what they could do, with crisper colors, complex fluid animation throughout and refinement and outright changes to character models.
  • A very notable instance goes to this shot from "Putting Your Hoof Down", where the camera does a beautifully animated 3D pan while Rarity tells Fluttershy that she can utilize her assertiveness without being a Jerkass about it.
  • This extends to the "Madame Pinkie" scene in "It's About Time!" and the first couple of minutes during "A Canterlot Wedding Part Two"
  • During longer musical numbers (especially in Season 2), the animation has a notable improvement. For example, you can see the pony's hair flowing and bouncing better, instead of a single object being stretched and moved around.
  • Season 3 seems to have improved on the animation even more, if "The Crystal Empire - Part 1" is any indication. The way Twilight's mane and tail flow in the wind during "The Failure Song" is something that was rarely seen even during Season 2.
  • Certain scenes in Season 3 also feature non-mirrored sprites.
  • Season 4 develops things even more. Even from the just the first few episodes, different types of shading get used more often, and the animators really seem to be going for broke in designing new expressions for the cast.
  • The battle between Twilight and Tirek in Twilight's Kingdom Part 2.
  • For the Season 5 opener "The Cutie Map", expressions have REALLY improved with even more exaggerated expressions, such as Pinkie's suspicious frowns during the "In Our Town" number, and Starlight yelling, "I CREATED HARMONY!" and "QUIET!" after she is exposed. The ponies' muzzles also scrunch up more often when speaking, to make better lip-sync; it's much more noticable with their mouths now stretching out further and having their tongues more prominently visible when frowning as they speak.
  • Cloudsdale and Rainbow's house have taken a huge step in lighting and details by "Tanks for the Memories".
  • Chrysalis' cloning ritual in "The Mean Six" features a huge step in lighting with her spell effects; same goes for expressions of the Mane Six's clones as well, such as the way Mean Twilight grits her teeth when being annoyed the heck out by the real Pinkie, the creepy grins by Mean Fluttershy and Mean Rarity, and especially the way the clones are killed in the end.
  • Taken up a huge notch with Cozy Glow in Season 8; after her true nature is revealed, she is prone to giving off rather creepy and exaggerated smiles that show a huge step in animation development.
• The animation of Peter Pan & the Pirates was overall pretty average and consistent throughout its run, but the two episodes animated by TMS called "Treasure Hunt" and "River Of Night" have considerably better animation than anything else in the series.
• Most of Top Cat is in the typical Hanna-Barbera limited animation style - except the opening and closing title animation, which although still limited seems to have had more care and attention lavished on it. It was not the only H-B show of the era whose intro was more fluidly animated than the main show; those of Huckleberry Hound and Quick Draw McGraw were as well, along with their interstitial segments.
• The 1990's X-Men: The Animated Series series had okay animation overall, but when it was brought over to Japan, the Japanese decided to go all-out with a super-high quality kickass animated opening. Same goes to the American Opening, though not to the same extent as it was done by the show's main studio.
• Family Guy:
  • Lampshaded (and readily apparent) in the Family Guy episode "Road to the Multiverse" when Stewie and Brian enter the universe where everything is animated by Disney.
  • Lampshaded again in "Back to the Pilot" in which Stewie and Brian from the current seasons travel back in time to the series' crudely-animated first episode.
  • Stewie dancing with Gene Kelly in "Road to Rupert" is noticeably more fluid than is standard for the series in order to sync properly with Kelly's dancing.
  • In "Don't Make Me Over", Stewie whacking a thought cloud of Meg features more detailed animation than you'd expect.
  • The animation during the "Christmas Time is Killing Us" song from "Road to the North Pole" is a good deal more fluid and detailed than the rest of the episode.
  • For being a brief gag, the animation of Kermit the Frog panicking after Brian finds him out in "Deep Throats" is oddly fluid and dynamic.
• Phineas and Ferb's animation is far from the best, but the animation has improved in later episodes, namely, in the specials such as Summer Belongs To You, and Christmas Vacation. Also, the animation of Phineas and Ferb The Movie: Across the 2nd Dimension looked more dynamic during the dramatic scenes.
• On the second season premiere of The Amazing World of Gumball, "The Colossus", Hector the giant goes on a rampage, and suddenly his animation is incredibly fluid and dynamic, unlike the more stylized animation of the other 2D characters on the show.
  • The showerhead from "The Singing" is animated smoother than the 2D characters too, with eyes, a nose and a mouth (in other episodes, it is a different shower, which is either inanimate or has just two Black Bead Eyes and a little mouth).
• The intro of Clarence is much more smooth than the actual series.
  • The episodes "Tuckered Boys" and "The Tails of Mardrynia" have better animation for their fantasy sequences, standing out from the scenes taking place in the real world, which are animated in the show's typical style.
• Not episodes per se, but certain sequences in Motorcity, particularly whenever Mike Chilton fights with his spark staff look amazing as opposed to the more common Flash-look of the show (and even that's better Flash than most shows).
• Any Recess episodes by Grimsaem were much more fluid than the episodes by the show's other animation departments^note Sunwoo Entertainment, Anivision, Plus One Animation, and Toon City.
  • Inverted with Toon City in that while their episodes were very fluidly animated, it didn't work well with the show's style. Making the animation too over-the-top, cartoony, Off-Model, and deranged.
• Looney Tunes:
  • Pretty much any scene in a Chuck Jones cartoon done by animator Ken Harris. His character animation is generally considered the most detailed and on-model.
  • In any given Robert McKimson, Tex Avery, or Bob Clampett-directed cartoon, the scenes animated by Rod Scribner are generally considered to be the most fluid, expressive, and often deranged.
  • Back when Robert McKimson was an animator, he was responsible for some of the most brilliant subtle acting in the studio's history. One good example comes from A Wild Hare; McKimson animated Bugs' fake death scene. He also animated Uncle Sam in the short Old Glory, and no, he was not rotoscoped.
• The first seven episodes of Pound Puppies (2010), animated by 9 Story, had rigid animation and clunky character designs that lacked outlines (similar to Samurai Jack, except not as well executed). When production was moved to DHX Media/Vancouver starting with episode 8, the animation became drastically more fluid and characters were given outlines and made more expressive. Seasons two and three look better still.
• The CatDog episode "Fetch" was made to be shown with The Rugrats Movie in theaters and had a theatrical cartoon budget to match, resulting in an episode that looks very different from the rest of the series, especially in how the characters are colored.
• Thomas & Friends is a particularly notable example, since it originally wasn't even animated at all, using model puppetry and static models with a couple of frames of movement changes at best. Season 12 added CGI animation for the human characters and the engine's faces, while Season 13 onward moved the show to fully CGI. After Season 16, the show traded hands from Nitrogen Studios to Arc Productions, who use slightly more limited animation and models (though compensate with more emphasis on character expressions).
  • Arc Productions' work has gotten nicer looking within it's first couple of seasons and specials, with increasingly better textures and renders and impressive lighting and ambience. Combined with it's more vivid character animation, Arc has arguably surpassed Nitrogen by this point.
• ''Rock Odyssey" from Hanna-Barbera has smoother animation than its usual works, among other things.
• Archer: In the season six episode "Pocket Listing" there's a noticeable bump in quality when Archer and Lana start making out during an argument. The sequence uses more frames making the characters' movements more fluid than usual.
• The 2013 Mickey Mouse cartoon Get a Horse! contains a clever mix of both hand-drawn and computer animation, both of which are spectacularly animated. Special mention goes to the scene where the characters run from one side of the screen to another, making them appear to become black-and-white 2D characters and 3D color characters seamlessly. Not only that, but the CGI animation greatly mimics the squash-and-stretch physics of the 2D animation. There's also the scene where the "camera" follows Pete speeding away from behind. Not only is the background animated like the characters, but it also tilts in the direction Pete steers.
• Several Popeye cartoons incorporate this. For example...
  • "King of the Mardi Gras" has the scene where Popeye beats up Bluto on a rollercoaster with the tracks animated with them.
  • "The Paneless Window Washer" features several scenes where characters stand on windows from a downward-facing angle. According to the commentary, it required twice as much animation because the animators made a scene from a normal angle and then staged the scene again from another angle.
• The Dexter's Laboratory short "Chicken Scratch" has noticeably fluid animation and stylistic designs, with some scenes animated by Genndy Tartakovsky himself. Justified, as it was a theatrical short (shown alongside The Powerpuff Girls Movie)
• The opening sequence for Gravity Falls has much more fluid animation than the show. Some scenes were even animated by former Disney feature animator James Baxter, who also animated the pterodactyl from "Land Before Swine".
  • In the "Voice Over" story in "Bottomless Pit!", the scene where Dipper tries out his new voice has lots of expression in it.
  • The majority of "Not What He Seems" has amazing animation, with the reveal of Grunkle Stan's twin brother being animated in-house.
  • The scene of Bill spazzing out during his defeat from "Weirdmageddon 3: Take Back the Falls", animated by story artist Dana Terrace, is this, as was the CG animation of the ShackTron.
• The Owl House boasts several moments of animation bump done by in-house animators (namely Spencer Wan, Kofi Fiagome, Tom Barkel, and Dana Terrace herself), usually for major defining action and character scenes: most notably Luz and Amity's battle dance in "Enchanting Grom Fright", Eda and Lilith's duel in "Agony of a Witch", and The Big Damn Kiss in "Clouds on the Horizon".
  • In general, the episodes animated by Rough Draft Studios are the most fluid in the series, though Sugarcube gets close despite that studio's use of Toon Boom.
• The ChalkZone episodes by Rough Draft Studios and Wang Film Productions are the most fluid in the series, with Wang also animating the TV movie, The Big Blow Up.
• Adventure Time has had really solid examples throughout its run.
  • Consider the original pilot, which premiered on Nickelodeon. Despite the fact that the animation overall is not even close to what it is today, both were created through Frederator Studios, with the pilot lining up more with the overall design choices of the Random Cartoons! program, where the pilot premiered. Even the first season tried to harness the Nickelodeon aesthetic, which was eventually dropped after the money started rolling in.
  • It's been noted by the creators that in-between work is handled by a variety of international studios. This means some episodes drop quality from time to time, only to be fine the next episode, creating the illusion of an animation bump.
  • The changes in fluidity mid-scene often occur by means of shifting perspective. With noted examples being in "Jake vs. Me-Mow", when the camera follows Me-Mow as she runs up a tree and "Maja the Sky Witch", when Princess Bubblegum dives into a mirror pool and the axis shifts.
  • One of the earliest examples is "Ocean of Fear". While the episode isn't great overall (with some waves looking downright atrocious), the scene where Finn knocks himself unconscious and dives below the ocean's surface looks incredible, especially in the movement of the sea floor.
    • Two episodes after, "Dungeon" showed up and did an equally good job with the Guardian Angel scene.
  • When David O'Reilly and Masaaki Yuasa showed up to direct their guest episodes, they brought different animation teams with them. This meant for two episodes, the animation went to internationally recognized companies Studio Soi (The Amazing World of Gumball) and Science Saru (founded by Yuasa). Needless to say, the effort shows.
  • It's clear the budget stabilized mid-way through Season 2. Episodes like "To Cut a Woman's Hair", "The Real You", "Guardian of Sunshine", "Mystery Train", and "Mortal Folly/Mortal Recoil" would establish the show's general quality overall.
  • Like most shows of the era, Adventure Time really likes to animation bump whenever Nightmare Fuel is called for.
  • When Flame Princess was introduced, the show jumped to highlight her magic abilities.
  • The title character in "James Baxter the Horse" moves more fluidly than the other characters. He was animated by the real James Baxter, a former Disney animator (see Gravity Falls example above), who also provided the voice.
• One of the complaints against Captain Planet and the Planeteers is how the opening intro is really well-done, but the series itself isn't anywhere on its league.
  • There was still a noticeable improvement in animation quality when production moved from DiC Entertainment to Hanna-Barbera for the fourth season in 1993 (as Turner, who developed Captain Planet, bought out Hanna-Barbera a year after the show premiered.)
• The earlier seasons of Regular Show had more fluid animation and were prone to Off-Model. This is especially noticeable in the episode First Day, due to shifting animation from the pilot to the actual show's animation.
  • The final battle between Pops and Anti-Pops was animated by veteran master Disney animator, James Baxter. Impressive.
• SpongeBob SquarePants had a few occurrences of this, including the two movies.
  • Season 1, due to being animated by cels, was the only season to use this animation style. As a result, the animation looks sort of unique compared to the rest of the show.
  • The Season 3 episode "I had an Accident", the scene with the live action gorilla had noticeably smoother animation compared to the rest of the episode. Patrick and Sandy had to be animated at 30fps to keep in sync with the gorilla's movement, when they were being thrown into the gorilla's bag. Similarly when the gorilla picks up Spongebob and rips him into two halves.
  • Some fans had noticed that Season 4 had more fluid animation than the rest of the show, especially in "Fear of a Krabby Patty", which was C. H. Greenblatt's final episode on the show.
  • As of season 9 (mainly with the return of Stephen Hillenburg), the animation is more fluid than it was the past few seasons due to converting to HD. It gets more noticeable in episodes made after Sponge Out of Water (like the dance sequences in Sharks vs Pods, which was animated by David Gemmill).
  • In seasons 13-14, scenes plussed by Ibrahim J. Corona are notably more expressive without going too Off-Model, are well-timed and don't stay static for too long, and make good use of perspective and 3D space. Examples include SpongeBob's "I'll show you wild!" freak-out in "Ma and Pa's Big Hurrah", the Goofy Goober and day care scenes in "My Friend Patty", the Narlene parts of "Sandy, Help Us!", and the tornado and jazz club scenes in "Squidiot Box". It's particularly noticeable in episodes with more Limited Animation like "Necro-Nom-Nom-Nom-I-Con" and "Squidiot Box".
• Jem:
  • Overall the music video portions feature crisper, better animation than the rest of it.
  • The first few episodes were individual segments pieced together once the series was picked up, and thus feature rather Off-Model looking animation compared to future episodes. Certain scenes looks pretty decent though, such as most of the close-up shots of Jem in "Only The Beginning".
• The first season of Beavis And Butthead had animation so poor that Mike Judge recalled a 2002 DVD release which featured the entire first season. While seasons 2-7 still have primitive animation compared to many animated series, they are much better animated in contrast to season one.
  • Season 8, which aired in 2011, had the best animation in the history of Beavis and Butt-head with the possible exception of Beavis And Butthead Do America.
• Big City Greens:
  • The characters undergo a minor design change as of the third half of Season 1, as the animation production improves slightly. What's most noticeable is that their pupils are much smaller than the early episodes (especially Cricket's, Tilly's and Gramma's), the lip-sync is much more spot on, and the Thin-Line Animation is slightly smoother and less choppy.
  • Season 2 introduced a whole new set of facial expressions, many of which are much more exaggerated and comical, something the early episodes completely lacked.
  • Heck, even the title cards have improved, this is mostly shown with those for "Flimflammed" and "Greens' Acres", which are done with GLORIOUS drop shadowing and realistic scenery.
  • Taken up a notch with "The Room" which has rather realistic camera effects in keeping up with the reality theme of the episode, specifically quick zooms and bokeh focus. Even the eviction ceremony in the kids' bedroom features advanced blurred effects and lighting.
• The first season of Rugrats is very rough around the edges, in a similar vein to the first season of The Simpsons, which was also produced by Klasky-Csupo. The series' animation similarly improved starting with season two.
• Like others of its era, SWAT Kats was outsourced to multiple different studios for the animation, resulting in some episodes seeming more... cartoony (fluid and matching conventions for American TV animation) while others, notably animated by Mook DLE, which had all the crisp flair of 90s anime.
• The movie Madeline: Lost in Paris has a definite bump-up in animation from the Madeline specials and television series.
• Sheriff Callie's Wild West's second season change in animation studio to Wild Canary Animation brought brighter, crisper animation.
• The intro to The Powerpuff Girls (2016) is a lot more fluid and energetic compared to the actual cartoon.
• The animation for the first season of Bob's Burgers features limited animation, as well as somewhat unfinished character designs. This was greatly improved the following season, with the animation being a little more fluid, as well as the character designs looking better polished. Since the second season, the animation, while not as fluid, is still crisp.
• The animation for Uncle Grandpa had improved significantly since the pilot and the earlier episodes. Notable episodes with crispier animation are Guest Directed Shorts (of course, since it was a Art Shift episode), The Great Western Spaghetti, Ball Room, and most of the recent episodes.
• Kaeloo:
  • The pilot looks nothing like the rest of the series. Also, the animation starts to increase in quality from Season 2 onwards, moving with more fluidity.
  • Invoked in Episode 218. This being a series with No Fourth Wall, Kaeloo deliberately reduces the quality of the first half of the episode so the animation budget can go towards a fight scene between Mr. Cat and Quack-Quack near the end of the episode. The ensuing fight scene has some of the most fluid animation in the entire series.
• Ready Jet Go!: The first 15 episodes (barring a few 11-minute segments like "A Visit to the Planetarium", which had gorgeous animation) had rather unpolished animation. However, starting with episode 16 (Solar System Bake Off!/Kid-Kart Derby), the animation is much better. Tons of detail is put into the character models, the movements became more fluid, and it is overall very pretty to look at.
• Subtly in Star Wars Rebels. For starters, the lighting in Season 2 has improved from Season 1. There's also a noticeable case towards the end of Season 3 where Obi-Wan's holocron recording plays with more lively animation than previously seen in the beginning of Season 1.
• Steven Universe is already one of Cartoon Networks' most beautifully animated shows. However, there are certain times when you can see that the animation team is putting a little more effort than normal, usually during musical numbers.
  • During Pearl's solo in "Mr. Greg", the animators indulge in a 360° pan shot around Pearl while she sings, complete with complex head movements and changing facial expressions.
  • The Dream Sequences in "Mindful Education" are animated in a subtly Animesque style by Studio TRIGGER animator Takafumi Hori, and it shows.
  • In the season five finale "Change Your Mind", the scene where Steven's human and Gem halves reunite while White Diamond looks on in bafflement is animated much more fluidly, courtesy of the work of veteran animator James Baxter.
  • The sequences for "Other Friends" and "Change" in Steven Universe: The Movie are once again done by Takafumi Hori; the former sequence in particular highlighting the 1930s rubberhose cartoon nature of the film's villain.
• Green Eggs and Ham: While the character animation is largely consistant, 13 episodes is an awful lot to keep up a certain level of fluidity and detail. As such, certain scenes are noticeably more fluid or limited than others.
• The 13th and final episode of Mortal Kombat: Defenders of the Realm, "Overthrown", had much more crisp and fluid animation with very detailed character designs compared to the rest of the series which often had limited and choppy animation. It, along with the rest of the series, was animated by Animal Ya a Japanese animation studio who clearly put their best animation team on the episode.
• Three of the classic Fleischer Betty Boop shorts (Snow White, Minnie The Moocher and The Old Man of the Mountain) featured characters played by Cab Calloway and his rotoscoped dance moves. Causing his scenes to have much smoother animation than what the shorts in general would have.
• The Looney Tunes Show:
  • ZigZagged. Season 2 used character designs that closely resemble the original shorts, in exchange for slightly more restrained animation (compared to Season 1, which was highly fluid but had rather off character designs and Thick-Line Animation).
  • The Season 1 episodes done by Toon City are the most fluidly animated in the entire series.
  • "Casa de Calma" and "Point, Laser Point" (both animated by Rough Draft Studios) are also expressive and well-animated, having been originally produced for Laff Riot.
• In the Randy Cunningham: 9th Grade Ninja episode "Let Them Eat Cake Fries", the attractive French teacher's butt is animated rather smoothly while she's crossing her legs, in contrast to the rest of the scene.
• In Oddballs, Max is known for turning realistic when he is surprised.
• Filmation was rarely able to do this thanks to their usual No Budget operation, but when they were given a sufficient budget to work with, they could produce decent animation. Their Flash Gordon: The Greatest Adventure of All telefilm is a good example, with more fluid bits than usual for a Filmation production; most vehicles are depicted using rotoscoping, and it's especially effective in depicting the Nazi warplanes bombing Warsaw and Dr. Zarkov's rocket.
• ''The Head: The first three and a half minutes of the first episode looks crude compared to the rest of the series.
• The Patrick Star Show: Starting from "The Patterfly Effect", the show got an Animation Evolution and looks a lot smoother, using crazier expressions and poses.
  • Scenes plussed by Trey Chavez push the visuals way farther, making the expressions crazier and funnier, with the motions being more fluid. Good examples include the song scenes in "The Patrick Show Sells Out" and "The Starry Awards," the ending of "There Goes the Neighborhood," and the openings of "Which Witch is Which?" and "Big Baby Patrick."
  • One particularly noticeable example is "The Patrick Show Cashes In", which has a very detailed and well-animated shot of Patrick's rocket flying through the air.
  • "Now Museum, Now You Don't" has detailed lighting and shading for most of its scenes.
  • The climax of "Dr. Smart Science" is a visually epic showdown between Patrick and GrandPat, both of whom have been supercharged with electricity, which uses complex shading and hand-drawn electricity VFX.
  • In "Chum Bucket List", when Patrick announces to the audience that he is going to die, the scene is animated with full lighting and shading, something the show usually doesn't do.
• Kamp Koral got a guest director, Ken Mitchroney, a veteran of acclaimed animated films like Monsters, Inc. and The LEGO Movie, to direct "Regi-Hilled". The opening is very well-composed and has a noticeably different feel than the rest of the show.

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