Did you notice if the quality of a cartoon fluctuated when you were a kid?

M

Motahar

New member
I was talking with a friend just now, and she jokingly said that the producers of one particular anime didn't worry too much about their characters being on model because their core demographic (13-15 year old boys) likely wouldn't notice because they were easily impressed by speed lines, buckets of blood and big swords.

I think she might be on to something with that, given the long sad history of action animation on TV. Budget restrictions aside, a good chunk of all of those late 80's early 90's cartoons people like to get all nostalgic over were oftentimes severely lacking in both consistent animation and character designs. It's entirely possible that the producers simply didn't care, but part of it could be that their target demographic didn't notice.

Now, in the case of some anime, it's hard to say that the producer's don't care because, quite frankly, the merchandising behemoth attached to a title DEMANDS a certain degree of quality be maintained. Not to mention titles adapted from a currently running manga have the added pressure of the original artist tuning in every week. Which leaves us with that curious question...

So, guys who are 13-15 years old, or were once! Do or did you notice when a character in a cartoon you were watching goes off model for a significant length of time, or were you easily amused by monsters, big swords and/or big guns and - if your parents were awesome, blood and possibly boobs?

And, for comparison; GIRLS who are 13-15 years old or were once! Did YOU notice all of these things? Is the animation in cartoons aimed at girls more consistent (I never watched many myself to make a proper comparison)? Or did/do those suffer from the same issues?

To answer my own question...

Yes, I noticed. And it'd irk me no end too. Buuuut I've been drawing since I could pick up a pencil, so I'm never sure if an 8 year old noticing that they drew Darkwing Duck really wonky for one particular episode is normal or not. :sweat:

What say you rabroadrs?

Oh yeah, bonus points if you can figure out which anime we were talking about. ;)
 
I would notice the big things, like animation and coloring mistakes. But the little things, no, and the same is true even now. For example when people talk about how much poorer the TMNT series was animated by the time Fast Forward rolled around versus how it was when 2K3 first began, those conversations are completely lost on me.

The opposite is true, too. Apparently American Dad aired in HD this week, and I didn't even notice the difference. And I have a fairly large HD set, so I've been watching it all this time with black bars down the sides, but it was irrelevant to me when they suddenly disappeared.
 
Only huge mistakes as rallyrev said. When I was a kid most quality fluctuations were lost on me, but looking back at many of the shows, they seem glaringly obvious and you can't help but wonder why you never noticed them before.
 
When I was a kid, the difference in animation styles on "Tiny Toons" and "Animaniacs" were readily evident to me. I always looked forward to episodes done by StarToons or Tokyo Movie Shinsha, and was disappointed whenever I'd get Akom or Kennedy. I'd always go "It's not cartoony enough! They should be more lively than this!"

Ironically, though, I never really noticed the different directorial styles in the classic Looney Tunes until later in life. I watched Looney Tunes on Nickelodeon the most, and a Chuck Jones Road Runner looked no different to me than a Rudy Larriva Road Runner. (Now that's inattentive!)
 
I didn't start noticing that stuff until after I became a huge X-Men fan as a pre-teen and Fox Kids started airing it Mon - Fri. Things would get pretty weird when I'd see the Lady Deathstrike episodes and notice the glaring differences with other episodes.
 
I noticed it in TMNT in the late 80s. How high a quality the 1st 5 episodes were compared to subsequent ones.

I only started really noticing it in BTAS, and I was 13 years old by then. The Clayface 2nd part really opened my eyes.

Re: XMen on Fox Kids:

I'm not sure if the quality really fluctuated. The whole series was consistently awful looking and awfully animated. I liked it more for the stories than the dialogue or animation or artwork, etc,.
 
What comes to my mind is the original Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cartoon. There was several episodes where the animation was sloppier than other times, and the writing as well.
 
I think I did. In terms of mistakes and noticeable cuts, yeah, I had a eye on them as a kid. Different style? Somewhat. For instince, when I was a kid, even though I didn't pay attention to the credits until the first Golden Collection came out, I did notice on how the characters looked like under different directors. Then again, if you saw those compilations movies, it's easy to notice on whenever the footage is old and new.

In fact, speaking of which, remember those redrawn LT cartoons that was all over those PD videos? Even as a kid, I knew something was up when I saw choppy movements and train and bulls colored red for some reason.
 
I can't remember honestly...

I do remember noticing when the French dubber would change voice actors for a particular character and would get annoyed at it.
 
Yes, I have.

Looking at G1, the animation would fluctuate not only from season to season, but from episode to episode, even scene to scene in some cases (Even if Toei animated most of the series, the animation looked different in every single time)

Ditto with the Simpsons, although season one was pretty bad in term of animation (Remember, Akom was swamped as it was) so in seasons three and four, Anivision and Rough Draft joined respectively. And I would dread seeing an Anivision ep more then an Akom ep (while the latter often stayed close to the model sheets, the former would tend to make the pupils big then when the other two companies animated).

Then there's Waner Bros. Animation and their use of multiple companies. Some were good (TMS, Wang, StarToons and in Batman's case, Sunrise and Spectrum), some were not bad, but also not good either (Akom, again, they were busy with other series at the time and quite possibly didn't have a big enough staff too) or were just plain awful (Kennedy, Freelance)

DIC's show also happened to change quality, a show like Inspector Gadget still looks okay, but the Sonic and Mario series are sub par in comparison.

And even anime are like this. Bakugan for instance, one minute the animation looks great, the next minute the guys at TMS get lazy and screw it up. Pokemon looked pretty decent before the DP series and now it's pretty much a mess and quite limited compared the the other seasons.

Hanna Barbara also has flucuating quality, their shows, when animated by either Wang or Toei look decent, as well as some of their 70's work (Captian Caveman is a good example). But most of the time it's flat and stilted (though not as bad as Filmation).

I'd go on, but as it is, I'm getting into rant mode. So I may continue it at another time.
 
Reminds me of how much I disliked the Fleischer Popeye shorts in comparison to the Famous shorts, when I was really young. It was only after many years that I learned about how the Fleischer shorts were colorized and how much detail they'd lost in the process.
 
Yu-Gi-Oh! and 5D's are prime examples of this.
There are many different styles in these shows,
one can probably tell who animated what episode after a while.
The actual quality of the animation also tends to fluctuate, from episode to episode.
One episode can have awesomely amazing animation, the next can be... meh.

Episode 200 of Yu-Gi-Oh! was probably the worst animated of any episode ever,
and it was glaringly obvious to even my little brother who was only 5-6 years old at the time.

Examples (big images):
fudo1.jpg

fudo2.jpg

fudo3.jpg

fudo4.jpg

fudo5.jpg

fudo6.jpg

In Avatar, you can also pick out subtle differences.
Like Katara's eyes being consistently bigger than they are normally in one episode.

In Flapjack, different styles seem almost encouraged.

All these things I started noticing around 11-12 years old,
when I started to get interested in art, specifically.
I like seeing different styles in one show, it makes it more interesting to learn who animated what episode.
 
Being honest I barely notice it now. Though watching some shows back such as TMNT, Superted and Bucky O'Hare I have noticed it, though it does often skip me by.
 
Well, Rugrats did that a lot. It starts off sketchy, moves to more consistent in 91-93, then improves in 97 but then I would say becomes ultimate in its vibrancy and artwork as a whole in 99-00.
 
I didn't notice mistakes or when characters went off model much at all until my age reached the double digits. I rewatched Ducktals about a year ago and I remember in one episode Huey and Louie switch the color of their hats for a scene. It was obvious mistake as a 19 year old, but I never remember noticing that when I was five.
 
That's an interesting example. Actually, as I now recall the animation differences in Road Runner cartoons were quite evident to me... although I never bothered to learn who was responsible for which style. I don't recall if I've ever even heard the name Rudy Larriva.
 
That's more evolution than inconsistency. ALL comics and cartoons will start in one place, and change gradually over time - hopefully for the better.

I'm talking about character designs drifting dramatically for a scene or two or even an entire episode. Low frame rates, odd directorial choices, lack of acting (IE... the voice actor says "WHAT!?!?!?!?" and the character is only mildly surprised). All cartoons have goof-ups like that, but some just seem to be riddled with inconsistency.
 
By the time I was 13 or so, I started to notice stuff like this (Kennedy on Tiny Toons), but before, I never really noticed. Heck, I didn't even notice the animation mistakes on Superfriends until I watched them as an adult!

I guess that was when I started paying more attention to stuff like that in cartoons. One of the first things to get to me was on the original Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles series, Bebop's ponytail would be brown (the same color as his neck), but his mohawk was purple. That was the first time I really noticed lazy animators at work.
 
Only specific example I can remember is back when I was first getting into "The Batman," right around when season two was ending. I had enjoyed most every episode I had seen up to that point, but not even my young age could keep me from being rather put-off by the awful Cluemaster episode. Something about that piece of garbage just didn't jive with the rest of the show, although my attitude towards it wasn't nearly as negative as it is now. :p

Edit: Oh, but this is specifically about animation quality, isn't it? Drat, should have read the title post more carefully.
 
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