In Your Opinion Part 1: What Makes a Good Children's Comedy Cartoon?

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Gemini DJ

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Welcome. Yes, welcome indeed. Today marks the beginning for a new series of threads: In Your Opinion. Here, you can sound off about the topic given that chosen thread. It could be anything from "Can Voice Actors ruin a show?" or even "What Comic Book Cartoon has been most successful?". But today, we'll start off with this: What makes a good children's comedy cartoon?

I personally look at Tiny Toon Adventures, Pinky and the Brain, Looney Tunes and Fraggle Rock (although you can't really call Fraggle Rock animated) as the best examples of good childrens comedy animation.

Pinky and the Brain and Tiny Toon Adventures are probably the top 2 in the list I wrote up. I think this is because they blend the perfect amount of parody-style humor with adult humor, yet still remaining the kids show they are known as.

What do you think are prime examples of good children's animated comedy, and what makes these shows and other so good?
 
Fraggle Rock was a cartoon. it did poorly, especially since it was a substitue for the HBO show that was cancelled earlier that year. I'll discuss that somewhere else.

Anyway, here's my top rules for a successful cartoon.

  • DO NOT make the main star a monkey. Monkeys done't usually make good cartoon characters, as real monkeys are much funnier than anything an animated series can come up with.
  • Great writing, great voice acting. Animation helps to sell the story. You can have a great show with Horrid animation, but good writing and acting, and a poor show with great animation with a lousy script and lousy VA's.
  • Variations on a theme. You can have so many Superhero shows go up against each other if and only if you can bring something amazing and different to the table.
  • Do not come up with a name until you finish the plot, character developement, scenes, and basically anything that makes up a show. My gym partner's a money is an excellent example. You really get the impression they got the name way before they decided on what the show was about.
  • Study. Study different books and shows and anything you can. That way you can make gags that both go over kids head's and ones that they can understand now. Nothing is better than hearing a joke, not getting it, and then finding out what makes it funny. Like the Ruby Yacht of Omar Kayam.
While that's just a partial list, and I can think of others, that's a good way to go on.
 
Or the Kirwood Derby. :D

Anyway, as far as children's comedy cartoons, I generally like to apply what Robin Williams's character said in Mrs. Doubtfire: "Bottom line, don't patronize kids. They're little people. You gotta personalize it. Make it fun. If it's something you’d enjoy, they'd enjoy it." So I guess my criteria would be a cartoon that plays to multiple age levels. Good animation, voice acting, and creative plots all help, too.
 
"I tricked 'em! I told 'em it was going to be unfunny; that it would be wiggly lines, nobody would be able to follow the stories, and nobody could identify with the characters. And they said, `Oh! That's exactly what we want!' And I totally lied." John Kricfalusi

That's John K's pitch for Ren & Stimpy to Nickelodeon. So say what he said to say, and do the reverse of the quote in the final product, and you may very well have a half-decent animated children's comedy.
 
If you have a main character that's lacking in intelligence, don't make him or her obnoxiously stupid. That's one of the biggest problems with modern comedy cartoons.



That has to be be highly exaggerated somehow.
 
My favorite kids' cartoons are the ones that can basically be enjoyed by anybody, not just kids. "Tiny Toon Adventures" and "Animaniacs" are the best examples, but I also include "Rocko's Modern Life" and "Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends" - they have a good balance of kid-friendly jokes and the occasional obscure reference that only the older crowd will get. Also, the best kids' shows shouldn't talk down to their audience, lest they insult their intelligence (unfortunately, all the aforementioned shows have suffered from this at least once, but these moments are tantamount to the positive aspects). Shows that go for higher humor and more complex character development are the most memorable in my eyes.
 
Yea, but kids won't. That show will end up with a huge fanbase outside the target audience who will be upset because the show was cancelled since it received poor ratings from it's intending audiences, having people come here to complain about it.

I think a Good Children's cartoon is one that allows itself to be wacky. That's what kids like.
 
The thing about obscure references is that, depending on how they're done, even if you don't get the reference it can still be funny as a form of bizarro humor: something so weird you just have to laugh.

Personally, I think one of the most important things in a good children's comedy cartoon is range. You've got to give yourself a premise and setup that allows many different types of stories to be told (from the bizarre to the mundane) without feeling unnatural. In my opinion, The Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy did this well; the show could do episodes that were just very weird versions of everyday life with a character who happened to be a skeleton, and it could do incredibly insane stories with Martian zombies and mushroom dwarves, and neither sort of episode felt out of place.
 
Do NOT go with a gimmick. Make sure the show's material can carry it's own weight, don't try to add something "glitterly" in hopes that it will attract and sustain an audience (like the ABC show Cavemen; yes, I know that's not a cartoon).
 
A children's comedy should be clever but not go too far over kid's heads.

Most importantly it should have likable characters that have unique personalities from eachother so they can play off eachother when they're in the same scene.

Never, I repeat NEVER talk down to the audience (kids are a lot smarter than the media gives them credit for) and don't litter the show with puns, one-liners and potty humor.

References should be understandable but not entirely predictable.

There should be at least a bit of subtle humor mixed in with the more obvious stuff to give each scene better pacing.

Slapstick is fine as long as you don't go overboard.

No matter what you do, you probably wont come up with a completely original idea so to make up for it do your best to add something to the idea and "make it your own".

"Never miss a beat" and by that I mean you have nail the comic timing otherwise something that might have been funny will fall flat.

If you can do all that, you'll probably make a decent cartoon if not a great one. But it seems like these days it's not a matter of not trying enough so much as trying too hard. Let it come to you. Some people get it and if you don't... that's fine, just pick a different medium to express your vision.
 
Going back on what I said about Monkeys... Gorillas are great cartoons. Magilla, for example.

Only good monkey cartoons I can think of are the current Cureous George (but then again, he's an established children's literary character) and Capt. Simian and the Space Monkeys. But since that was an action comedy show, I don't know how to categorize it.
 
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