Wednesday, March 17, 2010

American Animation Trends

Talking with a scribe last week, it occurred to me that there's been distinct trends in animation -- teevee and theatrical -- over the last two decades. And when you think about it, they kind of leap out at you. (Please note that what follows is painted with a broad brush.)

Television Cartoons -- 1990 to Now

In TeeVee (circa 1990-95), there was a surge in higher quality toonage, away from the Hanna-Barbera/Filmation styles of the eighties. Spielberg teamed with Warners for Tiny Toons and the various series that came after (Pinky and the Brain, Animaniacs, etc.); Disney ginned up the Disney Afternoon and blocks of animation derived from the roundish Disney house-style going back to the 1930s.(But was also influenced by what Warners Animation was doing.)

Budgets were relatively high in the quest for quality ...

Then came the Nick and Cartoon Network era.

The round "classical" look of television cartoons were, series by series, supplanted by flatter, simpler, more angular styles epitomized by Rug Rats, Ren and Stimpy, Cow and Chicken, Sponge Bob and the other Nick-style shows (produced by every company -- from Cartoon Network to Disney) that came after.

The changes, I think, arrived in the second half of the nineties for several reasons:

1) Ratings for the flatter-style shows compared well with the classical Warners and Disney television cartoons.

2) The Nick-style shows were perceived as "edgier."

3) The Nick-style shows cost less to produce.

4) The boom in syndicated broadcast animation came to an end and licensing fees declined.

5) The need for low-budget cable-programming exploded and lower-cost cable-based toonage took off.

One overarching development that happened as we shifted from one millenium to another was that television animation studios and divisions got cost-conscious, real cost conscious. The business model of large, stable, in-house staffs turning out animated shows with 65-episode orders morphed to the thirteen-episode, project-to-project, freelance-heavy style of employment we know and often loathe today.

There are, of course, exceptions to this trend. Prime-time animated shows on the broadcast networks (otherwise known as "the FOX Sunday block") employ large in-house staffs, but even this has changed over time as Fox and some of its sub-contractors have attempted to rein in production costs.

Now, in the second decade of the new century, television animation is changing again.

Nickelodeon, once a pioneer in the flat and edgy, is pivoting toward cartoons of the computer graphics persuasion, what with Kung Fu Panda, Penguins of Madagascar, Fan Boy and Chum Chum and other CG product. Up until recently, CG cartoons for the home screen were but a small subset of total output, since some ambitious CGI series from the turn-of-the-century didn't perform well enough (Starship Troopers) to justify costs.

That now has changed.

And what changes the oncoming era of three dimensional television will bring is anyone's guess. But as I write, it's pretty obvious what three dee cinema means at your local AMC ...

Theatrical Animation -- 1990 to Now

The big milestones in theatrical, feature-length animation have been simpler and more pronounced than in t.v. land. Below, the big events (again with the broad brush, since I'm not writing an Encyclopedia Britannica entry ...)

* Prologue: From 1937 to 1980 it was pretty much Disney and a few pretenders to the throne. Everything was hand-drawn, most product was based on the Disney model (Yellow Submarine being one notable exception) and the most prominent, on-going theatrical animation staff was housed at 500 S. Buena Vista Street in Burbank, California.

In 1980, that changed a bit when Don Bluth and part of the Disney staff bolted from Burbank and commenced creating their own feature cartoons that were also built on a Disney foundation. Although Don was not wildly successful, he did have two animated hits in partnership with Mr. Spielberg, and he turned out over a dozen features over the course of fifteen years.

* As the 1990s floated into view, Disney was proceeding in its usual way, turning out a new animated feature every two to three years. But new management took over and the tempo picked up. And starting in 1989 with Little Mermaid, the department's feature cartoons became lots more profitable. When the profits reached gargantuan proportions in the earlyand middle nineties (LionKingAladdinBeautyandtheBeast), most of the Mouse's rival conglomerates jumped into Cartoonland with decidely non-gargantuan results (Quest For Camelot, Titan A.E., etc.).

* In the late 1990s, the tide receded. But as Disney's hand-drawn animation crested and the rivals flamed out, a small studio partnered with Walt's place turned out a c.g. feature entitled Toy Story; it was a major hit, and the course of feature animated was reset.

(Side note: I don't think hand-drawn animation would have declined as rapidly as it did from late 1990s to early 2000s if the Mouse's story prowess had remained as potent as is it was under Mr. Katzenberg. But power centers changed, and the happy chemistry that had clicked for five or six magical years at Disney Feature Animation faded away, and CG feature animation became the platform for bonafide hits.)

* By the start of the new century/millenium, other studios clambered aboard the CG bandwagon to partake of some of that computer-generated goodness (a.k.a. profits). This second time, the congloms didn't crash and burn, but had hits of their own. And this (by my estimate) sealed the fate of CG animation's pencil-and-paper cousin. The day of Snow White style animation was O-VER.

* Today: CG animation hasn't simply displaced the older style. It's displaced live-action, too. Directors and animators can argue who controls the performance of big blue aliens or 19th century Londoners, but the bottom-line is, lots of animators are sitting at lots of computers doing something that impacts the images projected on those big, silver screens.

There's lots of new animation and CG technical work in this brave new world, but the question is, where is the work going to get done? A sizable chunk will be outsourced to various parts of the globe. However, a lot of the work will be performed stateside because cost differentials aren't the crucial fulcrum in high-budget features. The most important elements are quality control and timeliness. (It does no good to save a million and a half dollars on your sword-and-sorcery epic if the shots don't get done in front of the release date.)

This doesn't mean, of course, that CG personnel are going to have an easy time in a sellers market, far from it. I've been sitting in this grandstand seats for awhile, and I've observed that supply always catches up to demand, and in-demand skill sets never stay in-demand over long stretches of time. (I know CG artists who could write their own tickets in 1995 who now work as independent contractors because their leverage is now less.)

What I also know is that animation is an expanding part of the movie universe, and the jobs supporting it are high-skill and high-value. Lower end product will be outsourced because lower-end product seeks the cheapest labor market in order to get made.

But the high-end product? The name of the game there is quality not cost. The last thing that James Cameron, Michael Bay or Steven Spielberg want is a hackish CG job-shop in Bangladesh wrecking their vision. It has been ever thus, and I don't see that changing anytime soon.

20 comments:

Anonymous said...

bluth did nothing new, other than his phony "neo-classical" animation, focused on bells and whistles. Audiences didn't care and stayed away because bluth couldn't tell a story or create compelling characters real people could connect with. And they were emotionless. And ugly.

I'll give him this, though. He made a LOT of bad films.

Wonkey the Monkey said...

I think John K. would probably rupture something if he heard you describe Ren & Stimpy as having a "flatter, simpler, more angular style".

Anonymous said...

Doesn't John K. rupture on a regular basis anyway?

Anonymous said...

I really REALLY miss Ren and Stimpy.

Anonymous said...

"I think John K. would probably rupture something if he heard you describe Ren & Stimpy as having a "flatter, simpler, more angular style"."

Why? It's true. It's an oversimplification, but in the case of Ren and Stimpy, it's a VIRTUE. And it certainly isn't simpler to do.

Anonymous said...

John K is a one trick pony.

All the praise and adoration dumped on him by his handful of superfans was old 10 years ago.

Sure he's talented, but cmon.

Anonymous said...

They're still dumping it on his website, which he recently had to velvet-rope against outsiders:
Apparently, John K. doesn't like being sent down in history as "The Man Who Killed Cartoons".
(Y'see, it's not really his fault, he tells us, it's all those IMITATORS!)

bluth did nothing new, other than his phony "neo-classical" animation, focused on bells and whistles. Audiences didn't care and stayed away because bluth couldn't tell a story or create compelling characters real people could connect with.

Well, to be fair, his first two big 80's "neo-classical" looked a little more focused back when the Ron Miller Disneys were stuck in their 70's rut--And then the Mermaid Renaissance happened at the end of the 80's, Bluth's films looked as old as lace doilies, and we all started concentrating on how creepy his "helpless" fetish was starting to look.
Land Before Time was the critics'-darling in its day, now it's hard to watch more than five minutes at a stretch.

Wonkey the Monkey said...

I'm not a huge fan of Ren & Stimpy (mostly, it's John K.'s storytelling that doesn't impress me), but it seems to me that the visual style of that show is substantially different from all of the other Nicktoons: solidly constructed characters, painted backgrounds, dozens of unique poses per episode... Rugrats and Doug never had anything like that.

When people talk about Ren & Stimpy changing everything, they're usually talking about its gross-out humor, randomness, odd timing, and the deep involvement of its creator. I really don't see much visual influence on today's cartoons, with the exception of a few facial expressions that caught on with in shows like Spongebob.

Anonymous said...

Forget what the cartoons look like, audiences responded to John because of what they felt like - they felt like real cartoons. Meaning they were completely unlike the Emmy-winning crap coming out of Disney and WB at the same time. They felt that way b/c they were run by creators and staffs in charge of the destiny of their work. The executives were pushed and often bullied to the sidelines, and guess what - the people actually liked the work for a change. Imagine that! Cartoons created the way they were supposed to be created.

Their 'cartoon' counterparts at Disney and WB were bloated, executive-heavy bores.

John was far from flat.

The union didn't show up until way after the fact, for better or worse. The Simpson's just happened to have James Brooks in their court for their writers. We had no equivalent name on the art side at the table in television. And that, as they say, was that. Forever.

Steve Hulett said...

The union didn't show up until way after the fact, for better or worse. The Simpson's just happened to have James Brooks in their court for their writers. We had no equivalent name on the art side at the table in television.

TO enlighten you: I was standing outside of Klasky-Csupo in '91, waving my flyers and working to get the studio to go union.

Didn't have enough takers, though I was down in front of the studio for over a month. (We ultimately threatened a lawsuit for unpaid o.t. and got settlements for half a dozen artists who stood up.)

We tried again to organize "The SImpsons" several more times through the nineties. No luck. It wasn't until Film Roman management cut benefits and blocked people from getting jobs at "Family Guy" (after "The SImpsons" had laid them off due to a wild-cat voice actors' strike) that artists voted overwhelmingly -- finally -- to go union.

As for James Brooks, "The Simpsons" writers worked without a WGA contract until 1997. Brooks wasn't instrumental in the Yellow Family writers going WGA; the writers were.

Anonymous said...

It wasn't Film Roman blocking people from gong to Family Guy. That was a back room deal between Gracie and Twentieth Television.

Anonymous said...

Yes, but you absolutely cannot deny that a very wealthy and influential member of your union at the table helps enormously. I acknowledge your tip of the hat to the ranks, but they did at the end of the day have a general at the top to follow. Let's not delude ourselves.

Anonymous said...

as a little girl in the eighties and a 2d animator now, i have to put in my 2 cents - i don't think i've ever connected with any film the way i did with secret of nimh as a kid. those were some effing real compelling characters. as a female it felt way better to connect with mrs brisby or even fievel's sister than ariel or belle. i love john k and appreciate disney. don bluth may not be the aesthetic i'd prefer to animate nowadays, but you sure as hell can't say they were emotionless.

Anonymous said...

In the same position as the female Animator above: Land Before Time isn't just the critic's darling, it spoke to a generation of kids.

I mean, we're supposed to be talking about animation styles, here, but "emotionless"? The animation supplants the dialogue, and in Land Before Time, the dialogue dealt with a lot of heavy, heavy, heavy subject matter about not just losing loved ones but about dealing with the grief of losing loved ones, of friendship, of long journeys home.

For the record, I think the animation was beautiful -- but I loved all of his works, being in a position when they were released to enjoy them and find them relevant and nostalgic still today.

Anonymous said...

as a little girl in the eighties and a 2d animator now, i have to put in my 2 cents - i don't think i've ever connected with any film the way i did with secret of nimh as a kid.

You had to be there in '82:
Old-Disney had delivered a cement balloon with Fox&Hound the year before, and the audience was giving the Miller animated studio up for dead.
Then along came Bluth's lush retro-tribute hyper-storytelling, and the audience (and Spielberg) all literally wished Bluth would march in, kick the bums out and take over the studio, tomorrow the industry.
Looking back in hindsight at Thumbelina and Titan AE, as well as what later became of Disney after the 80's...good thing he didn't. ;)

(Although PATF could have taken a screening or two of "Anastasia" for historical notes on How To Do a Genuine Retro-90's Musical According to the Rules.)

Awww, my eyes!! said...

"Anastasia"....talk about rotoscoping, jeeez!

Anonymous said...

"blocked people from getting jobs at Family Guy..."

***Hey Steve...you know this is still happening, right?

Anonymous said...

"blocked people from getting jobs at Family Guy..."

prime time treats artists like cattle. worst pencil-pushing jobs in animation, working hit tv animation. they should all be ashamed of themselves, wga and sag included. sweatshops, even WITH union representation across the board. these shows are sad failures.

Steve Hulett said...

"blocked people from getting jobs at Family Guy..."

***Hey Steve...you know this is still happening, right?


Not to my knowledge.

I thought Richard Reynis had grown bored with shafting people

Anonymous said...

Last I heard one of the tipping points for Film Roman was not that benefits got cut per say as IDT had promised free phone service, etc then realized it had no jurisdiction west of the Mississippi. There were a million things leading up to that of course, but I heard that was the straw that broke the camel's back.

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