Talk:Modern animation of the United States
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If anyone is able to check some of my facts on the "Sick and Experimental" section I'd be thankful. Also let me know what you think of the section title. I'd like to say a little more about how Space Ghost has changed the field, at least on Cartoon Network. I also added a dead link to Internet animation, which were it to get written should go on the main Animation page. Shoehorn 14 Aug 2003
I'd rather not cut the paragraphs on CGI animated special effects and characters in the movies, because they are (IMHO) a very important factor in the popularization of computer animation in the past decade. CGI has increased to the point where it is now an essential part of nearly every Hollywood wanna-be blockbuster film; whereas "realism" in CGI owes a lot to the likes of (ugh) Jar-Jar Binks and Titanic. --Modemac 12:11, 15 Aug 2003 (UTC)
While I think there is some crossover between the world of digital characters as special effects and animation, the paragraph about Forrest Gump is really just about special effects. And Forrest Gump is not even as interesting or groundbreaking as Woody Allen's Zelig. The second paragraph which paraphrases George Lucas is simply awkward. I made reference to Jar-Jar and Gollum in the previous paragraph, so that is now redundant.
Things I think should be discussed: George Lucas, Titanic
Things I couldn't care less about, with respect to animation: Forrest Gump, the Hulk.
- Shoehorn
Can anybody tell me with a straight face that the opening paragraph of this article is NPOV? --MTR (严加华) 06:41, 25 Sep 2003 (UTC)
- Right on. Felicity4711 22:42, 22 March 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Phantom 2040 & Highlander:TAS
Circa 1994, independent art houses gave the world some gems as well, including Phantom 2040 (imagine Batman: The Animated Series by Peter Chung instead of Bruce Timm), Highlander: The Animated Series, and ReBoot (world's first fully CGI television show).
Also, w/r/t the decline of saturday/sunday morning cartoons, some attention should also be shown to ABC's Saturday Morning Special which included Cadillacs & Dinosaurs.
However, at the moment I can't think of how to be bold and insert this into the article proper, because I think I'd end up just rewriting the whole thing.
The "Return of Disney" section seems extremely biased against late 70's-mid 80's animation. Someone fix this. Ralph Bakshi and Don Bluth != a decrepit state. - Anonymous Coward
[edit] Biased Against 1980s Animation
The early to mid-eighties were a great time for animation. Thanks to outsourcing to competent Japanese animation studios, animation quality was higher than ever, and after two decades of Hanna-Barbera being the default, this new standard of animation was in particularly sharp relief. However, because the model sheets were designed in America, these cartoons did not suffer from an overtly anime style. Though many of the best cartoons of this period were toy tie-ins, the quality of writing, acting, and overall production was extremely satisfying, enabling the cartoons to speak to older audiences who would never buy the related toys.
The decline began in the late eighties, when it became too expensive to continue using Japanese animation, writing got more kiddified, and a new generation of less seasoned, less resonant voice actors took over. By the early nineties, the only place to find competent American-Japanese animation was in the one-third of the episodes of Tiny Toon Adventures and Batman: The Animated Series that were outsourced to Japan. At the same time, however, model sheets got simpler and simpler, resulting in a style of artwork that only the best Japanese studios could pull off.
Today there are absolutely no well-written, well-animated cartoons on the air. The best cartoons on the air are the Adult Swim types, and they can hardly be said to be well-animated; like their 1960s-1970s ancestors, they make up for cheap animation with other strengths. Even with that, they don’t stick to their own style consistently. Felicity4711 22:40, 22 March 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Title
The title of this really ought to be "Modern animation in the United States"
