On the topic of animated fat men...

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Tsuyoshi-kun
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Re: On the topic of animated fat men...

Post by Tsuyoshi-kun »

John K. has admitted that he was pressured into making Adult Party more risque against his will. Even then, though, it wouldn't explain why it was so damn ugly. I seriously haven't revisited that show in years because of its grotesque art.

Spike TV's animation line-up was just a mess all-around.

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Re: On the topic of animated fat men...

Post by Cuckooguy »

My favorite shorts from the "golden age" are the ones that make high use of music and its marriage to animation. Fantasia is probably the best example of this, though I don't necessarily want all animation to attempt to elevate animation into a "higher art" like Fantasia does (it's nice in certain doses, though!).

My favorite Mickey cartoons (I think 90%+ of them suck) are the ones that do that, such as The Sorcerer's Apprentice (which I think is the high point of Mickey's career) and the Band Concert, where you have this juxtaposition of a ragtag bunch of musicians trying to look professional in a casual setting playing "high music". Every action and every musical cue (which I'm not sure if this is the right word but I can't think of a better word) has something to do with each other. This is mostly why I dislike a bunch of Fantasia 2000 segments save for the yo-yo Flamingo and the abstract butterflies segments.

Anyway, the lack of this element is why I dislike a lot of modern cartoons that ape older cartoons. When I watched one of the Looney Tunes Show skits I notice that there's so much damn talking! I watched a couple of the show's Merrie Melodies but it's just singing music videos, no real marriage of what the music is doing and what the animation is doing, it relies heavily on the lyrics and not much else. Maybe Animaniacs is the only relatively modern cartoon that does this well.

One Warner Bros. cartoon that I liked parodied Fantasia, pretty much.

Some of my favorite parts of some cartoons featuring Donald are when he's singing (he usually sings some folk song when opening up one of his own cartoons), but the fact that he's singing is only half the battle. Comparing Donald's singing in 1936's Orphans Picnic at the 1:12 mark to a Mickey Mouse Works short that was made in the late 90s (I don't remember the name of the episode and can't find a youtube clip of it) where Donald Duck was walking with a picnic basket singing Old McDonald, something about that walk was very boring. It was just a walk cycle of him singing, nothing particularly entertaining about the way he moved. Why should a cartoon from the 1930s be better at this than a cartoon from the 1990s? It's really not about what's happening, but how it's happening that's important here.

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Re: On the topic of animated fat men...

Post by cjmcray »

Tsuyoshi-kun wrote:John K. has admitted that he was pressured into making Adult Party more risque against his will. Even then, though, it wouldn't explain why it was so damn ugly. I seriously haven't revisited that show in years because of its grotesque art.

Spike TV's animation line-up was just a mess all-around.
APC was pretty terrible, but I thought the animation was excellent. The art was more colorful and vibrant than the first two seasons on Nick, and it still had the same amount of detail put into animating the facial expressions.

John K deserves some credit. I know some of his cartoons have some really infantile humor and bad writing, but he's very passionate about making sure the animation is as fluid and has as much movement as possible. That's why his cartoons are never done on-time.

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Re: On the topic of animated fat men...

Post by Rob-Bert »

If a show has to have "Adult" and "Cartoon" in the title, then you know they were trying way too hard.

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Re: On the topic of animated fat men...

Post by Wooduck51 »

No love for courage the cowardly dog? This is a travesty!
I do rather like adventure time, funny because I find 13 year old humor (fart jokes and the like) obnoxious, but after watching a few episodes I realized that it can be as bleak and disturbing as you would like it to be (the recent christmas special was a good example, barely watched until the last quarter of it and once again realized the amount of fridge horror you can eke out if you wish) that being said I don't watch it alot, but usually I enjoy the episodes I see.
Generator Rex I like, as well as a few of it's other peers, however I am a rather traditional values kind of person, and so to be honest a lot of children's cartoons, or shows in general, irritate me a great deal due to the way they portray abject disregard for parents and family, that men and boys are all swaggering buffoons, and in particular portray fathers as idiots or weak, incompetent effeminates.
To balance that rant though, it just as much pisses me off that the concept of "manliness" is a disregard for humbleness, respect, and care. Often if not portrayed as weak, they are bumbling swearing cussing uncaring tanks with an I.Q. of 3. Lest I be called a hypocrite, I enjoy futurama, I like, on rare occasion, family guy (Stewie!) but those are for (hopefully) mature adults who already have a grounded sense of what is right.

So there.

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Re: On the topic of animated fat men...

Post by Wooduck51 »

Ha! almost Forgot about King of The Hill, probably my favorite "Adult" cartoon.

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Re: On the topic of animated fat men...

Post by Neo »

Wooduck51 wrote:No love for courage the cowardly dog? This is a travesty!
Cartoon Cartoons in their heyday were amazing. Dexter's Laboratory, Cow & Chicken, I Am Weasel, Johnny Bravo (before the retool), Ed, Edd 'n' Eddy, Courage the Cowardly Dog and even Sheep in the Big City. I never really liked The Powerpuff Girls though, and others were simply a disastrous miss, like Mike, Lu and Ogg and Time Squad. Grim & Evil was also great but came too late, ending up in the shit sandwich that is present-day Cartoon Network.

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Re: On the topic of animated fat men...

Post by Tsuyoshi-kun »

I sure miss all those old Cartoon Cartoons. (I also liked Kids Next Door until Mo Willems left after season 4.) Its live-action programming might be a joke, but Cartoon Network at least has four good animated shows right now - Adventure Time, Regular Show, The Amazing World of Gumball, and (arguably) The Looney Tunes Show.

If anyone went to shit in recent years, it's Nickelodeon. I wish iCarly would end already, and SpongeBob mercy-killed at this point. They seriously have nothing going for them right now, and their schedules are an absolute joke.

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Re: On the topic of animated fat men...

Post by gr4yJ4Y »

Tsuyoshi-kun wrote:Cartoon Network at least has four good animated shows right now - Adventure Time, Regular Show, The Amazing World of Gumball
I was completely unimpressed by the one episode of Gumball I watched. The idea of animation on photographs or live action for an entire show is interesting though, and done really well. I hope other shows are able to follow in the footsteps of Adventure Time and Regular Show.

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Re: On the topic of animated fat men...

Post by Dr. Watson »

Neo wrote:
Wooduck51 wrote:No love for courage the cowardly dog? This is a travesty!
Cartoon Cartoons in their heyday were amazing. Dexter's Laboratory, Cow & Chicken, I Am Weasel, Johnny Bravo (before the retool), Ed, Edd 'n' Eddy, Courage the Cowardly Dog and even Sheep in the Big City. I never really liked The Powerpuff Girls though, and others were simply a disastrous miss, like Mike, Lu and Ogg and Time Squad. Grim & Evil was also great but came too late, ending up in the shit sandwich that is present-day Cartoon Network.
Huh, i think the Powerpuff Girls is actually the very best of Cartoon Networks shows, with Dexter's Laboratory coming in second. Both shows were fantastic both in narrative and (especially) style, which was of course extremely similar between the two. The one thing that Powerpuff Girls had over Dexter that i feel puts it just ahead of the latter is that along with everything else that made it great it would actually on occasion (even if rarely) attempt to be genuinely exciting and somewhat serious, which usually worked really well.

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