Cartoon characters designs
 

Is it me, or does it seem like cartoon character desgins have gotten more and more simple over the years. I mean look at the detail on the faces and bodies from cartoons from the 80's and 90's compaed to the ones from the now.

http://i436.photobucket.com/albums/q...-x-men-315.jpg

http://www.behindthevoiceactors.com/.../char_3200.jpg

http://www.theraffon.net/~spookcentr...b_cast_ray.jpg

http://www.cartoonscrapbook.com/02pi...venturer01.jpg

http://img.webme.com/pic/t/theultimatejemsite/eric.png

http://www.hubworld.com/hubworld/img...ge-570x420.jpg
vs.

http://www3.images.coolspotters.com/...er-gallery.png

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...perman_TAS.jpg

http://cdn.static.ovimg.com/episode/60376.jpg


Is there a reason for this? I mean you see this kind of blocky design like in Total Drama Island alot more lately and even the better looking animation has simplitic facial and body designs.

http://www.comicbox.com/wp-content/u...s-1024x576.jpg

I was watching some cartoons from the 80's and 90's and a friend of mine said the more detailed look makes the character look ugly and "dated." Do you agree? How come the detail and quality in character designs have gone down over the years? The last cartoon I saw with detailed character designs was the 4KIDS show before the Fast Foward remodle. I mentioned before that during the turtles cross over movie I found the old school turtles more detailed and realistic looking than even the more serios 4KIDS turtles.

I blame Bruce Timm :P

personally, i appreciate the change. Most of the 80's and 90's designs were lazy copies of each other. duke looked like lion-0 looked like he-man looked like cyclops..........and you'll notice all of them were pretty poorly animated. but i think there has been a serious shift since the anime influence came in, along with bruce timm dominating the DC releases. Detailed designs are a real hinderence in traditional animation, and the proper route SHOULD be to have some simplified design that lends itself to the style and expectations of that particular show.

Alot of the change also has to do with the animation programs they use. you'll see a lot of stuff like foster's imaginary friends that's designed in a way to be successfully animated in flash. very geometric, very simplified, very designed.

IMO the best mix of detail and animation has been avatar. beautiful all the way around.

I honestly can't stand most designs today. Modern cartoons look a lot more lazy than they did back in the 80s and 90s. Now I am not saying they didn't have there crap back then, but I mean come on! Most cartoons now look like a drunk guy drew them!

think I have some long ranty rant somewhere in this forum on my stance about modern American animation designs.

so, to simplify it, I disagree with ya Zany.

most cartoons then looked like a drunk guy animated them! have you seen some of those cartoons lately?

I belive she was refering that some cartoons today look bad, not all. Like that show "The Problem Solverz", now that's a badly animated show. Even though the styles are different, that doesn't mean they are bad, it's just the artists' style, am I right Zany? :)

Simpler, more angular designs are easier to animate at a consistent level. That was always a big priority for Bruce Timm. By the time you get to Justice League Unlimited all characters look much more "toony" than the people see in Batman: The Animated Series. However, with the advent of digital technology and more rigid stylistic standards for animations, the JL shows have much more consistent animation than the BTAS show.

I personally prefer the more detailed character designs of the 90s, even if modern superhero shows tend to look much smoother in animation from episode to episode.

Really? Have you looked at how absolutely god awful the animation is on those shows? They're terrible. Not only is the animation choppy and ugly, but the character designs can't even stay consistent. Watch an episode of 90's X-Men and focus on the eyebrows of Professor X. It's a laugh riot. That show is a prime example of how detailed design can go horribly wrong.

:lol:

Yeah, I always thought those eyebrows were seriously messed up!

And everytime is Voice Actor screamed in pain it was just the most unbearable sound ever!

don't be dissing the eyebrows, the best part of the series :P

I don't think the simple, stylized designs of today are horrible, but I do miss the more detailed look of the 80s and 90s. However, even those had problems, such as tendencies of becoming off-model and sloppy.

I don't see how anyone can look at the sh*t from back then and say it looks better than the stuff today.

To the OP
It looks like ur comparing two different styles, In the 80's and 90's most artist used a Western art-style, This is also why a lot of the characters looked the same. There is a certain formula for drawing Western style, u eventually develop ur own style, but certain styles for Western Artist r bound to look similar.

Many tv shows today use Anime style which I do not know nearly as much, bc I chose to use Western style personally, but Anime is a lot less realistic and more simplistic in most instances. Also most cartoons today tend to be Anime and that is why they look less detailed.

And guys lets not forget, all because a show looks choppy, is not necessarily due to the artist, but lack of budget or lead designer I would think would be at fault.

But an example of what I am talking about. Compare TMNT 2K3 to Avatar the last airbender. TMNT is a Western style, while Avatar is a Anime style. In Anime style the character tend to have big heads and Eyes, While Western tends to have more proportioned bodies. Another example is Young Justice(Western) and Teen Titans (Anime) (and most like Nick's tmnt)

I think the bottom line is that is comes down to what style u like in all honest....:ohwell:

Part of me wonders how much of the difference can be attributed to a show being animated by multiple studios (I mean, how many studios did the animation on the Fred Wolf Turtles series?) and the fact that these shows were done before digital clean up and when things had to be mailed and changes couldn't be made as easily.

I do prefer the more detailed models, but the more detailed the model, the more likely a small missed detail could ruin the model. I'll admit to thinking "Uh, the models for The New Adventures of Batman suck!" when i first watched it, but then I watched it, and I got over it quickly. Sure Catwoman's model suffered, but Scarecrow was awesome.

I agree with Reedemer, it may be a preference issue. I prefer western style as opposed to eastern style animation, but I'm starting to respect both.

Well put, Jester.

That was a huge deal with cartoons back in the day. The studio would make all the difference. Some of the X-Men episodes still look fantastic to this day, while others can be an eyesore. Wild variations existed in just about every show from the era including Tiny Toon Adventures, BTAS, TMNT, and etc.

I tip my hat to TMS, the greatest animation studio there ever was and ever will be!

Yeah thats same with me. I always preferred Western style, but over the past few years Anime style has grown on me. I like how shows like Teen Titans and Full Metal Alchemist use Anime style and exaggerate the characters to emphasize on the comedy in the scene. :lol:

I've been watching a lot of Dragon Ball lately. I'll say one thing it's consistent, though you can see the style change slightly between the 3 series.

I agree with you and Reedemer as well

Yeah, I'm not a fan of how they made all the characters look "shiny" as they went further and further along. The original DragonBall art style is my favorite visual look, even if the main characters tend to look a little too scrawny. The Saiyen, Android, and Perfect Cell Sagas are my favorite arcs of the DBZ era. The rest of the series is more or less filler... and perfect for parody!

Not sure I like Vegeta's GT model. There is such thing as too many muskles. :P

Lol, as oppossed to the DBZ model? In any DB show they're way to muscled

It may just be that DBGT is where I am now, and I've already forgot his design in later arcs in DBZ.... either way his neck makes me chuckle sometimes.

Yeah, nothing tops the original DBZ Vegeta design: semi-midget with noticeably red hair, scrawny neck, nerdy scouter, and tail wrapped around his waist like a belt.

The coolness scale on that design was well over 9,000.

Lol. I gotta see some DBGT then.

look, i grew up with all of that, hold it dear to my heart still, and can assuredly say most of it was - garbage. some hold up well, but honestly not many.

as a whole, 80's cartoons are more vinegar than wine. if youve watched any of it within the last 10 years (save ghostbusters, voltron, and occasionally robotech) there is no way that you could argue that its ANIMATED better than anything the 90's offered. batman, x-men, animaniacs, tiny toons, any of the disney shows ALL destroyed them on an animation level, and IMO an asthetic level as well. i can still enjoy ducktales, i tried to enjoy transformers again and couldnt.

See I loved all that also

I can understand that, but really "occasional mistakes"? The FW TMNT had at least 1 per episode. :P

I'm almost of the opinion that TMNT animators intentionally made mistakes as an inside joke. Some of them are just so bad you have attribute it to a complete lack of supervision or an inside conspiracy.

:tlol:

Watching the transitions from 80s style to 90s style and into the latest decade has been interesting. Im partial to the old school but I dig the newer styles as well

c'mon now, animation had been around since the 30's and the stuff out of warner and disney back in the 50's SMOKED the 80's cartoons in animation quality. it wasnt that they were working out the kinks of a new medium, they were working out the kinks of outsourcing it in a world with no cell phones, internet and instant responses. but it wasnt even issues with the animation that was the worst offender. there was no coherent story, plot, things happened simply to sell toys. there was no production value to it. im not sure what changed in the 90's, maybe guys who grew up watching the crap of the 80's took over, but there assuredly more substance to them.

*special note- ghostbusters is exempt from this because it is STILL unabashedly awesome and well done, even watching it today. :)

Maybe... Heck I tend to agree with Adam, the fact that there are things like Raph's belt being on backwards in 50 Foot Irma, makes you think, that has to be intentional. Maybe it in itself is an homage to the continuity gaffs in the 50's sci-fi/horror flicks that the FW TMNT parodied.

more like it was drawn by some korean dude who had no idea what an r was. :lol:

True, but the budgets were also bigger, since they were for movies and not TV. Hanna-Barbera could probably be blamed for cheapening animation as an art form to make it work with the limited budget of television...
As for the 80's vs. 90's storytelling, maybe the writers weren't used to the "write to sell toys" in the 80's and by the 90's had figured out how to tell good stories within the glorified toy commercials.

If I could post a screen cap, I would, but I mean the buckle and tie were on the back of his shell... :P

I don't see how you can compare a cartoon rabbit or mouse with something like Jem or Thundercats. Of course it's going to be easy animating Mickey Mouse strutting down the street then Lion-O clashing against Mumm-Ra and do it more fluidly and crank it out each week. And while watching old Disney and Looney shorts, you can still catch mistakes like blemishes and eraser marks.

As for production value, well, maybe it wasn't the greatest, but really, shows like MOTU and G.I. Joe developed some very good stories. Even though they were made to sell toys, they blossomed into something more. Sure, some episodes were ridiculous (a few Joe eps just had me shaking my head), but overall it wasn't just some claptrap like Captain Planet.

Or had comic books for inspiration.

well, i dont consider ducks and rabbits easier to animate, but i do think they were tailored to the medium. squash and stretch, arcs, ins and outs, are all present and built around the design of looney tunes and the disney stuff.

i can try to paint realistic portraits with oils, or i can draw them with crayon. one is decidedly more difficult than the other, but at the end of the day, youre left with a picture. and you should judge the picture, not the road to get there. i dont appreciate the crayon drawing more because it was harder. they chose a style that was inherently more difficult to accomplish, and you could tell. disney and WB played to the strengths of the medium, and was performed by actual artisans, vs being sent overseas. i think youre seeing a reversal (well, not the overseas part anyways), and thats why you are seeing such simplified designs. something tailored to be animated. and with that, your seeing better results too.

When did this become a fight between 80's vs 90's cartoons? I thought this was about character design?

It seems like KROW is getting defensive about his childhood based entirely on the content of the shows themselves, which isn't what this was about.

Where I was going with my animation argument is that, most of the time, shows with detailed character designs are also rife with bad animation, ugly deformations of the character model, inconsistencies, errors etc. That's why you can watch, again, 90's X-Men and cry laughing every 2 minutes. On the flip side you can watch a 50's Looney Tunes and the animation is fantastic. It's all in the design of the character. What Pickleweed said applies perfectly to this argument.

It's not like shows with more simple character design are free of problems. Some of the kid sh*t like Dora is absolutely inexcusably bad. However, take a show like Samurai Jack and you see how this argument holds weight.