What Is The Climate Of Cartoons Today?

Evening fans, I thought I would change the subject a little and delve more into animation but I would like to discuss about the quality of cartoons in the modern day. As you know, there are many different forms of animation; 2D hand drawn animation, stop-motion, cardboard cut-out and 3D computer graphics. The majority of animation studios today use 3D animation or use a combination of those. Although the animators can use many of these techniques, there are many aspects needed to complete this creative process.

I really enjoy cartoons and still do, they are part of the escapism if you are not watching live-action shows on TV, surfing on the Internet, listening to music and playing video games. What I have noticed is a significant decline in the quality of cartoons since the late 2000's and early 2010's. Remember shows like Ren & Stimpy, Ed, Edd & Eddie, Hey Arnold, Courage the Cowardly Dog, The Flintstones or Dragon Ball Z? Well long gone are these shows and here come pointless shows on TV like so called reality TV such as Keeping Up With The Kardashian's, horrible game shows; Strictly Come Dancing, The Cube and others. Enough ranting, the point is I am not putting the blame on these kinds of shows, in fact some of them like Deal or No Deal and other UK and US shows are good. The point I am trying to make are there are rubbish programming and stupid decisions made by producers, studio execs and executive directors. 

Below are the problems found in cartoons today in the 2010s, most animations do not last more than 2 seasons or even 1 season. The same can be said by some live-action, reality TV and game shows. In fact, the only type of show which really last in programming in the U.K. are cooking, finance, stock and shares, marketing, shopping, family affairs, talent shows, gardening, antiques and documentaries. Some of these type of shows can even be said for U.S programming except they spend more on reality TV, games, family affairs and talent shows like X-Factor, American Idol and both America and Britain's Got Talent.

The issues are labelled under these aspects below, such as characters, story-lines, expense and seasons:

Characters

The problem with the majority of cartoons on TV today is some new characters they put out are mainly 2 dimensional. I am not against new ideas, concepts, settings, characters and even animation style but these characters most of the writers, directors, illustrators and animators create have no emotion and do not stand out much in the way of personality. They are cheap fads of a lazy creator's manifestation. 

Particularly in 3D animation, now I'm not saying I am against this style of animation but some of these 3D graphics only work for certain types of animation. They invoke these visual effects because for this kind of style it saves time although it takes long to render if you are talking about more realistic, action-orientated, cartoons. The downsides is for comedic pieces, there's more escapism and some of the characters look goofy, but they remain ugly in some cartoons in terms of appearance.

The look, feel and drive of the characters of course depends on the software the animators are working under. I prefer 2D hand drawn, cut out, flash and 2D/3D hybrid animation that use cel-shading and other applications of technology to make the cartoons look more hand-drawn when actually they have CGI (computer generated imagery), animation directors may use motion capture for voice actors and green screen as well as CGI to achieve the desired result. My point is sometimes the characters have no meat to them. 

Story-lines

Another thing, I will not go in too much depth in, but it is plainly obvious, is that the plot for each episode and story arc is weak and flat. There is either no originality (that word should be taken lightly) I will get back to that point in a sec; horrible gags, flat dialogue e.g.one-liners with a bad attempt of shock factor, no structure, characters we could care less about or guess stars who come in for pointless crossovers and otherwise generally very bad writing in part to the scriptwriter(s). 

If its comedy, the result is that the punchlines run out and become dry and become extremely boring fast. One example is Family Guy, that show is great but the annoying thing about the show is the writer always rely on references from pop culture or jump cuts to an otherwise random event as punchlines which can sometimes lead to unscrupulous and often retarded shortcomings in the humour. Whereas in some action, children shows, teenage drama, adventure, mystery, sci-fi and fantasy there are bad antagonists (villains) which the leading character(s) have to face, whiny supporting characters and abstract or random situations the main hero is placed which don't make sense. Sometimes a new team of writers are employed that make or break a programme and alter the characterizations of the main players.

This brings me back to originality, now face it, most of the concepts and ideas have already been done. New writers must come up with new directions to recycle the same formula or break the whole tradition completely and try change the game where no creator has gone before. It is stupid and darn right ignorant to even utter a sentence like this "Oh, they don't make cartoons like they used to" or "Can't they come up with something new?". Anyone who says these lines just go home or better yet live under a rock. There is nothing new, point blank. Even the creators of Batman, Bill Finger and Bob Kane, got the idea from pulp fiction such as Zorro and The Shadow.

Expense

The important thing to note is animation costs lots of money, especially in feature-length projects, Disney and Pixar only put out a feature animated film every 2-4 years. The range of their budget depends on art direction, time slot, schedule, working hours, technology, studio hire, specification etc. 1/3 of animators in the UK are women and professional animators over £25,000-£36,000 with an hourly rate of £12-£15/hr while scriptwriters can earn £120,000 and can earn excess of £8,000 per episode if the writer is in a writer's union such as WGGB (Writer's Guild of Great Britain) while in the U.S. from WGA (Writer's Guild of America) fees range from $5,000-$10,000. Producers earn between £1,100-£1,800+ a week but salaries can exceed to £40,000-£55,000 with experience and the average salary for directors in this field is around £86,000. The average money spent is $1 Mil-$3 Mil per episode (£623,200-£1.8 Mil).

Everyone needs to be paid, the episode has to receive a lot of ratings and the main players in the offices has to make sure they keep the members of the board happy and they reach targets. Every show cut off air is a sting in their production cost and don't ever think big time studios don't get taxed by the taxman. My point I'm trying to make is the officials cash in on entertainment that does not actually please. Face it, they are targeting a particular demographic regardless of gender, race, etc. who are aged 5-14+ and 18-40+. These people don't give a cahoots about people over 50's and 60's, which is awfully strange as the average employees within these fields are at least between 30 and 60.

Seasons

Another problem is syndication, which is the number of episodes animated shows are sorted into grids for the market called blocks to cash in on DVD and Blu-ray sales. It is well known that networks in the UK buy  US shows and distribute them on multinational and domestic programming such as Cartoon Network, Nickelodeon, Disney XD, CITV and CBBC. Executives of production offices have enforced either a 52 or 65 episode limit rule on cartoons, especially from the US and Canada. Executives do not want to take risks on shows which may not give them the ratings they want regardless of how successful or a failure it is. That is why often new shows do not last more than 1 or 2 seasons, they are indeed exceptions of course like for example The Simpsons, Family Guy, The Boondocks, American Dad and some anime but the fact remains that business is business in the long run.

That is it for now,


- Written by Andre Farquharson