45 replies to this topic

[Lemanic]

Yes, let's talk about 70's cartoons.

Between the Golden Age and the Silver Age, there's a hole of 20 years of cartoons that has never been named. I suggest to separate them in two eras named "The Counter Culture Age of Cartoons" (70's) and "The New Romantic Age of Cartoons" (80's) Let's talk about the first one, shall we?

The definition follows: The hippies of the late 60's began doing their own thing with inspiration from both Disney and Warner Bros. and made history with their trippy and gritty visuals and pop music played in the background. Ralph Bakshi may be the name synonymous with this era, but Richard Williams is welcome too.

And Hanna-Barbera brought us classics, such as Scooby Doo, Hong Kong Phooey, Harlem Globetrotters, Wait 'till Your Father Gets Home and Josie and the Pussycats.

The over-all theme of this period is realism, political consciousness and trippyness and may have been influencing Matt Groening and John K. in their works.

The era ended loosely with classics such as Animalympics.

What ended this era for good? Maybe the presence of that new machine called "computer" and the fact that the animators started including Fantasy and Sci-Fi elements and ended the whole "realism" thing for good.

OK, let's discuss this intreresting era, shall we?

Edited by Lemanic, 06 August 2012 - 12:14 AM.

[Phos]

I'm glad it's over.

[Person]

Scooby Doo: Where are You is really the only one I liked from that era, though I'm more farmilliar cartoons from the 90s and early 2000s a lot more.
In short, I appriciate the cartoons like Scooby Doo, but I think the best thing about it is the Johnny Bravo crossover with Scooby Doo from 1997.

EDIT: yeah..to be honest I pretty much agree with VisionaryBlur

Edited by a person, 06 August 2012 - 04:20 AM.

[Soniman]

I consistently forget the 70s even had cartoons.

I remember the 60s being ruled by Hanna Barbera and their horribly cheap animation and the 80s having the most iconic cartoons that 30 year olds look back on with nostalgia.

The 70s though? Ummmmmmmmmmmm I can't think of anything notable.

[VisionaryBlur]

Pffffftttttt. *Closes every other tab to concentrate.*

This was the worst era for cartoons on television period. It was at this point in history when American cartoons couldn't be sponsored by products or try to sell products.

Not only were cartoons made for TV at the time ridiculously tight budgeted, but most of their sponsors were cut off? That left absolutely no one but Hannah Barbera and Ruby Spears as the only ones who could compete on the Saturday Morning. And what's worse is that censorship in this era was at some of it's worst. Most of the violence (which, to be fair, was pretty mindless) in cartoons had to be cut away by censors who had a heating metal maces stuck up their bums!

This attitude led to history's greatest enemy duo to become the beste of friends!

FUCKING DISGUSTING!

Then we have the Scooby Doo copycats. My god, the scoooby doo copycats! Since, Hannah Barbera were looking to make entertaining and adventurous cartoons for kids that lacked violence, Scooby Doo had proven to be an absolute life saver for them. It was one of the few things they could do that could get by the censors at the time. And they repeated it over.

and over

and over!

AND OVER!!

AND FUCKING OVER AGAIN!


This was the era where creativity died for cartoon series in America and animation looked cheaper than it ever had been.

But lo and behold, there was always a silver lining in dark clouds. Mostly in TV specials, and theatrical releases by up and coming company, Rankin/Bass.

You may know them well for their stop motion features from the 60s, but Rankin Bass actually did a few animated series of their own, along with TV specials, being one of the earliest animation studios to convert half their work overseas.
If there is anything I must commend them for in the 70s, it's that their fantasy cartoons were absolutely top notch. I mean, the animation was absolute shit, but their script writing, and voice talent was some of the finest in the industry.
If I may recommend a good series of theirs, try and looks for their, "Festival of Family Classics", very well versed children's fairy tales that really have a poetic beauty to them.
And let's not forget their TV movies, "The Hobbit" was a fantastic piece of work (flawed in so many areas, but that's another story), which would prelude their fantastic animated movies from the 80s.

I'll discuss theatrical animation, but this wore me out. So I'll come back to this thread.

I'll be back...

Between the Golden Age and the Silver Age, there's a hole of 20 years of cartoons that has never been named. I suggest to separate them in two eras named "The Counter Culture Age of Cartoons" (70's) and "The New Romantic Age of Cartoons" (80's) Let's talk about the first one, shall we?

Oh, and by the way. Us animation lovers do have a name for this Era. We call it:

THE DARK AGE.

Edited by VisionaryBlur, 06 August 2012 - 01:54 AM.

[Lemanic]

One of the first cartoons with an all-female cast that had a minor feminist touch on it.

The birth of Blaxplotiation cartoons right there. The Cleveland Show owes deeply to this one.

Oh, and by the way. Us animation lovers do have a name for this Era. We call it:

THE DARK AGE.

But that ain't fair, because we're facing one now and have done it the last decade.

Golden Age - Looney Tunes, Mickey Mouse, Felix the Cat
Counter Culture Age - Fritz the Cat, Scooby Doo,
New Romantic Age - TRON, He-Man, TMNT, Don Bluth
Silver Age - Animanicas, Swat Kats, Beavis & Butthead, Sonic SatAM
Dark Age - Animé and Americ-Animé.
Bronze Age - FiM, ???.

That's how I put 'em anyways.

[VisionaryBlur]

One of the first cartoons with an all-female cast that had a minor feminist touch on it.



The birth of Blaxplotiation cartoons right there. The Cleveland Show owes deeply to this one.

It doesn't change the fact that they are awful clones of Scooby Doo. Just because they do something right in a certain area doesn't make them fun to watch, especially when the Pussycats went into space. WHY THE HELL DID THEY GO INTO SPAAAAAAAAAAAAACE?


And I'm not about the sing the quality of Fat Albert as entertainment though it was quite the progressive cartoon at the time, and presented a good message. That's all well and good, but if the show isn't entertaining, then jack all.

The only entertaining thing I found that came from Hannah-Barbera in that era was the Laff-A-Lympics. And that was probably thanks to it's mildly entertaining star power, and maybe the Popeye Hour, if it wasn't for the heavy restrictions placed on the show.

But that ain't fair, because we're facing one now and have done it the last decade.

Golden Age - Looney Tunes, Mickey Mouse, Felix the Cat
Counter Culture Age - Fritz the Cat, Scooby Doo,
New Romantic Age - TRON, He-Man, TMNT, Don Bluth
Silver Age - Animanicas, Swat Kats, Beavis & Butthead, Sonic SatAM
Dark Age - Animé and Americ-Animé.
Bronze Age - FiM, ???.

That's how I put 'em anyways.

Oh it is quite fair. The 70s to us still remain the worst of the worst eras for television animation, however I feel it more fits your counter culture definition when it comes to theatrical animation.

Otherwise, this is how we list it.

Golden Age- 40s-Early 60s
Dark Age- Late 60s-70s
Renaissance- 80s-90s
New Millenium- 2000-?

So you believe that the heavy emphasis on anime led a dark age this gen? Puh-lease! I'll admit that the beginning of this era was quite rough at times, and led to a small drop in quality compared to the Renaissance Era but nothing as drastic as the late 60s and 70s.

The reason for that drop of quality was mostly because after the creator driven era of the Renaissance things were starting to wind down, and anime and flash were becoming quite the influences on an industry filled with tired veterans who had little understanding of these new mediums.

But after a few years of being in an enigma of getting used to these new mediums (2000-'03). I feel animation really started to hit it's stride with the coming of the many great action cartoons of their era such as TMNT, Avatar, Teen Titans, Static Shock, Justice League.

I think the problem was mostly that there weren't enough cartoons during this era, because of the network decay around 2007-'09. However, the few cartoons that would come out (from America) were very good on their own such as Chowder, Flapjack and Adventure Time.

Then there was the problem with the Canadian imported shows on Cartoon , which were all very awful to say the least but acting as a stepping stone for the better animated shows that would follow them. Really, the only quality Canadian show I'd say came out in that part of the era was Total Drama Island.

Right now we're in a time where cartoons are starting to return in prominence, and creator driven animation has taken a root in both the market of flash, CGI, and traditional animation, taking inspiration from the land of the rising sun while still being new and fresh, and younger creators coming into play.

[Lemanic]

So you believe that the heavy emphasis on anime led a dark age this gen?

The reason for that drop of quality was mostly because after the creator driven era of the Renaissance things were starting to wind down, and anime and flash were becoming quite the influences on an industry filled with tired veterans who had little understanding of these new mediums.

Well, the heavy emphasis on Animé led to poor self confidence on our own way of makin' toons. Thus every popular toon the last decade has been blatant Pokémon rip-offs. The peak was the introduction of "The Last Airbender", which set the tone to how low our self confidence were at the time. "Loonatics", anyone?

But the 70's was the time of fusion. The fusion of Disney and Warner Bros. in terms of style. Some well-attempted. Some ill-attempted. The new creators were indeed hippies and the double standards that followed. The emphasis on down-to-earth, independent productions may've led to this decades reputation as "the worst", but a lot of things was going on at that time.
Even though we all like 'em, Disney was going downhill with Robin Hood, Jungle Book and Aristocats and would continue so untill 1989. But Disney's way of portraying escapism in the 40's and 50's is crucial to 70's animation anyways. Especially the most trippy parts.
Warner Bros. did already say good-bye in 1969 and left inspiration to most of the 70's raunchy humour and the way of makin' pop culture references.

Edited by Lemanic, 06 August 2012 - 01:59 PM.

[VisionaryBlur]

Well, the heavy emphasis on Animé led to poor self confidence on our own way of makin' toons. Thus every popular toon the last decade has been blatant Pokémon rip-offs. The peak was the introduction of "The Last Airbender", which set the tone to how low our self confidence were at the time. "Loonatics", anyone?

But the 70's was the time of fusion. The fusion of Disney and Warner Bros. in terms of style. Some well-attempted. Some ill-attempted. The new creators were indeed hippies and the double standards that followed. The emphasis on down-to-earth, independent productions may've led to this decades reputation as "the worst", but a lot of things was going on at that time.
Even though we all like 'em, Disney was going downhill with Robin Hood, Jungle Book and Aristocats and would continue so untill 1989. But Disney's way of portraying escapism in the 40's and 50's is crucial to 70's animation anyways. Especially the most trippy parts.
Warner Bros. did already say good-bye in 1969 and left inspiration to most of the 70's raunchy humour and the way of makin' pop culture references.

Loonatics and? For every Loonatics, we have a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, A Teen Titans, and an Avatar.

So? I'm talking about TV animation, and It still wasn't good. That's what's important.

Now then, I suppose I'll take this time to talk about theatrical animation of this era. *Closes all tabs.*

This era was an interesting time for theatrical animation, and definitely tried to be revolutionary in that respect. This was the era of Ralph Bakshi, and his particular style of animation, that focused heavily on being different from everything The Disney corporation did up to that point. He threw out all the original techniques of animation in an attempt to bring about new styles. Did it work? Not really. If there's anything to say about his form of animation, it's that it has this awkward bounce and flow to it that just seems disturbing at times. It has no real consistency to it, and characters seems ready to snap in half when they move.

His attempts at rotoscoping wasn't really the best either. If there's one thing to say, though you are still drawing pictures, a rotoscoped film is essentially live action with imagination, and you have to direct the actors to move like normal human beings. But Bakshi still believed he was looking at a cartoon anyways, and that gave his rotoscoped films a very, very awkward sense of uncanny valley.

As for the movies themselves, Bakshi had a lot of character and heart put into his scripts, and it shows, despite the inconsistencies at times. His material was risque and attempted to pierce the social barriers of culture at the time. A task which I felt he succeeded in different ways.

The best work he put out in my opinion would have to be, Coonskin. A very flawed movie adapting the B'rer Rabbit stories into a contemporary setting; making fun of Blaxploitation films of the time, and making fun of the mafia. Of course, thanks to Al Sharpton being a donkey drool, few people really got to see the time.

Now then, as for the Disney stuff at the time, very few of it was anything spectacular. Robin Hood was a dull piece of work, along with the Arisocats, and even The Rescuers. There was just that little work being done and almost none of it had the Disney charm from the Golden Age. None of the films took any risks, and the Xerox animation was the stuff of dull. The only film at the time which I felt had the real Disney magic was The Adventures of Winnie the Pooh, which actually admitted that it wasn't trying to be a big blockbuster, but instead a laid back little adventure that felt like walking through the park with friends. And hey, the pencil animation actually looked fitting with the film.

Really the best stuff came from overseas, but this is mostly about animation going on in the States. But I still would give a shout out to the amazing Russian animation during this era, along with the English classics like Watership Down and Plague Dogs.

Overall, while the theatrical animation from this era had very little to add, they certainly weren't... bad, just not special or too good.

[Ride The Walrus]

I think there was a few Duck Dodgers in the 24 1/2 Century remakes in the '70's and '80's, just for them alone, it was an amazing time.

[VEDJ-F]

I love the Dark Age.

You can tell I'm no cartoon buff.

[Applejack1973]

Yay the 70's.

I was born in 1973.

Of animated movies there was Fritz the Cat I can recommend to watch.




Beneath is a Danish cartoon play I had on cassette starring voice actors, mother and daugther and singers Vivian and Gry.

Edited by Applejack1973, 06 August 2012 - 05:29 PM.

[Tornado]

One of the first cartoons with an all-female cast that had a minor feminist touch on it.

No it didn't. It was Scooby Doo with a band but not a shark. There was no deeper message to it just because they filled it with poorly animated eye candy instead of a talking car or a Rodney Dangerfield ripoff.

The birth of Blaxplotiation cartoons right there. The Cleveland Show owes deeply to this one.

Neither one of these things are something to be proud of. Nor is the latter particularly true.

Even though we all like 'em, Disney was going downhill with Robin Hood, Jungle Book and Aristocats and would continue so untill 1989. But Disney's way of portraying escapism in the 40's and 50's is crucial to 70's animation anyways.

Of course it was. Disney needed something to trace the animation cels for at the time.

Then there was the problem with the Canadian imported shows on Cartoon , which were all very awful to say the least but acting as a stepping stone for the better animated shows that would follow them. Really, the only quality Canadian show I'd say came out in that part of the era was Total Drama Island.

I liked Kappa Mikey...

Edited by Gilda, 06 August 2012 - 04:17 PM.

[VisionaryBlur]

I liked Kappa Mikey...

Oh yeah, sorry. I liked that one too. I forgot it existed with Nickelodeon refusing to put the series on DVD.

[Tornado]

Something that piqued my eye:

Golden Age - Looney Tunes, Mickey Mouse, Felix the Cat
Counter Culture Age - Fritz the Cat, Scooby Doo,
New Romantic Age - TRON, He-Man, TMNT, Don Bluth
Silver Age - Animanicas, Swat Kats, Beavis & Butthead, Sonic SatAM
Dark Age - Animé and Americ-Animé.
Bronze Age - FiM, ???.

The way this is written implies that animation died in 1995-1996. That's fair enough, because many people say the Renaissance Age ended with either the release of Toy Story or the dual release of A Bug's Life and Antz a couple years later; which was combined with Disney's traditional animation arm collapsing on itself for Pocahontas and The Hunchback of Notre Dame, causing the relative failure of movies like Hercules and Mulan. This was also the time when the mainstays of television cartoons (like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Garfield and Friends) ended their runs.


In the years immediately following, we had the rise of Cartoon Network as a major player (all of the Cartoon-Cartoon shows date from this era), almost the entirety of the DCAU (everything except Batman TAS dates from here), Futurama, Nickelodeon's personal renaissance era (Hey Arnold, CatDog, Rocket Power, The Wild Thornberrys, Invader Zim, Jimmy Neutron) and the start of Nickelodeon's juggernaut shows (Fairly Oddparents, Spongebob). So, with that output in addition to localized Anime like Pokemon, Digimon and Dragon Ball Z, what exactly from the 10 years or so following Toy Story makes that era "dark"? Because it seems to me that up until 2004-2005 when most of those shows started ending their run, you had more choices than you did even in the late 1980s. Yeah, things were pretty shitty for Disney at the time, what with their propensity to fuck up most things that they touched in that period unless Pixar made it; but Disney is not the entirety of the animation industry.

Edited by Gilda, 06 August 2012 - 04:48 PM.

[Nepenthe]

There is nothing particularly great about the 70s era of animation. An explosion of extremely cheap TV shows, a severe dip in Disney's quality, and some novelty animated films that failed to capture any significant popularity. Yeah, Fritz the Cat's kind of cool as an ode to hedonism and the political climate at the time, and hey Scooby Doo appeared on the scene and everyone loves Scooby Doo, but we're significantly better off.

[Lemanic]

Can we say that we're in a 70's throwback now?

FiM feels like a 70's cartoon done right. "Love & Tolerance" makes me feel like a long lost hippie.

The Disney-coms post-Hannah-Montana have a distinct 70's fragrance now. The heavy emphasis on moral and messages of these, reminds me of questionable kid shows in Sweden during the 70's.

The animation styles of Adventure Time, Problem Solverz and such reminds me of "Raggedy Ann" and a famous Swedish animator named Per Åhlin. Seriously, look at "Dunderklumpen!" and tell me they don't resemble each other.

Edited by Lemanic, 06 August 2012 - 05:47 PM.

[Soniman]

Wasn't Problem Solverz cancelled for being horribly animated garbage that was nigh unwatchable?

[Phos]

This era was defined by shows where no one was allowed to punch anything and characters needing to run away from the bad guy for poorly defined reasons. Have you ever heard of Seanbaby? He got his start by making a website making fun of how terrible Super Friends was, and that was par for the course in that era. Precious little of merit was animated during this decade.

By the way, Scooby Doo is my yardstick for bad story telling. Major events being caused by or necessitated by characters screwing up simple tasks, formulaic structure, characters defined by shallow roles, and how many times are they going top use that same cut away animation of Scooby chewing something, it isn't even that good.

Golden Age - Looney Tunes, Mickey Mouse, Felix the Cat
Counter Culture Age - Fritz the Cat, Scooby Doo,
New Romantic Age - TRON, He-Man, TMNT, Don Bluth
Silver Age - Animanicas, Swat Kats, Beavis & Butthead, Sonic SatAM
Dark Age - Animé and Americ-Animé.
Bronze Age - FiM, ???.

That's how I put 'em anyways.

Frtiz the cat is a complete anomaly and is not at all representative of animation of the era.

And if you want to pick a name for this age based on Lauren Faust's work, I'd go with tin foil age. It's shiny and moves a lot but it's flat and no I'm not talking about the limited shading.

quality

Total Drama Island

Wat.



And Solomon Grundy wants pants too.

[VisionaryBlur]

Wat.

During that era of flash cartoon it really was the only sign of quality next to Kappa Mikey (which I think was canceled when TDI aired).

And I think the show is kind of funny.