A lot of the animated shows are pretty well done and I think the only thing that is wrong with them is how weird everything is. Seriously, most of the writers and artists for these shows must be out of their goddamn minds. I know in the nineties we had some kids shows that were a bit "out-there". Ones that jump to mind are Courage the Cowardly Dog and stuff like Tellytubbies. But everything on kids tv today seems to be really bizarre. And honestly, I don't think I could animate for something like this:
Waybuloo (A somewhat creepy Canadian/British CG animated kids show)I'm not saying that it's bad, it's clearly something kids want to see, but it's a style that seems to dominate childrens television nowadays. I remember when there was dynamically animated shows filled with action and some of them are still around now which is great, but things now seem to float around calmly and stare eerily into the camera in an almost hypnotic way. I think it's due to the anti-violence thing that's been in fashion for the last 10/15 years but I think it's a lot more to do with kids hanging around with nothing to watch :) We took so long saying kids should play outside rather than watch tv, I went for the nice medium as a child, I watched the cartoons when I got in from school then went outside afterwards.
I notice the old favourites like Pokemon and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles popping back up every so often which is nice but I really feel like there was a time when 2D animated cartoons were the rulers of kids tv. Fox Kids was my favourite for this, showing stuff like X-Men, Batman: TAS and the Animaniacs. And I can't forget Cartoon Network with DBZ and Cartoon Cartoon.
I realise that a lot of this new style animation is aimed at a much younger audience and there are things airing now that I reckon I'd have been watching as a kid. One that's popular is Ben 10. Now that would've been my kind of show. Well animated, with an action packed adventure every week. Good stuff.
The main problem I think we have today is that in the 80's and 90's, most kids of any age were watching the same shows. As a 5 or 6 year old I loved Power Rangers and I so did a lot of 10/11 year olds. As parents got more and more worried about what their kids were exposed to, kids tv seemed to be dumbed down. CITV when I was a kid showed a lot of different types of cartoon and everyone seemed to watch them. I personally will allow my kids to watch what cartoons they like and I think channels should put more plot-based cartoons out there rather than bright colours and characters speaking unintelligible nonsense. I think it helps with creativity and a bit of cartoon violence never hurt anyone.
I knew I would do this, having a blog on animation makes it too easy for me to get nostalgic about shows I used to watch. But to make it a little bit professional I'll talk a little bit about what I've been up to at university in the last couple of days.
I'm happy to say that I've finally learnt from a real animator how to properly animate a walk-cycle. I knew how to do it but the thing I found so helpful was all the little tips he gave us, all the different tweaks we could make to the movement to make it move in a smoother way.
We also started using CAT rigs in this lesson which I have found to be much easier to use than bipeds. If anyone's using Max 2011 and not animating with these, I urge you to try it out. One of the best things I've learnt so far.
I'll upload the walkcycle I did once I get it from the university computers but for the moment I'll be more optimistic about the animation of today. I don't mean to be all doom and gloom about the animation industry at all though. I'm really pleased about how things are going, especially with Disney's (brilliant) decision to get back to their roots. Things are really going to change in the industry and I expect once Disney get their 2D influece back into the animation world, tv will change along with the movies. Here's what they've got in store for us this summer :)
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