Western Animation - Discuss American, Canadian, and European cartoons here (or just bitch about wokeshit, I guess)

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Did someone say "AMERICA"?




That's the spirit!

Speaking of the 4th, this Popeye cartoon always comes to my mind for it's solution to preventing minors from playing with fireworks, though the alternative seems just as bad if someone pokes an eye out anyway!
 
Before we keep on talking about Coonskin, let me just put up this nigga talking up a storm about every MTV cartoon ever made...
This is what's here so far, of course.
 
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Well someone couldn't shut up!

Speaking of Baskhi, I noticed someone uploaded a decent copy of a pilot he worked on in the late 80's that aired only once on NBC prime time (though I recall it also airing on a Saturday morning too). It hasn't aged well and it's got a laugh track just to warn you guys!
 
Sheesh, why people thought laugh tracks needed to be a thing in animation I will never know. It didn't work for The Flintstones, it didn't work for Scooby-Doo, it didn't work for Dinosaurs and it sure as hell doesn't work here.

Also holy shit the credits have some notable animation players. How the hell did Ralph even get half of them? Let alone the likes of Andrew Stanton and Jeff Pidgeon?
 
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Sheesh, why people thought laugh tracks needed to be a thing in animation I will never know. It didn't work for The Flintstones, it didn't work for Scooby-Doo, it didn't work for Dinosaurs and it sure as hell doesn't work here.
Network executives are assholes!

Also holy shit the credits have some notable animation players. How the hell did Ralph even get half of them? Let alone the likes of Andrew Stanton and Jeff Pidgeon?
It was a desperate time. Nobody was hiring fresh art school upstarts like Ralph did and immediately putting them to work like he did.
 
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Network executives are assholes!
You said it.

It was a desperate time. Nobody was hiring fresh art school upstarts like Ralph did and immediately putting them to work like he did.
That makes a lot of sense for several of the animators, but at this point those two were firmly Pixar employees. Guess it was just downtime between shorts and commercials then.
 
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That makes a lot of sense for several of the animators, but at this point those two were firmly Pixar employees. Guess it was just downtime between shorts and commercials then.
Maybe, don't forget Pixar was still quite a young company at the time, and all they had were those one or two shorts and a commercial or two.
 
I really love psychedelic Western animation, here are two of my faves.
Both directed by Laloux.
 
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I really love psychedelic Western animation, here are two of my faves.
Both directed by Laloux.

I had a friend who was a big fan of the top film, and had seen clips of the latter. (Only thing I remember from him showing it to me was the - as I put it - "space pimp" music.)

Now, I actually own a copy of the former and nearly got one of the latter - but the guy who sold it to me accidentally broke it and so I never got it.
 
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I really love psychedelic Western animation, here are two of my faves.
Both directed by Laloux.
Always amuse me he managed to get countries that weren't seen on friendly terms with us Americans to do these films in (North Korea in particular worked on Gandahar).

EDIT: Reminded of one anecdote about the whole experience, those animators in Pyongyang don't get out much, as they found it difficult to animate those naked bodies! It's clear the state-run animation studio doesn't allow them to branch out of the same kiddie propaganda they've been making for the past half century.
 
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Reminded myself of this wonderful gem from the 80's! The guy behind this was so clever, yet he ended up producing preschool crap later on.
 
I just binged watched Star vs. this past week with my SO and I think it's... ok?

I'm not a huge fan of the character design, yeah sure it's supposed to be all bright and sparkly but I think characters' facial features are drawn way too exaggerated, nitpicky I know but it kinda puts me off. Some of the humor surprised me by being pretty raunchy and gross out, there was times I was forgetting it's a Disney cartoon and not a CN one. For a show that seems to pride itself on lolrandum shenanigans the episodes that go really serious and are then never brought up and have any impact ever stick out like a sore thumb (staring hard at the episode of Marco becoming a transdimentional badass adult in a teenagers body).

However I'm genuinely surprised that the characters don't annoy me, particularly Star herself who I thought I was gonna completely despise with all the lolrandum. I'm also thankful that Marco's ethnicity isn't too distastefully shoehorned for representation points (I'm Mexican myself) and is just a character that just so happens to be Mexican rather than a Mexican character.
 
I'm also thankful that Marco's ethnicity isn't too distastefully shoehorned for representation points (I'm Mexican myself) and is just a character that just so happens to be Mexican rather than a Mexican character.

I'll give Marco this: At least he acts like he didn't come out of a show like Maya & Miguel. (Not that that show wasn't a bad show for kids when it came to multiculturalism, but it got dull and a bit obnoxious pretty fast.)
 
I just binged watched Star vs. this past week with my SO and I think it's... ok?

I'm not a huge fan of the character design, yeah sure it's supposed to be all bright and sparkly but I think characters' facial features are drawn way too exaggerated, nitpicky I know but it kinda puts me off. Some of the humor surprised me by being pretty raunchy and gross out, there was times I was forgetting it's a Disney cartoon and not a CN one. For a show that seems to pride itself on lolrandum shenanigans the episodes that go really serious and are then never brought up and have any impact ever stick out like a sore thumb (staring hard at the episode of Marco becoming a transdimentional badass adult in a teenagers body).

However I'm genuinely surprised that the characters don't annoy me, particularly Star herself who I thought I was gonna completely despise with all the lolrandum. I'm also thankful that Marco's ethnicity isn't too distastefully shoehorned for representation points (I'm Mexican myself) and is just a character that just so happens to be Mexican rather than a Mexican character.

I don't even like Star Vs. all that much and this was some damn valid criticism right here. Nicely said.
 
I don't even like Star Vs. all that much and this was some damn valid criticism right here. Nicely said.
It also really suffers from the modern cartoon inability to create a rising conflict without being slowed down with the weight of filler episodes. I swear to god for every one episode of plot three more are fillers that contribute nothing. I get having downtime in your series but it shouldn't be at the cost of plot progression. Another jab at the Marco dimensional centric episode here: why include something heavy then immediately offset it with nonsense in the following episode? Why dedicate an entire episode to it when it won't matter to character/plot development in the long run? It just causes huge tonal dissonance and makes it an even bigger elephant in the room.

I know I shouldn't be analyzing a kids cartoon this much like a sperg but it's annoying from a story writers' perspective.
 
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