Animation in the United States in the television era
Cartoons on TV
Cartoons didn't used to be just for kids. Cartoons in the Golden Age contained topical and often suggestive humor, and as cartoons migrated to television they were still targeted at all age groups. The Flintstones was the first half-hour "sitcom" cartoon (I think), and it like many of its sucessors was originally aired during prime time when the whole family would be watching television.
One of the problems with producing a show like the Flintstones was the extremely labor intensive animation process. While theatrical short subjects were previously produced in six month cycles or longer, network television needed a season of 10-20 half hour episodes each year! This led to a number of shortcut techniques to speed up the production process:
- cels and sequences of cells were reused over and over again -- animators only had to draw a character walking one time
- only portions of a character, such as the mouth or an arm, would be animated on top of a static cell.
- the visual elements were made subsidiary to audio elements, so that verbal humor and voice talent became more important factors for sucess.
Hanna-Barbera was the major pioneer of such low cost production methods. Over time, the lowered production quality of televised cartoons led to atttitudes that "cartoons are for kids", and prime time cartoon fare slowly disappeared.
Commercialization and counterculture, 70's-80's
Heavy Metal, The Smurfs, California Institute of the Arts
- Animation
- Animation History Part 1: The Golden Age
- Animation History Part 2: The TV Era
- Animation History Part 3: The Renaissance