Topic: Horrible Round Eye Animation (Read 60364 times)

Thad · « **Reply #420 on:** September 29, 2012, 05:40:50 PM »

Good AV club interview with the showrunners of American Dad.

And I learned that Seth MacFarlane is not one of the showrunners and has not been since very early. Which could explain why it got so damn much better than any of his other shows.

It really is funny to look back at the first season and how many of the core concepts just got thrown out the window to the betterment of the show: Stan and Hayley bickering about politics and Roger never leaving the house, for starters.

Also apparently the show's got mostly-new writers at this point, so...new blood could be a good thing, or it could be like it's been for Simpsons.

(The interview also mentions there's a 20-episode backlog; I can't tell from context whether that's the "season 8" that's starting tomorrow and whether it's where the writers are 70% new, or whether we're 20 episodes away from the new team.)

patito · « **Reply #421 on:** September 29, 2012, 06:48:03 PM »

Quote

MB: The first thing we did was, we stayed away from flashbacks. That was like the No. 1 mandate: no flashbacks. I mean, if you have to do a flashback, it’s got to be a really good one, and we can’t do it more than once in an episode. That was the main thing.

MW: And actually to your credit, Mike, you thought in the beginning when we were beating this out with Seth [MacFarlane] that we should do less of that, and Seth and even I were like, “Oh, but that’s kind of the thing that is Seth,” and so forth. At the time, though, Family Guy was not coming back, so we thought maybe that’s okay. But the moment that Family Guy came back, we were like “No, we can’t do that.” So we just focused on stories and characters.

That pretty much sums it up, since I think that's entirely the worst part of family guy.

Büge · « **Reply #422 on:** September 29, 2012, 06:54:30 PM »

I think the flashbacks are just a symptom of laziness from the writers.

patito · « **Reply #423 on:** September 29, 2012, 07:01:04 PM »

It's not even necessarily that. They just break the flow of the show I think. Like, Robot Chicken is sort of based around the family guy flashback formula, but the fact that they can just do any random skit at any moment makes it work.

Brentai · « **Reply #424 on:** September 29, 2012, 08:23:24 PM »

The flashbacks are just kind of a part of Family Guy, basically. They don't belong and, for the most part, don't show up in any other shows (Robot Chicken is sketch comedy already, not sketch comedy injected into a sitcom).

patito · « **Reply #425 on:** September 29, 2012, 08:36:55 PM »

Yeah, I suppose sketch comedy is its own thing.

Thad · « **Reply #426 on:** September 29, 2012, 09:10:42 PM »

Thing is, though, Arrested Development relies pretty heavily on cutaway flashback gags and always makes them feel organic. The thing about Family Guy's cutaway jokes is that they're non sequiturs. Arrested Development uses flashbacks to support what's going on in the present; Family Guy uses them to distract from it.

Course, AD also violates the fuck out of one of the cardinal rules of TV by having constant narration and somehow manages to make THAT an integral part of the show's comedy and charm. On the whole I'd say it's a show that gives great examples of stuff that's not supposed to work but totally can in the right hands.

Brentai · « **Reply #427 on:** September 29, 2012, 10:38:16 PM »

I'm not saying I particularly like Family Guy's conceit, just that it is what it is. Family Guy would be vastly improved without them... but then it wouldn't be Family Guy. It'd be like removing that dumbass talking dog from Scooby Doo.

Classic · « **Reply #428 on:** September 29, 2012, 11:05:18 PM »

There's such a thing as relying too heavily on a core concept, though.
We have Scrappy Doo.

Büge · « **Reply #429 on:** September 30, 2012, 05:17:32 AM »

And Scooby Doo's inbred hillbilly cousin.

Mongrel · « **Reply #430 on:** September 30, 2012, 06:36:18 AM »

Oh shit yeah, they grey one with the straw hat (what was his name?).

Like "talking dog" was not good enough, they they upped the stakes with "talking dog who also smokes a corncob pipe".

Cthulhu-chan · « **Reply #431 on:** September 30, 2012, 07:16:27 AM »

There's a whole Doo family, and if I recall, they're mostly hillbillies.

Mongrel · « **Reply #432 on:** September 30, 2012, 07:42:08 AM »

Don't step in the...

Mongrel · « **Reply #433 on:** September 30, 2012, 07:43:41 AM »

Though to be fair I adored the ever-loving shit out of Scooby Doo when I was a kid and watched every bit of it that ever came on TV. Even the ridiculous made-for-TV movies where it was basically nothing but Shaggy and Scooby chasing the "ghost" of a confederate general around a derelict riverboat in a bayou for an hour.

Royal☭ · « **Reply #434 on:** September 30, 2012, 10:20:51 AM »

The original Scooby Doo was also kind of goofy, and one mostly ever watched it for the zany 70's kitsch factor. Although Mystery Incorporated has taken the concept and really run with it, keeping the formula mostly intact while also fleshing out the characters of the teens (in that they actually have character, now) and giving them overarching storylines. It's pretty good!

Zach · « **Reply #435 on:** September 30, 2012, 05:18:46 PM »

Scooby Dum.

Büge · « **Reply #436 on:** October 26, 2012, 07:41:20 AM »

Quote from: http://www.wired.com/underwire/2012/10/hotel-transylvania-genndy-tartakovsky/2/

Wired: It’s safe to say you’re out of it now. But let’s go back to the massively underrated Titan. What the hell happened?

Tartakovsky: Cartoon Network bought into the show for one reason, and when they got it, their mind changed on what they wanted the show to be. I sold it as an action show combined with a John Hughes comedy. Teenage issues and characters with amazing action, and that’s what they bought. But as we started making it, they were making Ben 10 and Generator Rex, and they wanted it to be that. And there was no way I was going to make that type of show. So they didn’t really push or support the show, we didn’t get a toy license, and that was it. It didn’t get numbers because they didn’t promote it the right way, and we didn’t get the audience that we really needed.

:I

Disposable Ninja · « **Reply #437 on:** October 29, 2012, 10:54:59 AM »

ASK AXE COP | HALLOWEEN | ADHD

DestyNova · « **Reply #438 on:** October 29, 2012, 02:40:24 PM »

Scooby Doo was also great for stuff like the Harlem Globetrotters where they did stuff like Shaggy and Scooby trolling the trotters by using their own stunts against them.

Thad · « **Reply #439 on:** October 29, 2012, 10:00:11 PM »

Yeah, I dig old Scooby-Doo (pre-Scrappy) just fine. Yes, it's formulaic as fuck, and yes, putting a laugh track on a goddamn cartoon ranks in the top ten worst ideas in the history of Scooby-Doo, but it's a fun show that found its niche and captured its zeitgeist -- which isn't as easy to do as it looks (as pointed out in the episode of the current series where Scooby teams up with all the also-ran Hanna-Barbera Four Kids and a Mascot Mystery-Solver Teams).

Plus if you want to look for any philosophical underpinnings, it's a pleasingly subversive bit of humanist propaganda -- there's no such thing as ghosts, the villains are always adults who lie to children, and the skeptic solves the mystery while her friends are unable to overcome their fear and think rationally. (Sims expounded on this at some length.)

And yeah, I think it's perfectly reasonable to say that Mystery Inc improves on the original in nearly every way, but it's also the apotheosis of forty years' worth of nostalgia, navel-gazing, and cultural analysis. Plus a shitload of great examples of What Not to Do.

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Author Topic: Horrible Round Eye Animation (Read 60364 times)