July 23, 2022 • 37 mins
Slide whistle falls off of cliffs, and twinkle toes powering Stone Age cars were just a few of the sound effects that made Saturday morning cartoons popular with Blind and Low Vision kids in the days before Audio Description. Today, Christine and JJ aim to fill in some visual gaps by describing the look of classic cartoons, from prehistoric gadget gags in The Flintstones, to cutting edge camera work in Snow White, and the colour palette of The Simpsons. So pour yourself a huge bowl of junky cereal and let's dig in!
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JJ Hunt (00:03):
Talk description to me with Christine Malec and JJ
Hunt.
Christine Malec (00:27):
Hi, I'm Christine Malec.
JJ Hunt (00:28):
And I'm JJ Hunt. This is talk description to me, where
the visuals of current eventsand the world around us get
hashed out in description richconversations.
Christine Malec (00:47):
JJ and I had a first in our voluminous
communications about the podcastin which I had the opportunity
to say pretty pleased. And thatwas in relation to this episode,
we had started with the idea totalk about animation and
animation styles. And I said,Could we pretty please focus on
the Flintstones, and it's just apersonal thing for me that I
(01:12):
grew up with them. I watchedthem a lot. They're sort of also
had iconic everyone have adrink? And, JJ, you asked a
great question, which is Do youthink there's more investment in
the Flintstones within the blindcommunity? And when I thought
about it, I said yes, becauseit's very dialogue driven. But
there's also a really welldeveloped soundscape and so
(01:33):
sounds and activities gets saunafide. And so it's possible to
follow what's going on, even ifyou don't get the details of how
things are done. But of course,I know there's a rich layering
of eccentricity and youprehistoric cave technology
about how things happen. And Ireally wanted to talk about
(01:55):
specifics of things that wewould have missed as blind
people watching the Flintstonesand being entertained but not
necessarily getting the, theeccentric visuals of how stuff
is done. So we're gonna talkstyles, but we're also and we're
gonna you know, cover a lot ofground there but we're gonna
start with the Flintstones justcuz I said pretty sure. Do you
(02:18):
want to start with with style orspecific's JJ?
JJ Hunt (02:21):
Let's get the the basic visuals the visual style of the
Flintstones down so then we canbuild out some of the specifics
from there, that probably makessome sense. So the Flintstones
1960 to 1966 a relatively shortrun, but for the original Sims
Flintstones. But it was the veryfirst big primetime cartoon I
(02:44):
mean, essentially it was asitcom being presented in as a
cartoon which was interestingfrom a storytelling standpoint,
very clear style. So thecharacters are outlined in black
and inked with solid colors.
This by the way is repeated thisformula is repeated very often
in in cartoons because it'shaving very little detail inside
(03:07):
costumes makes it easier toanimate. If you have a lot of
like Louis hatching or a lot ofdetail work in the in the faces
that makes it much moredifficult to replicate over and
over and over again or to changeand shift so this kind of like
you know, black outline withbold colors inside is very
(03:28):
replicable. The men in the inthe Flintstones in general. The
men are very stocky, they haveno necks. And there's this
really distinctive the smilelines kind of under the cheeks
are down around and under whatwould be a chin if they had
chins. They don't their chinsjust disappear straight into the
(03:50):
bodies of their one piece fortunics or whatever. Those are,
they have these like thesecircular areas around their
mouths, which are the stubbleareas. So those areas are a
darker color than the rest oftheir skin tone. Because men of
course they shave and so that'sthey've got this like five
(04:14):
o'clock stubble. It's verydistinctive, actually Homer
Simpson, they they they kind ofborrowed that. From the
Flintstones this idea of thestubble area around the mouth
really very distinctive. TheFlintstones men have very fat
noses, thick arms, thick legs,huge feet and great big toes. So
the men are basically like furcovered sausages with no
(04:39):
shoulders and no necks. They'rereally stout. And their hair is
like a singular piece. So youknow it's got its it it's a set
hair all the hair in theFlintstones is set. It never
moves. There's no like, strandof hair. There's no wiggle of
hair. It's just a block of likeLego hair basically The women on
the other hand, the women in theFlintstones, are basically
(05:02):
corseted. So their torsos aretapered to the waist. And the
wastes are almost the size oftheir necks. So they're really
tapered to a very thin waist.
And then VAVA voom boom, thesebig curvy hips. So it's very
this very hippie, and thenthey're wearing miniskirts. So
(05:25):
the little firm mini skirt thatcomes out around the hips, and
then out from under there,you've got very shapely legs and
dainty feet. And the women havered lips and tiny noses. So the
men are these like bigcharacters big sausage, and the
women are very dainty and verypretty, right.
One of the things that's unusualabout the Flintstones is that
(05:47):
the eyes aren't uniform. So inThe Simpsons, for example, all
of the characters have the samestyle of eyes. South Park very
much the same thing mo for themost part, all of the characters
have the same kind of eyes. Butthat's not the case in the
Flintstones different charactershave their eyes are rendered in
different ways. So for red andBetty have roundish eyes that
(06:11):
are you know, outlined in blackand then there are whites with
little black circles for pupils.
Very classic. Wilma only hasblack dots for eyes. That's it
just black dots for eyes. AndBarney has like has just rings.
There's their hollow rings withlike flesh tone inside like the
color of his skin inside. Sothey're, they're not even solid
(06:35):
black, there's no white inthere. Very, very interesting.
And I should mention in terms ofskin tone, everyone in the
Flintstones and I don't thinkI've ever seen aside from like,
you know, the green what's hisname kazoo? Aside aside from
Green, Kazoo and purple Dino thedinosaur everyone is the Crayola
(06:56):
crayon, quote unquote skincolor, meaning this slightly
pinkish beige color. That's thethat's the uniform skin tone in
the Flintstones. And it's alsointeresting to note that for the
most part, all of the charactersare presented, the default
(07:16):
positioning is this threequarter profile, so not directly
facing us not facing the side,somewhere in between. And so you
can see both eyes at the sametime. And the nose is kind of
you know, being viewed more orless from the side. But that's
the default, you very, veryrarely see a Flintstone
(07:37):
character looking directly atus. Nor do they do they look
straight to the side. That's nothow we're used to seeing these
characters rendered almostalways in the three quarter
profile.
Christine Malec (07:48):
I'm going to totally indulge myself here.
There's a little part in anepisode where Fred has written
some love poetry for Wilma. AndI'm going to quote it: "Your
shell like ears, your daintyhands, your eyes so black like
frying pans."
JJ Hunt (08:07):
Ha ha ha! Just off the top of your head?! You've just
got that --
Christine Malec (08:10):
I got it. I got it in there. I got it in there.
My partner and I quote this lovepoetry to each other now and
then.
JJ Hunt (08:15):
That's so funny. I had some quotes from the from the
Flintstones, I had a roommatewhere we use the there was some
little bird character that waslike a scrub pad or something
like that, that they would useto like wash their car. And the
little bird like these littlecreatures that were used. They
they often had like one liners.
And this little bird that wasbeing used to like wash the car
(08:35):
or something didn't like beingwashed by Barney would prefer to
be washed used by Fred and theboard would say the little ones
got cold hands. And for somereason my roommate and I would
say that constantly. The littleones got cold hands. I don't
know why these funny littleliners from cartoons.
Christine Malec (08:55):
All these one liners. Can we talk about the
household gadgets because thisis where like they never
describe a lot of them becauseit's so dialogue heavy and we
don't know what they are. Butthat's where I think as a blind
person you miss out on some ofthat that fun eccentric stuff
that's so like, technology, butnot
JJ Hunt (09:12):
Yeah, they love those little, you know, hidden things,
little side things. So I justdid a Google image search for
Flintstones gadgets and a wholebunch came up. So there's one
that's a can opener. It's a tinylittle blue like a purpley blue
dinosaur with an overbite. Solike buck teeth like a like a
(09:32):
rabbits buck teeth, and justtall enough so that it can fit
underneath and then you tap thething on the head and did it
choose along the edges of thecans. That's a can opener. Oh,
here's a garbage disposal, whichis a pig like dinosaur hidden in
a crawl space with a with a holein the floor up above. And so
(09:53):
this pig like dinosaur has hismouth wide open. So garbage and
like food scraps. app's soclassic food scraps like bones
that look like femurs withlittle knobbly bits on the end
and and you know, onion droppinginto this hogs mouth and it
looks like there's another holebehind the hog so you can poke
them in the in you can poke himin the backside and that lets
(10:17):
him know to open his mouth. Thelawn mower that's a classic. So
that's like me gonna say like abird like dinosaur sitting on a
platform with wheels it's kindof tied to the platform with his
long neck kind of reaching overthe edge of the platform and
kind of chewing it the chewingit the grass. As you as you push
(10:39):
this little platform along alongthe lawn, oh, here's the
automatic dishwasher, which islike a prehistoric squid.
Sitting at the sink, washingdishes with all the hands. So
the gadgets are almost alwaysanimals dinosaurs that are
turned into some kind of ofcourse, like right at the very
beginning of the show, Fred'slike working at the quarry and
(11:00):
sitting in a little booth thatis strapped on to the back of
what looks like a brontosaurusstyle dinosaur who is picking up
a you know a big boulder in hismouth. That's the classic like
you know, turn if you can turn adinosaur into some kind of
chomping or, or you know, workcreature then that's what you
(11:24):
do. That's that's how theFlintstones roll.
Christine Malec (11:26):
In the intro.
There's something about ribs anda drive thru. Can you take us
through that?
JJ Hunt (11:31):
In the intro, the family pulls up in their car
they pull up to a burger joint,a drive in burger joint and a
waitress who's basically wearingthe same kind of outfit that
that I already described verytapered at the waist, the little
kind of mini skirt that goes outover the over the curve tips.
And she's got a little a jauntylittle cap on the side of her
(11:54):
head kind of like a like a likea bellhop cap. And she comes out
from the restaurant, carrying amassive just what the small tray
with an oversized rack of ribs.
And so this is a huge sea shapedrack of ribs, it's literally as
big as the car, and then setsthis tray on the edge of the
car. So like you would edit oldfashioned that old fashioned
(12:15):
like a 1950s driving, you wouldhook the little tray to the
window, door of the car. So itwould kind of stick out of the
car on the outside. And so shesets this tray on and the car
goes by boom, boom and thenflips over. Because the ribs I
love that you're laughing atthis. It's like such is such an
(12:36):
old timey gag. But it's it'sfun. It's still very fun.
Christine Malec (12:44):
Obviously, animation is something that has
evolved over time. And so whatwere the characters moving? How
were their moving styles in insomething like the Flintstones.
JJ Hunt (12:55):
So the thing with animation is movement is
expensive, right? If it moves,it has to be redrawn. So there
are a couple of ways that that ashow like The Flintstones, which
is on TVs got to be done everysingle week, not being seen in a
movie theater where it might beshown over and over again. But
the idea was it was just goingto be shown on television. So
(13:15):
it's a cheaper medium, you wantto get that done as cheaply as
possible. So there are a coupleof different things you can do
for that, one thing you can dois you can paint the background
separately from the foregroundand characters because the
backgrounds are not going tomove the foreground and
characters are so thebackgrounds in the Flintstones
(13:37):
are they're softer. They've gotthis mottled kind of quality. I
think they might even bewatercolor paintings. They're
permanently motionless. Theynever move. So the ground the
walls, the tree lines,buildings, all of those things
in the background have this likea literally they they look
different they are they looklike watercolor paintings, the
(13:59):
foregrounds things that didmove, they had more. There were
solid, solid colors, people,vehicles, animals contraptions,
because at some point, thosethings would be moving, they
were drawn separately. But theneven within that the movement of
a person, you want the leastamount of the person moving at
any given time, because to havethe whole person moving, you
(14:22):
have to redraw the whole person.
So first of all, one of the waysthat the Flintstones made this
whole process cheaper was tohave the backgrounds repeat. So
the fifth, the Flintstonesbackgrounds are pretty notorious
for this. If Fred and Barney sayare running away from something
or someone they might run past apalm tree and a gray stone
building, and then they're goingto run past the same palm tree
(14:43):
and the same gray stone buildingI've heard and then the same
boundary and over and over andover again. Not only is it
recycled, it's recycledimmediately, like one right
after the other after the other.
And then to make it evencheaper. EIPER only the things
that are moving or gettingredrawn, so when they are
(15:03):
running, their bodies might becompletely still, but their feet
are moving back and forth. Theyare moving very quickly, but the
bodies aren't totally rigid. Sofor example, if a character
raises an arm, only the armmoves, not the torso. So it's
one of the reasons that theycreated the style they did with
(15:24):
the shoulders, arms that arejust basically stuck onto the
sides of the body, there's norounded shoulder, it's really
easy to just have an arm raiseup and down. In some, like in
the earliest Flintstonescartoons, they actually wouldn't
even necessarily get the colormatch perfect, because that the
skin on the face and the legs ispainted separately than the skin
(15:47):
on the arm, because the arm iswhat's moving in this shot, not
the face and the legs. So thearm that's gonna move in the
scene, as this is just aslightly different shade of
beige than the other bits ofskin. Very awkward. So you could
always tell if a character comeson screen, and they've got like
(16:07):
one arm a different color, it'slike, oh, they're gonna be
waving soon, you know. So themovement was interesting. So
yeah, and the other thing aboutthe Flintstones movement, when
characters or vehicles movedreally quickly, there were
action lines added. So thiscomes right from comic books. So
if a character is going to runfrom one place to another, in a
(16:28):
comic book, there are theselittle action lines that go
around the, you know, the, thecurves of the body, so maybe
around the head, or around thefeet, these legs, like almost
like parentheses, littlebrackets, to show that that body
part is in motion. And thenmaybe if they're running really
fast, they're gonna have thesestreaks lines coming out from
behind them with like a littlepuff of smoke or something
(16:49):
that's a very cart that's like,like a comic book thing that is
brought into the Flintstones. Sowhen a car when when they run,
zoom, these little tiny cloudsat the tail of these action
lines would appear and then fadeaway. And then if there was
something really heavy, like ifsomeone dropped a boulder in the
(17:09):
Flintstones, the entire imagewould shake, like, like the
whole screen would shake, kindof like we talked about on Star
Trek, if the if the ship getshit with a with a photon
torpedo, the whole image shakes,it's very much the same. So that
the whole image was shake thesoundscape really did a very
good job of conveying that thosebooms would would be in the
(17:31):
soundtrack. So if you've heardthat, that's those are exactly
the moments that were that kindof thing is happening.
Christine Malec (17:36):
And we are going to talk about other
cartoons but just in case anyonemay not know, whenever they
drove off in their car, I'mright here, right the feet would
stick out from the bottom andrunning to get the car going.
JJ Hunt (17:48):
All vehicles are operated either by an animal or
by feet. And that's right thisso it's the men with the big fat
feet. Baba Baba Baba. And thenyou get the zoom and the zip off
like that. Yeah, but it's alwaysthe feet moving under the car.
That's the big gag.
Christine Malec (18:02):
Classic. So yeah, I could spend you know the
whole next half hour talkingabout the Flintstones but we're
not going to do that. Um, LooneyTunes is also a very popular and
beloved by many I couldn't getinto it because there's not
there's a ton of visuals and nota lot of dialogue driven our
sauna fIying so what happens tothe style and the tropes in
(18:23):
there when when with LooneyTunes.
JJ Hunt (18:25):
SO tyhe Looney Tuines is interesting because it's
actually quite a bit earlierlike the earliest Looney Tunes
is 1930s Again, similar blackoutlines bold. You know inked
colors inside, and there are alot a lot of details in the
clothing and the first so BugsBunny, long, thin rabbit in gray
(18:45):
with a white belly and kind ofyou know white around the mouth.
Big long oval eyes tall ovaleyes and long ears, big feet
oversized hands wearing whitegloves. Why don't know why the
white gloves? Maybe it wasbecause they needed hands on
this rabbit but for some reasonBugs Bunny has white gloves. I
don't know why. Yeah, it's a bitsimilar kind of the outline and
(19:10):
bold colors. But the originalswere created as film shorts, not
for TV, so they're actually veryhigh quality. So the backgrounds
while painted separately, soit's similar to the Flintstones
the backgrounds are paintedseparately, but the backgrounds
in the early Looney Tunescartoons were fairly lifelike
paintings and they hadconsiderable depth. And the
(19:32):
character movement was muchsmoother than the Flintstones
even though the Flintstones wasquite a bit later. And like like
said The Flintstones only an armor the eyes would move in Looney
Tunes, more often the entirebody would move. So you could
you could do more nuanced gagsand more nuanced character
reactions. So like a character'sshoulders could slowly sag or
(19:57):
the entire face would move evenif it can't Character wasn't
talking, if they wanted areaction, they might get an
expression that would slowlycreep onto their face, which is
very different than theFlintstones, which would to make
sure that you, you know, acharacter still stayed alive,
they would blink. That's it,like so it Fred's having an
(20:19):
action moment, and Wilma isacross the room, Wilma might
blink, so those little blackdots blink, but that's it she's
otherwise motionless. Later, inthe later years, when Looney
Tunes moved from film totelevision, it got they needed
to move more quickly, the thingsgot a little cheaper, things
were a little bit more rushed.
So the backgrounds became quitestylized, there was an era in
(20:39):
Looney Tunes, with a backgroundsinstead of being paintings,
lifelike paintings, they'rethese very stylized geometric
shapes and blacks and neutralcolors really stylized. And then
they use more of this limitedanimation style that we've been
talking about, with only themoving parts moving and
(21:01):
everything else beingmotionless. But the difference
was with the Flintstones, theydid that because it was cheap.
And it was just part of what itwas. With Looney Tunes, they
kind of used it for comiceffect. So for example, a bad
guy might have his hat choppedin half with an axe. So someone
takes an axe, you know, whacks abad guy over the head with it,
(21:23):
and then you get a close up ofthe bad guy. And for the most
part, the bad guy is motionless,staring directly at us. But the
hat that's on top of his head,slowly splits into and slides
down off the sides of his headwhile he stares at us
motionless. So from a productionstandpoint, that's cheap,
(21:43):
because only the hat moves, therest of the face stays
motionless. But it'sintentionally rendered the
character staring straight atus, it's done for also for comic
effect. So it's a slightlydifferent approach to this, you
know, to the same kind ofproduction issue. Lots of the
streaking action lines, theseones look like they're rendered
(22:06):
in crayon, so they're not reallysolid block lines. They're a
little bit more dappled andpuffs of smoke cloud trails, all
that stuff. And what the you'reright, like not as much
necessarily in some of them veryheavy in dialogue, but in some
of the Looney Tunes stuff, notat all. Instead, it was about
the orchestral soundtrack. Andthis orchestral soundtrack could
(22:28):
convey an awful lot. But youstill, unless you got some bit
of story being expressed, itdoesn't really work out you
still you need something youneed, you need something to hang
your head on. The orchestralsoundtrack isn't quite enough.
Christine Malec (22:47):
Disney is sort of the you know the the mega
animating production place. Andso what did Disney do with some
of some of these techniques.
JJ Hunt (22:57):
So it's interesting, Disney in what is now considered
the golden era, Walt Disneyreally wanted to turn the studio
from a place that made cartoonsto a place that made art films
like actual proper films thatjust that were animated. So 1937
to 1942 is considered the goldenera. That's when Disney Studios
(23:20):
put out Snow White, Pinocchio,Fantasia, Dumbo and Bambi. And
these really are the firstanimated films, they are pieces
of cinema, and they're reallyvery cinematic in scope and in
presentation. First of all, theanimation style is utterly
fluid. They filmed scenes usingreal actors, and then drew them
(23:46):
kind of frame by frame so thatthey so that the movements of
the animated characters mimickedexactly the movements of real
people. So the movements are alittle bit slower than in real
life more a little bit moredeliberate, but they're
incredibly lifelike again 1937This is very, very early an
(24:06):
example of how lifelike thisthis becomes is when Prince
Charming for example, leans downto kiss Snow White as she
sleeps, a lock of his hair slipsand brushes against her
forehead. Now contrast that tothe Fred Flintstone bit where
he's got that Lego hair. It'sjust it's it's just a completely
(24:27):
different thing right? Thebackgrounds in the in these
golden era Disney Pictures arefully rendered painting so
again, Looney Tunes went furtherthan the Flintstones the golden
era of Disney, the some of thebackground paintings or works of
art in their own right you canyou can buy them online or
beautiful paintings. And Disneyin this era was also the first
(24:51):
to use. I think it's called amulti plane camera. So the idea
is the background, theforeground and the character
could be completely separate.
Edited and filmed at the sametime. And what that does is it
gives you a fully threedimensional look because you can
move the background, you canmove the middle ground, you can
move the characters in theforeground, and you can zoom in,
(25:12):
you can pan across a scene.
These are things you could notdo in in animation before this
time, it just wouldn't work. Imean, it's incredibly cinematic
to be able to do this. This isthe kind of thing you could only
do with a live camera not indrawings, it just hadn't been
(25:34):
done before. We could do a wholeepisode on Fantasia alone. It's
this avant garde, you know,animated film, some people love
it, some people hate it, butit's undeniably astonishing as a
piece of art to be made in Ithink was like 1939, or
something like that. It's justan incredible, incredible work.
Christine Malec (25:56):
Speaking of polarizing, I think it's not an
outrage, to categorize theSimpsons on South Park together
as possibly having the same fanbase, they share a certain
sardonic, you know, approach tothe world. But I know people who
won't watch South Park becauseof the animation style alone. So
can we break that down?
JJ Hunt (26:16):
Yeah, they're very different. So South Park, is
really unique. I don't thinkI've seen anything else that's
done quite in the same way. It'sSouth Park in animation is made
to look like stop motionanimation, with paper cutouts.
So it's like, you know, if youtook a, you know, sheet, a
bristol board or whatever, andyou cut out a circle, and then
(26:38):
you cut out using a differentcolor, some legs, and then you
cut out a different color andput a head on it, you glued it
all together, boom, there's yourcharacter, extremely simple,
lots of simple shapes. Very,very flat. And the characters
are primarily presented from oneangle, like we talked about that
three quarter profile for thefor the Flintstones, this is
(27:00):
even more rigid, it's almostalways face on. So all the
characters, even if they're, ifthey're, like, if they're having
a group conversation, they willoften just be all standing in a
row. Oh, facing us. Yeah, it'svery, very, very flat. And the
actions are intentionally jerkybecause they just, it's like
these little cutouts that aremoving around, so you don't get
(27:23):
smooth, fluid motion, you getlike that, that, that that that,
you know, arms waving up anddown. Very, very, very simple
animation. And if you know, thefolks who are not watching are
Canadian, that makes even moresense, because it should be
noted that Canadians arerendered even more crudely than
the other characters within theshow. Yeah, there's constant
(27:45):
jokes about Canadians, but thereare it's true, it's constant.
And so the way the visuals tothe way that represent Canadians
differently in the visuals, somost of the characters in South
Park have simple facial featureslike white circles with black
dots for you know, pupils,that's very classic straight
lines for eyebrows and mouthsthat are animated within the
(28:08):
confines of this round heads. Sowhen the character talks, the
mouth might move, and theeyebrows will move up and down,
depending on the expression, youknow, whatever. So it's simple,
but they're fully rendered.
Canadians. No, no, Canadiansdon't even get mouths. Our heads
are these ovals. And they'resplit in half. There's a top
half and a bottom half. And, andour eyes are just black dots.
(28:30):
We're very, very simplecreatures, you see.
Christine Malec (28:35):
Ha! We're a simple folk.
JJ Hunt (28:36):
When a Canadian on South Park talks. The top half
of the head just bounces andtips back and forth. And that's
what makes us talk we are very,very, very simple. Yeah.
Christine Malec (28:51):
Oh my gosh! Ok, that's absolutely new to me.
Terrance and Philip, I'll neversee them the same again. So what
about the Simpsons? What's its style?
JJ Hunt (29:00):
So the Simpsons is interesting. The Simpsons is
kind of like, I don't know, Ithink of it as being one of the
most cartoony cartoons outthere, because it's pulling on a
lot of these references thatwe've already talked about. So
again, a black outlines, andthen very bright bold colors
inside in fact, like primarycolors, so they're like the skin
(29:22):
tone. The default skin tone isthis yellow color. Bart's shirt
and Lisas dress are bright redmarches, hair and homers pants
are blue, primary colors, very,very bright black outlines. And
again this stylized look thisvery clear look. So big round
(29:43):
eyes with black dots for pupils.
The noses are these littleNubbins like stubby little
fingertips all the noses arelike that. The hair is
interesting. So the hair in TheSimpsons is sometimes an
extension of the head. So Lisa'shead and baby man I guess head,
there are these like theiryellow faces and then the tops
of their heads are spiked like akid's drawing of the sun,
(30:07):
there's no separate hair on topof their head is their hair.
It's very strange. Bartsimilarly has like a spiky flat
top. It doesn't, it's notseparate. And that's not the
case for all the characters.
Some of the characters havehair. Marge, of course, has this
tower of blue hair. It's like abig, blue phallic shrubbery
(30:30):
that's on top of her head. AndHomer has this zigzagging
straight line around the sidesof his head, and two strands of
hair as a comb over on top,very, very simple, very clean,
and they all have overbites.
That's the that's the classicSimpson face, so strong on the
upper lip, and then very weak onthe chin area. And then yeah,
(30:51):
some of the tropes andtechniques that were used in, in
the Flintstones get pulled intothe Simpsons. So the backgrounds
right there, they are renderedseparately. The difference here
is that the backgrounds in thein the foreground and the
characters, they're all renderedwith the same color. So they're
all bold, they're all clean, theblack, outline, bold colors, is,
(31:14):
you know, that is throughoutvisually, so visually, it's
seamless. And the backgroundsare repeated, like they have
been done in all those previousother shows that we've talked
about. But they're not recycledone after the other after the
other, they you'll only evernotice a repeating background in
The Simpsons, if they want youto notice if they're making a
(31:36):
joke about it, then they'll dothat intentionally. But
otherwise, they don't quite dothat. They also do create a
depth of field, they use someshadows in The Simpsons, but
really, that's that's so theworld looks convincing. As a
real world. It does have thatkind of look to it. But it is
(31:56):
still a very cartoony cartoon.
Christine Malec (32:03):
And I wonder about what's going on in
animation. Currently, and I'mnot following it particularly,
but I know for example, there'sa Star Trek animated series
called lower decks. And so arethey following any new
approaches to animation styling?
JJ Hunt (32:19):
Lower Decks is an interesting one. So it's, in
some ways, it's quite a bit likeThe Simpsons they do. They do
have 3d worlds, right. Sothey're, you know, you have a
foreground, a background and amiddle ground and there is a
little bit of shading in thecharacters. Not a ton. Though,
it's a little bit closer, thecharacter design is a little bit
(32:43):
closer to what I've heard calledeither like the modern style, or
the 2d flat, or 2d flash likestyle. This is a lot of the
stuff that you'll find on theCartoon Network. Now things like
Powerpuff Girls, Dexter'sLaboratory, Teen Titans Go, it's
a little bit younger. It's thisvery flat graphic style. So in
(33:03):
the extreme versions of it,there are no shadows, very heavy
black outlines, very boldcolors, and a very clean digital
look with limited threedimensionality within the
characters. So even though thecharacters are in three
dimensional worlds, sometimesthe characters themselves look
very flat. So something likelower decks has uses elements of
(33:26):
this, this flat, very digitalrendering, but then something
like Powerpuff Girls can bepretty harsh, like it's really
extremely flat. Sometimes thebackgrounds are nothing but
stylized shapes and colors, verythinly rendered sometimes very
muted. Sometimes, the movementin these tends to be quite fast,
(33:47):
it's abrupt. It's a little bitchoppy. And you can hear that in
the pacing as well. Like the waythe movement goes away
characters are zip, zip, zipfrom here to there. And it's, it
looks like Flash animation. It'snot flash animation, but it
looks like it looks like it'srendered very quickly, very,
(34:07):
it's very, very digital. Thelines are too clean to be drawn
by hand. No one is thinking thisis drawn by hand. The corners
are too sharp, the curves aretoo smooth. The Simpsons by now,
of course, is digitally renderedas well, but it's evolved from a
hand drawn style. So it stillretains a little bit of that.
(34:28):
But this modern 2d flat, it isentirely digital proud of it. It
looks like it was done on atablet, as opposed to done in a
production studio and that's intentional.
Christine Malec (34:40):
I have one opinion question. Don't think
too hard if it doesn't comeeasily, but what's the most
realistic animation you've everseen?
JJ Hunt (34:49):
There have been there are a couple of different ways
to create realistic sometimesit's about realistic movement.
In the case of realisticmovement, the Disney approach
where you're actually drawingover filmed footage, the
movement looks very, veryrealistic. Then there's the kind
of the computer the CGIrealistic. And then you get into
(35:12):
the uncanny valley thing whereif you get too close to reality,
but you can't get it perfect, itlooks really bad. So even though
it's technically closer to beingreal, it looks far worse. I
think for the most realisticanimation, you'd have to go to
video games. And there are someincredible animations in that
(35:34):
where I have had the experienceof watching, you know, seeing a
YouTube clip, and it's a big,you know, action sequence or
something like that. And I'll be20 or 30 seconds in before I
realized, oh, wait a minute.
This is an animated video game.
This isn't like a fight scenefrom a film. Oh, yeah. It's not
(35:55):
until you get close up and youget to look at that character's
face. Because, yeah, you know,the the expression isn't exactly
right. The sweat down the sideof the face isn't perfect. But
that's kind of that's the CGIkind of side of things. Yeah,
it's it. realism and animation.
You only want to get so closeand then you want to have to
(36:18):
kind of dial it back. Otherwise,it looks too creepy.
Christine Malec (36:25):
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Talk description to me with Christine Malec and JJ
Hunt.
Christine Malec (00:27):
Hi, I'm Christine Malec.
JJ Hunt (00:28):
And I'm JJ Hunt. This is talk description to me, where
the visuals of current eventsand the world around us get
hashed out in description richconversations.
Christine Malec (00:47):
JJ and I had a first in our voluminous
communications about the podcastin which I had the opportunity
to say pretty pleased. And thatwas in relation to this episode,
we had started with the idea totalk about animation and
animation styles. And I said,Could we pretty please focus on
the Flintstones, and it's just apersonal thing for me that I
(01:12):
grew up with them. I watchedthem a lot. They're sort of also
had iconic everyone have adrink? And, JJ, you asked a
great question, which is Do youthink there's more investment in
the Flintstones within the blindcommunity? And when I thought
about it, I said yes, becauseit's very dialogue driven. But
there's also a really welldeveloped soundscape and so
(01:33):
sounds and activities gets saunafide. And so it's possible to
follow what's going on, even ifyou don't get the details of how
things are done. But of course,I know there's a rich layering
of eccentricity and youprehistoric cave technology
about how things happen. And Ireally wanted to talk about
(01:55):
specifics of things that wewould have missed as blind
people watching the Flintstonesand being entertained but not
necessarily getting the, theeccentric visuals of how stuff
is done. So we're gonna talkstyles, but we're also and we're
gonna you know, cover a lot ofground there but we're gonna
start with the Flintstones justcuz I said pretty sure. Do you
(02:18):
want to start with with style orspecific's JJ?
JJ Hunt (02:21):
Let's get the the basic visuals the visual style of the
Flintstones down so then we canbuild out some of the specifics
from there, that probably makessome sense. So the Flintstones
1960 to 1966 a relatively shortrun, but for the original Sims
Flintstones. But it was the veryfirst big primetime cartoon I
(02:44):
mean, essentially it was asitcom being presented in as a
cartoon which was interestingfrom a storytelling standpoint,
very clear style. So thecharacters are outlined in black
and inked with solid colors.
This by the way is repeated thisformula is repeated very often
in in cartoons because it'shaving very little detail inside
(03:07):
costumes makes it easier toanimate. If you have a lot of
like Louis hatching or a lot ofdetail work in the in the faces
that makes it much moredifficult to replicate over and
over and over again or to changeand shift so this kind of like
you know, black outline withbold colors inside is very
(03:28):
replicable. The men in the inthe Flintstones in general. The
men are very stocky, they haveno necks. And there's this
really distinctive the smilelines kind of under the cheeks
are down around and under whatwould be a chin if they had
chins. They don't their chinsjust disappear straight into the
(03:50):
bodies of their one piece fortunics or whatever. Those are,
they have these like thesecircular areas around their
mouths, which are the stubbleareas. So those areas are a
darker color than the rest oftheir skin tone. Because men of
course they shave and so that'sthey've got this like five
(04:14):
o'clock stubble. It's verydistinctive, actually Homer
Simpson, they they they kind ofborrowed that. From the
Flintstones this idea of thestubble area around the mouth
really very distinctive. TheFlintstones men have very fat
noses, thick arms, thick legs,huge feet and great big toes. So
the men are basically like furcovered sausages with no
(04:39):
shoulders and no necks. They'rereally stout. And their hair is
like a singular piece. So youknow it's got its it it's a set
hair all the hair in theFlintstones is set. It never
moves. There's no like, strandof hair. There's no wiggle of
hair. It's just a block of likeLego hair basically The women on
the other hand, the women in theFlintstones, are basically
(05:02):
corseted. So their torsos aretapered to the waist. And the
wastes are almost the size oftheir necks. So they're really
tapered to a very thin waist.
And then VAVA voom boom, thesebig curvy hips. So it's very
this very hippie, and thenthey're wearing miniskirts. So
(05:25):
the little firm mini skirt thatcomes out around the hips, and
then out from under there,you've got very shapely legs and
dainty feet. And the women havered lips and tiny noses. So the
men are these like bigcharacters big sausage, and the
women are very dainty and verypretty, right.
One of the things that's unusualabout the Flintstones is that
(05:47):
the eyes aren't uniform. So inThe Simpsons, for example, all
of the characters have the samestyle of eyes. South Park very
much the same thing mo for themost part, all of the characters
have the same kind of eyes. Butthat's not the case in the
Flintstones different charactershave their eyes are rendered in
different ways. So for red andBetty have roundish eyes that
(06:11):
are you know, outlined in blackand then there are whites with
little black circles for pupils.
Very classic. Wilma only hasblack dots for eyes. That's it
just black dots for eyes. AndBarney has like has just rings.
There's their hollow rings withlike flesh tone inside like the
color of his skin inside. Sothey're, they're not even solid
(06:35):
black, there's no white inthere. Very, very interesting.
And I should mention in terms ofskin tone, everyone in the
Flintstones and I don't thinkI've ever seen aside from like,
you know, the green what's hisname kazoo? Aside aside from
Green, Kazoo and purple Dino thedinosaur everyone is the Crayola
(06:56):
crayon, quote unquote skincolor, meaning this slightly
pinkish beige color. That's thethat's the uniform skin tone in
the Flintstones. And it's alsointeresting to note that for the
most part, all of the charactersare presented, the default
(07:16):
positioning is this threequarter profile, so not directly
facing us not facing the side,somewhere in between. And so you
can see both eyes at the sametime. And the nose is kind of
you know, being viewed more orless from the side. But that's
the default, you very, veryrarely see a Flintstone
(07:37):
character looking directly atus. Nor do they do they look
straight to the side. That's nothow we're used to seeing these
characters rendered almostalways in the three quarter
profile.
Christine Malec (07:48):
I'm going to totally indulge myself here.
There's a little part in anepisode where Fred has written
some love poetry for Wilma. AndI'm going to quote it: "Your
shell like ears, your daintyhands, your eyes so black like
frying pans."
JJ Hunt (08:07):
Ha ha ha! Just off the top of your head?! You've just
got that --
Christine Malec (08:10):
I got it. I got it in there. I got it in there.
My partner and I quote this lovepoetry to each other now and
then.
JJ Hunt (08:15):
That's so funny. I had some quotes from the from the
Flintstones, I had a roommatewhere we use the there was some
little bird character that waslike a scrub pad or something
like that, that they would useto like wash their car. And the
little bird like these littlecreatures that were used. They
they often had like one liners.
And this little bird that wasbeing used to like wash the car
(08:35):
or something didn't like beingwashed by Barney would prefer to
be washed used by Fred and theboard would say the little ones
got cold hands. And for somereason my roommate and I would
say that constantly. The littleones got cold hands. I don't
know why these funny littleliners from cartoons.
Christine Malec (08:55):
All these one liners. Can we talk about the
household gadgets because thisis where like they never
describe a lot of them becauseit's so dialogue heavy and we
don't know what they are. Butthat's where I think as a blind
person you miss out on some ofthat that fun eccentric stuff
that's so like, technology, butnot
JJ Hunt (09:12):
Yeah, they love those little, you know, hidden things,
little side things. So I justdid a Google image search for
Flintstones gadgets and a wholebunch came up. So there's one
that's a can opener. It's a tinylittle blue like a purpley blue
dinosaur with an overbite. Solike buck teeth like a like a
(09:32):
rabbits buck teeth, and justtall enough so that it can fit
underneath and then you tap thething on the head and did it
choose along the edges of thecans. That's a can opener. Oh,
here's a garbage disposal, whichis a pig like dinosaur hidden in
a crawl space with a with a holein the floor up above. And so
(09:53):
this pig like dinosaur has hismouth wide open. So garbage and
like food scraps. app's soclassic food scraps like bones
that look like femurs withlittle knobbly bits on the end
and and you know, onion droppinginto this hogs mouth and it
looks like there's another holebehind the hog so you can poke
them in the in you can poke himin the backside and that lets
(10:17):
him know to open his mouth. Thelawn mower that's a classic. So
that's like me gonna say like abird like dinosaur sitting on a
platform with wheels it's kindof tied to the platform with his
long neck kind of reaching overthe edge of the platform and
kind of chewing it the chewingit the grass. As you as you push
(10:39):
this little platform along alongthe lawn, oh, here's the
automatic dishwasher, which islike a prehistoric squid.
Sitting at the sink, washingdishes with all the hands. So
the gadgets are almost alwaysanimals dinosaurs that are
turned into some kind of ofcourse, like right at the very
beginning of the show, Fred'slike working at the quarry and
(11:00):
sitting in a little booth thatis strapped on to the back of
what looks like a brontosaurusstyle dinosaur who is picking up
a you know a big boulder in hismouth. That's the classic like
you know, turn if you can turn adinosaur into some kind of
chomping or, or you know, workcreature then that's what you
(11:24):
do. That's that's how theFlintstones roll.
Christine Malec (11:26):
In the intro.
There's something about ribs anda drive thru. Can you take us
through that?
JJ Hunt (11:31):
In the intro, the family pulls up in their car
they pull up to a burger joint,a drive in burger joint and a
waitress who's basically wearingthe same kind of outfit that
that I already described verytapered at the waist, the little
kind of mini skirt that goes outover the over the curve tips.
And she's got a little a jauntylittle cap on the side of her
(11:54):
head kind of like a like a likea bellhop cap. And she comes out
from the restaurant, carrying amassive just what the small tray
with an oversized rack of ribs.
And so this is a huge sea shapedrack of ribs, it's literally as
big as the car, and then setsthis tray on the edge of the
car. So like you would edit oldfashioned that old fashioned
(12:15):
like a 1950s driving, you wouldhook the little tray to the
window, door of the car. So itwould kind of stick out of the
car on the outside. And so shesets this tray on and the car
goes by boom, boom and thenflips over. Because the ribs I
love that you're laughing atthis. It's like such is such an
(12:36):
old timey gag. But it's it'sfun. It's still very fun.
Christine Malec (12:44):
Obviously, animation is something that has
evolved over time. And so whatwere the characters moving? How
were their moving styles in insomething like the Flintstones.
JJ Hunt (12:55):
So the thing with animation is movement is
expensive, right? If it moves,it has to be redrawn. So there
are a couple of ways that that ashow like The Flintstones, which
is on TVs got to be done everysingle week, not being seen in a
movie theater where it might beshown over and over again. But
the idea was it was just goingto be shown on television. So
(13:15):
it's a cheaper medium, you wantto get that done as cheaply as
possible. So there are a coupleof different things you can do
for that, one thing you can dois you can paint the background
separately from the foregroundand characters because the
backgrounds are not going tomove the foreground and
characters are so thebackgrounds in the Flintstones
(13:37):
are they're softer. They've gotthis mottled kind of quality. I
think they might even bewatercolor paintings. They're
permanently motionless. Theynever move. So the ground the
walls, the tree lines,buildings, all of those things
in the background have this likea literally they they look
different they are they looklike watercolor paintings, the
(13:59):
foregrounds things that didmove, they had more. There were
solid, solid colors, people,vehicles, animals contraptions,
because at some point, thosethings would be moving, they
were drawn separately. But theneven within that the movement of
a person, you want the leastamount of the person moving at
any given time, because to havethe whole person moving, you
(14:22):
have to redraw the whole person.
So first of all, one of the waysthat the Flintstones made this
whole process cheaper was tohave the backgrounds repeat. So
the fifth, the Flintstonesbackgrounds are pretty notorious
for this. If Fred and Barney sayare running away from something
or someone they might run past apalm tree and a gray stone
building, and then they're goingto run past the same palm tree
(14:43):
and the same gray stone buildingI've heard and then the same
boundary and over and over andover again. Not only is it
recycled, it's recycledimmediately, like one right
after the other after the other.
And then to make it evencheaper. EIPER only the things
that are moving or gettingredrawn, so when they are
(15:03):
running, their bodies might becompletely still, but their feet
are moving back and forth. Theyare moving very quickly, but the
bodies aren't totally rigid. Sofor example, if a character
raises an arm, only the armmoves, not the torso. So it's
one of the reasons that theycreated the style they did with
(15:24):
the shoulders, arms that arejust basically stuck onto the
sides of the body, there's norounded shoulder, it's really
easy to just have an arm raiseup and down. In some, like in
the earliest Flintstonescartoons, they actually wouldn't
even necessarily get the colormatch perfect, because that the
skin on the face and the legs ispainted separately than the skin
(15:47):
on the arm, because the arm iswhat's moving in this shot, not
the face and the legs. So thearm that's gonna move in the
scene, as this is just aslightly different shade of
beige than the other bits ofskin. Very awkward. So you could
always tell if a character comeson screen, and they've got like
(16:07):
one arm a different color, it'slike, oh, they're gonna be
waving soon, you know. So themovement was interesting. So
yeah, and the other thing aboutthe Flintstones movement, when
characters or vehicles movedreally quickly, there were
action lines added. So thiscomes right from comic books. So
if a character is going to runfrom one place to another, in a
(16:28):
comic book, there are theselittle action lines that go
around the, you know, the, thecurves of the body, so maybe
around the head, or around thefeet, these legs, like almost
like parentheses, littlebrackets, to show that that body
part is in motion. And thenmaybe if they're running really
fast, they're gonna have thesestreaks lines coming out from
behind them with like a littlepuff of smoke or something
(16:49):
that's a very cart that's like,like a comic book thing that is
brought into the Flintstones. Sowhen a car when when they run,
zoom, these little tiny cloudsat the tail of these action
lines would appear and then fadeaway. And then if there was
something really heavy, like ifsomeone dropped a boulder in the
(17:09):
Flintstones, the entire imagewould shake, like, like the
whole screen would shake, kindof like we talked about on Star
Trek, if the if the ship getshit with a with a photon
torpedo, the whole image shakes,it's very much the same. So that
the whole image was shake thesoundscape really did a very
good job of conveying that thosebooms would would be in the
(17:31):
soundtrack. So if you've heardthat, that's those are exactly
the moments that were that kindof thing is happening.
Christine Malec (17:36):
And we are going to talk about other
cartoons but just in case anyonemay not know, whenever they
drove off in their car, I'mright here, right the feet would
stick out from the bottom andrunning to get the car going.
JJ Hunt (17:48):
All vehicles are operated either by an animal or
by feet. And that's right thisso it's the men with the big fat
feet. Baba Baba Baba. And thenyou get the zoom and the zip off
like that. Yeah, but it's alwaysthe feet moving under the car.
That's the big gag.
Christine Malec (18:02):
Classic. So yeah, I could spend you know the
whole next half hour talkingabout the Flintstones but we're
not going to do that. Um, LooneyTunes is also a very popular and
beloved by many I couldn't getinto it because there's not
there's a ton of visuals and nota lot of dialogue driven our
sauna fIying so what happens tothe style and the tropes in
(18:23):
there when when with LooneyTunes.
JJ Hunt (18:25):
SO tyhe Looney Tuines is interesting because it's
actually quite a bit earlierlike the earliest Looney Tunes
is 1930s Again, similar blackoutlines bold. You know inked
colors inside, and there are alot a lot of details in the
clothing and the first so BugsBunny, long, thin rabbit in gray
(18:45):
with a white belly and kind ofyou know white around the mouth.
Big long oval eyes tall ovaleyes and long ears, big feet
oversized hands wearing whitegloves. Why don't know why the
white gloves? Maybe it wasbecause they needed hands on
this rabbit but for some reasonBugs Bunny has white gloves. I
don't know why. Yeah, it's a bitsimilar kind of the outline and
(19:10):
bold colors. But the originalswere created as film shorts, not
for TV, so they're actually veryhigh quality. So the backgrounds
while painted separately, soit's similar to the Flintstones
the backgrounds are paintedseparately, but the backgrounds
in the early Looney Tunescartoons were fairly lifelike
paintings and they hadconsiderable depth. And the
(19:32):
character movement was muchsmoother than the Flintstones
even though the Flintstones wasquite a bit later. And like like
said The Flintstones only an armor the eyes would move in Looney
Tunes, more often the entirebody would move. So you could
you could do more nuanced gagsand more nuanced character
reactions. So like a character'sshoulders could slowly sag or
(19:57):
the entire face would move evenif it can't Character wasn't
talking, if they wanted areaction, they might get an
expression that would slowlycreep onto their face, which is
very different than theFlintstones, which would to make
sure that you, you know, acharacter still stayed alive,
they would blink. That's it,like so it Fred's having an
(20:19):
action moment, and Wilma isacross the room, Wilma might
blink, so those little blackdots blink, but that's it she's
otherwise motionless. Later, inthe later years, when Looney
Tunes moved from film totelevision, it got they needed
to move more quickly, the thingsgot a little cheaper, things
were a little bit more rushed.
So the backgrounds became quitestylized, there was an era in
(20:39):
Looney Tunes, with a backgroundsinstead of being paintings,
lifelike paintings, they'rethese very stylized geometric
shapes and blacks and neutralcolors really stylized. And then
they use more of this limitedanimation style that we've been
talking about, with only themoving parts moving and
(21:01):
everything else beingmotionless. But the difference
was with the Flintstones, theydid that because it was cheap.
And it was just part of what itwas. With Looney Tunes, they
kind of used it for comiceffect. So for example, a bad
guy might have his hat choppedin half with an axe. So someone
takes an axe, you know, whacks abad guy over the head with it,
(21:23):
and then you get a close up ofthe bad guy. And for the most
part, the bad guy is motionless,staring directly at us. But the
hat that's on top of his head,slowly splits into and slides
down off the sides of his headwhile he stares at us
motionless. So from a productionstandpoint, that's cheap,
(21:43):
because only the hat moves, therest of the face stays
motionless. But it'sintentionally rendered the
character staring straight atus, it's done for also for comic
effect. So it's a slightlydifferent approach to this, you
know, to the same kind ofproduction issue. Lots of the
streaking action lines, theseones look like they're rendered
(22:06):
in crayon, so they're not reallysolid block lines. They're a
little bit more dappled andpuffs of smoke cloud trails, all
that stuff. And what the you'reright, like not as much
necessarily in some of them veryheavy in dialogue, but in some
of the Looney Tunes stuff, notat all. Instead, it was about
the orchestral soundtrack. Andthis orchestral soundtrack could
(22:28):
convey an awful lot. But youstill, unless you got some bit
of story being expressed, itdoesn't really work out you
still you need something youneed, you need something to hang
your head on. The orchestralsoundtrack isn't quite enough.
Christine Malec (22:47):
Disney is sort of the you know the the mega
animating production place. Andso what did Disney do with some
of some of these techniques.
JJ Hunt (22:57):
So it's interesting, Disney in what is now considered
the golden era, Walt Disneyreally wanted to turn the studio
from a place that made cartoonsto a place that made art films
like actual proper films thatjust that were animated. So 1937
to 1942 is considered the goldenera. That's when Disney Studios
(23:20):
put out Snow White, Pinocchio,Fantasia, Dumbo and Bambi. And
these really are the firstanimated films, they are pieces
of cinema, and they're reallyvery cinematic in scope and in
presentation. First of all, theanimation style is utterly
fluid. They filmed scenes usingreal actors, and then drew them
(23:46):
kind of frame by frame so thatthey so that the movements of
the animated characters mimickedexactly the movements of real
people. So the movements are alittle bit slower than in real
life more a little bit moredeliberate, but they're
incredibly lifelike again 1937This is very, very early an
(24:06):
example of how lifelike thisthis becomes is when Prince
Charming for example, leans downto kiss Snow White as she
sleeps, a lock of his hair slipsand brushes against her
forehead. Now contrast that tothe Fred Flintstone bit where
he's got that Lego hair. It'sjust it's it's just a completely
(24:27):
different thing right? Thebackgrounds in the in these
golden era Disney Pictures arefully rendered painting so
again, Looney Tunes went furtherthan the Flintstones the golden
era of Disney, the some of thebackground paintings or works of
art in their own right you canyou can buy them online or
beautiful paintings. And Disneyin this era was also the first
(24:51):
to use. I think it's called amulti plane camera. So the idea
is the background, theforeground and the character
could be completely separate.
Edited and filmed at the sametime. And what that does is it
gives you a fully threedimensional look because you can
move the background, you canmove the middle ground, you can
move the characters in theforeground, and you can zoom in,
(25:12):
you can pan across a scene.
These are things you could notdo in in animation before this
time, it just wouldn't work. Imean, it's incredibly cinematic
to be able to do this. This isthe kind of thing you could only
do with a live camera not indrawings, it just hadn't been
(25:34):
done before. We could do a wholeepisode on Fantasia alone. It's
this avant garde, you know,animated film, some people love
it, some people hate it, butit's undeniably astonishing as a
piece of art to be made in Ithink was like 1939, or
something like that. It's justan incredible, incredible work.
Christine Malec (25:56):
Speaking of polarizing, I think it's not an
outrage, to categorize theSimpsons on South Park together
as possibly having the same fanbase, they share a certain
sardonic, you know, approach tothe world. But I know people who
won't watch South Park becauseof the animation style alone. So
can we break that down?
JJ Hunt (26:16):
Yeah, they're very different. So South Park, is
really unique. I don't thinkI've seen anything else that's
done quite in the same way. It'sSouth Park in animation is made
to look like stop motionanimation, with paper cutouts.
So it's like, you know, if youtook a, you know, sheet, a
bristol board or whatever, andyou cut out a circle, and then
(26:38):
you cut out using a differentcolor, some legs, and then you
cut out a different color andput a head on it, you glued it
all together, boom, there's yourcharacter, extremely simple,
lots of simple shapes. Very,very flat. And the characters
are primarily presented from oneangle, like we talked about that
three quarter profile for thefor the Flintstones, this is
(27:00):
even more rigid, it's almostalways face on. So all the
characters, even if they're, ifthey're, like, if they're having
a group conversation, they willoften just be all standing in a
row. Oh, facing us. Yeah, it'svery, very, very flat. And the
actions are intentionally jerkybecause they just, it's like
these little cutouts that aremoving around, so you don't get
(27:23):
smooth, fluid motion, you getlike that, that, that that that,
you know, arms waving up anddown. Very, very, very simple
animation. And if you know, thefolks who are not watching are
Canadian, that makes even moresense, because it should be
noted that Canadians arerendered even more crudely than
the other characters within theshow. Yeah, there's constant
(27:45):
jokes about Canadians, but thereare it's true, it's constant.
And so the way the visuals tothe way that represent Canadians
differently in the visuals, somost of the characters in South
Park have simple facial featureslike white circles with black
dots for you know, pupils,that's very classic straight
lines for eyebrows and mouthsthat are animated within the
(28:08):
confines of this round heads. Sowhen the character talks, the
mouth might move, and theeyebrows will move up and down,
depending on the expression, youknow, whatever. So it's simple,
but they're fully rendered.
Canadians. No, no, Canadiansdon't even get mouths. Our heads
are these ovals. And they'resplit in half. There's a top
half and a bottom half. And, andour eyes are just black dots.
(28:30):
We're very, very simplecreatures, you see.
Christine Malec (28:35):
Ha! We're a simple folk.
JJ Hunt (28:36):
When a Canadian on South Park talks. The top half
of the head just bounces andtips back and forth. And that's
what makes us talk we are very,very, very simple. Yeah.
Christine Malec (28:51):
Oh my gosh! Ok, that's absolutely new to me.
Terrance and Philip, I'll neversee them the same again. So what
about the Simpsons? What's its style?
JJ Hunt (29:00):
So the Simpsons is interesting. The Simpsons is
kind of like, I don't know, Ithink of it as being one of the
most cartoony cartoons outthere, because it's pulling on a
lot of these references thatwe've already talked about. So
again, a black outlines, andthen very bright bold colors
inside in fact, like primarycolors, so they're like the skin
(29:22):
tone. The default skin tone isthis yellow color. Bart's shirt
and Lisas dress are bright redmarches, hair and homers pants
are blue, primary colors, very,very bright black outlines. And
again this stylized look thisvery clear look. So big round
(29:43):
eyes with black dots for pupils.
The noses are these littleNubbins like stubby little
fingertips all the noses arelike that. The hair is
interesting. So the hair in TheSimpsons is sometimes an
extension of the head. So Lisa'shead and baby man I guess head,
there are these like theiryellow faces and then the tops
of their heads are spiked like akid's drawing of the sun,
(30:07):
there's no separate hair on topof their head is their hair.
It's very strange. Bartsimilarly has like a spiky flat
top. It doesn't, it's notseparate. And that's not the
case for all the characters.
Some of the characters havehair. Marge, of course, has this
tower of blue hair. It's like abig, blue phallic shrubbery
(30:30):
that's on top of her head. AndHomer has this zigzagging
straight line around the sidesof his head, and two strands of
hair as a comb over on top,very, very simple, very clean,
and they all have overbites.
That's the that's the classicSimpson face, so strong on the
upper lip, and then very weak onthe chin area. And then yeah,
(30:51):
some of the tropes andtechniques that were used in, in
the Flintstones get pulled intothe Simpsons. So the backgrounds
right there, they are renderedseparately. The difference here
is that the backgrounds in thein the foreground and the
characters, they're all renderedwith the same color. So they're
all bold, they're all clean, theblack, outline, bold colors, is,
(31:14):
you know, that is throughoutvisually, so visually, it's
seamless. And the backgroundsare repeated, like they have
been done in all those previousother shows that we've talked
about. But they're not recycledone after the other after the
other, they you'll only evernotice a repeating background in
The Simpsons, if they want youto notice if they're making a
(31:36):
joke about it, then they'll dothat intentionally. But
otherwise, they don't quite dothat. They also do create a
depth of field, they use someshadows in The Simpsons, but
really, that's that's so theworld looks convincing. As a
real world. It does have thatkind of look to it. But it is
(31:56):
still a very cartoony cartoon.
Christine Malec (32:03):
And I wonder about what's going on in
animation. Currently, and I'mnot following it particularly,
but I know for example, there'sa Star Trek animated series
called lower decks. And so arethey following any new
approaches to animation styling?
JJ Hunt (32:19):
Lower Decks is an interesting one. So it's, in
some ways, it's quite a bit likeThe Simpsons they do. They do
have 3d worlds, right. Sothey're, you know, you have a
foreground, a background and amiddle ground and there is a
little bit of shading in thecharacters. Not a ton. Though,
it's a little bit closer, thecharacter design is a little bit
(32:43):
closer to what I've heard calledeither like the modern style, or
the 2d flat, or 2d flash likestyle. This is a lot of the
stuff that you'll find on theCartoon Network. Now things like
Powerpuff Girls, Dexter'sLaboratory, Teen Titans Go, it's
a little bit younger. It's thisvery flat graphic style. So in
(33:03):
the extreme versions of it,there are no shadows, very heavy
black outlines, very boldcolors, and a very clean digital
look with limited threedimensionality within the
characters. So even though thecharacters are in three
dimensional worlds, sometimesthe characters themselves look
very flat. So something likelower decks has uses elements of
(33:26):
this, this flat, very digitalrendering, but then something
like Powerpuff Girls can bepretty harsh, like it's really
extremely flat. Sometimes thebackgrounds are nothing but
stylized shapes and colors, verythinly rendered sometimes very
muted. Sometimes, the movementin these tends to be quite fast,
(33:47):
it's abrupt. It's a little bitchoppy. And you can hear that in
the pacing as well. Like the waythe movement goes away
characters are zip, zip, zipfrom here to there. And it's, it
looks like Flash animation. It'snot flash animation, but it
looks like it looks like it'srendered very quickly, very,
(34:07):
it's very, very digital. Thelines are too clean to be drawn
by hand. No one is thinking thisis drawn by hand. The corners
are too sharp, the curves aretoo smooth. The Simpsons by now,
of course, is digitally renderedas well, but it's evolved from a
hand drawn style. So it stillretains a little bit of that.
(34:28):
But this modern 2d flat, it isentirely digital proud of it. It
looks like it was done on atablet, as opposed to done in a
production studio and that's intentional.
Christine Malec (34:40):
I have one opinion question. Don't think
too hard if it doesn't comeeasily, but what's the most
realistic animation you've everseen?
JJ Hunt (34:49):
There have been there are a couple of different ways
to create realistic sometimesit's about realistic movement.
In the case of realisticmovement, the Disney approach
where you're actually drawingover filmed footage, the
movement looks very, veryrealistic. Then there's the kind
of the computer the CGIrealistic. And then you get into
(35:12):
the uncanny valley thing whereif you get too close to reality,
but you can't get it perfect, itlooks really bad. So even though
it's technically closer to beingreal, it looks far worse. I
think for the most realisticanimation, you'd have to go to
video games. And there are someincredible animations in that
(35:34):
where I have had the experienceof watching, you know, seeing a
YouTube clip, and it's a big,you know, action sequence or
something like that. And I'll be20 or 30 seconds in before I
realized, oh, wait a minute.
This is an animated video game.
This isn't like a fight scenefrom a film. Oh, yeah. It's not
(35:55):
until you get close up and youget to look at that character's
face. Because, yeah, you know,the the expression isn't exactly
right. The sweat down the sideof the face isn't perfect. But
that's kind of that's the CGIkind of side of things. Yeah,
it's it. realism and animation.
You only want to get so closeand then you want to have to
(36:18):
kind of dial it back. Otherwise,it looks too creepy.
Christine Malec (36:25):
We love making this podcast. If you love
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page to help cover the costs ofputting the show together. You
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(37:10):
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