cartoons

[Filip Plesha]

I have a few questions about modern cartoon production comming from hanna barbera.

 

For example, dexter's laboratory.

It looks to me like it has been shot on film conventionally. Is that true?

And is this still the usual way of making TV cartoons (not counting digital ones)?

 

And by the way, are the negatives of those cartoons edited (for archiving purpuses) or are they just edited in video and the negatives stay unedited.

 

And what film stock is usually used for that? I would assume 5245 or 5248

or something fine grain as that.

[David Mullen ASC]

Most hand-drawn animation is (obviously) drawn by hand, a new pencil drawing per every two or three frames, probably on pin-registered sheets of paper, but many places then scan them into a computer for coloring instead of using acetate cel inkers and painters. I don't know about Hanna Barbara though.

 

On site has said that digital ink & paint has become the industry norm. This suggests that film is never involved unless a transfer to film is needed. See:

 

http://mag.awn.com/index.php?article_no=1881

[Phil Rhodes]

Hi,

 

I've been looking very closely at some of the more recent stuff coming out of Japan, and I know that they do a lot of digital post on it - from After Effects up - to achieve some of the trickier effects you get in the higher end material. I was wondering at what point they'd give up and just start drawing the cels with graphics tablets. Some of it is starting to look extremely sharp and noiseless.

 

Phil

[Michael Nash]

I was amused to learn that the construction paper cutout look of "Southpark" is actually computer generated. I think I read it was Softimage they use to create that authentic paper drop-shadow look.

 

The funny thing is that my neighbor used to do the on-line color correction for Southpark. Apparently they crank the stuff out so fast they don't have time to finesse the color during animation, so they farmed that out to a commercial post house. He was color correcting in the morning here in LA in time to get the master satellited to Comedy Central in NY in the afternoon, which would then air the show that same evening. People kept asking him to make private tapes of the show, but he didn't even have time to watch it while color-correcting, let alone pirate a dub.

[Filip Plesha]

On one of the southpark episodes when they were making fun of George Lucas

for adding digital effects to his movies, they had like a small commercial in the middle advertising the new digitally remastered south park (it was a joke allso)

and then two guys were explaining that they replaced the paper characters with digital ones. So i guess they allso use paper and cell animation.

 

By the way, for hanna barbera, i have seen in credits of some of their cartoons "negative cutting" , and i remember reading somewhere on the internet about preservation of the negatives for edd ed and eddy. Perhaps they output everything to film after the computer work.

[Brad Grimmett]

Apparently they crank the stuff out so fast they don't have time to finesse the color during animation,

I've heard that they crank out a Southpark every week. I had a hard time believing it, but it sounds like it's true. Pretty amazing. On the other hand, what about The Simpsons? I heard it takes many months (9 months is what I remember hearing) to complete one episode. Anyone know if that's true, and if so, why? I know very little about animation, but it's very interesting to me that there could be such a huge difference in the time it takes to produce a show.

[Filip Plesha]

By the way, today i watched dexter's lab on cartoon network for a closer examination, and i can see that it is a film transfered to video indeed.

But i don't know was it all printed out to film after scanning and digital painting or was it done classically. Some of the background paintings look like real ink

(sort of like the old 60's and 70's cartoons like scooby doo)

I belive that some of the older episodes were perhaps done with classic cell photography, but i allso read somewhere about digital ink and paint. Perhaps newer episodes were digital and then output to film.

 

Why do I say it looks like film..

Beside the classic cell dirt there are film scratches (lasting one frame) and

you can clearly see that the frames are not stable, the image is riding softly

in every direction. Clearly a film transfer.

 

Allso i have read yesterday that some hanna barbera cartoons are suffering from

some digital cleanup software that damages the lines (when overdone).

And it is used for removale of scratches and dirt on film.

 

From all that i would conclude that even though today digital painting is used,

everything is usually transfered to film in the end, and then telecined.

[Alvin Pingol]

I've heard that they crank out a Southpark every week. I had a hard time believing it, but it sounds like it's true. Pretty amazing. On the other hand, what about The Simpsons? I heard it takes many months (9 months is what I remember hearing) to complete one episode. Anyone know if that's true, and if so, why? I know very little about animation, but it's very interesting to me that there could be such a huge difference in the time it takes to produce a show.

You are correct, nine months is the average time it takes to complete an episode of a cartoon. The reason South Park can produce episodes so quickly is because of the way the show itself is animated.

 

Obviously, South Park has its own unique animation style, and that is that "paper cut-out" style that has made the show so distinct. This style is simple to animate in that every character onscreen has "stock" modifications, an example being (a) full-body front, (2) full-body left, (3) full-body rear, and I would assume they use a simple horizontal flip to get full body right. When a character is walking towards the screen, they simply use full-body front, tilt the character slightly alternating left and right, and increase the size. Voila, a walking South Park character has just been created. Combine the tilting/moving technique with the stock modifications and you can get a character to travel anywhere. Same goes with character speech, they have stock modifications for the mouth, eyes, etc.

 

It's all very simple, and this is why you'll always see South Park episodes animated in such a way that the action never takes place at an angle and is always directly in front of the "camera."

 

Shows like The Simpsons, Family Guy, etc., use traditional hand-drawings that later get scanned and digitally painted/touched up. To animate a person walking, every frame for the legs in the "walking loop" must be drawn. And, due to the complexity of many scenes in cartoons, it is difficult to re-use these loops, for action many times takes place at a different angle. If Homer Simpson is walking up and down a hill and the 'camera' is positioned such as that Homer is walking towards it, every frame must be animated since the angle is continuously changing (Homer will be tilted up slightly while walking uphill, he will be straight while at the top, and then tilted down while walking downhill).

 

South Park would animate this by using a side angle combined with the tilt/move technique.

[Brad Grimmett]

Very interesting. Thanks for the info Alvin.