Better Animation = Low Quality?

[Ghetsis-Dennis]

I've noticed something regarding long-running animated shows (Spongebob, the Simpsons, Pokemon, etc). As the years go by, the animation gets better, but the quality of the episodes soon become stale by the older audience. A similar event has happened with video games where modern games uses realistic HD graphics, but a lot of people from the internet ranging from Youtube to 4chan complaining about the games not being as good as the ones in the 80's and 90's. This may be just a theory, but I've been wondering if a show will get better if it went back to its older art quality. Has anyone noticed it too?

 

[Cap'n Jack]

Art quality and actual content are two completely different things. Animation is getting more advanced as the years go on, which is just common sense to expect as technology progresses, but whether or not these animated works tell good stories is up to the viewer. People may be wanting to go back to the good ol' days they yammer on and on and on about, but technologically back-tracking is not going to do anything. If people want good stories, people need to make good stories. Then they can decide if they want 3-D animation, rotoscoping, pen-on-paper, cel animation, or whatever they want.

 

[Iteru]

Correlation does not imply causation.

A comparison and statistical basic.

 

[Garren]

I'm pretty sure that's due to the shows being long-runners and naturally becoming stale over-time, whereas new animation techniques became available as time moved on and were simply applied. Although I do agree that the old, hand-drawn style gave certain shows their original charm...a lot of people dislike the staleness of the Simpson's animation now, and personally, I hate how Family Guy quickly lost the rough, amateur quality it had early on and has become one of the stalest looking shows that shows how it's become a big budget FOX show.

At first I thought this thread was about how anime tends to have more detailed character models, yet less fluid animation, whereas American animations is different, with simpler models with more fluidity.

 

[John Understands]

By this logic, Hanna-Barbera cartoons, Dingo Pictures films, and Video Brinquedo have kickass films and cartoons.

But this is not the case. Adventure Time, Regular Show, and My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic are recent and have good humor, and have good animation.

 

[CrackFox]

There's no corralation. Take The Simpsons for example, the animation was terrible at the start and so were the jokes, by the time the show got better the animation had significantly improved and so had the writing, same with South Park and Family Guy. As for Pokemon, I wouldn't say that the quality of writing has declined at all, It just doesn't have the characters and humor that Kanto did. Still, a lot of people argue that Pokemon is much better now that it was.

 

[Ghetsis-Dennis]

There's no corralation. Take The Simpsons for example, the animation was terrible at the start and so were the jokes, by the time the show got better the animation had significantly improved and so had the writing, same with South Park and Family Guy. As for Pokemon, I wouldn't say that the quality of writing has declined at all, It just doesn't have the characters and humor that Kanto did. Still, a lot of people argue that Pokemon is much better now that it was.

But the writing started to decline when the animation continued to improve over the past years. There's even a vocal group who believe the producers spent most of their money on the flashy opening intros rather than the quality of the actual episodes (Ex: the original Thundercats, the first TMNT cartoon, and modern-day anime), where there are times where the characters barely move a muscle/position (compare the old episodes of Family Guy to the new episodes to know where I'm talking about).

 

[Dorothy LaRouge]

There's no corralation. Take The Simpsons for example, the animation was terrible at the start and so were the jokes, by the time the show got better the animation had significantly improved and so had the writing, same with South Park and Family Guy. As for Pokemon, I wouldn't say that the quality of writing has declined at all, It just doesn't have the characters and humor that Kanto did. Still, a lot of people argue that Pokemon is much better now that it was.

But the writing started to decline when the animation continued to improve over the past years. There's even a vocal group who believe the producers spent most of their money on the flashy opening intros rather than the quality of the actual episodes (Ex: the original Thundercats, the first TMNT cartoon, and modern-day anime), where there are times where the characters barely move a muscle/position (compare the old episodes of Family Guy to the new episodes to know where I'm talking about).

Like Iteru said, correlation does not imply causation. There are many shows with beautiful, fluid animation which are coupled with great writing (for example, Avatar and Young Justice).

 

[Cap'n Jack]

There's no corralation. Take The Simpsons for example, the animation was terrible at the start and so were the jokes, by the time the show got better the animation had significantly improved and so had the writing, same with South Park and Family Guy. As for Pokemon, I wouldn't say that the quality of writing has declined at all, It just doesn't have the characters and humor that Kanto did. Still, a lot of people argue that Pokemon is much better now that it was.

But the writing started to decline when the animation continued to improve over the past years. There's even a vocal group who believe the producers spent most of their money on the flashy opening intros rather than the quality of the actual episodes (Ex: the original Thundercats, the first TMNT cartoon, and modern-day anime), where there are times where the characters barely move a muscle/position (compare the old episodes of Family Guy to the new episodes to know where I'm talking about).

While it is true that spending more money to make the animation "flashier" or more distracting could be a sign of less focus on actual material, it's not much of a connection. You can't improve writing with money, you can only improve the quality of the aesthetic portrayal of what the writers and designers come up with in their heads.