Could Hanna barbara done a better job then filmnation
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It was also a serious and intelligent cartoon since there were no talking cats, dogs or bears in it like other HB shows.
I'd call that an exception for Hanna-Barbera's work, not the rule. Certainly not by the '70s.
Race Bannon looks like Mike Pence. 
Jonny. No H.
It got it up to the right number of episodes for syndication, on the assumption that it was a kids' show, and a year later kids have grown a bit and moved on.
[QUOTE="Warped9”]
There was also Space Angel [/QUOTE]
Space Angel is the cheapest TV show to ever come out!! You can’t even call it animation, since the producers didn’t animate anything! It was a bunch of still paintings with the voice actors mouths superimposed over the characters!! They blew all their money on fancy paintings (which would look god in HD). People think Filmation was cheap by having hands move in front of mouths, in order to not animate the mouths, but Space Angel didn’t even have 1 animated mouth on the show!
There was also Space Angel [/QUOTE]
Space Angel is the cheapest TV show to ever come out!! You can’t even call it animation, since the producers didn’t animate anything! It was a bunch of still paintings with the voice actors mouths superimposed over the characters!! They blew all their money on fancy paintings (which would look god in HD). People think Filmation was cheap by having hands move in front of mouths, in order to not animate the mouths, but Space Angel didn’t even have 1 animated mouth on the show!
If you want to see cheap and bizarre animation...Clutch Cargo fits the bill.
“Clutch Cargo” was done by the same studio that did “Space Angel”.
Hanna Barbara had a lot of really good old school animators on their staff and could kick Filmation's ass to the curb if they wanted to spend the money in the same way; they did full animation titles for a lot of TV live action shows and a lot of commercials, a lot of it really good. But TV series animation budgets were slim, and each studio dealt with that in different ways. HB went looser in style, especially once xerography allowed them to largely eliminate the ink stage of ink and paint, and they typically decided to spend more effort on more animated actions and less on careful draughtsmanship. Filmation largely worked on a system of pre-approved model drawings and stock poses, and animators literally had to get a supervisor to approve things like fixing a backwards thumb (true story). In that era Filmation's stuff was generally "tidier" but more rigid (except for the rotoscoped stuff).
One can't really compare Star Trek to H.B.'s Josie and the Pussycats or other "comedy" cartoons, as by rights those should be pitted against things like Filmation's The Archies. Compare Filmation's The Secret Life of Waldo Kitty to a contemporary HB cartoony cartoon and they're both equally awful in most regards, just in different ways.
The Alex Toth influence was a mixed blessing for TV animation because he tended to design good looking characters which didn't necessarily animate well. I hate to invoke John K. any more (eww) but I recall years ago he pointed out why the more realistic characters in TV cartoons tended to be "stiff as hell". I managed to find the blog post in question. Here's the key bit:
Filmation's Star Trek, Tarzan, etc. fell into that, which resulted in so much of their animation being so stiff and actually little animated.
In the end, some people prefer brand X, others brand Y.
IMO.
One can't really compare Star Trek to H.B.'s Josie and the Pussycats or other "comedy" cartoons, as by rights those should be pitted against things like Filmation's The Archies. Compare Filmation's The Secret Life of Waldo Kitty to a contemporary HB cartoony cartoon and they're both equally awful in most regards, just in different ways.
The Alex Toth influence was a mixed blessing for TV animation because he tended to design good looking characters which didn't necessarily animate well. I hate to invoke John K. any more (eww) but I recall years ago he pointed out why the more realistic characters in TV cartoons tended to be "stiff as hell". I managed to find the blog post in question. Here's the key bit:
In the production process that came later, they would just design the realistic characters on model sheets, then get artists who couldn't draw well to lay them out. Then animators who couldn't draw in this style either had a hell of a time trying to not only move them, but even pose them naturally. Then assistants would trace the already awkward poses and stiff animation and they'd lose another generation.
I did like Jonny Quest when it came out - for the same reason: Doug Wildey was a realistic comic artist and he did most of the layouts, and they inked them in comic book style. I think they found out that this wasn't a very efficient or cost effective way to make cartoons, so all the HB realistic cartoons that followed weren't even as good as Quest.
I did like Jonny Quest when it came out - for the same reason: Doug Wildey was a realistic comic artist and he did most of the layouts, and they inked them in comic book style. I think they found out that this wasn't a very efficient or cost effective way to make cartoons, so all the HB realistic cartoons that followed weren't even as good as Quest.
Filmation's Star Trek, Tarzan, etc. fell into that, which resulted in so much of their animation being so stiff and actually little animated.
In the end, some people prefer brand X, others brand Y.
IMO.
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Don’t forget that besides budgets, time was also a factor. For HB, coming from a theatrical short background, where the shorts might take upto 3-4 months to do animation, TV cartoons might have 1-2 months.
H/B cut so many corners that there's an episode of Super Friends where Green Lantern was drawn with three arms because the animators misunderstood Alex Toth's storyboard... And either no one caught it, or they didn't have the time to fix it (0:47 in the clip below):
There's another bad mistake in that clip, too. Captain Cold and Sinestro walk out of frame at 0:06 and we're literally staring at an empty background for a full six seconds.
I've heard that some episodes of Super Friends were actually animated in South American prisons, and after seeing mistakes like this, I can believe it.
There's another bad mistake in that clip, too. Captain Cold and Sinestro walk out of frame at 0:06 and we're literally staring at an empty background for a full six seconds.
I've heard that some episodes of Super Friends were actually animated in South American prisons, and after seeing mistakes like this, I can believe it.
The nice thing about animated characters is that you can erase them if they start getting too demanding.
I remember Filmation also did Fantastic Voyage in 1967/68, Tarzan in the seventies and He-Man in the eighties apart from our 22 episodes of Star Trek!
JB
JB
That's probably just that the guy photographing the animation making an error, since the arms and legs were often on separate cels. Filmation made mistakes like that, too.
Here's a fun H-B cel layering mistake (link)
With voice over, at least.
Look, Saturday morning television was a quality nightmare all the way around, be it H-B or Filmation or Jay Ward or name your studio.
Extraordinary claims... and kinda unlikely. Animated? Maybe cels being painted...maybe, improbably. You're going to have to find a source for that. Sounds like an urban legend.
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Well, the original Johnny Quest (done in 1964) by H-B was envisioned as a Prime Time (evening) show like The Flinstones, and ran on Fri. nights on ABC back in 1964. Later it bacame part of the kids cartoon Saturday morning lineup along with stuff like "Space Ghost" and "The Herculods" <--- Two of my favorites as a young kid in the late 1960s.
And WAS a prime time show.Well, the original Johnny Quest (done in 1964) by H-B was envisioned as a Prime Time (evening) show like The Flinstones, and ran on Fri. nights on ABC back in 1964. Later it bacame part of the kids cartoon Saturday morning lineup along with stuff like "Space Ghost" and "The Herculods" <--- Two of my favorites as a young kid in the late 1960s.
H-B came out of MGM’s cartoon unit and I forget what their production schedules were like, but over at Warner Bros. they had 6 weeks per cartoon, and I recall MGM being more generous than that, so 8 weeks seems reasonable. If so, each unit could grind out 6.5 cartoons a year for maybe 48 minutes of footage.
16 episodes per season of a half hour (22 min) show would be 352 minutes, which is over 7x the total footage of the units at MGM.
“Oh my god, it’s Diiiiiip!”The nice thing about animated characters is that you can erase them if they start getting too demanding.
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